Directions

Stuck in the green room. I’ve been here at least ten days. Unable to get out.

I hope it’s been ten days. Ten days means I’ve got two more.

If it’s longer…

I don’t know how long it took me to regain consciousness that day I hit my head falling from a frightfully high shelf I’d climbed up looking for clues. Clues how to get out. Hints on what Magic it is that seals this space so tight.

If it was hours instead of minutes, the Curtain will come sooner than I think. If days instead of hours, I could be out of time already.

I know this room will kill me if I don’t get out. That’s the one thing we all know about this place: More than twelve days in the green room means you’re dead.

It was in The Book. The Book that you find in every room except the green one.

The Book tells you what to do. It gives you the Play you must perform together for the room that you are in.

A perfect performance earns you an excellent meal, and a few days rest before you must move on. On to another room. On to another Play in the company of different people.

When you get that performance right, it feels so good. It’s Magic.

Mostly we don’t get it quite perfect enough. Something or someone is off. And that means we go hungry. Feeding only on whatever gets stuck on us and on our clothes as we run towards another room pelted with rotten and semi-rotten vegetables and fruit.

You don’t want to eat too much of those no matter how hungry you get. They make you ill.

If you’re ill, you can’t perform.

Not performing takes you to the green room, where you don’t eat a thing, but must find the right Magic to get you out or you are dead.

Cast the wrong spell, and you die sooner.

A really bad performance lands you there as well.

This is my third time in the green room.

What can I say? I was too hungry to play. Too hungry to give a good performance. Three times already.

There’s moments I am tempted to cast the wrong spell just to make it end. Get it over with already.

But something in me doesn’t let me do that. Something in me wants to survive, and keep on playing. Even though I hate this life and this existence…

Oh my God… The Curtain! I see it in the ceiling! It’s starting to come down!

I was wrong how long I’d been unconscious.

Time is up.

I have to cast a spell. Quickly. Whether right or wrong, I have to try.

I look around. Desperately hoping for one last clue to let me know which spell to pick.

My eyes happen upon a quill in a bottle of ink on a table. Not next to it, but in.

I decide that must be it. Oh, God, please let me be right about this…

I hurriedly move my hands. I weave the spell. It becomes a beautiful light in the air. I speak my chosen Magic words: “From within”. 

But Not That Year

They would travel. But not that year.

They’d catch a ride to the stars, explore the galaxy. But not that year.

They’d travel to the farthest reaches of the universe and catch a falling diamond rain. But not that year.

Always, always he promised her they would travel. Always, always she asked him when. “Soon. Soon.” But not that year.

Not the year that they were living. Not the year that they still had before he died.

And never in the years that followed.

The years were hard. The times were difficult, to say the least. They always had been. From the moment of her birth until the day her father died, the years were bad.

And then when he was gone, the years were worse. The times were ten times harder still. They always would be.

She had son. He was born when she was too young for the burden of bearing. She bore him nonetheless. She raised him too. She had a son.

When he asked her about the stars, she told him they would travel to them soon. When he was older. Just a little older still. A little bigger. They would travel soon. But not that year.

And when he grew, when he was taller than his mom, she said that they would travel soon. But not that year.

It was not until she died that he could travel. It was not until.

Upon her dying day she gave him everything she’d ever scraped together. All she’d ever saved. She gave him all she had.

And together with all that he had, there it was: just enough funds to travel to the stars at last. But not that year. Not the year of mourning.

The following year, he married. He could not travel then. The next year they had a little baby.

His son was ill. They needed a doctor to save his life. He could afford one!!!

Their son was saved.

And when their little boy grew old enough to ask about the stars, he picked him up and carried him so high upon his shoulders and he said, he said that they would travel. They would travel to them soon.

Dripping Dreams

A donut is dripping its glazing all over the kitchen table. Damn this heat. There’s flies all over. Attracted to the sugar. Laying their eggs in the quickly rotting carcass on the floor.

He was a man.

He was a real man he was. Strong. Capable.

Quick to temper he was. He beat his wife and daughter time and time again. Oh, he was a man. Oh such a Man with a capital M.

The hell he was.

He was just a worm. A maggot like the ones now crawling in his body on the kitchen floor.

I sit in the living room drinking an ice cold soda.

The donut drips its glazing in my dreams at night long after it is gone all this is gone it will be dripping in my dreams. I know it will.

