Gone the Tides of Earth

Ahead in dark a modest timber watchman’s post, beside the threshold a lit brazier, above in the air a steady wisp of smoke prevailing from chimney within.

Two bronze-plated shields embossed with gemstones and graven runes hang apart either side the door; one depicts the flanks of rearing lions exalting at a golden king of men, other a modified version of the Ivory Relief. Farthest from door two heavy, wood-framed windows shuttered in casements and atop the post, a thinly constructed turret with fraction-sized firing gaps, whole thing composed like a palisade.

In a grove of fir trees, I stand amidst the branches silent, stricken with terror - hardly breathing nor shifted gaze, staring at threshold’s immediate surrounds, shadowy in ruddy light - not daring look away. In my arms the girl, chest heaving then implodes mechanically, as though she knows what awaits before us, breath wheezing and wretched like a failing furnace. Her eyelashes bat incessantly, eyes never opening, in a sort of restless delirium fights and fidgets. Stuck in a nightmare she cannot avail.

In the trees visage of the den becomes distorted, great gust of wind bringing the shaken woods to flail and moan. Dark metallic ferocity of sky sheens overhead sharp, cloudless, hint of cobalt an anomaly when the storm begins. Electrical currents now flashing across the sky, wind blowing staunch courses the fields, trees sway violently and light methamphetamine, darkening.

My eyes water in the blistering gale, hardly making out the plume of smoke that had been obvious earlier; seems a second, tinier vapour flies mere feet away, perhaps part of the distortion, miraged mosaic of dark at dusk. One doesn’t breathe, conceive, move, stir, think, but inhales within, starting to-fro at the door, brazier, plates where they partly glisten in fire light, remain dull dark under shadows cast from the porch edifice. Seems though the entire world enshrouded in blackness creeping save the little post, eerie in lonesomeness like a beacon lighting the heart of a dark planet.

In hand I feel the cool metal of the gun, clammy, for having held it there long; distant now as the extremities in the way one carries something long enough to become accustomed, part-parcel, like the broken girl. In panicky, seasick motions trees seesaw furiously, high-pitched blaring sound like that of launched mortar before lurching strike. Firmament spectral blue seeps into black glosses darker, luminous; a sense of the storm, I tighten my grip upon the smooth handle.

Below base of crenelated turret, a gas lantern hangs off eavestrough, emanates lurid green light dangling from fractured piece of rusted rebar, sways fast creaks loud in opposing gales. Delicate, I take a step back within the trees, underfoot a tuft of fallen leaves crunches softly. Feebly, audibly the girl stirs in mine arms, too conspicuous for nothingness, atop the post a figure lunges forth, thin wisp of a cigarette’s smoke before its eyes - lustrous orbs light dimly in reddish burn of a long, modulated inhale.

PANIC ANXIETY FEAR –

Stopped dead, standing stiller, quieter if it possible; remain unmoved, barely breathing, heart thumping, sweat beading, disaffected to the silent anguish of muscles, bones, tendons, any chance for flight foregone … silent statue standing between trees as though they the revelling lions, unflinching, silent, an erupting volcano, moored to the spot, caught in pitch of quicksand, still, unmoving … dim glow of a cigarette drag once more, the buoyed sheen of dark eyes before the fag is jettisoned, from oral glands - polished glisten of a lustrous rifle’s barrel honing down from up above -

Next thing a cracklike whip like a sudden bellow of thunder, echo resounds in the sky and of Earth - missing wide a bullet whirs through farther trees, its force ruffles branches close, smooth wake flush upon flesh.

Reflexively, in madness I lose clutch of the girl, tumbles in a loose heap unto the ground, and notice presence of the soldier no longer looming from the turret. The door of post swings open, form of a silhouetted demon figure bursts out and I feel everything, nothing, rising up in fire, lingering bygone smoking brimstone, fanned out million times and drowned in broiling flames, within-without. Then the rifle is up, feet thundering closer and girl, splayed like a dropped corpse at the fringe of the clearing. He is not ten metres away, hastily shifts rifle into poise, green monster strides forth, stride pounding closer as gun fixes downwards, almost upon her, thee desolate, soon to be carcass of what was once woman. Where hide I leap out, strike the man hard, trips upon his own footing - directing the pistol at him falling I pull trigger, it is stiff, stuck like an unruly latch – I pounce and punch it against chest, crash against frame as he goes down, tumbling like a glass chandelier fallen in the brevity of what feels instantly a moment of suspended time: STEADY AIM IN CALMNESS UNTHINKING GRACE UNDER PRESSURE - primal calculus - grip firmly, SQUEEZE.

