--- 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
