home

search

Chapter 32 - I Dream of War: Part Two

  Crak-crak-crak!

  Standing tall like a flag planted in the ground, I keep blasting the shambling husks of German soldiers. Each burst of the BAR knocks me back, and so like a flag, I waver. As the Germans march closer, I realize: these .30 caliber rounds are punching holes in the Jerries like they’re paper targets, but the bastards bleed as much as paper, too. These aren’t men we’re fighting!

  What did I expect from a dream?

  “What’s the plan, Sarge?!” yells Alvin. “They’re getting closer!”

  Ears ringing like the bells of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, I throw the Browning to the ground.

  “Sarge!” yells Alvin. “What are you doing?!”

  She’s right.

  I take a deep breath and let it out. My heart is racing like a moonshiner at the sound of sirens. With empty hands, I watch more and more German husks shamble out of the woods, coming closer and closer.

  I can’t beat them with bullets.

  Another deep breath. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. The Germans, their eyes as dead as glass marbles, stare at me and raise their rifles to fire with what I can only assume are cold, dead hands.

  I might not be able to beat them at all.

  Crak!

  A round flies past me and hits the mouth of the cave. I hear the flecks of rock splinter and fall behind me.

  And that’s okay…

  “Sarge?!”

  …Because no matter what, I’m going to give it all I’ve got.

  I clench my fists tight until I can’t feel them anymore.

  Crak!

  Another round hits the berm in front of me. Dust bursts up from the impact.

  The outcome? It is what it is. I am what I am. My only choice—

  Crak! Crak! Crak! Crak!

  The German husks can’t aim a rifle to save a nation. Their next salvo hits everything but me: the berm, the cave, and the ground around my feet.

  —is acceptance.

  Crak!

  At the sound of one more round, the grimy feel of sweat and dirt from patrolling is gone, washed from my body in a cool breeze. There is nothing but bare, slimy, purple hide. My arms and legs are forgotten for dozens of long tendrils sprouting in every direction.

  I have to see myself as I am, not as I wish I was.

  I draw a deep breath in through my massive, terrible maw with its needle teeth and viscous saliva.

  Jack Wolfgang, it’s time you take the good with the bad.

  I reach into the air with a slimy tendril and snatch a lit smoke, pulling it straight from the stuff of dreams.

  “Oh,” says Clara. “You really are different.”

  “Don’t gaga just ‘cause I’m all polished up now, dollface.”

  “What the hell?!” yells Chester.

  “Sarge?!” yells Alvin. “What’s going on? Where are you?”

  I look over my shoulder at him, proverbially.

  “The war’s over, Corporal. You can go home now.” I turn back to the shambling German husks and take one long drag from my smoke, burning it down to the butt. I blow a cloud of smoke and toss the butt to the side. “I’ll handle things from here.”

  I don’t wait. I take the initiative.

  Leaping into the air like a comic book hero, I gather my psychic energy: I blast them all at once from up here!

  The German husks spring from the ground like grasshoppers.

  What?!

  Their limbs stretch, flesh ripping, insectoid legs with fiendish talons reaching for me. Hideous mandibles splay wide to loose their piercing screeches.

  Reeegh! Reeegh!

  Carapace and wings flare from their backs, beating the wind to buzz in flight. Their German skins were nothing more than garments, now reduced to horrific tatters hanging from strange, insectoid forms.

  “White Lightning Strike!” I cry, calling down Jupiter’s arsenal upon them.

  Shew-CRACK-cagh!!

  The horrors fall to the earth, hellish nightmares laid to rest as smoldering crisps.

  “Don’t look so shocked,” I say. “Germans make the best conductors. Ever hear their orchestras?”

  “Is that how you plan to solve everything, Jack?” asks Clara as she walks out of the cave and flies up toward me. “With violence?”

  “If it works, yeah.”

  Reeeeeegh!

  The sky turns red. I look at the burnt crisps. They’re rattling. Like cocoons.

