...That Day I Lost my Soul...

In hindsight, 

I should have killed him. 

Indeed, had I done so, 

this world as we know it 

might have been 

significantly altered. 

But listen: 

I was all of six years old, 

and my pending cultivation of 

   homicidal mindset 

had as yet    come to be. 

Patience. 

 

No, I rather figure it was 

meant to be a religious experience. 

It being Easter and all. 

Painted eggs. 

Chocolate bunnies. 

Shallow graves. 

 

My being a Cupid-esque, 

cherub-faced bow-hunter 

was only deemed lethally apropos 

on days other than that 

of Valentine’s. 

Quiver o’ arrows superfluous,

nay Artemis be damned, 

for the Herculean labor 

of which I had been tasked 

was none other than 

an Easter Egg hunt.

 

And this, my first 

professional ovum scrum. 

Indeed, at six years of age 

I’d decided that specialized 

egg acquisition 

would be my life’s work. 

Oh, not that I’d merely subsist 

on the consumption of omelets. 

No, that would be silly. 

 

Listen: the eggs I’m talking about 

were profoundly eerie and 

arcane by nature. 

They of other-worldly colors 

gone   cryptic   calligraphic. 

Necronomican 

gestated ovarian offal. 

Compulsion and    revulsion 

in equal letch affect. 

 

And some… yes....

Some were even gold!

‘Course, a lot of those gold ones 

were in truth made entirely of plastic. 

But hey! 

You could trade those 

special gold eggs in 

for real live baby rabbits, 

chickens, ducklings and buffalo. 

So yea, professional Easter Egg hunting 

  could be profitable. 

 

In hindsight, 

I suppose I took for granted 

all those prior years of training, 

with my mother and father 

surreptitiously hiding eggs 

throughout our bucolic backyard, 

then releasing the untethered   id of I 

to careen through 

screen-door and outward, 

under the loving parental blitz catalyst 

of administered meth-amphetamine. 

 

Focus adjust and psyche concussed, 

it had not been for naught. 

For here now, 

I was ready for prime-time. 

I at peak physical heat. 

Steroid rage engaged. 

I and around   a hundred other kids 

of my age and mostly older, 

all standing in a line, 

looking out over a massive hill 

which surely contained 

a million eggs, more or less, 

and possibly three or four of those 

jewel encrusted Faberge sort. 

 

Next to me stood my sister Terrie. 

She an entire year older than I, 

yet being a girl and thus inherently fragile, 

I would dare say keep a 

masculine eye out for her. 

 

Oh, and a second later we’re sprinting. 

We’re scampering. 

We’re bounding. 

We’re leaping. 

We’re zigging. 

We’re zagging. 

We are whole host 

and horde unleashed. 

Yet I    see    nothing. 

Nothing.    Nothing. 

Ahhh… That is, until 

I see nothing   not. 

 

And there it was. 

Right there on 

the ground before me. 

No mere colored egg, 

but a freakin’ gold one. 

Indeed, there at my feet… 

Pure glimmering golden gilt.

No mere minor   bird-butt    egg. 

No, this…    this was my egg. 

A yoke ever meant to be mine. 

 

There on the ground, an embryo of 

   significant religious import. 

Lo but what was that golden embryo 

  if not my soul incarnate? 

That of which forces dark and light 

  would covet as much as I. 

 

And what was this 

manifest moment of 

eggs-istential epiphany 

if not worthy of being shared 

   with my sister? 

And so I yell, “Terrie! 

Terrie! Terrie come here! 

  I’ve found a golden egg!” 

 

Yes, and in less than a second flat, 

there’s a pair of feet 

standing before me. 

And looking up, 

I see not my   beloved sister, 

but rather the face of an older boy. 

He much larger than I. 

 

And he raises both hands 

in what was surely an 

act of benediction at 

my new found grace. 

Then places both palms 

against my chest and 

knocks me off my feet. 

 

And there’s that moment 

when I’m staring up at the sky, 

its clouds and heaven above. 

That moment when I roll over 

onto my knees and turn to find 

that my golden egg is gone. 

 

That moral marrow moment 

when I come to realize 

that that boy was no mere boy 

but that of Beelzebub. 

 

Indeed that this was the day of which 

  Satan stole my soul. 

 

That I as a child was now 

ever brutally aware 

that here in such a sinister 

world such as this, 

there exists  

such a thing 

   as evil. 

 

Ó 2018 Jack David Hubbell