Before he hits I know him to be dead, corpse smacks the ground flat as if forced down taut by a rigid mechanism. In immediacy, arms and legs go out, no longer demonic. Gasping, sprawled atop he layeth below littler, stillest in death, crimped unto Earth - both us animalistic, green; I predator, him prey - from the split chest of the vanquished, absinthium soldier begins spouting a steady teem of blood. Runs over folds of the man’s military jacket along the shoulders, sternum, gizzard, spills from naval to soil the arid ground; I see eyes are green, that at least in the lurid lamplight they reflect green, and not beastly nor infernal.

Wits-whirling, in the aftermath I creep away about a rough yard only to collapse back, mind going out for a minute that might be much longer than so. When I come to eventually, assess calamity in the clearing of the wooded army post.

The girl is where she was.

The soldier is where he was.

So, I crawl toward the former in the blinding nightmare darkness. From the altercation I was not wounded nor hurt in any physical way; a soldier I am not. Kneeled aside, I brush away a few strands of hair that conceal her pallid face, untangle the mangled limbs, set them straight. There are fresh cuts across the sallow skin, lips colourless. Part of the eyes are visible, ghastly, ghostly with a slight lift in the lids. Two fingers I place to the nape of her throat, roll them about and press in.

Just before leaving, I cross the girl’s arms on her chest and tuck the hood of the sweater far over face as it’ll go. I get up, walk past the dead soldier and inside the threshold, rickety door ajar bumping support post in wind. The walls of the vestibule are scarce, behind a stair up to a plank door leading onto the roof, then three well-worn chairs, table and pellet-fueled woodstove. Two doors lead into peripheral rooms, being a bunkroom and kitchen. Framed on the wall over a cot is a picture of a beautiful Grecian woman; supple skin and full lip, big brown eyes shining in flash, the bed beneath the only apparent one in use; its sheeting ruffled, a pair of boots and leathern suitcase sidled below the steel frame, and a wallet opened atop a pillow.

In wallet’s pouch a second photograph of the soldier’s wife. Out of the door I spectate a last over the scene, itself an expressionist’s grimace of horror and death hued. Not something of Earth nor nature though mans make that, as the crone says, all things are for a reason cordially due. Thus, odious disembodiment of human rendered from humanity, I the bane, bearer … just so - YES, indeed.

Upon disembarking, I tell myself that the serpentine-green distortion makes it all seem worse. Yes, I let that I am not a doomed, indicted, or accursed man, knowing full well I am. And depart. Goodbye. Riddance be good. Proof guilts shame, insanity.

Through night I walk, grey phantom in black desert. At daybreak sky is gloomy, land swooped with smooth, eerie whiteness, perfect contrast. Trees black, sky dusky blue and brown. Long straight road stretches endless, scraggly sands and decayed woods. Not an inch of pavement uncracked, unbroken. Later at the town, signpost denotes Koniskos in bleeding ink on shabby plywood. Road leads up, windy between barren hills, few olive trees not dead. Going upwards sides of street littered with displaced coils of rope, wires, cleats, sledgehammers for anchoring of posts, stakes.

In town houses decrepit like rectangular barns, aluminum rooves, brick foundations mess of shades. Village twists upon main road, rolling hills darkly green, thatch-rooved rectangulates erected as barracks, military resource offices. Stalks afield grown wild as sea of kelp, crops once sewn and reaped concealed, structures amid grasses reclaimed by nature’s unmitigated expansion. Past fringe an ancient granite courtyard of collapsed walls, the yield throughout smashed gates and bare thresholds: drug-abusing addicts hovelled in alleys of trash, filth. As I go most fixate upon me their dumb, blackhole eyes agape, seeing nothing presently more than movement. Passing I bear the weight inflected, of what the eyes carry; them the lost children, motherless, cast out. Beyond approach up dusty, wind-swept rubbly road. Nature thereabouts tamer, scythed back to perimeter of gravel, cut below at bases of structures. The dilapidated neapolitan homes remain overtaken, creepers and pricklies clinging to olden electricity polls of blue and white.

