Mouth Agape

Mouth Agape: A Moment Of Atonement by Brodie Michael Yake

“Why are we here?” Robert asked, a timber of fear salting his voice. The stars hung low overhead that night as Robert awoke, noting the other three men asleep around the crackling fire facing the beach. The rhythmic crashing of one wave after another harmonized with its churning forebears like a mighty tuning orchestra. Had the quintet of strangers known beforehand what they would grow to learn about themselves and each other from one end of the night to the next and as a marriage of the fire’s heat and the ocean’s frothing symphony awoke the remaining four and set the stage for this transformative moment in their lives, perhaps Robert would have abstained from opening his mouth and asking the question in the first place, but he did not. As he looked around where he sat, another gentleman spoke up wiping sleep and sand from his eyes.

“Yeah, what’s the idea? I have a meeting in the morning. If my spreadsheets are late one more time, Osterman is going to demote me to the mailroom. What’s going on?” As this second stranger awoke and adjusted his necktie, a third man stretched his arms toward the stars as he joined the first two men in confusion while catching his bearing on the beach.

“A beach?” His gaze scanned the four other men around the fire.

“What the hell am I doing on a beach? I live in Nebraska. Must have had too much to drink off of the top shelf last night. Oh hell. How am I going to get home?” The third reached into his suit jacket’s breast pocket and removed a flask rusted with age. Taking one swig of the flask, he promptly spit the salt water out and into the fire. His vocal displeasure of the ocean’s natural flavor awoke a fourth man to his left.

“Did someone say something about a meeting?” The fourth gentleman sat up to join this group of strangers on the beach punctuating his inquiry with a yawn. Without warning, he grabbed the lapel of the man to his right, sending his flask skyward only to be lost in the uncharted darkness of the beach beyond the firelight.

“Where are we? What is this all about?!” The fourth man exclaimed.

“Hey!” Robert, sitting across the fire, retorted.

“It’s clear that none of us know where we are or why we’re here. Let’s just stay calm and do our best to figure this out.” As the men nodded to Robert and began collecting themselves, a baritone and ominous voice cut the silence of the men’s fear like a blade.

“Fear not! For all of your questions will be answered in time! I am Ghord!” The fifth man announced. Robert and the three collectively gasped as a fifth man emerged from the darkness of the midnight surf and joined them at the fire. Though Robert and the three all wore matching disheveled suits wet with ocean spray and stiff with dried sand, Ghord sat as an all-seeing authority among them; his smiling face adorned with diamond freckles and a glistening golden robe.

“Who the hell are you? What kind of a name is Ghord? And what the hell is going on?” The second man asked.

“Yeah! What is this? The third man echoed. “I have a family to get home to and a meeting in the morning”, the fourth man echoed. Robert did his best to rangle the three of them addressing Ghord directly.

“Listen, stranger. Ghord, is it? The four of us just woke up here around this fire with no idea why we’re here or who you are. You say you can get us home? What do we have to do?”

“Aaah, my brothers of the cosmic mother Earth” Ghord declared with closed eyes and a smile dressing his face. “The task you must perform is but a simple one. You must confess your wrong doings of this world and atone for your sins by a sacrifice of that which you hold dear.” As Ghord addressed them, the second man stood and pointed at Ghord through the crackling fire.

“Atone for my sins? Okay. The lot of us, aside from you, Magic Man, all appear to be men of business, so none of us are perfect, and none of us are going to be perfect after we get home, so what is the point of all of this. And a ‘sacrifice’? What the hell do you mean a ‘sacrifice’?” Ghord, not breaking his smile, pointed back.

“Would you reach into your right jacket pocket, please and remove what it is that you find.”

Robert, confused by Ghord’s direct persuasion, reached into his pocket and removed a crisply written check. Robert gulped. “Oh- Oh my god. It’s a check. It’s $5,000” Ghord smiled back.

“Aahh a check, you say. “ Ghord inquired.

“Wait.” Another man objected. “This bozo has a check? For five grand?” Skeptical, he reached in his jacket pocket and found an identical check for an identical amount. Suddenly the man’s voice was directed from suspicion to surprise as he found an identical check for an identical amount.

“He wasn’t kidding”, the man’s shaking voice spoke. The remaining men looked into their pockets as well and each found check written to be $5,000. Four men sitting around the fire with Ghord each with a check of $5,000.

“This is what you must sacrifice once you atone for your sins. The Great Fire demands it. Then I will send you all home.”

One by one, the men stood up at the fire with the ocean to their backs and atoned for the wrong doings they had committed against themselves and their loved ones in their lives. One man admitted that he was a liar and removed from his pocket a black leather notebook from which he read one lie after another. As Ghord and the remaining three men listened to him read, the remaining three men mustered what little courage aimed at their vulnerability they had and stood up as well. As the first man closed his black book of lies, he raised his $5,000 check to the stars reading it one last time, and cast it into the fire and sat back down. Ghord smiled. The next man stood up and admitted that he was an adulterer having cheated on numerous spouses.

After he finished speaking, he too raised his $5,000 check into the sky and cast it into the fire. Then the third man did as well admitting that he was a glutton and took everything he ever could for himself his entire life. Ghord smiled as the third man tossed his $5,000 into the Great Fire before him. Then Robert atoned for his sins as a procrastinator and the Great Fire accepted his $5,000 check. Having all atoned for their sins, they all looked at one another and at Ghord and found that they all looked identical. More than that, they had found peace with their demons and were all the same man. Ghord looked to the four of them and they all smiled as the sun rose.