Dylan Malik Orchard's Blog, page 11

Dead Man Dying

It was dark and it was cold and it was a cemetery. Kay shook as he squinted into the night, looking for tell tale signs as to the quickest way to get out. No matter how many of these places he ended up in, no matter how certain he was that he was the scariest thing in them, it never got any easier.

Looking down he could see that his sign was gone, another idea to cross off of the list of potential solutions. ‘Not dead, do not bury’ – how much clearer could he have been? And why did people never listen? A bird made a noise in the distance and Kay let out a brief gasp of fear. Why did everything have to be so goddamn atmospheric? If he had to have his… condition, then why did they always have to take him to the most gothic, spooky, Hammer Horror place they could? Why was it never a nice clean morgue that he woke up in? Why was the graveyard never a brightly lit one overlooking the sea? Was it him? Well, of course it was. Things like this never happened to people who weren’t him after all. Normal people didn’t have to worry about falling asleep in case the coroner came to haul them off, but then normal people didn’t look like the walking dead. For the fiftieth time he reminded himself that whoever had interred him here had probably meant well, in their own way. No point being angry about it. And at least they hadn’t buried him, that was a definite plus, a crypt was infinitely preferable to another six hours spent scraping away at wood and dirt in a desperate bid for the surface.

His night vision was kicking in now, he could see the obligatory gothic gravestones all around him, the elaborate angels carved over the mausoleum he’d just exited, the desiccated trees which never seemed to grow any leaves. He suspected there was some janitor whose sole duty it was to hack off any sign of green shoots in places like this, an aging Goth probably, revelling in the aesthetic continuity of it all.

There was a crack. A loud one that sent Kay leaping a foot into the air, which played havoc on his barely hung together knees. That wasn’t a bird, not unless it was an ostrich anyway.

“Hello?”

With luck it would be a groundskeeper, or a late night mourner, even some Emo kids out playing at being vampires and having sex between the graves would do. Any of them might, after suitable persuading that he wasn’t a zombie, give him a lift back to civilisation, or at least a pointer in the right direction. Kay held his breath for a heartbeat as he strained to hear a reply, a bit of a pointless exercise given that he neither breathed nor had a beating heart – facts which had led him to his unfortunate funereal routine.

“Grrrrawwwwwl”

Knees giving way he did his best lurch back to the doorway of the crypt he’d just emerged from, cowering in the meagre security of only having the definitely dead behind him and the growling darkness in front.

There was shuffling and more low-pitched grunting, definitely not a bird although teenagers still weren’t out of the question. And then he saw her, shambling out of the night, skin tattered and rotting, eyes sunken into black pits, desiccated orbs glaring at him with an unnatural glow that he recognised from his own fleeting experiences with mirrors. And she smiled at him, as best she could through wasted cheeks and with blackened teeth.

“You alright there? Sorry about the growling.”

Kay saw the world rising around him before he noticed that his legs were buckling, just in time to grab onto the wings of a passing marble angel adorning the doorway. A grunt was all he could manage as the natural urge to either grab a pitchfork and get to stabbing or to run to the hills washed over him. A process of inertia which lasted just long enough for the woman to drag her clumsy form over to him and stick out a welcoming hand.

“I’m Lou-Anne, pleased to meet you.”

“Ugh”

Kay reached out tentatively and shook her hand, for once in his life as wary of someone elses fingers becoming detached in the process as he was of his own.

“So, got a name there?”

“Kay, I’m Kay, and you are?”

“Lou-Anne, like I just told you. Shit, don’t tell me you’re one of those ones whose brain has rotted away, if you are I’ll take a lighter to you myself now, save the angry mob the trouble.”

Rushing to martial what remained of his motor skills Kay pulled himself back into something resembling an upright position and grunted in what he hoped was an eloquently coherent way to buy himself a few more seconds to gather some words.

“No, my brain works good. I mean, no, it hasn’t rotted away. You’re… like me?”

“No flies on you there Kay. Well, obviously some flies, but that comes with the territory, yes, I’m dead, just like you. First time meeting one of your own eh?”

