The Show

By Ron Koppelberger

Mawson August tapped the rust colored ashtray with a sleight subtle rhythm. Inhaling he savored the gentle caress of vanilla-flavored clove. Chaldea Clove, “Discreet yet neat!” it said on the box. The bottle of Heineken sat lonely and nearly full next to a half-eaten plate of green beans.

The teddy bear on the television screen looked soft and fuzzy, friendly; Mawson got cozy in his easy chair and clicked the remote control to his new flat screen liquid digital. He belched a growling tiger and patted his stomach.

Inhaling deeply he relaxed and exhaled a mushrooming plume of smoke. He turned out the table lamp next to him. Silhouettes in dancing storms and evanescent shadow played across his face in peripheral morphus exchange with the light from the glowing television. Mawson sighed and checked the cable guide, Click, Click, Click. Channel 138, a movie “The Lady and the Purchased Passion,” 187, “free will” it read, 209, “Kick yer Butt in Hell” it read. He opened his eyes wider in the darkness and the glow of flittering chatterbox vision. “ Kick yer butt in hell,” he read again. For a moment he was indecisive in his choice, “Why not.” he whispered. The tranquil pause between seconds and minutes ticked by as he waited for the satellite relay to capture the picture.

The screen flashed a simple one word announcement, “Evangeline,” then there was gray static, again the screen flashed “Evangeline!” He waited, bonded wandering eyes expectant, “Evangeline!” The rapt face of a brilliant twilight sunset, compliant to the approaching indigo shade, shaped in the fashion of a man, eyes scarlet and the rest in shadow except for a row of pearly white teeth, “Evangeline!” superimposed across the man’s silhouette. A low hum refrained in a soft pillowy echo, “Evangeline,” it whispered. Mawson looked at his watch it had stopped at 12:37 A.M., “Evangeline the man whispered a bit louder. “The spoils of war,” he spoke aloud in sibilant rhythm with the crickets that had begun chirping. His mouth opened a tiny bit and he reached up to the pearly whites and pulled out a piece of folded notebook paper. His dark hand held the paper, outstretched almost as if offering the secret note to Mawson. He unfolded the piece of paper.

“Evangeline!” it said in maroon script. The man took a wooden match from the shadows before him, striking the match against his check a tiny inferno of brilliance charmed the well of gray-black shadow. Holding the match to the paper he set the scrap on fire. It burned and his face gnarled to a look of absolute hatred. “EVAGILINE!” he screamed shaking the space between Mawson and the screen. Understood, implicit in chaste degrees of illumination a giant red and amber sun filled the screen, the unassuming figure of an angel in flight fluttered across the screen and a shower of rose petals filled the air in gentle undulating harmony. A silent rhapsody in cadence with the sound of a beating heart filled the room. Mawson saw an unborn fetus and the conclusion of the moment. The screen filled with light<“Salvation.” it read. There was an intangible unspoken purity in the angel as the gentle hiss of static woke him from his quiet reverie and his secret discussion.

The dream, he possessed the betrothal of a gracious existence, the dream, he shivered for a moment and the twilight wild whispered “Evangeline.” in his ear. The better of a revolution rolled before him, wheat and saffron, near the edges and in the distance, fire great heaps of flame.


Ron Koppelberger has written 97 books of poetry over the past several years and 17 novels. He has been published in The Storyteller, Ceremony, Write On!!!, Freshly Baked Fiction and Necrology Shorts. He also recently won the People’s Choice Award for poetry in The Storyteller for his poem "Secret Sash."