Apocalypso
Flash-fiction - by Laura F. Sanchez
Bad storm coming, rolling in on the island, sucking water from the ocean like a hungover titan. Ten hours till it hits, or maybe a day—everybody get dressed, grab your instruments, and play.
Waves sweeping in, so angry, so dark. Rolling in like doomsday, set to wipe out the sharks. Gonna wipe out the beaches and wipe out the houses, wipe out the bars and wipe out the bosses. Gonna wipe out the saltfish, wipe out the curry, wipe out the plantains, if y’all don’t hurry.
You can’t take the boats out or leave on a train, can’t take an airplane cause it’s starting to rain. Gonna have to stop it right in its tracks—it always blows widdershins, we gonna turn it around back.
Go on, grab a drum if you can’t find a pan, gonna march around the island like a clock’s minute hand. Gonna spin so much energy heading the other way, drill a hole up that hurricane and make it go away. Gonna nail that sucker with the sound of steel drums, gonna build up the sound till the energy hums. Let that music smash through the hurricane’s winds, make a muddle in the middle so the storm’s track bends.
.
So grab your guitar and polish your sax, put on your ruffles and your bright yellow slacks. Load your neck up with jewelry and your face with lipstick, get ready to party till sweat makes you slick. We’ll dance around the island following the sun, push against the winds, make ‘em come undone.
Moss slides around trees, rocks hump through the grass. Trees sway in circles, all moving like clocks. We head for the beaches where we march four abreast. The winds rise and churn, molding clothes to wet chests.
The carousel horses down by the pier twist on their poles till they run to the rear. We lead them around till they circle to their right, and the horsepower mounts as we dance through the night. The cattle and sheep follow along; hell, the fish in the shallows gather in throngs.
When we dance by the graveyard, we bring out the dead, holding back as they rise and move out ahead. Great calypsonians of legend dance to the beat, clacking their bones and shuffling their feet. They’ll add power so great it’ll suck off the heat that powers the storm and lashes the waves—this one last carnival brings them out of their graves.
You think we can’t do it, can’t beat back the wind? Can’t save our own houses? Can’t save our own skins? Well, we damn well better, cause nobody’s gonna help—with our hunger, our thirst, our floods, or our deaths. See these steel drums we’re playing? Where you think they come from? A pain long and deep, down through the centuries, awake or asleep. We turned pain to music with nobody’s help; some fool throwing towels can go drown in kelp.
Do what you want—
dance fast or dance slow.
One way or another,
It’s apocalypso.