  Molting!

  “It isn’t going to work,” says Clara.

  “Well, what do you want me to do? Talk to them? They’re flesh-eating bugs!”

  “I want you to look at things differently.”

  “What? Like upside down?” I flip over. “They’re still ugly, Clara. This isn’t fixing anything!”

  “Why are men like this?”

  The molting beasts begin to rip from their scorched cocoons, long limbs reaching out for flesh to rend, oozy, gelatinous bodies squirming in the eldritch, red light.

  If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, it's taken without the author's consent. Report it.

  “White Lightning Strike!” The bolts streak down from the heavens. They meet the insectoid legs and…

  “Nothing…” I say.

  The monstrosities absorb the electric strikes like fish drinking water.

  “Psychic force won’t work,” says Clara.

  “Then what will?!”

  “I can’t tell you. I’m not a man. I’m not you.”

  “Well, if you haven’t noticed, I’m not exactly a man either!”

  “Is that really true?”

  I start swiping with my tentacles, throwing pink psychic blades through the red world.

  I remember: I have to see myself as I am, not as I wish I was.

  “Yes! I’m a monster! I’ve always been one and always will be!”

  “No. Is that really true, or is that just what you want to believe because it’s easier than trying to change?”

  Her words hit like cheap whiskey. They burn, but once you get past the stomach-churning sting, they offer the same soothing numbness as the good stuff. But, instead of intoxicating the whirl of my mind even further, I let them sober me.

  “You’re right.”

  “Do you know what to do then?”

  Take the good with the bad.

  “I think so.”

  I take a deep breath. I let it out. I free-fall into the circle of crawling beasts below. I feel like I’m sinking into a deep pool. So, I close my eyes. All of them. I breathe. I live. I let the breeze go by.

  “Named Technique #2: Stoic Skin.”

  They spring at me, spidery beetloids leaping on their prey. Their mandibles and talons carve at my hide. They screech and squeal in blasphemous rapture. I feel everything, yet—

  They can’t break my skin.

  ——not a single drop of blood is drawn.

  They can’t break me.

  The pain is real, almost overwhelming at first. I relax. It fades like a cool breeze under a warm sun. I become unbothered.

  It is what it is. This is my imagination: a place of dream and memory. I will not suffer more here than in reality. You bugs? You are what you are, but I’ve been feeding you with bits of my own soul for far too long. The kitchen’s closed, you damn, dirty yogs.

  I reach up to the red sky with a free tendril and grab myself another cigarette. Stuff of dreams. I take a drag while I let the beasts do their worst, enduring the whole thing like an intense massage, like they’re trying to break up dozens of knots in my body all at once.

  Life simply is, I think, as I watch the smoke of my cigarette curl up into the red sky.

  Bang! Bang!

  Crak-crak-crak!

  Huh?

  “Move! Move! Move!”

  That’s Alvin.

  Bang! Bang!

  Crak-crak-crak!

  Reeegh! Reeegh!

  “We’re coming, Sarge!”

  Bang! Bang!

  Crak-crak-crak!

  You know, if this were real, that’s exactly what I would have imagined Alvin doing. He was always a good kid. I wish he’d had the chance to become a good man.

  I’m sorry, Alvin.

  Bang! Bang!

  Crak-crak-crak!

  “Get your claws off him, you filthy bugs!”

  The war didn’t let us keep you either, Chester.

  Bang! Bang!

  Reeegh! Reeegh!

  Crak-crak-crak!

  “They’re dying this time!”

  What would you have been if you’d made it home, Lancaster?

  Reeegh! Reeegh!

  Crak-crak-crak!

  Bang! Bang!

  Bang! Bang!

  Crak-crak-crak!

  [ MEMORIES ARE MERCIES. ]

  When I open my eyes, I’m a man again. For now, at least. I’m sitting on the ground looking up at a beautiful, blue sky.

