So,when was the last time you killed a moth? Recently or in the past recesses of your memory...do you regret your action?

Did that insect bother you as it flickered around a light bulb?  

Scared your children as it flitted overhead as they slept peacefully?  

Moco McCaulay (Photo Provided)

Well, embrace this simple fact....Moco McCaulay's tale is a "fiction" piece titled, "The Carbonaria Kingdom."  

I am reminded of the purpose and intent of "Gulliver's Travels." Maybe, I am just projecting... trying to create a memory from my distant past.  And yet, Moco's tale is contemporary and pertinent as was the Gulliver of long ago.  A different time, a different world...you decide.  Anyway,... 

take some time...read McCaulay's synopsis of his work.  The entire fiction story will appear in the spring 2016 issue of aaduna coming later this month...mid-late May.  Set your digital alerts.  aaduna delivers and always challenges your sense of what the world should be...maybe, maybe not.  

You decide. 

  

A SHORT STORY

By

Moco McCaulay

Synopsis

Peppered moths are polymorphous insects that usually appear dark or light-colored. And, depending on whether they live in a polluted region or not, one or the other form will thrive. In polluted regions, the dark-colored peppered moths, known as carbonaria, thrive because they use the soot-covered trees to camouflage from birds that prey on them. Hence, the more polluted a region, the more the carbonaria peppered moths.

A writer discovers parallels between this phenomenon and his homeland, a place crawling with lepidopterous gargoyles masquerading in the polluted corridors of officialdom to plunder its resources and feast in gluttonous opulence, while the people perish from genocidal poverty. He, therefore, writes a story about an allegorical kingdom ruled by a carbonaria king determined to keep it mired in soot so that it may continue to flourish after a devastating attack by birds.

Shortly after his story is published in The Plebeian Voice, his nation’s only independent newspaper, the Prime Minister is shot and killed by a young cadet. As he pulls the trigger, the cadet screams: “Death to The Carbonaria Kingdom!”, a catchphrase from the writer’s story. Consequently, he is accused of complicity in the murder and, along with the cadet, tried and sentenced to death.

While they await their executions, the writer experiences a veridical blurring of the line between his literary musings and the brute reality of his beastly corrupt homeland. He becomes convinced that The Carbonaria Kingdom was more than a mere figment of his imagination because he was living in it.

Therefore, he resigns himself to the deathly fate that looms but the cadet wishes to live and implores him to accept an offer to spare their lives. But, the writer repudiates the offer. He sees it as a malevolent ruse by the country’s megalomaniacal leader to assuage his image and perpetuate the status quo. However, when the cadet reveals his reason for killing the Prime Minister, the writer empathizes with him, viewing him as a poignant embodiment of the atrocious destitution bequeathed to the people by their rapacious leaders. 

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aaduna - a timeless exploration into words and images - is a globally read, multi-cultural, and diverse online literary and visual arts journal established in 2010.  Visit us at www.aaduna.org where we put measurable actions to our words.



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