The Field part Four

I explode into pain...

Endlessly the crows dive at me.  Cutting me.  Shredding my shirt and skin.

I fall to the ground again, ambushed, attacked.  

Murder by Crow.

The Angel Michael strides ahead of his host.  He is beautiful, like God himself.

"The pain you feel is nothing compared to the agony in our hearts since you left us, Samuel.  Come home."

I stammer out the word "why?"

Why is this happening?  Why am I being attacked?  Why this hill, why this man?

"Samuel, come home, send this man and come home.  Take the Flame..."

Michael extends the sword to me again.

I reach out for the hilt just as a large crow hits my elbow square.  Sinew is exposed.

I try to reach again and a larger bird lands on my back driving me into earth.  The birds attack my naked shoulder blades, pecking and devouring.

With one last breath of energy I lunge toward the sword.

I make contact with the hilt and my pain leaves.

The crows cry fury and all stream toward me.  My back is covered with feathers and talons.

As I rise, with ease, the voices of the crows are silenced one by one.  They melt and combine.  Bubble and form.

They are my black wings.  Dark and with a thousand eyes.

I am Samu-El, the Angel of Death.  

I lock eyes on Micha-El, my brother.

"Yes, Samu-El, complete the ritual, take up the flame and send that soul to us.  Reclaim your rightful place at my side!"

I step to the man.  Every step is lighter than air.  Every breath is the deep drink of a million souls.

I hear a millennia of pain and relief.

The man is crippled with age and a degenerative muscle disease.  As I see him shaded by a grand oak, I can see him in a hospital bed surrounded by family.  

Tears.

I lay hands on his shoulder and I receive his memories.  Thirty years locked in the prison of his body.  Every year he loses more of the man and becomes a diagnosis.  

Micha-El comes next to me, "Cut him free.  It is our Task.  You will be my Lieutenant, proud and dutiful when He shall return.  Already the signs are in place.  Brother, it will not be long.  Come home and serve me."

I remember too many years and centuries and eons at this point.  Micha-El is begging me to return to him.  To cease being who I am and become a servant.

The memories return so fast.  It is a grand thing to serve under the Light and He Who Shall Return.  It is my Task.  My compulsion.  

My memories and the memories of the man, mingle in my brain.

I turn to face Micha-El, I will return.

Suddenly one of the man's memories penetrates the battle in my mind.

"Don't accept what they say you are.  Be who you dream you will become..."

"Michael," I look him dead in the eyes, "go fuck yourself."

The crows awake and rocket from me, clouding the sun.

Everything goes dark.

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The Field part Three

The crows grow louder...

I scramble higher up the hill.  My hands clawing into the soil.  The grass wilts beneath my fists.  Bugs and rodents scream in agony.

My shoulders are on fire.

I am screaming wordlessly trying to get away from the heavenly mob.

The boy slowly walks next to me, although he is a man now.

I stop fighting my way up the hill and look into his eyes.

He has a larger branch now that has many many leaves.  Some look more wilted than others.

As I hold his gaze he ages in front of me.  One of his eyes clouds over and becomes listless.

The crows begin to circle around us.

The man falls to his knees, his right arm hangs loose at his sides.  A smile creases his face.

His branch becomes a root and falls from his hands and burrows into the ground.  I see the root move under the hill.

I see the tree on top of the hill and an old man in a wheelchair underneath.  

The man that was with me is him, distant.

The crows scream with fury.

My shoulder blades are wracked with pain and distort wildly.

I stand uneasy and limp towards the tree and man.

A crow dives towards me and tears my shirt and skin around my collarbone. 

Blood and feathers are in the air.

I hear Michael laugh.

I explode into pain...

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The Field, part Two

"Take the Flame Samuel..."

I try to move but my shoes seem riveted to the field.  The laces are not tight and I kick them off.

I run barefoot in the grass.  The breeze is pleasant.

Every hundred feet or so I see the Angel with the boy.  I run pass them but can notice that every time I see the boy he is a little older, his stick has another leaf.

Always the Angel calls out, "You've been running for so long ha-Mavet.  You can not out run He Who Will Come."

I trip over a root that is coming out of the hill.  My pants are hooked.  

I look over my shoulder and I see more Angels.  The are thousands behind Seven.  They come to me.  The Seven are larger, they have a crackling energy around them.  The boy walks with them.  He is carrying four branches, three with one leaf each.

