Drawing Pictures With Mind Crayons

Journal: 02.08.2010

Only two weeks back from Ops. and it’s started. For five nights now at 0200 hours this car alarm triggers. It burrs into my dreams like a Sudanese mosquito before its owner silences it.

I used my morning run as an excuse for recon: the alarm belongs to a Holden Commodore VE sedan. God-damn family car. God damn family man.

Journal: 04.08.2010

Brain like Pavlov’s dog wakes at 01:58 in readiness for car alarm. Family man does not disappoint. Takes him 11 minutes and 22 seconds to drag his fat ass out of bed and silence it.

I question why I’ve been dancing with roadside IED’s for the past 18 months for a country that refuses me rest.

Will pay family man a visit tomorrow.

Journal: 05.08.2010

Paid Mister Holden Commodore a house call. Suggested he make use of his garage. He thought this a good idea.

As I waved goodbye I imprinted him with the image of a hose pipe.

Journal: 06.08.2010

09:36 : Woken by sirens and the sound of crying children.

First lie in since returning from operations.

Feel good.

Journal: 17.08.2010

Barking dog. I’m trying to work on my forms. The squad-doc said that mastery of eleven higher forms is crucial to keep my powder dry. Someone should tell that to the fucking dog.

Stood on my balcony and assessed the canine. A beautiful German Shepherd. His name is Elmo. What kind of dick calls a German Shepherd, Elmo? Stayed on balcony and assessed the dog’s owner. Track pants up to her nipples. Hair unbrushed for days. Socks that don’t match. Reds faded to pink. Can’t even look after herself let alone a dog.

I can’t help myself. Up on the balcony. Lorikeets singing. I imprint her with the travesty of her life as I see it.

Five minutes later I hear the sound of a running bath and a knife being sharpened in the kitchen.

Note to self: contact Command tomorrow to pull some strings: Elmo deserves to be destroyed humanely.

Journal: 21.08.2010

Since I moved into this neighbourhood there’s been an itching in my cerebellum. A standard human would describe it like “someone walking over your grave.” I ascribe it to a bit of neuro-feedback. After all, it’s impossible to screen out a whole city of thoughts. All those tiny brains buzzing with inconsequential thoughts: some white noise is bound to seep through.

Journal 22.08.2010

Today gave the lie to yesterday’s theory.

Civilian across the road. An evolutionary cul-de-sac by the name of Albert. His residence is wired like the Pentagon. Surveillance cameras, multi-frequency microphones even second-gen night vision intensifiers. Thinks he’s The Neighbourhood Watch and The Eye of Sauron rolled into one.

This afternoon Albert presented me with a DVD documenting my doubled parked Ute.

I informed Albert that I PERSONALLY protect his freedom to act like an asshole. I probably shouldn’t have shouted off about the insurgents whose heads I denoted on the Syrian border. But I don’t think he noticed. My powder was far from dry. I was spitting bullets and screaming  like a jihadist. He scuttled off back to his hole across the street.

Tonight our friendly neighbourhood busy-body will receive a house call.

Journal 22/08/2010

I clamped down on his second, third and fourth cranial nerves as I scaled the back fence. With Albert’s optical motor function under my control it was an easy matter to divert his attention  as I breached the house.

He languished like a human slug before a wall of monitoring systems. He had the whole friggin’ street under surveillance. Every street corner, every intersection, every other bedroom window.  They all flicked in and out of shot as he sat like a fat, drooling spider at the centre of a web.

A screwed up paper-tissue stuck to my heel.

I went to imprint him but there must have been some feedback …

“You and me we’re just the same,” he wheezed as he glimpsed back into my memory. “We’re cleaning up this crappy neighbourhood.”

For that I imprinted him with an image so cruel it would have given the Devil a hard-on.

Journal: 25.08.2010

The human body can last 3 weeks without food … but only 3 days without water.

It took Albert precisely 3 days to die. Sat squeezed into his chair. His mouth drying into sandpaper. Unable to swallow. Pressure sores devouring buttocks down to pelvic bone.

