Longfaces Reward

Ron Koppelberger

Longfaces Reward

He held the cerulean sphere in cupped hands. His reflection wavered in the blue effervescence like a beseeching prisoner, a captured image of long faced desire, the desire for secrets and equal measures of beauty. His face elongated and drooped in long allay, his chin was a full foot beneath his pursed lips and his forehead sloped upward to an impossible length. He was Longface, Longface Wild as the town referred to him. He had tolerated the taunts of children and adults both over the tumult of his existence. The everyday spoils of marriage, children and love had eluded him. He was long faced and rambling in tonics of rare disposition.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaa,” he sighed in a whisper of reverent appreciation. The blue stone shimmered and swam before his eyes as he prayed for the confluence of events, the very purpose of his breath.
Longface closed his eyes and saw the afterimage of cobalt fire, the stone in the midst of a tempest. A tempest gathered against the exclamations of perfection, the decreed portion of beauty. A gathering tornado true, borne by longfaces and rare expressions.
The stone had been in the conclave of the dead near the edge of town. A long underground cavern where the townsfolk and country denizens had laid their loved ones to rest, in eternal sleep, a forever in company of damp moss and subterranean dreams.
He had crept to the entrance of the cavern and later, after dark, had gone into the ancient graveyard. The rows of rotting and mummified bodies had remained silent, passive and ever watchful. The flashlight had been a beacon and a torch as he searched the rows of decaying bodies. A moth flittered and danced in the moted glare of the light. He scanned the corpses and finally, near dawns edge he saw the prize, a large blue stone muzzled in the decaying jaw of an ancient king.
Longface had torn the jawbone free from the rest of the skull and the stone had rolled close to his feet.
“ Ahhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaahhhhhaaaaa.” he said, “Thank-you.”
As he sat in the small secret copse near the horizons frayed edge, the stone gleamed and glowed calling, calling. The old guard, the desires of the dead and the dreams of delirium. He waited, in confessions of revenge. Longface Wild, Longface Wild, they called as the air filled with the screams of the living and the gasps of the dead.