Kay took a second to consider the question, half aware that his jaw was hanging slack as he stared at her. Technically speaking he had known for a while that he was dead. The lack of a heartbeat, the lack of breathing, not needing food, being hit by that bus, they’d all been clues that a more willing mind might have picked up on. Then again, he’d also been successfully walking around, talking and even, occasionally, working for the last three years despite those minor disabilities so the idea had been an easy enough one to avoid. Barring the occasional good Samaritan hauling him off to the with grave ceremony when he fell asleep of course, something he did his best to avoid given that the ‘sleep of the dead’ seemed to be a genuine thing which could endure all sorts of autopsies, funerals and internments. Faced with one of ‘his own’ though he couldn’t do much to deny his somewhat unliving state.

“Yeah, erm, yes… I suppose I hadn’t really thought about there being others…”

Lou-Anne smiled again, a few flakes of skin falling away as she did so. Kay did his best not to register disgust, after all, he was no oil painting himself. Unless it was an oil painting of a cadaver of course.

“Well, don’t worry, you’re not alone and we all process it in our own way. Anyway, fall asleep did you? Gotta be careful about that, the more you do it the deeper you go, heck, it was only when they tried to cremate me that I got the message about doing that. Best to stay awake eh? Avoid all confusion.”

“I had a sign, it said I wasn’t dead.”

She nodded sympathetically.

“Nice idea, always hard to convince people though eh? Especially when you reach the point you’re at, I mean, you know your nose has fallen off right?”

Kay didn’t, although he had been feeling like something important was missing recently, but mirrors were always something to avoid if you could.

“No need to look so glum there Kay, it’s not the end of the world. If it makes you feel a bit better I’ve got a box of spares somewhere – prosthetics you know – we can sort a new one for you. Something nice, you’ll feel like a new man.”

“Are there a lot of… us?”

“Oh yeah, there’s a fair few. That’s why I come down here, never know when you’ll find a stray like you wandering around. Always in the spooky graveyards too, never been sure why that is. I like to pick ‘em up and get them back into society, you know? Doing something productive with themselves.”

Kay wondered to himself if ‘productive’ meant shambling around and growling but it felt rude to ask.

“Y’see, Kay, there’s all sorts of things you can do with yourself now you’re dead. I’m guessing that so far you’ve just drifted right? Lost your motivation? Lost that lust for life you used to have? Well it doesn’t have to be that way, sure society might see us as abominations but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a place for us. Just look at reality TV, there’s a place for everyone in this world.”

The situation was starting to sink into it’s own normality, as the shock wore off Kay started picking up the slighty manic tone in Lou-Anne’s voice. She sounded like an evangelical, a TV preacher, her words just that little bit too enthusiastic. He smiled politely, he hoped, and started scuffing his feet a bit, trying not to let the awkwardness in the air show.

“Oh yeah, it’s a whole new world Kay, there are all sorts of things you can do and I’m here to make sure you find your way. We have meetings you know, every week, kind of like a support group – which trust me some of us need when bits start falling off! You’ll have to come along, get involved in the community.”

Kay could feel his smile growing stiffer, becoming a rictus grin that he vaguely suspected would never fade. Taking a step or two sideways, out of the doorway and away from Lou-Anne, he started to trawl his dusty and decaying brain for excuses to make a move.

“Well, that sounds great and all, but I really need to go.”

“Oh Kay, where could you possibly need to go? You’re dead, remember? Come on, I’ll take you to meet the crew, we’ve got a meeting tonight and Stewie’s bringing his ukulele! We’re going to have a sing a-long. It helps keep the mind active you know, very important when you’re one of us. Of course he does struggle a bit, poor guy, always losing fingers in the strings but we’re there to keep him going.”

With a surprising turn of speed her hand shot out once again and clamped itself on his shoulder, pulling him in closer with the inevitability to of a black hole. Before he knew it she was steering him into the night, radiating an iron will that his atrophied muscles felt helpless to reject. She was still talking too, something about an annual summer camp and a mentoring programme. His limbs surrendering to her guiding hand Kay gave out a low growl of his own.

Why did it always have to be somewhere like this that they left him?

—

For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks. 

The Digger

They can bury me, beneath ten, a hundred, a thousand corpses. I won’t care. Suffocate me with the dead, fix me in place with carrion for a casket. It means nothing. When morning comes, and it will, I’ll rise again. Same as I always have.

I see them. I see them staring down at me from their gallows of flesh. The ones who see their death and the ones who don’t… they hate me. As they walk to their own slaughter or slide the knife home. They hate me and they judge me and pile more death upon me. I’m their dump, their rubbish pile. They hurl their guilt and fear and hate at me, but I don’t care. This is nothing new and when the morning comes I’ll rise again.

