this is my first post. i didn’t feel appropriate posting anything else, i think, until i had given you one of my stories. it’s a favorite of mine.
The Crippled Scholar
A crippled and paralyzed scholar sunk down in his chair as the flies gathered around his head and his uncovered appendages. He could not swat them away, and they batted at his head and fingers with knowing diligence. Bruises started forming where they batted him, and blood then started dripping from the wounds.
“Help me!” the scholar cried. “The flies are at it again!”
But no one heard him, or, if they did, no one came.
The flies batted away his lips and his eyelids, and the sight of his broad expanse of teeth and wide open eyes would have made him look like an excited child had it not been for all the blood. They batted his fingernails blue and stripped the skin on his fingers down to the bone in some places, though, as the skin on fingers is not very thick, this was not an exceedingly impressive feat, even for flies.
The crippled scholar did not feel the beating on his fingers, only on his face. And of course, all this did not take a small amount of time to complete. It took many hours that the crippled scholar spent sitting and listening to the thick, wet smacking of the flies in his blood.
chris.
noconversation.com
