Friday's Whims of the Time Traveler 1.1: May 12th, 2011
Death Poem
by Belinda Roddie
Graceful guillotine,
caress this red and broken flesh
as the blood turns brown
I was scheduled to die at sunrise. Ordained by a pseudo-justice, sporting the exaggerated garb and the creased scowl. Carried out by the drones in uniform. Their faces all looked the same. Their eyes all had no luster.
I stood in my cell with the other prisoners of war scattered about my feet. One was curled in the fetal position in the corner, muttering the same broken, incoherent phrase to himself over and over. Another kept asking people for a cigarette. Most were asleep. Others stared wild-eyed into the rays of sun that seeped through the fissures like the stones were bleeding light.
They began leading them out one by one. They bound them in the same fashion. Metal cuffs pressing knuckles into the spine. Chains coiled like slumbering serpents around their ankles. The prisoners hung their heads as they dragged into the morning dew. They were led like dogs on leashes, saliva dribbling from their helpless jowls. Put down by those who feigned pity. I watched them all, in single file, shed off their manhood and their bravery like old skin to drift to the floor, to burn and wither away until it was nothing but ash on my tongue.
I was the last to be called. My uniform lay in shreds about my torso. My nose was splintered, my teeth shattered from earthquakes and human tidal waves on the battlefield. I did not smile. I did not speak. They cuffed me, but they let me walk freely. No chains to subdue me, almost as if they knew I would not struggle. At least, not for very long.
When I stepped out into the purple fingers of dawn, poking and prodding at my skin, I tried to remember an old song that my father had sung to me when I was a child. He had been tone-deaf, out of pitch, but his passion seemed to make up for it like a fine seasoning on a bland chunk of meat. His accent carried me away, to sleep during nights where I was growing more and more accustomed to the dark. No longer afraid of it.
A drone clubbed me in the back with his cudgel. An electric current zipped through me, poisoning the blood in my capillaries, setting my vision to gray momentarily. I picked up the pace, my wrists swollen with blood from the tightness of the cuffs. They made me turn corner after corner, stone walls leading me further into this labyrinth of a prison. I heard tanks and blasters and marching feet. Steel-toed boots flattening the dirt.
I let the day molest my mind with its light, the sun licking at the scars on the crown of my head. My hair lay in wet straggles and could not provide much of a shield. My skin grew red and clotted from where the fragments of my cybernetic had pierced the gluttonous arteries beneath the covered socket. Insects flew about my face, threatening to crawl into my wounds. They forced me to wind across one last corridor, and I wished I had brought a golden thread to led me back out, like a myth I had heard once.
Forget the myth. It was the song that still eluded me, taunted me as I tried to recall its melody. Slowly, it came back. The beats and tempo all drifting onto the blank sheet music that lay beneath my broken cranium, tapping away the pain like fingers on piano keys. I had to choke down my smile and stop myself from humming it as it all came back to me…almost all of it.
The stage was laid out for me. Land vehicles were laden with fresh cadavers to be dissected for the sake of the enemy’s science, for the sake of discovery that was not mine. I was the meat to be gorged upon, as I saw the glistening blade hanging for my neck to greet as if they were friends.
A guillotine. How amusingly old-fashioned. Whatever happened to typical torture and a shot to the head with a rifle?
But the drones seemed to revel in this archaic ritual. They bared their teeth at the scattered heads about the dying grass, eyes glistening at the sight of red puddles around the cold earth. This was what made them smile. This was what made them thrive.
When I stepped onto that creaking platform, they let my wrists deflate when they removed the cuffs. Blood threatened to burst through the skin before then, and I exhaled as the plasma surged through my arms again. Numbness retired from my flesh only briefly before I was led to the guillotine, a man in black there to pray away my soul.
I wasn’t even aware we prayed for anything here. Was war some God in this city? It was as if all meaning had been sucked away like marrow from a bone and these fools were attempting to grow it back. Like an artificial transplant or mutation along the chain of DNA that brought us together in life and death.
They tore the jacket of my uniform off of me and shoved me down to my knees. My eye, for the first time, watered. I saw the drones gather in droves, as the bodies were carried away in cheap bags and the raw and breaking backs of trucks. The guillotine seemed to hiss above my head.
What had been the lyrics to that song? They were coming back to me, at the appropriate hour, no less. The man in black let the rope whip around his hands. And it all went back to my father’s voice:
Oh, somber essence of the night
Embrace this cold and weary stranger
Protect the child from present danger
And let me live without need of light
And let me live without need of light
The great descent. The gleam of sun from a soulless blade. The smile finally contorting bruised, bleeding lips.
