...heart-shaped things

“It’ll be nice to get that beer huh?” My mechanic asked as he reached out to grab the flashlight I’d been holding beneath my chin, I squinted when he pointed the light in my eyes softly laughing.

“…what beer?” I wondered why so many people thought such a thing funny as I reoriented the final piece my uniform – the piece was my patrol cap, which wasn’t authorized to be worn beneath the helmet but…. Meh. I slapped my ACH over it just the same. It was the weekend of the Fourth of July in the States and if we managed to make it back to Camp Echo, we’d apparently get a beer, or two.

I had to stifle my laugh, I liked my mechanic, he was a simple kind of man, kind of slow on the get and a little too quick on the go but being on the right side of his fist made you quite fortunate.

This is what we get excited about out here, a cold beer, maybe two. Oh? Where was here you might ask? Not sure, lost track of the time and our location a few times, such things you left stateside anyway. Things you might make it back to someday, like shower water that didn’t reek of chlorine and good ole’ fly free food.

We had been standing in front of our truck for over an hour, so when the cold whipped over the desert, I opted to add layers beneath all my gear. The plan had been to pick up a load originally but thanks to a few issues with our infantry unit escorts and our own tractor complications, myself, my mechanic buddy and another soldier who rode with us had been basically forgotten about… for the time being anyway. The entire rest of the platoon and the infantry guys were on the other side of this makeshift camp -I say camp but that’s even a stretch, it was only marked by three porta johns and a single Conex.

There was something different though about the night out here in the middle of this desert. Heck, knowing my hand was in front of my face was almost not enough. There was no moon this night and the light that the stars emitted did nothing to aid the sight. This was the kind of darkness that swallows the light - I mean even the headlights of the trucks looked like thin laser beams, only illuminating what they could directly touch for a short distance and a small radius. They seemed… well, meek really.

“Can you believe what they’re doing?” My mechanic buddy was always vigilant.

Be still my heart, it pittered, pattered and… waited a long pause before it resumed. Huh, I noted the difference and realized; if literally everything, didn’t make you nervous out here, you just weren’t right.

What he had indicated was about three hundred yards away, some headlights were trained on a crowd of soldiers standing around the front of another vehicle seemingly stuck in sand. To remedy this, these soldiers thought it wise to wrap a chain designed to recover tanks, around the front end of the tractor just before about twenty of them proceeded to - I’m not exaggerating, in unison pick up the chain, and put it onto their shoulders as if they would pull the truck out. This while about twelve trucks designed for this very purpose stood, literally, idling nearby.

When they all then leaned forward – and froze. I couldn’t stop myself.

“HA!”

Luckily, I had only begun to lift my 'rip-it' to my mouth which resulted in minimal spillage.

When I looked up quickly it was more because of a sudden dull hallow sound entering the scene. I watched as the entire chain slumped forward just before a gush of wind and something too bright or too fast for me to define, dropped like a rock dead center of the chain. The solid wall of heat that slammed my body gave me a moment to register what happened; that, yea, that was a bomb.

I did feel my body and my head connect with the ground; more like, I felt flattened, or squished like warm cheese between two patties. My limbs fell around the metal plate that kept my back protected from the large rock beneath it. Thankfully the force threw my ACH up and over my eyes, and I felt a deep crack in my neck as this happened. Many tiny hot things slashed at my face, and my brain searched for an answer. I would have to ask my friend, was there a Russian proverb about thousands of tiny razor like cuts? … and how did they make glass again?

When light blasts you out of complete darkness and fades just as suddenly, the brains synapses runs a bit haywire. Lights flicker behind your eyes and things don’t quite compute the way they usually do.

In this instance though I could see and feel my body, I was also a spirit standing outside of my body looking at myself. I could see myself in the desert too, because dark nor light mattered in this realm. Experiencing both ‘now’ in our dimension, and ‘now’ in the spirit dimension. I knew this intrinsically even though I do not understand it logically.

Images in my mind's eye tugged at the attention of my spirit self, and I found the spirit version of me drawn to walk alongside a vaguely familiar man from my past. The present me had been knocked out by the blast.

While all of this was confusing enough, to make matter worse, each step I took with the man in the Spirit realm resulted in a shift in scenery. The trees and grass around us withered and died, and edges of the scene chipped and frayed like burning paper. It was as if he were choosing to emit some invisible force that sapped the love and energy from around us.