More bodies to bear. Is that what irony is meant to be? Perhaps. I, the one who digs and hauls and heaps dirt on their shame, buried by the lot of them. No matter. Let it cover me, I can bear the weight, they’ve shown me that.

She’s watching me, one of the ones who sees her death but rages against it. Your fear, woman, not mine. More piles on. Your hate, not mine. But why not? Hurl it at me, cover all of me. You’ll be dead soon, I’ll not deny you this. When morning comes I will rise again.

—

No Cure for Shell Shock, the collection this is from, is available free on Kindle until the 14th of January. You don’t need a Kindle reader to download it, the app can be installed on any phone or tablet. You can download the book here.

The Accursed Blessed

‘You are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed. You are blessed. They’ve given you love, all the love you’ll ever need. You are blessed.’

The woman had been crying and repeating herself for hours now. No one was staring at her any more, though a few dull eyes still fell in her direction. There was nothing there though, just eyes hanging in sallow faces. They’d had their vision drained on the journey they had taken and been blinded by their arrival.

“… they’ve given you love, all the love you’ll ever need. You are blessed.’

I hug my baby closer and try to filter out the unceasing chant. Perhaps I am. I’m the only one left living here. The rest have stepped over already but I have something to fix me in place, love, all the love I’ll ever need. Her words are meaningless, a desperate lie but my eyes aren’t lost yet. I still see. I see enough to know that they took him and he won’t be back, enough to have watched that old love cut apart and buried. I saw them slice at him, through cracks in flimsy wood. He was made nothing, another object to be dragged away, no longer lover, father or man. And I was given a replacement, all the love you’ll ever need wrapped in rags torn from the blind who bore broken witness to the birth.

I feel no blessing though, no love, no nothing. I am no better than the rest. But still, I am not yet blinded. All the love you’ll ever need. Enough to see, for now.

“… you are blessed.”

—

No Cure for Shell Shock, the collection this is from, is available free on Kindle until the 14th of January. You don’t need a Kindle reader to download it, the app can be installed on any phone or tablet. You can download the book here.

No Cure for Shell Shock – Free from 10th-14th of January

To mark the passing of another year and our arrival in a new, hopefully better, one I’ve made No Cure for Shell Shock – my collection of short stories – free on Kindle until the 14th of January.

You can already find some pieces from the collection here on my site to give you a taster but there’s a lot more that’s only in the book so I hope you’ll help yourself to a download. As always reviews, shares, comments and rampant praise are very welcome but most of all I hope you enjoy the read and get something from it.

No Cure for Shell Shock is intended as the antithesis to the war story. Each part of this collection of poetry and short pieces was designed to search for those lost, silent moments which shape the human experience of conflict but which are left unmarked and uncommented on in the aftermath.

Anti-war by intent the focus throughout is on the human, attempting to find the self that endures beyond comprehension and judgement.

I also try to keep a steady supply of new shorts appearing here on the site so be sure to check back if you want to get a hit of free fiction, self-promotion aside it’s always good to have new eyes looking at what I do and, hopefully, enjoying it too.

Cheers,

Dylan

Platform 323 (Part Two)

This is, possibly, part on of an ongoing serialisation derived from something I’ve already written. The plan is to put a new part up every Tuesday so feel free to like it, or follow the blog, if you want to see more. Check out Part One.

—

The war didn’t exist on the platforms, not in any immediate way at least. Not all of the platforms had been completed when the bombs started dropping and conflict had brought a halt to all further work. Granted they still held plenty of strategic and economic value to whoever held them but the power blocs viewed them with an envious sort of fear, certain in the knowledge that the first of them to make a move to claim them would raise the ire of the others and see whatever gains they made in having the platforms liquidated back on earth in a fistful of mushroom clouds. So instead they dabbled. Acting through proxies they used the platforms as a black market for arms and technology, fighting mini-battles through friendly factions of mercenaries, smugglers, pirates, drug cartels and assorted criminals. All of whom happily played the role of state sponsored G-Men in between fighting their own territorial conflicts and protecting their own power bases. It wasn’t exactly the serene escape Murat had hoped for but by comparison it was as peaceful a home as you’d be likely to find as long as humanity was around. No army recruiters, no trenches and plenty of opportunities for a young and enterprising deserter to build a new life and, maybe, a new fortune.

