Count

Flash Fiction #4 - Inspired by Rudyard Kipling's 'Boots'

Boot, boot, boot. One, two, three, four. Like hocus-pocus. Like counting cards. Like crunching numbers or mathematics.

Ash in your blood. Cinders on your tongue. Is the sky red, or is that blood from your head? Count again - one, two, three, four, all the way up to twelve, bullets going down to the floor, too big for your bandoliers. Where's home? Where's it calling you from? Trace it. In the mud, the slop, like a pig in trough, a swine before the pearl searching for the silver, marble, ivory to make your dreams come true. There's pain in your chest. Is it pain, or is it just heartburn? Burning you up, missing home, missing the memory foam of the pillow against your head, missing the end of the day, into the black, to your own private movie theater, your own screening of all your favorites, and sometimes there are dragons in candy-coated colors, sometimes they're flying high, touring bouncy castles, and then they get to burrow underneath limestone and gravel, buried, deep.

Burials. How many will you visit? How many more? All the Tom, Dicks, and Harry's of this place, count them. One, two, three, four, five. That's five fathers. Five widows. Twenty-five children. Will they follow the same tune too?

Is the sky red? No. It's dark. Seas of soot swirling above you like decanted spirits poured from God's polluted goblet. You wade deeper, muck waist-high. Ghosts flay their arms about and grab you. You share dreams with them.

Boot, boot, boot. One, two, three, four. There's momma over there, basketful of sunshine ready and waiting for you to pillage and make a real murder out of it. Look at her, just over the border. Look at her, under the tent, next to all the other boys lying still, the ones who went over the top, the ones who lied about their ages, who thought they'd be doing this for King, Queen, Country, and God, only to find the answer to the question they didn't want to ask, but had to anyways - who cares?

None of the above.

There's snow now. Snowfall and crystallites and glacial flakes. They carry cosmoses inside them. Look close. Look far. You did well, old boy, they say, taking you back in, legs heavy, head a booby-trapped anvil of detonating thoughts. Nice piece of work out there. Good job killing all the [insert epithet here], you did the best you could. Sorry about [dead friend here], and [dead friend there]. Not much more could be done. He's there to your left of course, eyes glazed. They're ivory. And they will be ivory forever.

Good job, soldier. We'll be back on tour next month. Same music, same band.