---  So you like the night world 
                     he just tuned in in the nick of time to hear the radio jock profess his admiration how hes followed his guests work art  his life

then to hear him ask So you like the night world 

he heard it  a braying ass

it was breathtaking

the sleek plush radio voice asking So you like the night world

followed by a long  enduring    hard pause

an interminable abject darkness eclipsed his guests life which hed have known if he truly cared for the man        

the wants unfilled
his loneliness the disillusionment of the dream he shared with his wife                                                                                      

their hopes negated

he wondered what Trudell was thinking right now                                                    

the lighted world   the fire that charred his familys bones his unknown unborn childs bones on the very same day he challenged the FBI in Washington challenged that it continued to violate The Peoples Rights wasnt their genocide enough to satisfy them werent the bounties and hard cash that were paid for with their scalps and severed heads
wasnt that enough 


what would be enough

                breathtaking

he didnt breathe in his dark livingroom

his face lit by the radio dial

he didnt wait for the hard pause to cease he reached out his hand glowing yellow and turned off the radio

                                                                                  

                                                               he liked the night world too  the dark

he didnt have to see the ignorant faces                                                                                  

it was enough to hear them

he tried hard to protect his eyes from the light protect his night vision 

he could see in the dark

he saw in the dark before Starlight

an uncanny ability that helped him survive Nam

his stature was perfect to serve as a tunnel rat
and he had been a tunnel rat long before it dawned on him what he was doing and to whom 

who he killed

which too late he realised was ultimately no different than the American genocide perpetrated on The People

the VC was just another Other to be annihilated

                                        but when it occurred to him in-country
he stopped

the day he stopped he listened to earth sift down into the tunnel from its low arched ceiling from the tree roots as overhead unsuspecting troops walked over it

the crumble sounded echoed like being inside an obscene rainstick                                                                      

within it ahead of him he detected a void  it betrayed itself where the bits of clay didnt fall to the tunnel floor
and dribbled off afterwards

it wasnt far ahead of him

                      and in that not far ahead of him he saw a differentiation in the dark that had silently slipped into existence from his right  a vague apparition

on the tunnel floor prone he was perfectly camouflaged  perfectly still  

he tilted his gunhand up             

he held a suppressed revolver

he fired a silent round into the midnightgray gauze and it jerked upright then collapsed into the wall

he fired a second and third round

deadly still  he listened

he watched vaguegray lightning erupt from the floor jabbing at the nothingness over it  he heard pebbles scatter inside the rainstick as extremities lashed    then latent huffs huffs       huffs

no words articulated

                                   

when the lightning quieted

                     he heard a small circular winding like that of a bee that had stung and lay mortally wounded dying     

then there was not                    

he didnt move

he watched and listened

later he worked his way out of the tunnel in reverse on his belly 

above ground he could find the next trapdoor that would let him into the tunnel without having to crawl over the dead man

the dead were becoming insufferable

at the next trapdoor he probed it with his knife  

when he lifted a corner with the blade the dead mans vapour rose up passed its edges and inside it waxing he saw him as a boy a young man he saw his family him working their small farm fumbling at sex his small wife their baby

she was swollen with their unborn

Who was he

if he had said as much Command would tell him that that was unimportant

were so many tens of thousands unimportant

if they were why did they have to die  

couldnt they have become

or maybe that was why   

he didnt want to see he was tired of seeing

hed seen it before

                                                        he liked the night world too

                   he liked the things that lived in it

1357,  Monday,  22  8. 16

1434,  Twosday,  23  8. 16