And at first things had gone surprisingly well. He’d stepped off of the cargo ship that had aided his escape and, after helping to unload it’s suspiciously unmarked cargo, he’d disappeared into the chaos of Platform 323’s main plaza. He’d only learnt of its fame later on, when he’d started to pick up enough Platform lore not to be sneeringly dismissed as a tourist but even at the start he’d known the throng of life it held was something special.

While other platforms served their own myriad purposes P323 remained the beating heart of the network. It was where business was done. Pirates, smugglers, drug dealers, assassins, mercenaries, fences, theives, merchants, spies and assorted others treated it as their informal office with the Plaza acting as the greatest black marketplace in the known universe. With locals looking on all the while ready to fleece the unprepared of whatever wealth they couldn’t find a use for. Murat loved it. His military experience guaranteed him employment, not that he intended to go back into the soldiering business any time soon. But pirates and smugglers especially were always happy to pick up a new recruit who could handle a rifle in a crises and not ask too many question when there was a pay-cheque involved.

The first bar he’d walked into – and on P323 bars were the main site of business dealings – he’d been approached by the second-in-command of a pirate ship and after being liberally fed drink Murat had found himself as the newest addition to the crew of the San Francisco. It was a former cargo ship haphazardly refitted by someone who’d decided to bolt on a few missile launchers, run by another former soldier who’d left earth-side years before – James O’Shaw. And it was O’Shaw who’d taught Murat the basics of interplanetary piracy, the most important aspect of which had proven to be waiting around doing nothing. It was almost the ideal job.

On picking up a tip off from one of the many semi or wholly criminal individuals who floated around 323 studiously avoiding having any real job description they’d fly out to, hopefully, intercept the flight path of a cargo or transport vessel and… wait. Sometimes hours, sometimes days and sometimes even weeks would be spent sitting in space, the crew doing their best to pass the time without resorting to alcoholism or insanity. And then if they were lucky a ship would actually show up, at which point the relatively minimal excitement would start.

Space battles, Murat soon came to realise to his satisfaction, were not like real battles. There was no going over the top, there was seldom even any firing and the real conflict was solely one of patience and waiting to see who would blink first. Space, O’Shaw had explained to him one day, was death, lots of it. A ship was a tiny, insignificant patch of life cast out into a vast abyss of death and no captain with any sense would ever want to risk compromising the small glimmer of existence that they and their crew inhabited. So given a choice they’d almost always avoid a fight. Sure some rookies confused ‘shielding’ for a technological wonder that made their fragile metal can impenetrable. And some of those with military training had been convinced to have little enough regard for their life to make orders seem all important, but they were the rarity. For the majority, the sane majority, even the slightest threat of a missile slamming into their barely reliable energy shields and, more likely, into the hull itself was enough to make them back down and hand over whatever it was they had. So the pirates job was simply to aim their weapons and make the right threats. And a good pirate did it so well that before too long their reputation alone opened cargo doors the second they honed into sight. O’Shaw wasn’t that good, he admitted, but during Murat’s tenure they didn’t do too badly at the job. In fact only once had they even fired a shot in anger when a smuggler’s ship had turned out to be a bigger challenge they’d expected and had opened fire without a second’s hesitation. They’d missed, fortunately, the San Francisco hadn’t and at least a dozen of the smuggler’s crew had died as a result. The whole crew had gotten drunk that night – whatever savage and piratical image they may have liked to project on the platforms they were none of them gleeful murderers. Besides, a destroyed ship meant no profit.

Still, the occasional flash of danger aside, Murat had enjoyed those days. Enjoyed them enough, in fact, to set about buying his own ship and recruiting his own crew after five years of flying around under O’Shaw’s command. A choice made easier by the fact that his former captain had gotten himself stabbed in a bar brawl by an unknown assailant who, rumour had it, had objected strongly to someone stealing from a ship under his protection. These things happened though and at least they happened a lot less on the Platforms than they did back on earth, where Murat had seen deaths by the hundreds often enough not to be phased by a single murder, regardless of the victim.

So here he was, the captain of his own ship, chasing his own leads and with his own crew relying on him. Or sneering at him, one of the two. It was bad luck, nothing else. He’d done nothing wrong after all and if he asked his crew they’d probably even have agreed. He had the experience, he did the right things, paid the right sources and, for the most part, made the right choices. It just never seemed to work. In fact in the year he’d held his own command there had been just one job that had paid out and even then the prize had barely been worth enough to get the crew convincingly drunk. Why so many had even stuck with him this far was a bit of a mystery. The ship was free accommodation, he supposed, and he did keep them fed with the ever diminishing savings from his time on the San Francisco but given the general lust for fame and fortune that motivated those in his field it wasn’t much of a wage to offer.