As I went more faces popped up; the people were haggard, mostly in tattered robes, faces curious generally old and lined. Most were like those of the hovel dwellers, yet many unlike as well - a bit left bidden of a tethering to reality, these here eyes not wholly murked with detachment, and farther ahead more who seemed still within themselves. Wistful, I fancied the crone’s countenance was out there, blurring in and out through the disaffected winces when faces turned away. It helped to conjure her image yet hurt so that felt I might cry, though kept moving, knowing I could not all along.

A great hill, the climb cast out of sight beyond. Upon a final leg were camions and military vehicles parked along the road, and barricades protecting stations that used to be tollbooths. Soldiers were assembled there, quite strapping in uniform - all discipline and austerity and poise - and armed with machineguns and carbine rifles.

Each barricade was an intersection that you were forced to amble around, before the next. At the first I came face with a soldier, his cold eyes distrusting, running all over me from inside. Impatient, he waited, I knew better than to make a deadly mistake - I understood what was required, gave it to him before he needed ask: a small white document, greyed in age, wrinkled from folding. He scanned it, handed it back, looking me over then past at the next person.

In between that booth and next, middled in the labyrinth of barricades was a bonfire, racks that plumed with the smoke of boiling pots. Dishes and cups dried in a caddy below, under a dirty basin spoiled with grimy soap. Here a homely old man approached, smiled toothlessly, wrapped a threadbare twill blanket across me. On a badge pinned on his lapin was the military’s modern insignia. Nicely the fellow forced me down on a sawed, halved wooden log, which still smelt sappy and fresh.

‘Sit down here, please sir,’ he said. Smiling.

While he tended me another person, a woman filled a bowl with something, a cup with something other out of the two pots. She brought them over, ‘Here you are, good sir,’ said the fellow, his speak thick with an Eastern European accent. It was a porridge-like stew and coffee, she smiled and said, ‘What matters in the real world won’t ever give way, if we don’t let it.’ Quite suddenly I noticed that I was the only person in the inner queue of the barricades; a second booth faced me head on behind a couple rails, no one in it, two guards standing aside. They brandished their weapons with one hand on the stock with and other across, over, firm downwards. Nobody on the far side of the barricade, some people close by in the square of the town whence I came.

Some time later a few persons began lining up to get filed through, I ate and warmed in solitude, blanket pulled tight. Seemed with my coming others had made up their minds, followed suit hence on a leap of faith. Looking over at the queue, those compiled near the first booth were so dirty it was hard to tell if any of their faces were different colours. Each received similar treatment as me, guided by the ingratiating husband and wife. Eventually some remained standing while others sat on the pavement, a couple shuffling onto the far side of the log bench upon which I sat.

Strangest arriving here fully, having thought so long you had already been proper. Only now understanding how much farther there was, one might have been long as they lived, ineluctable it seemed to be here and now. Naught but in a place of occupation of sorts, metaphysical adrift on boundary of an irreconcilable plain unfamiliar. By the time I finished, dipping the mouldy bread which tasted better and eating like that, a disruption had broken out at the preliminary barricade.

Discrepancy was between a dark-skinned man and the soldier handling the booth. What few soldiers stood by jostled the man in question, as he defended himself to the toll-taker. An apparent wife stood there as well, mortified she clutched her husband’s shoulders behind the dispute.

Onto the grip of the pistol I held, it was deep within thick layers of clothing. Breath was hot, bitter copper in my mouth. Every second contracted a universal syllable, heartbeat slow, protracted, calculated by exterior force too great to comprehend. It was not long till the debate raged into flames and the soldiers, shoved the horrified couple into the back of an idled camion. Canvased tarpaulin quickly drawn, tied and their frenzied cries unheeded. In refuged of the middle barricades, fellow and wife with their badges continued on in a manner of businesslike unperturbedness, same smiles as before - graven faces of various margins could not help staring, winds that before whistled shrill, silenced.

Awake now the truck lumbered forth sidelong, shifted in the direction of the road and sped off toward frontier. Disappeared in descent of winding roads, screams fading out like purgatorial whispers, haunting in a lasting crescendo - them taken away wrenched forth from fleshes, dragged far below to join brethren of skinless, chthonian crawlers in the bowels of Tartarus. After it is downhill the boothman, that ferryman Kharon of Acheron and Styx, with grim composure of a skeletal corpse hanged in forewarned beware, tallies a clipboard ledger, blasély signals the next participant come forward.

The people await and resume in an orderly filing affront the booth, and the soldiers beyond beckon for those of us through to go past the rest of the barricades.