OZ Speaks

 

I watched them. 

They let me stay for this one day. The man Doug says I must go. How can I go?

The woman with young, the other woman, the lordman and his men had a thing I could not quite hold in my mind. I tried. I watched them.

They worked together but because their desire was to work for all of them together. No rule was over them to help.

I began to perceive what a man was, or a woman. They have something I do not. I don’t even have a way to say it.

They spoke of love. What is love! This love maddens me. I am tempted to gnaw my hands in horror! Why do I not know?

There is a flaw in me. I am only partly alive. I have flesh and I have blood, but something is not there, and I cannot understand what it is.

I was made under a master’s rule and was made to serve him with my others. My master’s rule was adamant, final. No petition was addressed to him because there would be no purpose to it.

I began to see the working out of this love, but there is no place for it in me. I am a hive being with flesh somewhat like a man’s, but that is all. I am no man! I have no idea what I am.

How did I think that I could live and serve here? For I would surely do them harm someday. I feel no distinction between help and harm.

In fact, I have never considered myself at all. I am only harm in flesh.

I am only danger to them.

There is only one service that I can do them. I must die.

*** 

OZ glances casually around the kitchen. There is a glass on the counter. Jen is busy with Lou upstairs.

Doug and Elvin are in the living room talking, making plans. These plans include getting OZ to take a hike and stay gone. Roger has gone home.

OZ takes the glass from the counter and goes out the kitchen door and down the steps into the little backyard area. He gives nothing he sees any consideration.

He walks to ZO’s unmarked grave. He sits on the loosened earth there.

He shatters the glass on a rock lying nearby. The end of the broken glass is still firm.

His last act as a living being is to open the veins in both of his wrists. This is the only service he can do. Little does he know it, but this is an act of love, though blockheaded and Thumbieish. Also, he didn't do a very good job of it.  He has that weird relationship with matter, remember?

💔

But, you know how girls are?  And  pregnant girls are even more so.  Women get broody too!  Let nothing suffer in her presence! Life is so strong in her now.

Jen comes downstairs. She looks around.
"Doug, where is OZ?  I left him sitting at the table."

Doug and his brother stand and come to the kitchen.  No one can see OZ anywhere.

"Jeez, Jen, he was just here two minutes ago!"

Bubby, under the table says, "he took a glass and went out to the garden."

All three run out to the garden searching for their Thumbie.  And they see him sitting on ZO's grave with his head in his bloodied hands.

"Oh, NO"  Jen cries. "The poor thing.  We didn't want this!"  

Doug is the fastest.  He gets there first, followed by Elvin and then Jen.  They kneel around OZ, the strange wounded creature.

They see that he is breathing and weeping. His great black eyes are swollen nearly shut too!

Jen speaks first. "OZ, don't die.  There is a place for you here."  She grips his wounded wrists and bows her head, crying now also.  She whispers words of prayer and healing.

The boys glance at each other in surprise.  But they go with it. Who could gainsay her?

OZ does not die.  He looks at his wrists and they are whole.  There is still blood here and there but that is soon washed away. 

OZ speaks again.  "I will serve you!  I will serve all of you, even the dog.  

"I can do much!  Matter and I are one.  Let me serve you!  I will obey and I will learn!

"Doug, I will obey you!"

So what else could they do?  Doug said "alright OZ.  You may stay with us." 

Now they had a sort of uncanny farmhand/butler.  

A Joyous Configuration indeed!

Link to all: In the tenth year of the pandemonium.docx