FreeLance
Apr 7, 2006, 08:51 PM
This is a short story. About the various European languages used herein - I am aware that some are not quite used within context. That is because in the context of the story, there is a sort of pidgin english that borrows from various European languages, and sometimes that means that the meanings get changed around and used in only remotely proper ways. That's all.
The morning of April the Seventh did not bring the promised break in the clouds. The sun did not shine down, there was no warmth brought to our skin. It was just another day in the Gaol of Life with the bitter bite of the night on my tongue. The half-frozen bread and lukewarm soup would only help me to survive another day, and that wasn’t saying much because the coffee tasted like urine every morning.
The Warden was the hand of Fate, and he’d had his eye on me for months – since the mythic Autumn ended and the same-ness of Winter began in earnest. My health was failing me and he saw my weakness, my inability to fight back, as a chance to test his own power against my mettle.
I would be a liar if I said that I did not deserve my execution. In a world that honoured only progress, only contribution to The Whole, I was the epitome of Griješiti – the sin, the big mistake, the one thing they feared and hated the most. My life was spent with the cheapest vodka, and sometimes the strongest poison, in the Den of Pleasure we called The Grove. We called it that in memory of The Minstrel – his last words, staring down the barrel of The Officer’s revolver, “I see my children dancing in the grove, and my beautiful Helena dances with them.”
The Minstrel’s Ehefrau and children were starved to death along with a thousand others during the Righteous Famine brought about by the men of Sveti Gral. It was his punishment as much as it was their murder. They took someone from everyone that stood against them – I was one of the lucky few that had no one to begin with. I never thought I would thank the gods for loneliness until the day they arrived outside The Panelák Complex, their sirens wailing and their speakers blaring out their hate.
“Women, children, mothers and fathers of the Svinja-Nazimica – your brave Resistance! Thank your husbands, your fathers, your sons – they have brought this fate upon you!”
I watched them through my shattered window as they gathered the families together. The trucks rolled in and out for six days, and on the seventh day they rested. That was in September. The Intelligence crumbled then, for its fiber were the women in the markets, the fathers keeping their shops, and the children playing in the street.
That was in September. That was when every hope was lost and we realised our demise. That was when we felt our spines were crushed, when we realised the blood was pouring from our eyes and that was when we were marked for death.
When we gathered in The Grove, we would drown our memories and recollections in the bosom of The Prostitute. We would swallow our pain with the vodka and cleanse our dreams and our lungs with stale cigarettes. We would pass around The Officer’s service revolver and we would question ourselves time and again. The Minstrel, I think, cursed every empty click until the day his turn came around. We all, I think, cursed that emptiness; we cursed the rising sun, we cursed the very breath we lived on.
The morning of April the Seventh did not bring the promised break in the clouds – The Talks fell through, and the vice grip of Sveti Gral tightened around the continent. In some distant country, the Brave and Proud and Free were gathered together to toast their wealth. Here in the den of our iniquity – the borrowed bed of Griješiti, the Traurig Herz Difesa was gathering together. Only six of us now remained – a destroyed memory of a proud heart that once beat in the belly of the continent. Where the others had gone we could not say for sure. Some were cowards, holed up now in their little beds, sleeping in their own urine and swearing Lealtad to their captives. Many were dancing now with The Minstrel and his Ehefrau. Most were simply gone, faceless people sleeping in the streets and forgetting their pride.
But we six gathered here every night. We unfurled our weary flag and hung it from the busted chandelier. We raised our glasses to our own misfortune. But tonight the rules had changed. Tonight, we wore our moth-eaten uniforms. Tonight, we had five balls of lead and The Officer’s revolver could hold six.
The rules were clear – we would take our turn from left to right. We would flip a worn out coin to see who would go first. There would be only one spin of the cylinder and from that point on our fates were set.
To my left was The Young Man. The coin chose him. His hand was steady and no sweat betrayed his mettle as he pushed each bullet into its place – one, two, three, four, five. One of us would go home tonight, and I hoped it would not be me.
The whir of the magazine called for a bottle of vodka to be passed around. The sound of the cylinder snapping back into place is not something I can even describe – it carried with it the death-knell of five broken souls.
The Young Man downed his vodka and did not delay his destiny. He pressed the barrel of The Officer’s revolver to the roof of his mouth. He did not close his eyes when his finger pressed against the trigger. The dull, hollow, empty chamber echoed in our minds. He looked to each of us and his eyes spoke of sorrow – sorrow for his own self, not for those of us who were to meet our release. He lowered the pistol and placed it onto the heavy wooden table around which we sat.
“Well!” The Swede spoke. “It’s set, then.”
The Englishman nodded and stared down into his glass before lifting it high. We toasted to those who were free, to their wealth, to their health and that they might drown in their warm bathtubs or suffocate on their over-stuffed pillows.
The eyes of my comrades settled on me and I did not flinch. I pulled the revolver toward me and pressed it to my right temple.
