Blind Murmur

Flash Fiction

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A submission for Iron Age Media’s Prompt: The Edge

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“There are two sides to every war story, the point and the pommel.”

My father and my father’s father knew the truth about that puzzle box of a phrase.

For vein after vein the blind offered the strength of their arms in exchange for the food that was to be harvested and served upon their family table.

Eventually, the blind would be crushed underfoot, careful as their ears were, they listened too closely, and the noise of weather and ruin had marked them for death on the battlefield.

And for each buried body in the morose aftermath, through magic and miracle, the puzzle box would slowly rust, its contents running dry, as though threatening to abandon the blind for a generation.

Every soul related to this shadow of circumstance tasted the damp impending issue of the box leaving them as mere vagabonds.

By the time I myself learned how to fight, the canary that was my mind sang clearly.

The box had selected its new keeper, the one who would pay the toll for an entire generation more of slaughtering, and the blind, as before - per their namesake - would never have to witness the horror of war for this spell.

And with each nail, digit, limb, and organ, the box would accept, and accept, until it could accept no more. The tithe had been paid, and the heartbeat of the blind would remain as it was for all of their history to that point: Unmeasurable, a murmur.