This time though they’d surely have to abandon him, if this gamble didn’t pay off. And it had been sold to him as a sure thing. A corporate ship, Neftech to be precise, carrying something they didn’t want anyone to know about on the behalf of an earth government who didn’t want anyone to know that they knew anything about the thing they didn’t want anyone to know about. As far as these things went it was about as reliable intelligence as you could get. And Kuzumo was about as reliable a source as you could get on the Platforms. He knew things, he always knew things, he had friends, of a sort, in just about every major group on and off of earth. O’Shaw had used him, other pirates used him, the cartels and the smugglers and the gun runners all kept him on a retainer. And it was only when it came to Murat that he seemed to disappoint. Which given how much he’d paid was a distinct failing of customer service. This had been an all or nothing sort of deal and if it didn’t pay off then there’d no be no more board and shelter for the crew, no more ship for them to work on even because Murat certainly couldn’t afford to take another gamble.

Shaking himself from his depressing revelrie Murat swung a boot at the metal wall and instantly regretted it, grunting in pain and hopping into an unhappy jig.

—

For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks. 

The All Seeing Blind

Another piece from No Cure for Shell Shock today…

There are no secrets here. No lies, no surreptitious half truths, no unwitting falsehoods. It’s terrifying. This honesty. This stripped down, acid cleansed, bare-bones city of truth. Full of brutalised inhabitants, eyes fixed on the inanimate, exhausted by anything human now that all that is human is laid so bare.

Even the children have seen raw, exposed life. The most trivial of paternal and maternal indulgences once so essential now shorn of comfort and revealed as tainted reflections of the screaming truth of feeling behind them. Love, hate, fear and doubt, all distilled into pure forms, painful to see and burning when consumed. Too much of each of them lost in each instance, the veneer of presentation shaved away to nothing.

I visited, a blind man in the world of 20/20 vision. Honest eyes and astute vision, a curse, a hyperactive sense driven to the point of crippling disability. Immature, that’s what I wanted to call it. The unrefined vision of the naive. Sheer and un-sculpted feeling. Not adult, not wise to the nuance of who we are and how we live. Not grown enough to don the delicate web of armour that obscures the painful and the overwhelming. Un-aged feeling looks up though, it forces itself in tantrums or laughter, it makes no excuses for it’s existence and feels no shame in it’s expression. But the city was silent. Eyes averted, observers exhausted. They weren’t waiting for the lies and untruths time grants us as a defence, they’d lost them long ago. Torn away by the relentless immediacy of corrosive experiences endured. Children who’d never even known that comfort weren’t going to be granted it, not now that they’d been rendered toxic by truth.

I couldn’t stand the place. The pungent honesty of it. I couldn’t deny it and if they chose not to meet my stare I simply wouldn’t meet theirs. I longed for falsehood, I had no envy for their judging glances, although I did resent them. I longed for the veiled and sanitised experience which I knew to be real life. I left them to it. No guilt, no remorse, no regret. Meaningless emotions to them, too obvious an attempt at blindness to even be noticed.

But I left too late. I could already see more, my world was already sharper, starker, as I walked it.

I went home, to civilization, to recover. I knew my time in the honest city had affected me. Comfort would dull my sight though, save me from their affliction. I could return to the world as it should be. Not a lie, nothing so crass, I may have run from their city but I was no coward. I could look at the truth, see it, feel it and not recoil. But they took it raw, still no resentment but was that not the diet of animals? To feel savagely, nerves ruled by instinct? Our art, our device, that was no lie, simply a human way to ingest the bare matter of life. It added meat to our bones, flesh and form to the hard and jagged. There was no lie in that.

Yet I couldn’t do it. Day by day my vision improved. I started to see deep into the frame, missing the rest. They’d infected me. The city had infected me and suddenly the truth was everywhere, abrupt and unyielding. My eyes would fix on the ground, afraid of who and what i would see beyond the safety of carefully nurtured grey neutrality. Music, art, words – once passions now insults, mockeries of my condition. What truth did they hold that was new to me? None. Just trivial plays for the near sighted. Beautiful, I had to remind myself, but not true. Or at least no more than the bones of humanity which they sought to cover and which grew up in walls around me.