The one who called himself Gabriel blows into a ram's horn.  The Choir sings.

The Angels wings are each made of a different material.  Smoke, Flame, Tide, Stone, Light, Wind.  Each covered in tattoos.  Unbidden I know their names, Gabariel, Remiel, Zerachiel, Raguel, Uriel, Raphael, and the largest of them all...Michael.

He comes to me.  He reaches out his hand.  It burns.  I feel waves of a nausea come over to me. 

I retch and convulse, my pants tear completely, my leg, exposed is covered in the same tattoos as the Angels.

I hear crows.

I tear off the rest of my pants and run again.

The crows grow louder and the sun is darkened by their wings...

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The Field, part One

I am in a field.

I am in a dream.

The grass of the field is lush and a summer wind blows like a tide.  

There is a hill in the distance with a large tree.  The wind does not blow the leaves.

My back itches near the shoulder blades.  I am wearing a coat.  

The sun is hot, burning, a burden.  Every second my coat absorbs another Fahrenheit.

The wind changes directions and blows my hair into my face.  I have long hair that smells of Spring.

I start walking through the field towards the large tree.  Savior in shade.

I remove the coat.  It is leaden and my arm screams as I pull it off.  I toss it to the side.  The t-shirt I have on now is itchy pulling at something on my back.

The jacket begins to smoke.  

The smoke becomes dark and solid.  It is an airy liquid.  It bubbles and churns.

There is a presence there.  A substance.  A consciousness.

The smoke begins to draw in on itself.  Violently retracting.  Violently subsiding.

A shape emerges from the waste, it is a man.  A man with black, coiling smoke for wings.  He is naked with elaborate tattoos covering everything but his face.

He smiles at me.  He recognizes me.  I can feel his recognition but I do not accept it.

The Angel, for that is what he appears to be, reaches behind his right wing with his left hand and withdraws a sword.

The sword is flame.  The sword is death.

The Angel bends to one knee and offers the sword to me hilt first.

"My lord, the burden is too much.  The Choir harmonizes in agony.  Return to us, the Heavenly Pitch."

"What?  Who the fuck are you, where the fuck am I?"

"I am your brother, Gabriel.  I've taken the Flame in your steed.  But the time has come, he will return and you must be with us..."

"Huh?"

"You've been away for so long Samuel.  So long that you've forgotten who you are.  Take the Flame.  Dispatch the Justice and return.  You are the Apart.  The Vision.  The Burden is yours Samuel, I can carry it no longer.

"If you want to remember who you are, take the Flame and dispatch this soul..."

As the Angel says soul his wings move to the side and a young, husky youth is in the field hold a small stick with ten leaves.

"Samuel, lead the human home and return to us."

"This is crazy, I'm fucking dreaming."

I look to the sky, I look to the compass points, I look for an anchor to latch onto anything that doesn't have a naked man with wings trying to give me a sword.  What is going on?

"Take the Flame Samuel..."

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Ambulance Chase

Last thing I saw was Deborah standing over me with blood on a pair of scissors.  My blood.  She stabbed my over me hip and through my liver.  Deborah did it hard and fast like a sucker punch.  When you get hit in your liver all the toxins it's been scrubbing from your bloodstream suddenly hit you all at once.

So on top of being stabbed, I'm blacked out drunk.

I came to in an Ambulance.  There is two paramedics who are staring at me with fear in their eyes.  My throat is raw, have I been screaming?

My arms are in cuffs, the leather kind to keep me from flailing around.

The paramedics get over their hesitation and slowly tend to their business, mainly me.  

I catch a brief look at myself in some burnished metal.  My eyes don't focus that well but I appear to be very very tan.  On a good day, I'm paler than the pope's ass.  What the fuck is going on?

I drift off to sleep...

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Timelines

I'm in a hospital bed trying to will my body to digest the disgust.

Who the fuck eats tapioca anyway?

What the fuck is tapioca?

My updates have been pretty weird time flow wise.  But I'm trying to tell a story, and that shit will happen.  You should be more forgiving.  Make a better person out of you.

So way back on April 20th I posted that there would be no post because I got stabbed.  Well this is true.

All the post that came after was stuff that happened before the 20th.

I was stabbed in my back but deep enough where it punctured some of my organs.  

