Like Sands In An Hour Glass [FICTOID]

“The nice thing -- well, I guess you can’t really call it ‘nice’ -- the thing is, those bastards are so entrenched in their code of everything have a price that they will sell out their own power in exchange for this quarter’s profits being higher than the last.”

The midwife looked tired but triumphant.  The delivery proved a long and difficult one but now mother and child rested peacefully, the state appointed birthing agent having checked off a legal birth and departed. 

Some dried blood remained on the midwife’s apron; she would wash that off at home.  Now she rested in the family’s kitchen, stirring lemon and honey into her tea (she washed her hands, of course; though a traditionalist in many ways, she nonetheless recognized the value of medical science).

“What do you do with the money you make?” the mother’s father / child’s grandfather asked.  “We never see you spend it on yourself.”

“Oh, I save it for a rainy day,” the midwife said, still stirring her tea.  She liked the father / grandfather; he was a good man, a just man, a man who honestly and openly held many of the same values she did…but he was still a man, still someone who could not be trusted with the deepest and darkest of secrets.

In truth, not even other women could be trusted, even if they would enthusiastically endorse her scheme.

Certainly the bankers and stockbrokers she employed couldn’t be trusted, that’s why she kept them separate in her dealings, separate but linked like strands on a spider’s web.

A black widow’s web, she thought, smiling to herself as she sipped her tea.  Something chaotic and without form.  Oh, no, a big net-like web would be recognized and avoided much too easily, but the jumble of a black widow’s web?  They’ll never notice until it’s too late.

Every penny she made other than what she kept for the bare necessities of life went into a vast, complex tangle of stocks and bonds and shares and holdings.  Bit by bit, share by share the patriarchy sold out their interest to her -- or rather, to her proxies.

The day would soon come when the black widow would reveal herself, and the terrified patriarchy – bound in soft silk and paralyzed with succulent venom – would quiver and soil themselves at the approach of her red hourglass…

…but for now she would sit and sip her tea, letting the blood red sands of the hourglass trickle down grain by grain.

© Buzz Dixon