And let me live without need of light.
by Belinda Roddie
Graceful guillotine,
caress this red and broken flesh
as the blood turns brown
I was scheduled to die at sunrise. Ordained by a pseudo-justice, sporting the exaggerated garb and the creased scowl. Carried out by the drones in uniform. Their faces all looked the same. Their eyes all had no luster.
I stood in my cell with the other prisoners of war scattered about my feet. One was curled in the fetal position in the corner, muttering the same broken, incoherent phrase to himself over and over. Another kept asking people for a cigarette. Most were asleep. Others stared wild-eyed into the rays of sun that seeped through the fissures like the stones were bleeding light.
They began leading them out one by one. They bound them in the same fashion. Metal cuffs pressing knuckles into the spine. Chains coiled like slumbering serpents around their ankles. The prisoners hung their heads as they dragged into the morning dew. They were led like dogs on leashes, saliva dribbling from their helpless jowls. Put down by those who feigned pity. I watched them all, in single file, shed off their manhood and their bravery like old skin to drift to the floor, to burn and wither away until it was nothing but ash on my tongue.
I was the last to be called. My uniform lay in shreds about my torso. My nose was splintered, my teeth shattered from earthquakes and human tidal waves on the battlefield. I did not smile. I did not speak. They cuffed me, but they let me walk freely. No chains to subdue me, almost as if they knew I would not struggle. At least, not for very long.
When I stepped out into the purple fingers of dawn, poking and prodding at my skin, I tried to remember an old song that my father had sung to me when I was a child. He had been tone-deaf, out of pitch, but his passion seemed to make up for it like a fine seasoning on a bland chunk of meat. His accent carried me away, to sleep during nights where I was growing more and more accustomed to the dark. No longer afraid of it.
A drone clubbed me in the back with his cudgel. An electric current zipped through me, poisoning the blood in my capillaries, setting my vision to gray momentarily. I picked up the pace, my wrists swollen with blood from the tightness of the cuffs. They made me turn corner after corner, stone walls leading me further into this labyrinth of a prison. I heard tanks and blasters and marching feet. Steel-toed boots flattening the dirt.
I let the day molest my mind with its light, the sun licking at the scars on the crown of my head. My hair lay in wet straggles and could not provide much of a shield. My skin grew red and clotted from where the fragments of my cybernetic had pierced the gluttonous arteries beneath the covered socket. Insects flew about my face, threatening to crawl into my wounds. They forced me to wind across one last corridor, and I wished I had brought a golden thread to led me back out, like a myth I had heard once.
Forget the myth. It was the song that still eluded me, taunted me as I tried to recall its melody. Slowly, it came back. The beats and tempo all drifting onto the blank sheet music that lay beneath my broken cranium, tapping away the pain like fingers on piano keys. I had to choke down my smile and stop myself from humming it as it all came back to me…almost all of it.
The stage was laid out for me. Land vehicles were laden with fresh cadavers to be dissected for the sake of the enemy’s science, for the sake of discovery that was not mine. I was the meat to be gorged upon, as I saw the glistening blade hanging for my neck to greet as if they were friends.
A guillotine. How amusingly old-fashioned. Whatever happened to typical torture and a shot to the head with a rifle?
But the drones seemed to revel in this archaic ritual. They bared their teeth at the scattered heads about the dying grass, eyes glistening at the sight of red puddles around the cold earth. This was what made them smile. This was what made them thrive.
When I stepped onto that creaking platform, they let my wrists deflate when they removed the cuffs. Blood threatened to burst through the skin before then, and I exhaled as the plasma surged through my arms again. Numbness retired from my flesh only briefly before I was led to the guillotine, a man in black there to pray away my soul.
I wasn’t even aware we prayed for anything here. Was war some God in this city? It was as if all meaning had been sucked away like marrow from a bone and these fools were attempting to grow it back. Like an artificial transplant or mutation along the chain of DNA that brought us together in life and death.
They tore the jacket of my uniform off of me and shoved me down to my knees. My eye, for the first time, watered. I saw the drones gather in droves, as the bodies were carried away in cheap bags and the raw and breaking backs of trucks. The guillotine seemed to hiss above my head.
What had been the lyrics to that song? They were coming back to me, at the appropriate hour, no less. The man in black let the rope whip around his hands. And it all went back to my father’s voice:
Oh, somber essence of the night
Embrace this cold and weary stranger
Protect the child from present danger
And let me live without need of light
And let me live without need of light
The great descent. The gleam of sun from a soulless blade. The smile finally contorting bruised, bleeding lips.
And let me live without need of light.
The work you see here has not been edited nor altered since May 12th, 2011.
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