The air was humid, it was always humid in this city. Hot and humid, or wet and rainy. It was supposed to be winter. Summer in November. If he had it his way he’d pack up and head north to some old small town he could disappear in, somewhere with winter year-round. As he made his way to the pool party that sunny afternoon, no one knew him really, but he knew many of the guests. The one thing about the heat he enjoyed was hot that it enhanced the stench stuck to his skin of the woman he had been with last night.

The man seemed to be walking toward an old house I recognized, though I was interested, something ahead of me and to the left of him began to rumble beneath the earth. It was something like a bear sized animal trap. I stopped just before the edge of the hole and watched the man move to open the fence that led to my childhood backyard. I watched, intrigued as the wood of the fence began to crisp and flake, disappearing like ash into the grey of the spirit world. I looked back down when I heard and felt earth shifting as the hole had grew. Naturally curiosity led me to lean over the edge and see what might be seen.

At first there was nothing, and almost without thinking I leaned to far forward and had to jerk back scattering rocks into the hole. I did not hear them hit a floor and knew somehow, there was no end to its depth.

A nervousness grew in my stomach as a tightness formed in my throat. I waited a moment longer, leering and squinting into the hole. It was then I heard flames and a small flicker came to sight. The light began to grow larger as if coming too close, too quickly. Within a blink I could see it more clearly, the contours of eyes and a mouth aflame. I noted the oblong shape of its fierce, fiery eyes. It wore a parted grin and had a tongue that seemed to lick at the atmosphere around me as if it were a savory BBQ sauce. I marveled at how the flames creating the contours acted as if each had its own fuel source, individually rising and moving like the snakes of Medusas head.

A moment passed as we looked at each other. I realized this was a question of sorts, the only way that the spiritual could convey a question – of sorts. A question of faith perhaps, pride? Paths?

Up until the the spirit world had remained mostly silent and grey, so when Reba’s voice tugged my attention back to that day of the pool party, I let the music take me.

“She handed me a heart-shaped locket that said, ‘To thine own self be true.’”

The pool was ten feet deep and with all the kids lined up at our diving board, the man I walked alongside opted to throw some kids in. Everything about him felt wrong. When he began to approach me and smile, no one saw me shake my head, cross my hands in front of myself and back away.

To fast for me to move, I felt him swoop me up and put his big hand beneath my bum. I felt a burning pain as things slide against and inside me. I wiggled to get away but he kind of grunted as his other hand gripped my thigh and he walked me to the edge of the board. I hit his hand and screamed just as he threw me nearly into the shallow end.

When climbing from the pool, ahead of me I saw a few other kids adjusting their clothes. I didn’t understand what I had felt or what I had seen because my head began to hurt so badly, I blacked out after spiking an emergency room kind of fever.

I could feel the cold of the desert again and knew -though did not understand why- I was seeing both worlds through each set of eyes. I understood the two of us, my Spirit self and I were connected in this moment and that we had been before.

I noticed an energy radiating around and against me that was confusing, I was sure it was a man, but it was not until I felt my vest pushing against my chin and a hot sweaty hand slid against my lower abdomen that things became clear. Though still unsure of what I'd do, I lifted the very real barrel of my rifle to the side of what appeared to be the energies head – and his response confirmed my suspicion.

“Hai- I thought you were… don’t ok?”

When my finger instinctively reached for the trigger, I found the Spirit version of myself again approaching the mouth of that pit.

The fiery eyed creature looked back up at me... pleased. I saw its mouth form into the shape of a laugh, one not heard but felt like a vibration -in the very marrow in my bones. I understood then that this thing had always been with us. Would always be. Weighing in, or waiting for, every decision that may lead us closer to it.

I watched a roach scatter across the toe of my boot, back into the depths as I turned my back to the creature. I knew then the decision I had made was final.

A bomb in the distance illuminated my mechanic buddy approaching.

“They say nukes hit the States hours ago.”

To fast for me to register I heard a crack and watched as the man atop me fell limp at my side, as his spirit scurried toward the pit.

My buddy moved something off my ankle before his arm wrapped my waist and he lifted me to my feet, buttoned my pants, straightened my armor and dusted me off.

“Interested in that beer...? We got a ride.”