Flash! Fiction 3 by Peter McMillan - HTML preview

65

Ernesto, captivated by the magic of her voice, made to approach, but a seamless wall suddenly appeared where the poetess and the alcove had been.

From further down the corridor, a theatrical voice beckoned. A sturdy, white-haired man with a ruddy complexion was in the midst of a reading. Ernesto's snatches of attentiveness were mostly unintentional.

... have become the anthropologist who fills with copious notes his notebooks and ... who sees but ... is not questioned who judges but is not ... exposed ... our primitive selves ... with ... the nearsighted ... perspective of absolute

... gods.

George Glover, the sign said. An obscure philosopher reading a handwritten page — the corpus of his scholarship. Recalling the thwarted encounter with the poetess, Ernesto drew near and watched with satisfaction as the professor disappeared in the middle of the second reading.

In the distance, a familiar, stern voice proclaimed, "In the beginning." Ernesto tottered hurriedly down the corridor but in his inebriated exuberance he overran the alcove and smashed face first into the far wall.

Flat on his back, Ernesto raised his head, blinked at his fractured wristwatch, then collapsed, his head plunking down hard on the floor. Unable to move, he lay there captive to the endless repetition of a word only vaguely understood and then only through its tone —

SELAH.

First published in thickjam, No. 363, February 6, 2014.