I stand in the kitchen doorway looking at his body at the flies and at the donut on the table growing mold.

I rush in to snatch another soda I rush out.

I haven’t liked to spend any time in the kitchen since the day he died.

I rush in. I grab another soda. I get out.

I buried her in the garden. Put flowers on her grave I made a wreath.

I buried her in the garden with flowers on her grave I made a wreath I will. I’ll make another wreath for her I will. I promise that I will.

She stopped him hurting me again. She got in his way and she stopped him. Slowed him down.

He killed her for it. He beat her to death and I… I killed him because of that. I killed him for killing her.

When he was drunk enough I killed him. When he passed out on the kitchen floor I took a knife. I killed him cut him open.

I buried her in the garden left him there on the kitchen floor.

He brought the donuts for my birthday. He never could remember when it was my birthday. He never did remember when it was.

He meant to bring those donuts for me. For me upon my birthday it was not my birthday then. I should not have said that. I should not have told him it was not my birthday. Shouldn’t have told him anything should have smiled.

He killed her when she helped me. For standing in his way. I killed him and left him to rot.

It is my birthday now. He never did remember when it was. My birthday is today is now. Today it is my birthday.

Today I am fourteen I miss my mom.

Wounded

Warm. Wet. Running down my side.

“How bad is it?”

Shit.

Wrong question.

I shouldn’t have asked that one. For now the pain hits me. It hits me hard.

“You’ll live.”

“Whatever you say, sir,” I manage. “Whatever you say.”

I don’t know if it’s the pain, or if it is the bloodloss, but everything grows dim. I’m passing out again.

I remember coming to a couple of times during transport. Slipping in and out of awareness into dreams, and into darkness.

One time I thought I saw you there. In the transport. But that must’ve been just another dream.

I’m awake at hospital now. The nearest proper one. Three days’ journey from where I was wounded. I haven’t been this far from the frontline in eighteen months.

They say I developed a fever. For a while there they weren’t sure if I really would pull through or not.

I’m on the mend now. The fever’s gone. The wound no longer infected it’s healing nicely. Another scar for me to carry all my life. I do not mind. I’m just so glad to be breathing. That is all that matters now. I’m just so glad to be breathing.

Two weeks, they say. Two weeks I’ll rest here, and then back to the battle it is.

I think I’ll rather enjoy this two weeks of mine. After eighteen months in the front line, I feel kind of justified in getting a break. Just wish it didn’t have to hurt so much to get here.

Don’t get me wrong. I’d never shy away from doing my duty. But still, eighteen months of war will get to you. A moment of rest, of peace and quiet in the beautiful surroundings of an old hospital like this one, it begins to feel like heaven.

I don’t think I’ve ever appreciated a place and a moment quite as much as I do this one here and now. Each breath I take, it’s like being born again.

There’s flowers in a vase near the door to my room. The room I share with only two others. The colors of the flowers are amazing. That such beauty can still exist in this world of war and pain and suffering. I spend hours looking at those flowers in the vase. Absorbing all their beauty.

Seems awful now, but when the war started, I was happy.

This was my chance to get away. This was my escape.

From the moment I enlisted, he couldn’t touch me. He couldn’t hold me any longer. My life belonged to the military now.

I expected to die very fast. I was okay with that. I’d much rather be dead in the service of the kingdom, than be kept alive for your entertainment even one more day.

Little did I know I’d turn out to be so good at war.

All the hatred I felt towards you, all the anger I could never express, I channeled it all towards the enemy. It made me an efficient killer.

All the need to survive, to stay one step ahead of you and all your games, it had honed my strategic skills to perfection. How ironic I had you to thank for my success at war.

Two weeks of rest and recuperation, before I would return. Two weeks of peace and quiet. I loved it all.

The night before I was to return to active duty I held the hand of a dying man. It wasn’t the first time I had done so. Unlikely that it would be the last.

In the morning I returned to my room. What few belongings I had would have to be packed.

I stopped by the vase of flowers. I breathed in their scent. Inhaled their beauty.

Standing there I overheard a conversation. They were talking about the new captain of my company. A city-dweller. A rich man who had bought himself a commission. Paid for his rank with money instead of brave action.

I didn’t pay much attention. This sort of thing happened all the time. Bigshots wanted to play at war, until they saw its reality, and swiftly bought their way out again. Just too bad this one had to come to my company to get his taste of action. Wish he’d gone someplace else.

