Twenty-three Small Disasters

Call down lightning.

Two boys dangle upside down from the jungle gym. Knees hooked over the bar, hands swinging free. Giddy rush of blood in your ears. Swinging hips, shoulders. Turning to look at each other's eyes. Look, I can do this. Blue eyes, brown eyes. Look, I can do this.

Bully boys are carrying bricks across the top level of Log City, pausing to rest them on the rails. The circus cacophony of the playground: hopscotch, four-square, smear-the-queer.

Knees hooked over the bar, the circulation's gone, feet asleep. They call that asleep. When your feet and calves wake up they burn and sting like a thousand fingers poking.

It's dangerous to love. If that's the word.

It ends in death, it all ends in death. We know this already. Dead bodies, cold and still, shadows like bruises under the eyes. There's a steel pole stuck in concrete out back in the park behind the schoolyard, something electrical is wrong with it. If you lick your palms and grab onto it you feel the power going through you-a hummingbird-fast shudder. A hum as loud as a roar, that only you can hear, shaking you. Like being a machine.

Here, upside down, it's a separate world. Everything is backwards. Like a world where Superman is sly and weak and Mr. Mxyzptlk is noble and beloved. One of the boys hanging upside down says "get off!" and pushes the other, even though nobody had touched anybody until then. Look, I can do this.

There are words that change everything, that call down lightning. We don't know them yet. We just know that they are coming soon.

Blue eyes, brown eyes. One of us will be a superhero, an astronaut, a Messiah. Twist rebar into a birthday bow, find enlightenment, make news.

The other one, left behind.

Knees hurt. Bell ringing. Time to come down.

Benjamin Rosenbaum's stories have appeared in Nature, Harper's, McSweeney's, Strange Horizons, Asimov's, and F&SF, translated into ten languages, and nominated for Hugo and Nebula awards. He lives in Northern Virginia.

More about Benjamin at http://www.benjaminrosenbaum.com