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| Brave New Real World "Holy Hole" |
| I wake slowly, piss-stinking and sick. It's darker and cooler so some time has passed. The herb let me down. Too little, too late. I try my voice and croak "too little...too late..." Exhausted, I assess my screwed up condition. Then, like a chain reaction a voice calls from the distance, "Too little, too late!". A boyish voice far by the darkening woods. The hinders are there. I see them clotted along the treeline. One of them is seeing me and I don't know that I like it much. Brain wrung like a rag, I can't see shit. I stand shaking, feeling as low as I have for a long while. Pack and light a pipe. Suck bitter smoke. Stagger toward the southeast where a waterfall less than a quarter mile off waits. Not much used by the locals; a bad place, a haunted place, a holy hole. Translate that as quiet and undisturbed. The hinders won't even go there. I don't believe in spooks. Since I'm heading in that general direction I peg the group and trail them for awhile, just inside the forest border. Five minutes in, a commotion; shrieking, like a hawk or some hunting bird. There's shouting amongst the hinders and flickers of light visible through the the thick woods. Head down, I doubletime, breathing hard and gaining. I'm on them now, flanking them. They're all in a knot around a small, standing figure draped in white. Two of the hinders hold fast to this wraith. Things are very weird. Time to split. I suck some herb, feeling better but my see grinds like a dead battery. I fix to move east, when the ...bird-bat... screams past my left ear, jackrabbiting my heart. The side of my head burns like it's on fire. And fuck if it ain't. Hair burning, hooting and head slapping, I spin out from the woods edge into a fringe of hinders. Gaping faces turn suddenly away as flames erupt at random all around. A hinder beats at his face with both hands, his beard ablaze. I turn away, my hair still smoking. The two hinders with their white bundled prize, push-pulled along, move quickly up the trail. As they do, the drape slips to reveal a crescent of a smooth jawline; slips to show one closed eye, lashes dark on a pale cheek. Suddenly, like a person dashed awake, the eye is open and there's no mistaking that bluegreen depth. I stand there, smelling of burnt hair and urine, stunned with the fact that I'm her only hope. My see is back. She has it too, and she's feeding mine like we were hooked to cables. Stronger than a pipe full of herb. I can feel her behind my eyes like another soul. I know where they're taking her. I know there isn't much time. She's mutated, like me. Like a few of us. Genes scrambled by constant low level radiation and one other thing. Those of us who see were different to begin with. It's different with each person, and I've met a handful. Me, it's my epilepsy, my jacked-up brain combined with a herbal booster rocket. Her, I don't know. I feel her panic like something trapped in my ribcage, banging around wild. Watch her moving without any visable struggle between the goons, about 100 yards up the darkening trail. I follow alone; the other hinders are in a twist and shout and not likely to do jack soon. The smell of my burnt hair reminds me of the thing and the flames. It makes me jumpy and I look over my shoulder every few steps. What the hell was that thing? The trio ahead leaves the path and enter the woods to the east, the way I was heading toward the falls. The holy hole? Her fear leaps like a cold fish in my chest and I scramble to keep them in sight. Though I could follow blind now for all that. Her fate is my fate. Her fate is existance itself. |
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| ...eyes bluegreen as a magazine sea... |