Moose

"Hurry." The man in the blue jumpsuit jumped into his vehicle and pulled away from the hospital, the woman in the back checking bandages and morphine shots. The street quickly became pregnant with sirens as the three ambulances pushed towards Thallow Flats. High on the telephone wires, a raven cocked his head. The sky boiled.

At the Flats, there was a small girl on the ground. There was a boy leaning over her, with a bleeding face. There was a man, old and shocked, and a sobbing gashed woman with a hopelessly crushed man beside her. There where tears.

The paramedics circle d slowly, as if to protect everyone from worse than had already happened. They lit on the fallen people like healing sparrows; moved here and over there.

Bridgette looked up, saw Moose, then saw the boy she had named Moose after.

"You came back," she said, confused. It hurt a little to say anything.

"I didn't want to. You're different now." The boy's smiling face was like smoke. Brie could see the sky clearly through his chest. She smiled, and closed her eyes.

"I'm still glad you came back."

She fell back asleep, and the man in the blue jumpsuit slid her onto the white stretcher and into the blinking ambulance, where the woman was waiting with oxygen masks.

List

enemy uniform
cigarettes
zippo
foreign currencies
loads of kevlar
morphine
extra socks
ts elliot complete collection
bible
something HE gave me

Ain't no Passing Craze

Brie surfaced from the smooth bathwater, blinking and shaking the drops from her hair. She was awake now, just barely, and as new to the happenings as a bear in march--it had all continued without her, while she had her own hazy dreams and half-existance. She was losing her part of it all.

I had been ill for nearly a week now, and just after the new job appointment, too. I lift Moose onto my shoulder and survey the room I hadn't realized I was in for so long. It smells like children's Tylenol ($8.35 at the pharmacy, I have betrayed my employer) and sweet toasted lavendar sachets, which I had been making daily at the Root Shop before this time of... flu? It was unclear. All that I remember was my father calming down and bringing water; unexpected relief, and getting up and laying down.

But the city hadn't just stopped because I wasn't in it. I look out the window now, I can see that what I had been waiting for for so long has finally arrived. I need to get out of this room now, today, this week, so that I can be a part of... well, whatever it is, it can wait till after my Great Grains.

Brie watched from the rooftops, and the sun died slowly. Her ciggarette dissappeared in the half-light that made everything blend--the lights were darker, the darkness dimly glowing. There was a woman walking, and she was a free person. She could tell.

The woman walked to the Tavern.


I was enthralled. The lights from the city were spread out, and I could almost have applied the "patient etherized on a table" to that sky. I watched; and waited.