His kidneys  failed first. Micro-toxins from anaerobic metabolism percolating in his blood.  Then the major organs failed. One by one.

The moisture in Albert’s eyes dried up on day 2. Unable to blink he was condemned to watch the TV monitors play out before him.

3 days was not long enough to view all that archived video footage.

I should have wired him up to an IV drip.

Journal 01.09.2010

The cops removed Albert’s corpse yesterday. The blow-flies must have put in the call.

Journal: 03.09.2010

My Blackberry rang. I flicked Command’s voice onto loudspeaker.

“Cory. We’re coming to bring you in.”

“Like hell you are. I earned this.”

“Suicide rates in your suburb have soared to ten times the national average … since you took up residence!”

The unmistakable roar of helicopter turbines filled my apartment. I opened the shutters.

Three Apache gunships hung against a bruising sky like a choir of dark angels. Their down draft buffeted the surrounding lawns. Grass clippings and trash whirl-winded across once tidy suburban lawns. Gardens fences flattened.

I could have detonated the pilot’s heads like a teenager squeezing spots. But I had eyes only for the lines of the gunship’s fuselage. The dark glint of their enhanced ordnance. The beckoning screech of engines.

Target acquisition systems stroked my body and washed away the rage.

“You’re right Command … I don’t belong here.”

Annie asked us to kill off her character Albert. That’s what I set out to do  … but in Cory I fear I may have unleashed an even more unsavoury character into the world. I have posted this story in #Fiction Friday and in JM Strother’s #Fridayflash collector.

I have every intention of returning to nice fluffy fantasy tales next week x

Aisley has filled a basket with the most potent ingredients from the herbalist’s larder. Now she enters the forest where  stalks a predator that craves human flesh!

Aisley picked her way through the earthen ramparts that encircled the village.  In her left hand swung the wicker basket. The fingers of her right played with its contents before bringing a scoop up to her mouth. The mixture of cheese and herbs was slightly flowery. The toadstools earthy.

If there was a moon it was hiding. The river at the base of the hill roared as she emerged from the maze of earthworks.  Aisley stood awhile to allow her ears to accustom to the cacophony. This was the furthest she had ever traveled in her life. If the potion of courage had not surged through her veins she would have turned back there and then. But she was fortified against the unknown. In fact, she was giddy with courage. Taking another handful from the basket and shoving it into her mouth, the girl turned from the river with a skip.

The ground was covered with rotting branches and tree litter. The base of the hill was a waste ground; desolate. The villagers had stripped back the cover in which the assassin could hide.   Aisley found herself having to pick through the quagmire. All the while careful the contents of her basket did not spill. She clambered and groped from stump to clumps of  firmer soil . Ahead of her sycamores and ash trees grew in silent silhouettes.  She took another bite from the goods in her wicker basket and waded like a refugee towards the forest.

At last she scrambled out of the cloying mud. The rain seethed down on the forest canopy with enough force to drown out the sounds of the river. Ten paces into the stygian woods and the feeble fires of  her home were lost to the girl.

Her eyes were now one with the night. She picked her way through the trees with little difficulty. This gave her more time to rummage in the basket and stow more and more food into her mouth. She gulped down the last of the cheese and was left with only bitter toadstools and leathery, chewy mushrooms. She reminded herself it was impossible to feel fear: for the the potion of courage was a suit of armour she wore within.

Her spare hand stroked against damp lichen coated trunks. Fine willow branches snatched at her hair as she passed. The woods were growing thicker now. Saplings attempted to entangle her, plucking at the basket like thieving fingers. The dry undergrowth crunched and cracked beneath her feet. Then abruptly the tangle ended. Aisley was before an oak of such size and majesty it  must have stood  since the dawn times. She crossed a forest floor tentacled with roots munching on the last bitter contents of her wicker basket. Upon a gnarly spur she sat down.

A puddle of stagnant water must have gathered in the bole of the spur. Its coldness oozing up through her clothes; numbing her bottom. But the girl did not care. She placed the wicker basket – now empty save for some small leaves and fragments of mushrooms – at her feet. Perhaps this was courage, she pondered. A numbing of oneself to care; to feeling. She was feeling sleepy now.

