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momebieOriginal fiction.
~1300 words.
And then he’s falling. The air rushes past Victor and he has to close his eyes. They’re drying out too fast and his cheeks are wet with the tears slipping up and out of his ducts. There’s a thought gnawing at the back of his mind. Open the chute. Open the chute. But opening the chute would have been a sign of defeat. A great surrender flag billowing in the air, pulling him safely back into the the comforting din of humanity.
In free fall he can’t hear anything. Just the white noise and static inside of him. Before he joined the army Victor had spent twenty-two years in a small town doing the things that people did. He went to school. He went to work. He spent time with a girl who was all softness and curls and wide, bright eyes that looked at him but not into him. He had done all of this without passion. Now he can’t remember what it was like to feel nothing for so long. Not when the German horizon is rising up to meet him at the speed of sound.
When Victor finally finds it in him to let go of the man he’s holding on to he doesn’t reach for the rip cord. Instead he spreads his arms and welcomes the overwhelming embrace of the universe, feeling like he’s figured it all out.
. . .
Walters dropped down next to Victor on the edge of the bench. “You’re like the robots in those paperbacks my brother reads. I bet if we peeled you open we’d find nothing inside but a handful of gears and some rusted out bolts.”
“Maybe,” Victor grunted. He couln’t say, he’d never thought to look that far inside of himself. It had seemed pointless before. They were ten minutes out from the drop zone and the men around him had gone quiet. Some of them were praying. Some of them were taking inventory of their lives. Victor had been counting and recounting the rivets along the inside of the plane’s hull. He got a different number every time.
“Do you know why young men go to war?” Walters pulled out his knife and started to clean under his fingernails.
“Boredom?” Victor watched as the knife flashed dully in the dim light.
“Because old men are too sure of their existence to test it. They’ve settled in to who they are. But young fuckers like you and me? We’re not worth anything to them, because we don’t feel. We haven’t actually started living yet. So they start wars to build fear within us.”
“Why fear?”
“Because. Fear is the most productive emotion. It shows you who you really are. Once you know who that is you’re alive and no one can take that from you. You just have to keep breathing.”
Walters layed his knife across his knee and Victor picked it up. He felt the sure weight of it in his hand. It grounded him. It forced him to put down roots in that plane--in the smoothness of the knife blade and the rough feeling of his clothes against his skin and the brush of both his elbows against the elbows of other men. “What if you don’t like what you see?”
It hadn’t occurred to Victor to be afraid. Fear, to him, was the moment before he first kissed someone. It was the fire in the pit of his stomach that made him falter. When he thought about jumping out of the airplane and landing in Germany nothing in him faltered. It was what he was supposed to do. He was being pulled along by destiny. When he was born they’d cut his umbilical cord but not, it seemed, the bit of string that attached him to the tangled mess that was life in the future.
Walters frowned. “Then you’re a useless son of a bitch and you might as well rot over here.”
Victor didn’t like the idea of being pushed into a role. He realized then that every time he thought he’d changed directions and taken a step against a greater destiny he was merely still reacting to its weight upon him.
Walters stood up and stretched. “About four minutes,” he said.
Victor looked at the knife. It was time to cut the string.
The knife was buried in Walters’ stomach up to the hilt before the other men notice that anything had happened. Walters took a step back, mouth agape. His hand clutched at the knife handle but he didn’t have the strength to pull it out. When he finally forced out a sound it was a low howl that slipped under the noise of rushing wind and the drone of the plane’s engine. Men on either side of them jumped up. Victor stood up and pushed Walter as hard as he could toward the nose of the aircraft. He slipped through a dozen pairs of grasping hands and wrapped his fingers tightly around Walters’ bicep.
“Is this fear?” Victor asked. His front teeth were clenched together and there were speckles of spit flying from his lips as he spoke. Walters’ eyes were wide and he frantically shook his head up and down. Yes, yes, I am afraid. His mouth was moving but there weren’t any words.
“Is this courage? Is this bravery? Is this hate?” Victor was yelling now. His head was pounding from the altitude and the rush of blood. He could feel himself pushing against the barrier of what was and what should be. He was burning up and he could feel it. His fuse was short, but at least in that moment he knew it was there. Here I am, the burning said. exist.
