Primordial: An Abstraction

82

I’m throwing grenades into a lake.

I don’t know where I got the grenades and I don’t know what lake this is.

It doesn’t look familiar.

The water is gray.

I’m in a boat.

A pontoon boat.

Occasionally sunlight glints off of the shiny metal frame and stabs me in the eye.

I might be stranded.

It doesn’t worry me.

After I pull their clips, I put the grenades to my ear and shake them, softly, like a rattle, to see if I can hear them tic. Then I cast them into the water.

There’s a pause.

Then a detonation — a muffled, rumbling blast that, after another pause, spits a morass of dead fish to the surface.

Perch, mostly.

Some white bass and sheepshead.

Sometimes I stop to drink wine.

I’m almost out of wine.

I wish it would rain. The sound of rain on water is the stuff of warm dreams.

When the wine is gone, I’ll just keep feeding grenades into the lake, one by one, until something happens.

Only two things can happen.

One: I kill all of the fish.

Two: I run out of grenades.

I’m out of grenades.

All of the fish are dead.

In the distance, the University lays on the shore like an evacuated whale. .