BLACK GOLD

The guns came first.

They did not come in spraying bullets and riddling the air with the smell of gunpowder and blood and sand, they came in quite subtly. No one knew they were there until they had taken over the negotiations on both sides. And people resorted to murder and kidnapping and theft.

It made the elders feel like peace was forever going to be a myth for them and their people. It angered them too, seeing their grandchildren setting up bullets in rows and swimming for hours on end in the oily creeks, knowing which parts were safe and which parts had the best weapons hidden in a watery vault. But it could not be averted, treasure was hidden in their land and everyone was out for it.

One king had lied about the location of the gem, black gold, they called it. He said that it was in a rival community whose fish trade he had his eyes on, and so the hunters descended, with drills and barrels and machines and pipes and hardhats and clipboards and condoms, zigzagging their way through the peace and quiet and carving ugliness through the terrain. Their condoms often disappeared at inopportune times, their hardhats didn't protect from the heat and their drills came up with nothing, just huge, gaping holes in the ground and hearts of the girl-women. They left an ugly landscape and bastard children with unusual names, perhaps their mothers had wished and wished, in futility, in vain.

War broke out. The liar king against the impoverished king, both backed by their communities. Someone had snitched and both sides were in stitches, each palm scratching at the other, eager for a blood letting. Twelve people, on both sides, fell in one week, and the government called for a truce. It lasted for a week and then a head appeared in a creek. It was the liar king's son. Thus did the guns come in.

Blood and oil had formed the landscape, blood and greed would ruin it. Black gold would one day, vanish.

I like this one.

I like that it's many subtle stories in one. How many stories can you make out?

Picture belongs to Ave Calvar Martinez on Pexels.