The Altonevers (20 page)

“
What do you use to paint
them,” she asks.

“
Rust, of the steel in that
bucket over there, some water and blood for the darker spots. The
blues I have to make by grinding down an enemy sergeant's flask. It
was very hard to get to, so I'm sparing with it. The few other
colors are from different rocks, and anything I can grind to
powder,” the medic says.

“
That's pretty cool, I like
them,” Cider says.

“
They are nice, but we
should really be going soon,” Anna says insistently placing her cup
on a wax covered table.

“
Oh no, were just getting
comfortable here,” Mickey says “No don't go, stay awhile longer.
It's been so long since I've had company, someone new to talk
to.”

“
Sorry, but we really
should be going,” Cider says brashly, seeing Anna's frightened face
and wanting her not to have it a minute longer.

“
No, no don't. Stay just
for a while longer,” Mickey’s voice rises and boils louder as he
speaks. Goosebumps raise from her neck as a chill rides down her
spine, her body language cowers away from Mickey's rising
tantrum.

“
Hey, hey calm down man.
Relax, you're scaring the lady,” Cider says holding his hand out in
front of her like a crossing guard. Standing squared off with the
dauntingly tall medic, who starts raving, spewing inaudible tongues
of demonic sounding gibberish while frantically waving his arms and
stomping around the chapel. Knocking things out of place, and
swiping out candles. She gets up to run for the door and trips over
a candlestick jutting up from the floor.

“
Oww,” she says holding her
knee. Cider jumps to her side to lift her to her feet.

“
You alright Carrots?” he
asks.

“
Yes! Now let's get the
hell out of here!” she yells. No longer hiding her disgust of the
medic, who's now shouting lunacy.

“
NO!” Mickey growls with a
beastly expression, shoving Cider away from her, then blocking the
door, and repeating “no!” in a begging, whimpering squeals and
shouts.

“
Please. Don't, go. Don't
leave, you’re new memories, hahaha, you mustn't leave me alone
again, you can't hahaha, you can't leave me alone again. No! no not
again no no nooo, please,” Mickey says with his voice changing by
the syllable.

Their shadows appear to be growing,
sharpening and flickering over the steeple walls. Twisting around
the candle's light glazing the white of their eyes in the light of
flames brightening with the rising intensity of Mickey's mad
tantrum. Anna and Cider are standing with their backs pressed
against a shattered piano, next to the fireplace with candle flame
inches from them. Cider stands in front of her, holding his arm
protectively across her chest. They're opposite the door of their
escape, that's guarded by this unraveling lonely lunatic who’s mad
ranting is only escalating. Cider’s gun is drawn, waiting to see if
Mickey will calm down, but he won't derail his raging mental break
down. The medic's unhinging, monstrously screaming through a
maelstrom of manically shifting emotions. He stops spinning in
place to face them with a pathetic whimper, then snaps into a
mindless gaze.

“
If I kill you, then you
have to stay. You'll never leave, you’ll be with me, forever,”
Mickey growls, then howls with a laughter that strips Anna bare of
her bravery, lost but for the feeble safety of Cider’s arm across
her chest.

“
You'll be here with
me...you'll be my new friends forever,” Mickey growls.

“
I told you so,” Anna says
to Cider.

“
Jeez, now's not the time
for that Anna,” he quips.

“
Shut up, we’re gonna die
anyway,” she yells at him.

“
Take out your gun,” he
says.

“
He's not alive
Cider!”

“
Aim for his eyes, shoot
things that might not be alive in the eyes,” he says.

“
What if he's a ghost?” she
asks.

“
We have to try to see
anyway, right,” Cider says. The madman of a medic pulls a hand full
of syringes from one of his many pants pockets, presumably to stab
them with.

“
Did you actually touch
him?”

“
No, I mean yeah, I shook
his hand...for a while.”

“
We’re gonna die and be
trapped in this desolate place. With this lunatic!” she yells in
his ear.

“
May die,” he corrects
her.

“
Cider!”

“
I'll take at least one of
you with me, hehehe, but which will it be? hahahaha. Which one will
be my friend forever and ever,” Mickey says in the distorting voice
of a demonically disturbed medic.

“
See I told ya he wasn’t a
ghost,” Cider says as though he won an argument, just before a
wooden shriek cracks like thunder through the room, then thundering
again.

“
More company, the more the
merrier,” Mickey says, lustily licking his lips. Someone, a few
people are wrapping violently at the door, banging again and again,
and coming to sound like room shaking rumbling drum roll. The
morning shines through as the heavy door shrills and splinters,
then breaks under a stampede of jack boots. Followed by violent
shouts pouring in from the other side as a six man death squad
enters with long fox fur coats and rifles in white gloved
hands.

“
What, no no, oh no, why?”
the medic begs, “no, no they’re coming for me, to take me away,” he
shouts in fear. No longer laughing, now cowering in place crouching
away from the noise with bent trembling knees. Daylight breaks over
the shoulders of the last two of the soldiers storming the tiny
decaying dwelling. With wrathful faces their rifles butts already
strike Mickey's head and take the wind from his stomach. One
soldier snatches Mickey’s dog tags, leaving red welts around his
neck. The medics trips on the candlestick while back pedaling, and
wrestled to the ground and beaten until he lays motionless. He
hardly had the chance to beg or plea.
Cider doesn’t move, and Anna isn't breathing, only hoping the
soldiers don’t even see her. After breaking his bones the fox furs
lift him to his feet and deliver a final stroke to break his nose
to blood. Not even acknowledging the silent two, they drag his
broken body through the opened doorway and take him away whimpering
and weakly struggling.

