The Emollient Nights Anomaly!

I stood waiting for train as the rain gathered in haunting pools about my feet, I peered down to where my boots had made two sinking graves. I feared to catch the drops, for each one seemed to me attached to a face or a cry. I shivered not wanting to look into the accusing droplets that slithered down my salt brow under my raincoat. The sky seemed apologetic, almost ashamed of its vast imperious omnipotence, a witness without a voice, a painter of hues and visceral maelstroms but no hand to inscribe above our heads the sins we possessed in flea bitten cloth sacks. Where once there were once young hearts beating a thunderous joyous victory only the misty crystaline memories remained, tainted by our being here at all. I had become a dead thing living inside my socket flesh, shadowy slip streams oozed vapour trails where ever we walked, a pocket of blight upon the nightscape. The settlers in the towns shunned us by night obeyed us by day. In groups of ten we blackened the chocolate shop streets with streaks of our invisible stink; whores whithered at our caress, salt had no taste water offered up no respite from thirst.

-Heinz, stop daydreaming you goat, you idiot, do you want to get into trouble! Beamed Walter as he shouldered his rifle and rubbed his hands vigorously together.

I did not look behind him, I could not see beyond the barbed wire gate, but I knew. I in my minds lacerated eye could see that bulbous never consistent vacuous face with eyes that did not look out, but sucked it like an enormous octopuses pad wrapped about the choking mouths of all our tomorrows. I could hear the train shrieking some way off, it’s carriages made of dry yellow skin, fastened together by thick hair strands, the metal be bones with chipped injuries and cleaved ridges too big but for the jaws of Cerberus himself as he slept inside the steam engine, which gargled and broiled with still feeling carcasses; a finger here, a hand pierces the agony film that covers the entire machine, it writhes like a dancing animal on fire, ever too drown in the mucous of the well oiled machine, ever to burn until the thin peeling crisps of regret roll back like wall paper not glued successfully to a bending wall. I live in that machine all though I wake here, with big black boots making watery graves in mud too tainted that even the worms of hell would shun it, spit at it, despise its languor stench.

-Walter I would like a cigarette!

-Of course my friend (Bellowed Walter) Ha ha you new boys all look the same! Here smoke make love rings in the rain, you see Heinz the fleas dine on the living and the dead, sinners and the sinless! The beauties and the loveless! Walter slapped me brotherly fashion on the back, it felt like a bullet, a wound so minute and sudden I laughed with him choking down the whimsy poison of a damp mornings cigarette.

Captain Amsel suddenly appeared, neat trim, tall, talented quiet vicious creature. His face was immaculately shaven, his pistol butt shone eagerly almost begging to be used. Despite the deep clinging mud that made all thinking impossible, Captain Amsel somehow clicked his heels. Walter saluted I must have too for Amsel passed by with that tell tale limp of his, a pronounced gate that levered him to the left then the right. His cruel bent shell was trailed by an impossibly opaque fugue. An augury fell in berating deluge that day and it consumed the very warmth from the ground beneath us. Nodding professionally as the train coughed to a halt on the platform side of the embankment Captain Amsel with his back to his motioned for the workers to follow.

A foul smelling undulating mass of vacant eyed non-entities shuffled in slush thick gurgling wet splashes before us. Walter nudged me smiling and pointing to a particular foul looking creature. I tried not to catch their eyes, not that they had eyes, well not seeing eyes anyway. They were so far removed from being human it made watching the death throws more garrulous pantomime than the grisly mimes of a vindictive vaudeville ring master, a rich belly aching laughter as he erupts with whips slashing the acrid air, a host of creatures too ill to think too sick to duck, I wince each time they face the on coming leather chastisement. The leather retreats and with it clumps of spongy flesh accompany.

-Oh my Heinz you look worse than they do (clapped Walter in his simple joyous way) you look worse get it, you look dreadful!

-Walter I don’t feel well!

-Looking like that you shouldn’t.

I watched as men in bright orange, vacuumed suits pushed and whipped the new arrivals off the trucks, the thin pale tar skin oscillated in the wind; they blinked at the maudlin sky each cowering near a trusted one, did they see the torn ribbons that fluttered as one enormous world consuming bat behind the harbingers that shrieked above? I heard a dog bark, its deep guttural rumblings pushed past the transparent watery gates that held our crimes bulging behind the monstrous eternity of ‘Sky Clock’. One of the creatures stumbled into the cavernous mud; without thinking I grabbed one of its limbs and hauled it up out of its peace; it’s ever nothing. I sensed its aggressive resentment communicate along its beaten and tired sinews leaping across the vast epoch between her and I; her thoughts then turned to forgiveness and I must have collapsed.

I could hear voices outside, they sounded like Dr Klug and Captain Amsel.

-He touched it!

-Well that is hardly a reason to write him up as ‘compromised’ you know what that means?

-Yes, he will be incinerated! Replied Captain Amsel, it was neither cold nor malicious, merely expressing that if private Gottlieb was ‘written up’ he would be incinerated immediately.

-Enough heavy death makes this place cold as it is let us see how he is when he wakes.

Weeks passed and they still would not free me from the infirmary. Walter Jaeger had visited only once but was inconsolable. I spent my days looking out of the window across the meadows toward the stark bright fences of the compound. Often in the rain, as the lightning made spiritual oozes of the thick damning mud I saw her there. Grotesque impossibly wretched being keeping some worthy vigil through the emollient night, what shadows lay between us coalesced into a formidable bridge and through the light moon gaze she came to my bed chamber effulgent shimmering like a delicate miasma cloth – a complete forgiving.

The workers were all locked down, they had been behaving oddly, restless, refusing almost resilient. Several troopers had broken down in a similar way to Heinz. Dr Kruge was puzzled Captain Amsel did not register any discernible emotion he merely took to arbitrarily executing workers. However insatiable his desire the only flickers of rage he showed were when they simply remained stationary and did not flinch nor squeal The more he shot the less fulfilled he appeared. One morning he left his hut without any boots.

-They (he pointed with his gun to the workers huts) they are doing it to our minds we must exterminate them all!

A few guards stood in a semi circle around Captain Amsel as he loaded one of the heavy death rifles and slung it over his shoulder, he trudged with intent toward the workers huts, the guards moved aside as he began inserting smooth silver capsules into the barrel. Dr Kruge arrived in a panic!

-Stop him! (He shrieked no one listened no one could) there priceless speciments, the last of their kind!

Walter Jaeger watched from the ‘Sky Clock’ tower as the fumes from the incineration chamber drift wilfully up into sky! He heard three large blasts, smoke began to bellow up from the workers compound.

-Hah! He lit a cigarette and numbly went about his duties.