Mother Earth truly doesn’t care if you live or die, but she prefers you dead. She lets you think you’re in control, but you can tell when she’s getting randy. The air is laced with the smell of rain. The wind blows through her trees, making the leaves whisper and tremble. She strikes up a choir of bees to set the tone, get herself in the mood. Her clouds open. She thunders. She’s electric. Her ground is wet, soaking. She shudders and shakes, splits open. Her oceans form a tsunami, spilling everywhere, engulfing everything in their path. An orgy of bodies, screaming, howling, swallowed up.
The sun reappears in the liquid sky. The loamy earth gushes and pulses with the murmur of frogs. She’s warm and glowing. Spent. Then she’s back for more. Some manner of this happens every day. Multiple times a day. Somewhere she’s desecrating a body and getting off on it.
Sometimes she is so cold. An ice queen. Solid. You might think you can break her. You drill down, fish around, take what you can bait and yank up. In her harvest season, you may strip her of her fertile raiment, leave her naked and barren. Other times you might set fire to her, make her a burning wilderness. No matter. This isn’t her first rodeo. She can take it. Eventually she will have you and she will have you dead.
This unquenchable desire of hers, you act like it’s a big deal, say she needs help, but what could be more natural than recycling human bodies? Devouring them, body and soul. Regurgitating them. Swallowing them down again.
She won’t stop. She can’t.
Not until she’s had her way with every last one of you.
Janice Leagra is an emerging writer, shortlisted for the 2017 Bridport Prize in Flash Fiction. She is a 2018 Best of the Net nominee. She has had flash fiction pieces published with Spelk Fiction, EllipsisZine, Dodging the Rain, Ghost Parachute, Riggwelter Press, and Paper and Ink Lit Zine. She also has work forthcoming at 24 Unread Messages Zine.