A. S. Field: Blood and Mud
He sits on the bed, sweating; his dazed, dream-drenched head tries to organize the stray thoughts, but they are not easy to sort out. It is as if a grader has gone through his brain, he is unable to find meaning, to find a foothold in reality. He feels his muscles twitching, his pulse beating violently, into which his heart, this frightened bundle of muscles pumps blood at a frantic pace.
Icy sweat covers his body, stings his eyes, flows like salty juice into his mouth, and he shivers until the contraction of his stomach sends an alarm signal to his brain to shift into gear and take action. By the second contraction, he is already standing next to his bed, feeling the cool stone under his feet, and it is as if he is running on it, his bare feet are clicking, although in reality he is only staggering towards the bathroom, where out of decades of habit he turns left on the threshold, opens the toilet lid, and he is already kneeling and regurgitating what he has taken in during the day.
Finally he vomits bile, rinses his mouth, the bitter taste does not go away, and he realizes that the bitterness of his soul is rising up within him, he feels it pushing forward like an intrusive, violent, attacking enemy that does not want to stop, it escapes from the dark recesses of his soul, through his throat towards the outside world, to crouch there, like a whining, needy animal, on the stone, next to the faience, drooling, hugging his raised knees, rocking himself.
Ever since he returned home, and yet every night it's the same show; he's afraid to sleep, he doesn't even dare to lie down with a sleeping pill. The powders and drugs don't prevent the horrible dreams, they only make it harder to wake up, to push himself to the surface, like now, they make his body a dazed, helpless rag. Don't help the therapy, the psychologist, a lot of training, the craft class he enrolled in without interest.
Sacha left him too; he moved back to his parents, so to speak, temporarily, until he pulls himself together a little, but they both knew that this was as permanent as the death of his enemies' face distorted into a silent scream, from which the no longer terrified eyes stare glassily into nothing.
Conscience. A single word, which, like the spreading branches of a swelling river, which neither concrete nor stone can resist, ruined his life, and not only his own, but also that of those around him, because like sticky honeycomb it coated and covered everything it touched. The innermost circle had already shaken, the ship tossed in the storm broke on the rocks, and Sacha's blue gaze was immersed in the slag that the furnace of his memory spewed into them day after day.
He could not escape; both awake and in his dreams he saw the faces in terrified state or frozen in a dead pale, onto which stick blood and mud; and the twisted limbs, torn, frayed clothes, half a pair of shoes, a toy doll and a living one like an immature puppet that would never grow up in its mother's arms. Screams, strangled groans, wails and stubborn silences chase each other in the maze of his mind, while he, like a madness undead runs the kilometers, stomping his feet on the hot asphalt in his running shoes, until he collapses when his strength runs out, but even then the tangles of his brain do not leave him, crucifying him, impaling him.
Alone, perhaps, it would be easier, he hoped, his loneliness without a companion could create peace, but it did not come, he waited in vain, just as the dream did not look at him, not even with help. The Mnemodel remains, the emergency release that has been kept for months, which erases all sorrow and trouble, the sin that others have ordered for some petty gain, for earthly treasures. They go to war for the future, for the family and for their country, in the name of God, for the emperor, for the king, for the right of descendants, for the truth of the ancestors, and it was all a lie, late, but he can see now, the lofty dreams and hopes have become treacherous. Deceptive disappointment, magical sorrowful repentance, anger, shame, murderous vomiting, a lifelong living scarless festering wound that torments his soul like a decaying corpse ulcer, while he cleans his blood-covered hands with mud.
*****
Rain falls, flows on the window, and he looks at the series of streams running down the cloudy glass, and smiles; he is not bothered by sorrow and worry, he does not think about his roots, his early ashes, the intelligence of his descendants, the blood and mud. He has erased everything, he has started a new life, he only feels some bitter aftertaste, he constantly drinks, gargles, cleans his throat, but they are useless, like the words that Sacha cried trembling, hiccupping, and which found no shore on the empty foam of his raging mind.
THE END