Walters tripped backwards and a boy caught him. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen and Victor wondered idly what fear meant to him. Anger twisted the boy’s cherubic features as he tried to hold Walters up. Victor had seen devils with the same deceptively sweet faces painted onto the sides of planes, lording over tracks of kill marks. “What have you done? You’ll compromise the whole mission!”
At this Victor laughed. Every one of the men on that plane was undeserving of their morals. After all, they’d done nothing to achieve them. The surge of feeling had overwhelmed him now and he couldn’t do anything but shake and gasp. “I’ve saved a life,” he said. “That’s for the dozen men Walters would have killed. How many men were you going to kill? I can give you a prick for each one.”
A hand came down heavy on Victor’s shoulder and he lurched forward. The plane hit a pocket of turbulence and the whole thing shuddered. Walters was knocked away from his protector and seemed to hang in mid-air, his back arching upward, the line like that of the curve in their helmets. Walters had no beginning or end until Victor hurtled into him, the touch creating proof of existence where before there had merely been a hypothesis of a person. Victor’s force carried them both across the floor of the hull and then over the edge of the plane into the grey morning sky.
. . .
Victor knows he’ll never actually hit the ground. To the others he’ll be dead in seconds, but his mind will stretch this moment out across the whole of time and he’ll spend all of it remembering the taste of blood on his chapped lips and the warm, hard feeling of another body pushed against his by gravity and velocity, their legs tangled together in a complicated dance step he had to come half way around the world to learn.
He can feel himself slowly unraveling and his existence leaves small memory marks all the way down. He’ll get to do something no living person can do. He’ll relive the moment he took control of his life. Over and over and over as he tumbles. Head then feet then head. Frantically up and down. He can feel the fear and nausea and anger and pride and hate and love. He can feel everything, and it hurts. It feels rather like coming home.
Finis
1. This bit of nonsense brought to you by WWII propaganda posters, which I've always loved. The main culprit being this one.
2. When I told twitter I was killing paratroopers![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
matthewbowers decided to stage a protest. It looks like this:
TOO LATE. I HAVE KILLED EVERYONE. MOO HA HA.
This entry was written for Topic 2: Deconstruction at![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
therealljidol.
~1300 words.
And then he’s falling. The air rushes past Victor and he has to close his eyes. They’re drying out too fast and his cheeks are wet with the tears slipping up and out of his ducts. There’s a thought gnawing at the back of his mind. Open the chute. Open the chute. But opening the chute would have been a sign of defeat. A great surrender flag billowing in the air, pulling him safely back into the the comforting din of humanity.
In free fall he can’t hear anything. Just the white noise and static inside of him. Before he joined the army Victor had spent twenty-two years in a small town doing the things that people did. He went to school. He went to work. He spent time with a girl who was all softness and curls and wide, bright eyes that looked at him but not into him. He had done all of this without passion. Now he can’t remember what it was like to feel nothing for so long. Not when the German horizon is rising up to meet him at the speed of sound.
When Victor finally finds it in him to let go of the man he’s holding on to he doesn’t reach for the rip cord. Instead he spreads his arms and welcomes the overwhelming embrace of the universe, feeling like he’s figured it all out.
Walters dropped down next to Victor on the edge of the bench. “You’re like the robots in those paperbacks my brother reads. I bet if we peeled you open we’d find nothing inside but a handful of gears and some rusted out bolts.”
“Maybe,” Victor grunted. He couln’t say, he’d never thought to look that far inside of himself. It had seemed pointless before. They were ten minutes out from the drop zone and the men around him had gone quiet. Some of them were praying. Some of them were taking inventory of their lives. Victor had been counting and recounting the rivets along the inside of the plane’s hull. He got a different number every time.
“Do you know why young men go to war?” Walters pulled out his knife and started to clean under his fingernails.
“Boredom?” Victor watched as the knife flashed dully in the dim light.
“Because old men are too sure of their existence to test it. They’ve settled in to who they are. But young fuckers like you and me? We’re not worth anything to them, because we don’t feel. We haven’t actually started living yet. So they start wars to build fear within us.”
“Why fear?”
“Because. Fear is the most productive emotion. It shows you who you really are. Once you know who that is you’re alive and no one can take that from you. You just have to keep breathing.”
