by A. J. Breton
(the first of the Deflagro stories)
I awaken. The sun is out. Ohhhhh, the sun hurts my eyes.
The sun thinks it can pin me here. The sun thinks is can keep me down on
this cold, wet ground. The sun is wrong. I look at the sun, its white rays
pierce my retinas and force my eyes to squint. I force my eyes open. The
sun belongs to me now, and white does too.
I breathe in a heavy breath.
The air is thick and cold in my lungs. It threatens not to let me take
it in. The air thinks it can make me stop breathing. The air is wrong.
I force the air into my body. The air belongs to me now.
I stand under my sun and
my sky. I have my knife with me. My head throbs. It aches with a pain like
a small creature scratching on the inside of my skull. Scratching, scratching,
oh why do I have to wake up like this? I hate it when I wake up like this.
I know it is necessary, though. All of this is necessary.
Yes. Necessary.
I stand in my ditch beside
my road. I strain my eyes to view across my field, toward my clump of trees
a few hundred yards away. I see two people walking there, by my trees.
The seem to be talking and laughing.
I know they are laughing
at me. I know they are talking about me. I will not tolerate their insolence.
They continue toward the dark green shape of trees in spite of me.
Green is now mine.
I walk up my road. The smell
of my blacktop is a dull weight in my air. I see a car on the side of my
road. It is a new car and it is blue. I walk slowly toward the vehicle
and try to think. My head still hurts. Scratching, scratching.
I vaguely remember that
night. It was the night everything became clear to me. The night I understood
what my purpose in life is. I had been driving my car. I ran a red sign.
The sound of crashing. Hot tires burning with white smoke. There were flashes
of blue and red behind me. A man, tall, with metal on his chest kept asking
me something. I saw his uniform, it was brown, and I knew at that instant
that brown was mine. I knew that metal was mine, as well as blue and red.
Of course, so was the man. I remember turning my head and looking at him.
"You belong to me," I had
said. He looked at me oddly, like he had not comprehended my words. He
kept asking questions. I tried to be kind to him. I tried to explain to
him, but he did not understand.
The shadow killed him then.
The shadow from my dreams. It had explained to me who I was and what I
must do. I remember dragging the man to a ditch, my ditch, and leaving
him there. I remember feeling something warm and sticky on my hands. I
remember his face.
I remember nothing before
that night. Under the light of the moon, from under a smashed wheel of
fortune, I had been born. The sticky liquid on my hands was proof of my
birth.
I am approaching my blue
car. I notice that my hands are sticky, and wet with a thick red liquid.
I wipe my hands on my car. The red leaves a nice streak against the blue.
I try to open the drivers side door to my car. It is locked. I look out
across my field and see the two people near my trees.
Blue is mine.
Red is mine.
Scratching, scratching.
Inside the car I see and
leather coin purse, it is black. Black is mine.
I turn toward the people
walking near my trees. They are small and silhouetted against the bright
sky. The are still talking, still laughing. I begin to walk toward them.
I begin to think about things.
About my dreams. About the fire and the darkness that plagues my slumber.
What dose it mean, I wonder. My dreams are like fire that is spat out of
a dragon's mouth. I sit like a weak child in its claws. I am scorched.
I am burned yet painfully content. I am dropped into the beast's shadow.
I belong to the shadow. It leaves me and I yell for it and scream and reach
out with bloody hands. I chase it. I cannot run far because there is something
scratching in my skull.
I awaken from this dream
but I can never feel. It is hard to believe that I may have waited an entire
lifetime before the shadow opened my eyes. Just like a time before I had
been born when I had been trapped behind my wheel. Smashed, and covered
in red. I would have waited my entire life to be free, but time has not
been on my side.
I know this is for me. The
shadow has told me that this belongs to me. It had whispered seductively
in my ear and stopped the scratching for a time. It had told me what I
must do. I destroy; therefore I am.
I am.
Yes, I know this is necessary.
Time waits for no one. Time belongs to me.
Scratching, scratching.
Of course, so do those people
out there, too.
The End
Copyright 1999 A.J. Breton
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