Staircasing | Michael Farfel

I was once staircasing, traipsing up the unsteady steps. Each board bent and whined and announced my coming even though I slowly tested every one with my toes. Pressure of any kind bound them up and untwisted them ever so slightly so that the sound of the nails, ancient, ancient nails, fidgeting from their tombs was as loud as if the moon were crashing in the night. And, in fact, the moon was crashing, unhooked from her lover, the sky, and falling headlong in the distance, as I headed up the old rickety set in search of that cat that had caught the bird who I had been feeding. The bird whose plumage was a mixture of red and some gloomy blues, whose voice was as smooth as a smoothed over lake in some valley, in some hidden grove, was plucked from its perch by a most notoriously, fiendish feline. And so, I sought them out in hopes to find not what I found, fore what I found was a carnage complete. A feast. A no longer famished cat eyed me over its blood sunk maw and dared me with a hiss to object. I turned and staircased away, traipsed down the bowkneed steps and found myself a new hollow-boned friend to feed.

Michael Farfel lives and writes out of Salt Lake City, Utah. His work has been published in a number of wonderful journals and can all be found on his website, MichaelFarfel.com. He also has a book coming out in 2021 with Montag Press. Find him on twitter @onebillionmikes