I recoiled from it all. I even thought to run back to the city though I wasn’t sure why. To sink further into the silent company of it’s inhabitants? There was no point to that and even less desire. What comfort could there be to my newly inflicted sight in like company? I’d seen their city, they endured raw humanity, it gave them nothing in return.

Instead I did the only thing I could think to do. The only thing I could bear to do. I closed my eyes. And all I could see was my own truth, the truth of that city.

—

This is from No Cure for Shell Shock, a collection of short stories and poetry. It’s available as an eBook or paperback here.

The Strange Land

I’ve been here before. I’d almost forgotten, but I’ve walked these streets. Back when they were streets, defined by walls and pavements and order. I’ve met these people too, back when they were people.

Is that right? Did they stop being people at some point? Did they abandon their humanity with the first echoing shots of war? What does that make them now? Enemies? I suppose it must. That’s the idea anyway. But who has such pathetic enemies? Who can claim such raw vitriol as to wage war when confronted with these things? I’ve met them as people, when these streets had order, I didn’t hate them then and now they’re not people that hasn’t changed. Has it?

Maybe they’re animals? That might make sense. I can kill animals, yet they aren’t my enemies. I can walk amongst them, free of malice, I can even like them. But still find nothing in their death. A weak argument, I know. When I walked here before, when all of this had yet to happen, I felt none of the distance I feel in a farmyard. What else can I call them though? If they’re not people and not enemies? Even if they weren’t animals before they certainly act it now. Burrowing into rubble, scavenging in the debris. Dogs do that, pigs, vultures. The people I once saw here didn’t. Proof that they’ve left while I was away. Yes, I know why. I won’t touch that thought. Call it cowardice if you will but all that’s happened is for people to know. And they aren’t people. If they don’t need to know then why should I have to?

I’ve never walked these streets before. That must be the truth. I’ve never walked among these people before. Yes. Because there are no streets here, there are no people here. Just something else, something left over.

—

This is from No Cure for Shell Shock, a collection of short stories and poetry. It’s available as an eBook or paperback here.

Heavy Pride

They did dark work. Heavy work. Barbaric work, some people said – but never for long and never too loudly. ‘Who cared?’ was his reply. At the slaughter house his father did dark work, heavy work, even barbaric work as he buried his arms in blood and swung his blade to hack away at flesh. That was how they ate, that was how they lived and they did it without questions or accusations. They were happy not to see and not to know as long as food was on their table when the day ended. Only hypocrites cast scorn with full bellies and comfortably heavy eyelids. And when they did he lashed out, knocking into them, he thought, a measure of respect for the work that sustained them. Silencing the jibes and insults about the stench of death that covered his father and, by proxy, himself.

The soldiers were the same, not that they needed him to fight for them. Their work roused the hypocrites too though. Warm and safe in their rural security they whispered insults at the ‘murderers’ who descended from the army camp to buy their food and their drink. Always eager to condemn the job the soldiers were bound to do and always quick to take their money and sleep soundly in the peace the soldiers brought them. Those who judged never had a right to. It was always the ones who dodged and denied, evading the truth of the enemies who were out to kill them and theirs. Give in to their way of thinking and the village would be gone, the country would be gone. That’s what you got if you let the cowards take over, the weak who shied away from the abattoir at the first metallic scent of blood.

He would be different though. The slaughterhouse worker’s son. No cowardice. No shying away from the dark, heavy and barbaric work of keeping them all safe and secure. He too would bury his arms in blood, far deeper than even his father did, letting deeper shades of crimson taint his skin. He would stand with the soldiers. Join them when he could, steep himself in the effluence of their oppressive labour amidst the human cattle they corralled. Do the work they had to to keep the hypocrites alive, in mockery of their disdain.

And when they stared at him in the street, when they mumbled their insults in shameful corners he’d know that he had beaten them. He’d know he could feel proud.

—

This is from No Cure for Shell Shock, a collection of short stories and poetry. It’s available as an eBook or paperback here.

The Grey Column

It was the third column of the day. The novelty had worn off now, the mood had changed.

On the arrival of the first one, marked by an earth trembling roar of diesel engines groaning their way through barely passable streets, virtually the whole village had turned out. Children shrieked with delight, chasing the metal behemoths of the tanks and optimistically calling for soldiers to give them a turn driving. The men, or at least the elders who had stayed far from the front, stroked their beards and pontificated on what these passing troops meant. Good news for the army, bad news, attack or retreat, victory or surrender. An academic matter, the war was a long way away, fought on imagined battlefields by immortal armies. At least that was as far as they were willing to let their thoughts stray before pushing against the unpleasant and unspoken truth.