I heard myself shout to them and my voice was restored to the strength it had when I had lead them into combat so many times before. I heard myself shout to them as I pulled the trigger,
“Doviđenja!”
The morning of April the Seventh did not bring the promised break in the clouds. The sun did not shine down, there was no warmth brought to our skin. It was just another day in the Gaol of Life with the bitter bite of the night on my tongue. The half-frozen bread and lukewarm soup would only help me to survive another day, and that wasn’t saying much because the coffee tasted like urine every morning.
The Warden was the hand of Fate, and he’d had his eye on me for months – since the mythic Autumn ended and the same-ness of Winter began in earnest. My health was failing me and he saw my weakness, my inability to fight back, as a chance to test his own power against my mettle.
I would be a liar if I said that I did not deserve my execution. In a world that honoured only progress, only contribution to The Whole, I was the epitome of Griješiti – the sin, the big mistake, the one thing they feared and hated the most. My life was spent with the cheapest vodka, and sometimes the strongest poison, in the Den of Pleasure we called The Grove. We called it that in memory of The Minstrel – his last words, staring down the barrel of The Officer’s revolver, “I see my children dancing in the grove, and my beautiful Helena dances with them.”
The Minstrel’s Ehefrau and children were starved to death along with a thousand others during the Righteous Famine brought about by the men of Sveti Gral. It was his punishment as much as it was their murder. They took someone from everyone that stood against them – I was one of the lucky few that had no one to begin with. I never thought I would thank the gods for loneliness until the day they arrived outside The Panelák Complex, their sirens wailing and their speakers blaring out their hate.
“Women, children, mothers and fathers of the Svinja-Nazimica – your brave Resistance! Thank your husbands, your fathers, your sons – they have brought this fate upon you!”
I watched them through my shattered window as they gathered the families together. The trucks rolled in and out for six days, and on the seventh day they rested. That was in September. The Intelligence crumbled then, for its fiber were the women in the markets, the fathers keeping their shops, and the children playing in the street.
That was in September. That was when every hope was lost and we realised our demise. That was when we felt our spines were crushed, when we realised the blood was pouring from our eyes and that was when we were marked for death.
When we gathered in The Grove, we would drown our memories and recollections in the bosom of The Prostitute. We would swallow our pain with the vodka and cleanse our dreams and our lungs with stale cigarettes. We would pass around The Officer’s service revolver and we would question ourselves time and again. The Minstrel, I think, cursed every empty click until the day his turn came around. We all, I think, cursed that emptiness; we cursed the rising sun, we cursed the very breath we lived on.
The morning of April the Seventh did not bring the promised break in the clouds – The Talks fell through, and the vice grip of Sveti Gral tightened around the continent. In some distant country, the Brave and Proud and Free were gathered together to toast their wealth. Here in the den of our iniquity – the borrowed bed of Griješiti, the Traurig Herz Difesa was gathering together. Only six of us now remained – a destroyed memory of a proud heart that once beat in the belly of the continent. Where the others had gone we could not say for sure. Some were cowards, holed up now in their little beds, sleeping in their own urine and swearing Lealtad to their captives. Many were dancing now with The Minstrel and his Ehefrau. Most were simply gone, faceless people sleeping in the streets and forgetting their pride.
But we six gathered here every night. We unfurled our weary flag and hung it from the busted chandelier. We raised our glasses to our own misfortune. But tonight the rules had changed. Tonight, we wore our moth-eaten uniforms. Tonight, we had five balls of lead and The Officer’s revolver could hold six.
The rules were clear – we would take our turn from left to right. We would flip a worn out coin to see who would go first. There would be only one spin of the cylinder and from that point on our fates were set.
To my left was The Young Man. The coin chose him. His hand was steady and no sweat betrayed his mettle as he pushed each bullet into its place – one, two, three, four, five. One of us would go home tonight, and I hoped it would not be me.
The whir of the magazine called for a bottle of vodka to be passed around. The sound of the cylinder snapping back into place is not something I can even describe – it carried with it the death-knell of five broken souls.
The Young Man downed his vodka and did not delay his destiny. He pressed the barrel of The Officer’s revolver to the roof of his mouth. He did not close his eyes when his finger pressed against the trigger. The dull, hollow, empty chamber echoed in our minds. He looked to each of us and his eyes spoke of sorrow – sorrow for his own self, not for those of us who were to meet our release. He lowered the pistol and placed it onto the heavy wooden table around which we sat.
“Well!” The Swede spoke. “It’s set, then.”
The Englishman nodded and stared down into his glass before lifting it high. We toasted to those who were free, to their wealth, to their health and that they might drown in their warm bathtubs or suffocate on their over-stuffed pillows.
The eyes of my comrades settled on me and I did not flinch. I pulled the revolver toward me and pressed it to my right temple.
I heard myself shout to them and my voice was restored to the strength it had when I had lead them into combat so many times before. I heard myself shout to them as I pulled the trigger,
“Doviđenja!”