The first shot was that which hit hardest; I felt the inertia slowly course through me like thunder as the paralysing impact took hold. I began to break down and falter, staggering powerlessly for what seemed like a stop-motion crawl through a dozen fractured millennia before collapsing into the dreary, squelching mud below. The dream was over and the ideal lost: this was my defeat at the hands of the enemy.
As gunfire crackled numbly overhead like decomposing fireworks, I watched the stars flare brilliantly for several precious, fleeting seconds before the leaden pull of recognition finally yawned its peace and I knew that they had me now. This was the grand inauguration at the start of the countdown, the final destination on the black and twisted road. And so it came to pass; I lay weightless and frail facedown in a puddle, the dank stench of stale water dampening my senses as I stared in disconnected wonder at the horror which surrounded me. With only one pallid eye left fully conscious, through the maddening clarity of fear I saw the tremulous reflection of the battlefield raging above, its ethereal holocaust undulating like the flickering images of a remote underwater cinema. I saw the atrocity unfold in full as it screamed unspeakable profanities; the chilling sound of a thousand dying lambs punctured the darkness as knives drew blood across scalps of shrivelled clay and shrapnel rattled like a pinball through all-too brittle ribcages.
And in the middle of the chaos, there you stood. Constant. Unerring. Destructive. Magnificent. As the carnage threatens to destroy all that is sacred your aura reaches fever pitch, the shrill howl of your subsonic clarion-call rocketing through the atmosphere until each remaining skull absorbs the virulent impulse and detonates like a grenade. As you look into my eyes with purpose and meaning I can feel the dull explosions start to morph into far-away hallucinations; the discarded shells were absolute in their conviction as their collisions gradually became internal ricochets of passion. The enemy had fallen: you lined them up and shot them down, casting an apparition of God in their eyes before the world turned away and fell silent. I see her now with reverent wonder as she cradles me in her arms: she is the ache of the glittering fallout as another suicidal missile explodes in a pyrotechnic display of light before steadily fading into history as the cruel march of time rumbles on. She is the distant musical shimmer fighting for dominance in the rainfall which drums all around me, spattering a taut militaristic punishment on my skin as each icy beat cruelly deadens my resolve.
She is risen now, and with her spirit so too am I. Spurred on by her strength, my heart aflame with love, I clambered in defiance, summoning reserves of energy hitherto unpossessed in a final bid for immortality; they shot me to pieces as I flailed spasmodically in the glorious night air, my useless body jerking like a rag doll as the winged piranhas tore mercilessly into my flesh. It was agonising and serene, a perfect assimilation of all that went before: futile, senseless, and all-too inevitable. Though later I would discover my entire life to have been nothing more than a series of torn documents in a forgotten treasure-trove sealed by lies and deceit, I collapsed in a heap and joined you somewhere in the highest echelons of a paradise heretofore unknown. There we lay in disaffected rapture for what seemed like hours in a clinical, aseptic surgical ward, my face aglow with the radiant warmth of her touch; she dabs at my wounds with an astringent flannel and I feel the sting shudder through me as I slowly submit to her care.
C.C. 23/01/06
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