Walters layed his knife across his knee and Victor picked it up. He felt the sure weight of it in his hand. It grounded him. It forced him to put down roots in that plane--in the smoothness of the knife blade and the rough feeling of his clothes against his skin and the brush of both his elbows against the elbows of other men. “What if you don’t like what you see?”
It hadn’t occurred to Victor to be afraid. Fear, to him, was the moment before he first kissed someone. It was the fire in the pit of his stomach that made him falter. When he thought about jumping out of the airplane and landing in Germany nothing in him faltered. It was what he was supposed to do. He was being pulled along by destiny. When he was born they’d cut his umbilical cord but not, it seemed, the bit of string that attached him to the tangled mess that was life in the future.
Walters frowned. “Then you’re a useless son of a bitch and you might as well rot over here.”
Victor didn’t like the idea of being pushed into a role. He realized then that every time he thought he’d changed directions and taken a step against a greater destiny he was merely still reacting to its weight upon him.
Walters stood up and stretched. “About four minutes,” he said.
Victor looked at the knife. It was time to cut the string.
The knife was buried in Walters’ stomach up to the hilt before the other men notice that anything had happened. Walters took a step back, mouth agape. His hand clutched at the knife handle but he didn’t have the strength to pull it out. When he finally forced out a sound it was a low howl that slipped under the noise of rushing wind and the drone of the plane’s engine. Men on either side of them jumped up. Victor stood up and pushed Walter as hard as he could toward the nose of the aircraft. He slipped through a dozen pairs of grasping hands and wrapped his fingers tightly around Walters’ bicep.
“Is this fear?” Victor asked. His front teeth were clenched together and there were speckles of spit flying from his lips as he spoke. Walters’ eyes were wide and he frantically shook his head up and down. Yes, yes, I am afraid. His mouth was moving but there weren’t any words.
“Is this courage? Is this bravery? Is this hate?” Victor was yelling now. His head was pounding from the altitude and the rush of blood. He could feel himself pushing against the barrier of what was and what should be. He was burning up and he could feel it. His fuse was short, but at least in that moment he knew it was there. Here I am, the burning said. exist.
Walters tripped backwards and a boy caught him. He couldn’t have been older than nineteen and Victor wondered idly what fear meant to him. Anger twisted the boy’s cherubic features as he tried to hold Walters up. Victor had seen devils with the same deceptively sweet faces painted onto the sides of planes, lording over tracks of kill marks. “What have you done? You’ll compromise the whole mission!”
At this Victor laughed. Every one of the men on that plane was undeserving of their morals. After all, they’d done nothing to achieve them. The surge of feeling had overwhelmed him now and he couldn’t do anything but shake and gasp. “I’ve saved a life,” he said. “That’s for the dozen men Walters would have killed. How many men were you going to kill? I can give you a prick for each one.”
A hand came down heavy on Victor’s shoulder and he lurched forward. The plane hit a pocket of turbulence and the whole thing shuddered. Walters was knocked away from his protector and seemed to hang in mid-air, his back arching upward, the line like that of the curve in their helmets. Walters had no beginning or end until Victor hurtled into him, the touch creating proof of existence where before there had merely been a hypothesis of a person. Victor’s force carried them both across the floor of the hull and then over the edge of the plane into the grey morning sky.
Victor knows he’ll never actually hit the ground. To the others he’ll be dead in seconds, but his mind will stretch this moment out across the whole of time and he’ll spend all of it remembering the taste of blood on his chapped lips and the warm, hard feeling of another body pushed against his by gravity and velocity, their legs tangled together in a complicated dance step he had to come half way around the world to learn.
He can feel himself slowly unraveling and his existence leaves small memory marks all the way down. He’ll get to do something no living person can do. He’ll relive the moment he took control of his life. Over and over and over as he tumbles. Head then feet then head. Frantically up and down. He can feel the fear and nausea and anger and pride and hate and love. He can feel everything, and it hurts. It feels rather like coming home.
Finis
1. This bit of nonsense brought to you by WWII propaganda posters, which I've always loved. The main culprit being this one.
2. When I told twitter I was killing paratroopers
matthewbowers decided to stage a protest. It looks like this:TOO LATE. I HAVE KILLED EVERYONE. MOO HA HA.
This entry was written for Topic 2: Deconstruction at
therealljidol.
