The Drone Watcher

The Drone Watcher

The screeching seagulls a-mewling and a-calling, circling above, the grey surrendered sky, always there as they had always been, eyeing the produce that we throw up regurgitated to new year once again, once again. Subordinates dismantle hastily prepared structures removing support for those that dared to live that mightiest die when they said no; that they should go and defy the anonymous suckered-beast, the omnipotent god of war, myself, thou, thee. And she screams that she will do the deed that will end the time on earth deadest; the time that all the sired will cease to exist yes and the drone watcher will know. For he will see, for night will follow day; one can take no more, no more and all sweet children will follow thee to release and show that love is everything or not enough.

In the morning breeze the drone watcher will see the thing that only he has ever truly seen.

When Jesus Matinez Santa Cruz y Banda looked through his old battered binoculars and focussed his bloodshot eyes on the park in the port area it was to confirm three more hangers reported by a member of the public. He sucked in deeply on his cigarette, put down the binoculars and rang his subordinates. What was worse, he thought to himself, the drone missile strikes or the suicides. Jesus sighed; the sigh of a man who had ceased to care. Jesus had been transferred to The Observation Corps just before his 30th birthday and not long before his wife, Mariana, developed ‘mental problems’ which involved threats of suicide and alternate bouts of fantasy and self-neglect.

Mariana Martinez Santa Cruz y Banda turned off the blaring and insistent radio and looked at her children; all children deserve time with their family and Jesus just couldn’t see this. No matter that there is war and we’re losing; family must be adhered to. Her parents in the distant peaceful land constantly begged her to flee the besieged land.

“Daughter….get some forged ID cards – every one does it. Even that dumb friend of yours, Elena, managed to get out.,” said her father.
“Papa…you know him and his damned duty. We’ll die here. We’ll all bloody die here and why do you care anyway…you know I’m not well….I want to die…my husband the drone watcher…he hates his family…he hates humanity.”

The children watched their mother smoking and pacing after the conversation.
“What is humantity, mama?'
She looked down at them and gathered the little ones in her arms and whispered:
“You....me.....everyone but sometimes I don't take part in it....I don't want to be part of it.”
At this, she let them go and she said nothing more until the morning.

Mariana turned to one side and reclined on one elbow watching the rise and fall of his chest.
“Wake up husband. Are you ready to face the day? This is what you say to me nearly every day but I wonder whether it is you that has problems with the day….for example, why can’t you feed the dogs? Why is it me that has to do this? Why??”

“I’ll feed the dogs if that’s what you want and makes you happy. You know what I do wife…it’s important I watch the drones. How would people feel if we did nothing and they knew the futility of what we do. Do you really think I don’t know that binoculars are a eighteenth century invention pathetically countering the twenty-first century? You think I don't it? I give them hope. I am the drone watcher to them. The Drone Watcher and you are my wife.”
“Yes…and what is your fucking job exactly? Watching swinging corpses…is that a job? When was the last time you stopped a drone getting through? I will die here. You will die here. Your children will die here. You know it and you will do nothing about it.”

He later retired back to their bed and listened to the wind drag the cotton blind irritatingly to and fro, to and fro and he stared into the black uncomprehending sky, always there, always there. His father, a minor celebrity in the city, had drummed into him the importance of duty, service and family. Family above all and the family should be together. Without family, a man could not be. Without love one cannot breathe and only sadness festers in the empty inner core, a tundra of whirlybird winds and indefinite objects where you will go to die. Who will join you; not they who ride the mount in their own terrible hell.

And it came that night, the air full of sound and misty haze moving across the ancient port gently enveloping the wastelands, the streets of higgledy-piggledy houses, the shops and factories but seemed to be most dense in the park. The park where he left his gaze at the unforgiven sky to observe more cadavers swinging in the constant off-shore breeze. When she said she was leaving with the children, the day broke a bright uneasy red.

The drone watcher scanned the horizon as he did every day; calm descended or more accurately blank relaxation of the kind only tedium induces and then you can think. His eyes spotted a hanger and he let out the usual sigh. He focused lazily on his cigarette then back to the dress that he had bought, the one that she had worn before the war, before the drones, to let them kiss tenderly, the lilac blue it was, it was, now billows on swaying corpse. Sat on a picnic blanket where all around glistened for the nightly sea mist washed it, his children looked at the ground near their mother and then they looked up together into their father’s distant eyes.

And the Drone Watcher has seen the only thing he will truly see.