“
Yes, finally, yes,” Mickey
shouts halfway down the trodden clay path.

“
What?” she
asks.

“
Shhh,” he says.

“
Yes! hahaha, finally!,
finally!, I can see it for myself. I will be free, finally free of
all of this, ahahaha!” Mickey's practically singing, elated there's
a change to his eternity of living everyday that is exactly the
same. After a few seconds the two tiptoe to the doorway to see
Mickey being dragged on his back down the trampled path back toward
the trenches. His exuberant face disappears as they turn around a
shallow hill. Cider immediately starts pillaging the pilfered nest,
throwing anything shiny he can see into a canvas sack.

“
They're taking me away,
hahaha, to a better place. finally it must be, yes finally I am
free of this life,” his screams of joy, and praise for his captors
reach their ears from over the hills.

“
My heaven, hahaha my own
heaven,” The medic shouts in embrace of his own death with every
shred of his being.

“
Salvation, eternal bliss,
hahaha,” Mickey shouts almost a minute later. Another man shouts
something inaudible. Then the crackling bolts of a four man firing
squad snap in their ears, as echoes of the sound of Mickeys
exorcism from this existence.
Anna stands
with arms folded next to the dead medic's makeshift mailbox. Cider
lights a tasteless smoke, and spills out a drop of the tasteless
whiskey.

“
Well that was that huh,”
he says.

“
You think he's going to
heaven?” she asks.

“
I'm not religious, I
believe in chance, probability and that. But if it's real to him,
maybe. Maybe he’s going to his heaven, whatever that is,” he says
shrugging as to say it’s not his problem.

“
I suppose not. I mean he
killed those people, thousands, does it matter more if you believe
that you're right to do what you have done, or is it just that you
have done it?” she asks.

“
Something to ponder I
suppose, but either way he faced the firing line,” he
says.

“
Let's get out of here,
this place gives me the creeps,” she says shivering with folded
arms.

“
We need gas,” he
says.

“
He said it was
where?”

“
There’s some right here,”
she says pointing to two red five gallon canisters leaning against
the other side of the rotting cottage.

“
That makes things a lot
simpler, wonder why he didn’t just say that. Are they full?” he
asks.

“
They're heavy, ones full,”
she says nearly falling over trying to lift it.

“
This one isn’t as heavy,”
she says.

“
Half empty or half
full?”

“
Whatever, let's get the
hell out of here already,” she says. They grab and drag the gallon
jugs, leaving snail trails as inch high trenches through the grassy
knoll and thick gossamer. They backtrack through the gap in the
tree line they'd come through. Stopping to stomp suspended craters
of the sky’s reflection from the pond's still surface, and leaving
the red sycamore tree blemished by their initials. Struggling to
pull her jug, Anna knocks the white picket gate post out of place
as they pass through it, then descends the mossy stone slab stairs.
The promise of paved streets and the car seat are consoling to her
tired feet and wobbly arms hardly holding the heavy red jug. Back
on the paved path leaving the daily war and picket fence far
behind, and closer to getting out of this melancholic stillness
masquerading as serenity.

They reach the pristine seeming soot
covered car, hardly even able to see it's pearl white paint. The
smoke is still standing in the cabin, and their webs still in the
place they've left them when leaving it behind.

“
Okay, fill her up,” she
says dropping the jug with a thud and getting in the driver’s seat,
“and no more smoking unless you blow it out window.”

“
Fine,” he says.

“
And hurry up will ya. I
wanna drive already, and remember no smoking while you’re pumping
gas either. We don't want to blow up now do we,” she says nearly
singing.

“
Fine,” he sighs, though
happy they made it out and that she’s still with him.
The engine rumbles awake, galloping in place,
until she jams the shifter into first, and pushes the pedal to the
floor. The car glides at forty miles per hour while wavering from
one side of the road to the other like a bowling ball on a lane
with bumpers. He sits patiently, thinking of what he might have
done somewhere, or to someone to end up being a bowling ball for
miles and miles on end. She has her head out the window in the
windless air, yelling with elation into the green, black and white
vacuum as she drives.

Pink lemonade

She suspects she’s been at the wheel
for much longer than she thinks, though she doesn’t really know.
The outlines of the sloping hills, the road, of everything she can
see start to soften. She sees the steering wheel slowly spreading,
splitting into two wheels, then three. Her hands multiply into
ghostly duplicates, with each aglow as pink and yellow
reverberating blurs resembling visible echoes radiating outward.
Filling the interior of the car with pink and yellow fluorescent
light flowing from everything they can see.

“
What’s happening?” She
asks, enamored by the eye pleasing mackle.

“
I don't know,” he drones,
lost in amusement of the road splitting in all directions, every
second a new path branches out on either side. Probability waves as
yellow and pink phantom like light emanates from their bodies in
every possible place they can be, of every infinitely passing
instant of the present. The phantoms of the car speed up and slow
down, swerve, straighten, running off the road, crashing into the
hills, rolling over with her driving and him driving at the same
time, always though down the road, roads. The two look over at the
other seeing every one of their expressions sweeping across their
faces at once.

“
Oh!” he says, as his
movements echo infinitely outward. “these are probability waves,
we’re between places at the moment.

“
A probability wave?” she
asks.

“
What is a probability
wave?” he asks. Looking down at her, “it’s what could have been at
any given instant rather than what is of the present, our
present.”

“
Wait, what?” she asks a
bit befuddled.

“
Whenever you do something,
you are doing it in the circumstance that you are in,
right?”

“
Yeah, I guess,” she says,
waiting for more.

“
So there are so many
things you could’ve done under the same circumstance, like thinking
of what you should have said after you’ve already said something
else.”