I can see them scuttling. Back and forth and along the walls. I hear them tapping at the spaces in between, where floor meets sky and doors stay closed, holding off the nowhere. The lines they trace as they flee. In their fleeing they see me. We stare. Until I nod, we stare and stare. It’s fear but cities away, bombs away and it’s a tear in the ocean for the soldier.
The soldier moulders. He sits and takes and waits and gets and waits. His works always at his side, holster heavy but gun always empty. Eyes always looking but attached to dead hands. A useless mouth. But we have something here. Them. That scuttling. I see them. Only me. Mister unfound. Mister Missing. Captain looking and finding, needle-in-his arm soldier.
Their scuttling feet fall on the faces of the brethren. Twist the curly hair of the gone baby gone head of Squid. Squid’s eyes twitch, jostling in the ocean in his veins. The love in his heart. The art all through his falling. They eat it, those things. Legs like needles and a draw, a plunger being pulled and a plug torn apart. Squid ink spills and those things lap it, that sap. That dew of Squid just open to the nothing. Just a meal for the in betweens.
Windows dance and pelts shiver. The hand of a fallen lays at my side. The nail dirt slenders lay upon my leg. A something for others, that thing a delight for the blind. The no-perspecto’s riding mowers, spending summers stock and bonding. To them a touch. To them a door, a ride, a love, a distraction. My lady has me. My lady scoffs at that animal plunging cocksure and driving. My lady crawls in my most secret holes and into that stream. And then…. It’s just…..
Those pickers and prodders squeezing now. My head raising like a portcullis all strength diverted and climbing. Toward her my eyes catch up with the racing blur of slow mind and shape and focus. Her eyes are the same, not color or shape, but that cold focus. Our eyes one. Her face crossing into mine. The soldier sees armies now tearing across landscapes of rock. Ripping and twisted streamers before us now.
White eyes answered, hands frantic and face manic, twitching bird wants a word. And she says it. Her mouth pours what only the soldier knows. She asks me do you see them, those scuttling things and I tell her yes, verifly and certainly I see them. I see them scuttle and pull, and draw and flee and attack. I see that stacking fleshy pile feeding upon my brethren fleshy piles. Cycling meat for heat. Tearing souls and weaving those holes to no-place and such-and-such where they scuttle in cities.
Their road leads here. The same road the king of beggars, Olive my Twist, travels on his carpet of nod to a someplace of dreams. Where purple rules and crimson is dead, drowned by gold. Where soldiers are strangled and held while waves of orgasm claim them over and over. Where semen and blood could not convey intensity. That road led us here, the soldier and his sister.
Spirits of the road raised us, and towering we came down upon those scuttling things. One a sack, two a pile and a hundred more. Flesh piled on flesh, the ones formerly feeding. Theirs mix with the Brethren in the land of sleep, all those somehwherites. Nowhere now. Fed upon and split like atoms and the scuttling things before us.
Baptized that night, the Soldier and his bride. Her eyes the holes that hold the scene of crimson. The crimson is of our world, that of them, they of they, and my brothers and sisters. Those casualties of a war at the edge of in between places where no-where meets the empty rooms and hallways of had-a-place. The crimson blessed us both, the sharps in our pointers leading us out into the world of the no-perspectos filled with lawns and little ones. The sharps guide us now for there be monsters here. There are holes open and no one sees but the soldier and his mother. There are doors to close. There are eyes to close. And crimson will close the door between nowhere and never. And we will end the scuttling.
