Sacred, a short fiction

Sacred Cow by Guy-Claude Portmann (Manonp on FreeImages.com)

by Cory Martin

The gentle man who approaches this week is much like the others. He isn’t rich. He smells faintly like the animals he tends. He doesn’t smell much different than me.

His eyes roam the stalls lining the street before they pretend to unconsciously stop on me. It isn’t long now until Gopastami, and some preemptory acknowledgement of a wandering cow won’t draw too much suspicion. He bends at the waist and leans his forehead close to mine, a prayer to Devi upon his breath. His fingers fumble with the decaying hemp collar around my neck. He pauses when he finds what must have been left for him by my visitor