Drabble 136 – Hamirostrate

Clearly, publishing drabbles on Tuesday wasn’t working. It’s been a stressful month. A stressful few months? Can I remember a time when I wasn’t stressed?

I think, at age 29, it’s time to accept that stress is a permanent state of being. I am constantly churning through the garbage of my life, chewing on it and spitting it out and chewing on it again, breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces. Eventually, maybe those pieces will get so small I no longer have to think about them. For now, I’m surrounded by them, just a garbage queen on her garbage throne.

Part of this process is recognizing what does have to be done versus what doesn’t. And it when it comes to posting a story once per week, it seems that my brain (and me) have filed that into ‘doesn’t’. Which is to say that I’ll be posting Wednesdays instead, because it gives me an extra day to sort out the garbage and turn it into something I’m proud of.

Anyway, here’s a drabble.

HAMIROSTRATE

(n.) From Latin hamus, for “hook”

Having a hook-like beak.

A vulture has a dirty, thankless job, but it does it with joy, with gusto. It digs into the meat of things, tearing, snatching, ripping, using its barbed tongue to strip flesh away from bone and dive into marrow to scrape it clean. It is a filthy creature, a stinking, bald-headed bird so foul it inspired myths of the harpy. They are not beautiful, their faces gore-stained, their breath rancid and acidic. They survive, they thrive, because someone must dispose of the rotting and vile; there is no shame in what they do because they do it well.