A cruel shape separated from the shadows behind her.

Wet lips the length of a canoe peeled back. A mouth lined with gleaming daggers hissing in anticipation of an unexpected meal.

Aisley turned to take in the fiend towering above her.

It was as tall as a tree; but not as tall as the oak tree that sheltered her. The creature was a broken thing with arms and legs that were either shattered in many places or possessing many secret elbows and knees. Its body was squat and bloated in comparison. It smelt of earth and festering meat. Its fur stringy with faeces.

And still it continued to unfold above her.

Claws familiar with rendering and mutilation reached out. Their tips snapping as they came to pluck her from her damp little stool.

Aisley turned her back on the creature and raised the potion of courage to her lips. She drank deep. Then wiping her lips with the back of her hand she said:

“Eat me.”

To be continued …

Little Aisley has hatched a plan to deal with the monster besieging her village  … but its inspiration came from the bottom of a potion of courage and threatens to be more foolish than brave!

On the pallet the Hedge Sitter wheezed and rattled. Smoke filled the round hut from embers that were burning their last. With a branch in hand Aisley stoked at the hearth until a weak tongue of flame licked up. A handful of dried kindling and then three lumps of charcoal did the rest. Revived the fire would fend off the chill wind for the rest of this night.

The Hedge Sitter’s sleep was total as Aisley discharged the last of her chores. Then certain she would not disturb her mistress the little girl turned her attention to the apothecary. Aisley may have only been an apprentice  but she knew enough to understand that the items she needed lived on the top shelf … out of harm’s way.

Aisley stood on a stool and picked from the deadly poultices, herbs and toadstools lining the splintery shelf. She dropped the ingredients into a wicker basket of crunched up bread-crumbs that sat on the table besides her. By the time she had finished the wicker basket bulged with herbs and fungi. She eyed the contents and shook her head. Cautious at first then with greater gusto, she crumbled a block of stinking cheese over it. When the last of the cheese had fallen into the basket she allowed herself a satisfied nod.

There was no denying the basket’s contents were deadly but they would taste fair.

Next, Aisley’s attention fell on the clay pitcher containing the potion of courage. Her fingers danced back and forth over the bottle stirring the air and dust around it but never quite touching it. On her face the serious expression of childhood consideration was painted.Two drops had been enough to infuse her with bravado enough to face the entire village. What would the same amount do for the Hedge Sitter as she awaited death … for The Burning Bull to guide her  into the afterlife?  She glanced back at her mistress recalling how the Hedge Sitter had eked out every drop from this the most valuables of potions. Priceless, she had called it as she dribbled a wee drop into the broth that turned peasant men into fearless warriors.

But the Hedge Sitter was resigned to the journey that would take her to The Pens of the Dead. What need  she for fearlessness? What need do the peaceful have for courage? After all, was not the quiet acceptance of your fate a kind of bravery?

Aisley snatched the clay pitcher and shoved it into the flaxen cord that served as her belt.

Then she took from the table a little knife – used for pruning sprigs of mistletoe and stripping bark. It was a puny little instrument. A clammy strip of leather around its handle. The dull and discoloured blade no longer than a grown-ups finger.  Aisley made two practice jabs with it before tucking it into the top of her skirt.

After that she dragged on her hide boots and wrapped another fur shawl around her neck and body.

She kissed the Hedge Sitter on the forehead and left into the night.

The village was stilled. The huts nothing more than a gathering of inky smudges against a backdrop of storm clouds. She picked her way to where the midden pile lay. She scrunched her nose against the sweet smell of decay and picked her way through the detritus towards a hole in the stockade.

A hole small enough for a child and her wicker basket to squeeze through.

She raised the pitcher of courage  to her lips and took a swig big enough to make a mouse feel like a mountain.

