Smith, Jeffrey G. General Infantry. Grunt. Front Liner. Short-Timer. Mean Green Killing Marine, Ooh Aah! I’m with 3^rd Platoon Alpha Team. Or maybe it’s Charlie Company 1^st Battalion, 20^th Infantry Regiment. There’s been so many it’s hard to keep straight.

Platoon’s at base camp, around a fire that pops like bones in the desert air. Men’s faces tiger-striped in shadow, they’re every face of every soldier of every war ever fought. Shell-shocked and battle-rocked. Tired, hungry. Ready to die or go home.

Next to me, Rodriguez says, “Pinche frio.” He cups his hands to his mouth and blows. Slips them under his armpits. Just a kid. Getting a diploma, then getting orders. Same acne on his forehead he had at Prom.

I sip from my canteen. Lick the trickle from my chin before anyone sees.

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… forging a beeline
past the boarded-up rink
where a lone rollerskate
rusted at the end of
a disintegrating lace

… dead-on toward
an overgrown grove
of trees gone wild …
the wreckage of a tangled
timber rollercoaster —
charged subaural screams
from cars that jumped the track
left hanging in the air.

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If you didn’t know any better, you might call her a witch. At least that’s what she said. I don’t know what the hell she is. For all I know, she might be a demon. Maybe an angel. It’s hard to tell.

The day I met her, I was standing in line at the bank, waiting to cash one of those damn seven-dollar rebate checks. It was lunchtime and the line was long. When I first walked in, I almost turned around and walked right back out. But then I would have wasted my trip to the bank. Hell. All for a lousy seven bucks.

It looked like all three tellers were working so I didn’t think it would take too long. I was wrong. Ten minutes later and I’d only made it halfway up to the front. The tellers were taking forever to wait on their customers. I don’t know what their deal was, but it was really starting to annoy me.

I had just decided to walk out when three armed men burst through the front doors. They all had ski masks on. One of them had a shotgun and he seemed to be in charge. He shot a round into the air and purposefully pumped another round into the chamber of the weapon. I don’t know if you have ever heard a shotgun go off in an enclosed space, but I’ll tell you, it’s quite an attention getter.

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First he robbed the nests. Rough-skinned, torn loincloth flapping about his hips, he snugged up the forest’s tall trees and grabbed at branches. Ants swarmed about his flesh, but it didn’t matter. He swung on lianas just beneath the canopy, filling his hide-lined bag with birds that squawked and pecked as his fist closed around their necks, wringing life from them.

Beyond the canopy was the sun. And inside the sun, the gods. And the gods did as they pleased.

Icarus — someone else’s name but he had snatched it for himself — huddled in his cave among countless footprints left in the dust, and plucked. He threw tiny heads into a stinking pile sharp with beaks and blind, staring eyes. The curled claws stringing the walls looked almost festive. Limp bodies sizzled over cookfires, dripping fat.

The gods didn’t need food; why should he? But the gods had ambrosia, or once did in the distant mythic past. Icarus had no ambrosia. Bird meat would do. Darkened blood slaked his thirst as he ripped their powers of flight from them.

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The train to Fukujiwa is express at 8:15 and so I wake up at 7. I eat left over noodles cold. I get dressed, grab my bag and head to school. I get to the first car as the door closes. The train rumbles away nearly empty. The next train is 30 minutes away.

The time is 8:45. When the next train arrives the platform is full. The station agents help shove people in as the doors close, pushing against the crowds until we’re stuffed in like clothes in a suitcase. The door closes and the suffocating car rolls down the track.

The time is 9:12 when the train pulls into Akoyama. Someone bumps me. I lose my grip on handrail and fall. I reach out blindly and catch something soft. I rear up, finding myself facing the door and the young girl in front of me. I follow her gaze down to where my hand is holding her supple breast. The train passes Akoyama when she screams. The time is 9:45.

~*~

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Brian Rosenberger lives in a cellar in Marietta, GA and writes by the light of captured fireflies. He is a member of People for the Ethical Treatment of Werewolves and a staunch supporter for equal rights for the Undead. Recent and upcoming publishing credits include the anthologies Vile Things, Tooth Decay, The Book of Tentacles, Side Show 2 and the debut issue of Shock Totem magazine. Additional updates can be found at http://home.earthlink.net/~brosenberger.

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Five minutes to go. I pick up the cup of black coffee I’d prepared myself and feel my eyes drift to the poster over the little work area I’d claimed as my own. “A DREAM RIDE WITH CHRIS!” bubbly, over-sized yellow letters scream against a purple background. “ONE DAY ONLY! TAKE A TRIP WITH THE FRIEND YOU KNOW AND LOVE!” Chris the Choo-Choo’s painted eyes twinkle, caught by sunshine in a moment of photographic brilliance. His grin is big, salesman-esque. All teeth. Does anyone else ever notice just how long those teeth were? Probably not. Then again, I’ve known Chris for far, far longer than most.

The day is perfect, the bait laid, and the squeals, giggles and cries outside my little shack tell me the trap is sprung. The metaphysical pendulum hangs over their babbling heads… Master will be pleased.

Show time. My hands tremble as they draw my stove-pipe hat over my ears, and my fingers quake in anticipation while they snap the buttons together on my cover-alls. Years of preparation, and it is so close. I fish a bit of petroleum jelly from the jar on my desk and slime the gunk into my mouth, onto my teeth. I grin wide and hard. A certain image must be maintained, at least for a while; gotta smile for the brats.

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Poured into winter’s shadow
angels dance with the Star Seed
on the edge of a black hole.

Hate and life prepare
a coming storm, no comfort,
no answers are forthcoming.

Galaxies swirl and dip, await
simple melodies structured
for unassisted rebirth.

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It was the Friday after Thanksgiving and my mom had gone out on a date with George Strong. I hated this guy. He spoke with a lateral lisp — everything he said sounded like kish-thish-fish, and his words came out all defeated and namby-pamby. He wouldn’t leave my mom alone. He sent her gladiolas and a plaster Navajo incense burner. I have no idea what she saw in George Strong except a warm body to have beside her at Heywood Anderson’s Hickory Steakhouse where George bought her a prime rib dinner two Saturdays a month. They were a couple of convenience in a routinized turning-away-from-loneliness-and-grief kind of way. My dad had dropped dead of a coronary a week before my fourteenth birthday, and George Strong’s wife had run off with their contractor… allegedly.

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A little girl found a balloon lying in the street, and she cried and ran all the way home.

But Annie, what’s wrong? said the girl’s mother. It was just a balloon, just a balloon.

But Annie couldn’t say what the problem was; or if she could, she just wouldn’t say.

That night the mother had a terrible dream. In the dream, Annie was a balloon. She floated up out of her bed and through the open window and away across the sky toward the moon.

Come back! yelled the mother. Come back, Annie!

But Annie didn’t come back, she went on.

The next day the mother did not let Annie go out.

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