But then they said his name.

Your name.

And everything stopped.

The flowers filled my field of vision. An echo in my ears, your name.

A thought.

This is war… where people get killed all the time.

 

One Kiss

“Oh Jake…now why did you have to go and get yourself into this mess in the first place?”

He didn’t answer. I didn’t expect him to, seeing as how he was unconscious from the loss of so much blood. Good thing too, or me cutting that bullet out of him would’ve been even harder than it was.

I didn’t much like cutting into the flesh of another human being, or stitching it up afterwards. It always made me feel so nauseus. You’d think it’d get easier with practice, and right around the tenth time, or so, you’d no longer feel a thing, but no. Me, I always got every bit as sick to the stomach as the first time I had to do it.

And here was Jake. A man I’d secretly been in love with these past seven years I’d known him. Right from the first time I laid eyes on him.

God, he was so handsome. Standing at the doorway then. Dark hair and sculpted body. His face all chiseled cheeks and near-perfect symmetry. Even that scar he had underneath his left eye just added an air of danger to the man, making him damn-near irresistable. But resist him I did. I had to.

I’d known him three years by the time he got drunk enough to tell me the story of that scar. He was kind of embarrassed about it. A little girl and a pen knife he tried to get away from her when he was twelve. Not what one would expect to hear from someone in his profession.

I laughed, of course, but in truth, hearing that story only made me love him all the more. That moment of vulnerability. That window into his life as just a boy.

Today they brought him in, and told me to save his life. They couldn’t stay. Had to return to the fight or risk losing the ridge completely.

I’m glad they had to go. If they had seen how bad the knife shook in my hands before I started, they’d never have let me cut him open, and he’d be dead for sure. Even as it was, it had been touch and go.

By some superhuman strength of will, I stilled my shaking hands, and cut and cut and found the bullet, took it out. I stiched him up as best I could, and then it was a case of waiting.

If morning saw him breathing still, there was a chance he’d live.

I poured myself a scotch, and collapsed into a chair I’d brought beside his bed. I prayed. More fervently than I’ve ever prayed before. For anything.

There I sat all through the night. Begging God to spare his life. “Let him live. Just let him live, it’s all I ask. Please, just let him live.”

When morning came, and Jake was still alive, I cried. He was strong. He might just live, get well again. He would. He would survive, and he would live.

And he would move on, and find himself a wife and get some children. And he would never know how much I loved him.

I stood up, and looked at him. I touched his face to see if he was hot.

He was so pale. Lying there unconscious still, or maybe sleeping. I couldn’t tell. I was suddenly so exhausted I could not tell. Sleeping or unconscious there he was, so beautiful before me still alive.

I’d thought that I had lost him. I had thought him gone, from this world forever parted.

My heart felt like it was about to explode. There was so much love inside me I could not… there was no way that I could contain it all.

One kiss, is what I thought. I have to give him. Just one kiss before he’s gone.

Though he would live, he never would be mine. He belonged to the world that was out there. I to the shadows of this house. But just one kiss. For just one kiss he could be mine, I could pretend.

All my love, in just a kiss. A touching of my lips to him. All my heart, and all the grief of loss therein.

His eyes fluttered.

I stumbled backwards from beside his bed. My back hit a table, and I circled it, and I rushed to the furthest end of the room.

The sound of someone at the door. Running steps, a hurrying in.

“How is Jake, Doc? How is he?”

“He will live. Most likely he will live. Though I cannot guarantee a thing, if fever should set in, I believe that he will live.”

They came in. Two. Three. So relieved to see him still alive. Friends. Good men, each in their own ways. So grateful for my help in Jake surviving.

They spoke of the battle they’d fought for the ridge all through the night. How they finally beat the attackers back sometime after morning came. I hardly heard a word they said, but must have made all the appropriate noises, as no one noticed anything amiss.

How easily the mask slips on. The shadows claim me.

Jake woke up, was talking. People came. And each and every person that walked in took me further and further away from him. Him away from me, and never knowing.

The headman’s daughter came as well. A true beauty at the age of seventeen. Under her father’s ever-watchful eye, she laughed at something someone said about Jake, and then caressed his face so gently. I felt it in my hand.

She looked at me that moment. Straight into my eyes, and maybe knew.

In all the years that followed, she never spoke a thing.