  There’s nothing like you, Italy. Shame we had to meet on these terms.

  I look around at the desolation: dozens of amalgamated insectoid corpses lie around me. I can’t tell if they were spiders or roaches or centipedes or locusts. What does it matter? Now, they’re dead. Ripped apart by .30 caliber fury. My men killed them.

  I stand up.

  “How are you alive, Sarge?” asks Lancaster as the three men come running up to check on me.

  I’ve been wondering that myself for a while.

  “Because,” I say, “I have men like you fighting for me.”

  The wind starts blowing.

  “Shouldn’t we get back to cover, Sarge?” asks Alvin.

  “I told you, Alvin: the war’s over.”

  “Did we win?” asks Chester.

  “Somebody won. It’s never us, though. But we don’t fight to win, do we? We fight because there’s something in us that demands a thrill. As miserable as the war was, frankly, I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it with you men. I just wish I’d had a real chance to say goodbye.”

  “What are you on about, Sarge?” asks Lancaster.

  Damn. Even as fabrications of my own mind, these guys are as dense as concrete.

  “He’s saying we died,” says Alvin. “He’s saying he misses us. We miss you, too, Sarge. Did we die well?”

  “Like real men. Shame you didn’t get the chance to live like real men, but there are too many of us envying a good death because we don’t know how to live.”

  “Then live for us, Sarge. You always did what we couldn’t.”

  “Say, where’s the rest of the squad?” I ask.

  “I don’t know,” says Chester. “This is your dream we’re in. You tell us.”

  I think I broke the illusion.

  “They’re a little further down the road,” says Clara. “You’ll be ready to meet them some other time.”

  “What is all this?” I ask. “And where’s Dave? Isn’t he supposed to be here?”

  “Who’s Dave?” asks Clara.

  “He’s … someone who helps me get by.”

  “I’m sure you’ll see him again then. As for what this is, I can’t really say. I don’t understand all of this either. I just know that on that night outside of the cabin, both of us stepped through the veil of reality and into the realm of dreams.”

  “I still have no idea what you’re talking about. Is this one of those things that’s just going to make sense to me later?”

  “Life is more than atoms spinning in circles. A man is more than chemicals bound in patterns. All of that exists on top of dreams. It’s something like that. We’re both just going to have to go with it for now.”

  “You’re running on instinct, aren’t you? Trusting your gut.”

  “Something like that. Yes. I think Jung calls that the Self, but the part of the mind that only sees atoms, he calls the Ego.”

  “What do you know about Jung?”

  “I’m trapped in a mental hospital, remember?”

  “Ah. Right.” I take a drag from my cigarette. “So, you’re saying the deep part of our minds have connected to something beyond what we thought was reality. A deep reality.”

  “I think that’s right.”

  “I’m glad you’re doing alright, kid. All things considered. Keep your chin up.”

  “You’re the one who needs to keep his chin up.”

  “You’re not wrong.” I look at my watch. There are five hands on it, and the numbers are just silly little squiggles. “Look at the time. I’d better go check on Roger.”

  “Who’s Roger?” asks Clara.

  “He’s a really good friend I made out in space.”

  “You’re in space?”

  “You didn’t know?”

  “I didn’t even know you were turned into … that thing. All I really knew was that we’re here in a dream and that I needed to help you.”

  “Funny. Maybe we’ll meet here again someday. Not here exactly. Maybe in Rome, or maybe somewhere nicer.”

  “Where are you from, Jack?”

  “Seattle. Kind of a dingy place if you ask me.”

  “We’ll meet there one day, then. I’ll buy my friend a cup of coffee.”

  “I’d like that, kid.”

  “See you, Jack.”

  “See you, Clara.” I flick away the butt of my cigarette. “Don’t be strangers, boys.” I rub my eye to get the dirt out of it. “It was nice seeing you all again.”

  “Goodbye, Sarge.”

Recommended Popular Novels