I've been in the hospital since.  And I've be relaying the information to you.

All caught up?

Good.

I get discharged later today.  Some strange stuff went down when I was laid out.

Peace and chicken grease as they say
Sam

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Deborah Pt. 7 Sunday

I wake up in a bed.

I smell sex.

I am naked.

A cat is looking at me disapprovingly.

My back and knees scream as though they have been locked for hours.  I feel dried up and used.  I feel dirty.

Last thing I remember is...what?  Passing out?  Getting shrapnel in Iraq.

No that last thing was a dream.  But it seemed so real.

I hear breathing.  I look to my left and see a woman wrapped up in a sheet.  There is a sheen of sweat on her naked shoulders and back. 

Where am I?

Moonlight is coming through a window but a tree branch is attempting to block it.

A branch covers the girl's face.

I fling the covers off of me and discover I'm naked as well.  I assume that explains the sex in the air.

Great, first time for sex in a long time and I wasn't even present.

Why did I blackout again?

Last thing I saw...was that camera picture.  Me, an African-American.  I wouldn't mind except that I until that moment always saw a white guy in pictures and the mirror.

I get out of the bed and bash my knee against a dresser.  Somehow I navigate tossed clothing and baby toys and that judgemental cat and make it into the bathroom.

The woman is mumbling on the bed, she is waking up.

"Ricky?"

That was Deborah Conners voice.  Ricky is the person she thinks I am, and the person I was in my dream.  

I flick on the lights and in the mirror is a black haired white guy.  The me I remember.  Sam the bartender.  Not Sam Conners, not his friend and certainly not Ricky Davidson, the black solider killed in Iraq.

"If you are going to take a shit, light a match.  And come back to bed, Ricky, I'm getting cold."

Her purse is just outside the bathroom door, I grab it and look inside for her camera.

I take a picture of myself and I am white in the picture. 

This is so weird.

I have to get out of this bedroom.

I turn off the bathroom light and try to walk carefully.  My clothes appear to be near the bedroom exit, but that damn branch is making it hard to see.

"Ricky?"

A lamp clicks on.  

The woman screams.

I go to calm her down, try to explain.

Just to shut her up for a moment.  I picture in her head her confusion.  She sleeps with Ricky and wakes up to a naked white guy pinning her down.

She screams rape.

Her arms flail around, clawing at a nightstand.

I feel panic and pity for her.  

She rakes her hand down my face.  

I feel a sharp pain in my side.

I fall to the floor.

She stands over me with a pair of scissors.  

The branch moves and I see blood in the moonlight.

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Welcome to the Suck

I hear a piercing.

My body is not with me, I am behind myself north and to the left.  There is dirt everywhere.

My ears and eyes are bleeding.  I cannot see more than a foot in front of me, the world is blurred.

There is a hole where the barracks used to be, I try to rise but my bare feet slip in the puddle where Carlos used to be.

My hands are numb, I can't see them.  I can feel...loss.

The ringing is abating and screaming is the replacement.

"Everybody stay down!!"

"Fucking Maclin is hit!"

"Medic!"

I hear distant impacts followed by a whooshing sound.  Followed by heat.

Slowly my vision returns.

"Jesus Christ, Ricky, stay the fuck still."  The voice belongs to Carmichael the overly Christian Medical Officer.  He's speaking to me, or rather the bloody mess that was me.

I see my body rolling away from the pain, the fire inside me.  I do not see hands, or the top of my head.

I can see a face, the face that was in the camera.

The name on the shirt is Davidson.

The morphine hits, the world becomes still.

"Ricky, can you feel this?"  Carmichael begins to poke my body, it's too late the spine is severed.

A big burly Sergeant walks over to us.  "Carmichael go help Juarez, you can't do anything more."

Carmichael lowers his gaze in shame, he squeezes my shoulder softly.

"Ricky, can you hear me?"  The Sarge asks with compassion.  This is the guy that would make me do pushups underneath a bayonet to get my ass down.

I mumble something, I'm having trouble doing anything but sob.

"It was the goddamn Haji's. Hit us with mortars.  I'm sorry son.  Is there someone you want me to notify?"

The implication is clear.

I struggle and plead and mentally scream.  It's a low hum, a bloody bubble of a reply.  A puzzle of vowels and consonants.

It's a name.  Stammered and palsied.  It is my last words.

"Deborah Conners..."

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