After the Eclipse

The cult fell apart after the eclipse. We expected it, the baker’s dozen of us who still gather monthly in the hidden room of the Senator’s office but, still, it’s a disappointment. We called ourselves a cult as a joke. Our friendship, though, wasn’t…I thought.

Over a hundred of us stood together on the Monday afternoon of the eclipse, whispered the summoning chants, and waited. We basked in the energy flowing onto our tiny Earth as the moon blocked the sun and opened the way for the little gods. But when nothing rent the sky and the moon slid quietly by without a shriek, we despaired.

The next day, only fifty of us met to discuss what happened, or didn’t happen. More slipped away over the next month without a word, without contact. Millennials call it “ghosting”. I didn’t understand. You don’t just give up because the moment for which you prepared your whole life doesn’t produce the immediate result you want, right? You must have patience with events eons in the making. That is when you should learn more about your beliefs, dig deeper into the sacred texts, learn the difference between a birth and conception.

Or maybe not. Maybe modern devotion is more fragile. Maybe the slightest trial extinguishes it completely, just as the little gods extinguished the lives of the faithless when they burst forth, glorious and grown, from their skulls.

I love the now-great gods — Iä ! Iä! — but…sometimes…I miss my friends.

Yeah, okay. Fine. Eclipse stories are hackneyed, especially the day of the eclipse. But I’m a writer. Sometimes hackneyed is what I do.

Truth be told? I kind of feel bad for this guy. He deserved better friends, don’t you think?

(image credit: Flickr user Juan Carlos Martins)