To be continued …

I thought I’d try something away from Fantasy and Whimsy this week … but this one ended up taking me somewhere I didn’t know I had inside. I wanted a boy avenges girl story … but ended up with a gang of vigilantes with domestic hardware as tools for ugly violence. Even my hero ended up unlikeable and I’m the guy who likes heroes to be heroes. Back to “Moult World” and “The Courage of Others” methinks for an antidote!

The prompt at Write Anything was: The note taped to the door said: See you at Wild Notes Karaoke Bar.

Click this link to read: We tried the gaming pubs first. Then the strip clubs on the west side of town. After that, we made our way along the train track to the collapsed bridge where the old boys bet on fighting dogs. We pooled like water beneath those broken arches. There was no one keeping a book this night. Only brickwork soaked with dried blood.

The Hedge Sitter has given Aisley a sip of liquid bravery so she can tell the villagers they must evacuate come dawn. Outside the  stockade the fiend digests its latest victim.

The wind was savaging the hill-top as  Aisley left  the Hedge Sitter’s round house. Her shawl clutched tight against the rain. The little girl dropped her chin into her chest and marched towards the closet home.

Smoke was venting horizontal to the ground from a hole in the hut’s thatched roof. An old man with a belly as big as a keg of ale and a nose to match leaned on a pig enclosure next to it. He eyed Aisley as she approached. And she – who usually spoke to men and boys in the smallest of voices –had no trouble in being heard over the gale. The man nodded just the once as she informed him of the Hedge Sitter’s decision to evacuate the village come the next dawn.

Her duty discharged she continued to the next hut. Where amongst straw and ash grandmother and grandchildren received the news with tears and wails.

But Aisley did not dally to comfort them.

Her heart beat like a shaman’s drum in her ears. She was so emboldened from the Hedge Sitter’s potion that come the third hut she was wishing that the village was bigger than just twenty families. She descended on the last family like a hawk. The mud was grabbing at her ankles but such was Aisley’s purpose she was almost running by the time she reached it.

The mother greeted her as the hut creaked and groaned around them. The woman’s knees were dirty from kneeling in the mud. A heavy woolen cloak thrown over her shoulders emphasized her swollen pregnant belly. Aisley’s recital of the Hedge Sitter’s instructions was now well practiced, almost curt. The mother asked of the unborn babe she was carrying but Aisley did not answer for she was already striding off.

The potion was filling her with such zeal. Until that day she had been the meekest of children. Now, courage pulsed through her veins like thunder. It did not matter that this courage was a drink she had swigged from a clay pitcher. She loved being this brave, unshrinking soul. She envisioned herself sat astride a white pony. Its mane giving off silver fire. In this vision a long golden path spiraled away from the hilltop to a place safe in the sky. On her pony she would ride that path and the villagers would follow  to deliverance and they would cry saviour. Aisley Saviour! Aisley Saviour!

But … the skull.

It lay before her toes.

Close enough to nudge.

Its ivory barely visible beneath a sheen of sludge.

The pony and vision evaporated as Aisley looked down at the grisly fragment. That piece of a stranger.

The previous evening a face had hung from this skull. Curls of auburn hair had twisted out from above his ears. Hair pulled tight into a ponytail that threatened to spill forward a helmet a little too small for his head. He boasted he was a veteran of many raids. Said many war-leaders had bestowed wealth on him for his brave deeds. Of the villagers all he asked was some food – and a woman or two – and he would rid them of the monster.

Aisley dropped into a crouch and dug the bone out of the muck. The sheeting rain washing it clean as it came free. Stringy tendons dangled where the jaw bone had only recently hung. Furrows etched the skull where teeth so much stronger than a man’s had gnawed scalp from bone.  So many sons destroyed in the night, she thought, what can stop this fiend? No matter how bright our fires, no matter the height of our embankments or the sharpness of our stakes. No matter how many skillets and hinges we melt down to equip our menfolk with blades and armour. No matter how far we run  or strong our potions … it would always be out there.

Waiting to devour anew.

Soaked to the flesh she got to her feet.

The potion of courage no longer filled her with its zest.

Which was good … for only a meek little girl could conceive of  the kind of brave she needed to be this night.

To be continued …