The women just stared, or locked themselves away from the tumult of marching troops. Too many had lost too much. The sight of survivors, or those soon to die, was merely a false promise for the fate of their own sons, fathers, brothers and husbands. Or an unwelcome reminder of those whose marches had already ended. A few shooed their children away, fearful of the corruption of war that followed armies like a disease, infecting the mind before destroying the body. The children evaded them with a laugh, too lost in excitement to see anything but life and the intriguing other.

All of that passed though. By the time the third column arrived the image had grown too detailed. What had seemed an earth rattling stampede of engines had dulled to a constant reverberating roar. The children had lost interest, called home or gone to new excitement. The men and women had seen faces. As the soldiers had passed men had taken their place, grey faced and hollow. Eyes floating beyond their bodies, trapped in distant moments and places. To speculate or seek feeling there felt like a trap. Look too closely and you’d fall in yourself. Better by far to be behind closed doors, the war once again a far away fantasy. Fought on distant battlefields, with immortal soldiers.

Then the shelling started.

—

This is from No Cure for Shell Shock, a collection of short stories and poetry. It’s available as an eBook or paperback here.

Innocent Man

Charlie closed his eyes again, tighter this time, as if by force of will he could make himself see something different once they re-opened. It didn’t work. As he opened them again he was still in the cell. His head still pounding at the meagre serving of light, slatted by the bars on the high window, his mouth still felt like a graveyard and his gut was still somersaulting over whatever it was he’d drunk the night before. Everything, probably, although judging by the smell that was radiating off of him some of it hadn’t stayed down for long.

Looking around, unhappy clarity slowly but viciously returning, the pain of the hangover started to become a secondary concern. The night before was a blank, one into which dread was starting to flood. Nothing good could have happened because nothing good ever led you to a cell and even without that solid clue half distorted images were bubbling up which may, or may not, have been real but which seemed plausible enough. Being thrown out by belligerently bored bouncers, heaving up a toxic mixture into the gutter, lights and sirens and staggering walks through disgusted crowds. Depressing, but worse than that – fleeting. Fractured images that left too much unseen and unremembered even as they hinted at worse.

Pulling himself upright he felt his balance failing, the alcohol still in his system was enough to throw him off even after a night of comatose sleep. Another side note though, marginalia to the undiminished abyss of uncertainty about what had led him through the night and to his current sorry state.

The possibilities were multiplying in Charlie’s aching mind. Theft, violence, sin and idiocy, anything was possible and with answers lying beyond the borders of intoxicated blackness he could barely even attach himself to the process of figuring the truth out. Somewhere during the acid tasting night he’d separated from himself, the small and broken man he was now couldn’t conceive of the potential actions that had led him on. He closed his eyes again, it hurt to contemplate it, although there was little enough comfort to be found behind the veined shields of his eyelids.

There were footsteps outside, heavy and striding. Charlie tried to ball himself up but a wave of nausea stopped him before he reached full foetal seclusion, too late anyway as he could hear a key turning in the cell door. Whatever was coming in to see him, whatever shame or disgust, wasn’t going to disappear no matter how deep inside himself Charlie tried to retreat.

It took bravery to re-open his eyes, small bravery, but bravery nonetheless. He felt momentarily proud, as if he was stepping back towards civility by daring to face the light. It wasn’t a feeling that lasted though, the cell was unchanged and the cop before him did nothing to add to it’s hospitality.

“Awake at last, get up, we need to process you.”

The policeman was young and scowling, dull brown eyes expressing an unfamiliar disdain that Charlie knew was meant for him. It couldn’t have been a simple drunk and disorderly, no one looked at you that way for that. That the lost possibility of mere shame and humiliation hit him so hard made him sway twice as much as he struggled to stand up, although with effort he didn’t fall back. The cop backed away a step, wary in case his ward tried to seek a supporting arm, understandable given the smell of vomit that neither man could ignore.

“What was it?”

The question took a part of Charlie’s flesh with it, as real as the churning gut or pounding head he could feel the physical wrench of asking and risking getting an answer. He prayed quickly for a mundane reply.

“Murder”

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For more from me you can check out my novel Crashed America – available in paperback and digital formats. Or you can try any of my other work here – variously available as ebooks or paperbacks.