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Thursday

Found a new notebook. I haven't seen so much paper in months. Maybe it's not so many. Perhaps it just seems like a dozen lifetimes ago. The sunlight is beautiful today. Feels like long golden streams are falling down around my head.

Seems as though I've come to my own version of Eden. That oft mythical bastion of hope and peace. A look to the horizon shows a strange version of that Paradise. They know I'm here. They always know I'm here. I now know that God is punishing me, making me relive my pains, my past. I'm no longer bitter. Whatever comes, comes. Ka is Ka-tet.

When this notebook first rested in my fingers, the battle, the war inside me began. Should I go back down the road; my own highway of perdition that mockingly calls itself memory? Past? Is it true, writing out your demons, exorcising them to paper will finally banish them to a more hellish Purgatory than exists right outside the window at this very moment?

More importantly…most important of all…are my memories real?

I haven't slept regularly for almost five months. I used to get pleasure from dreams, now they just taunt me with visions of my previous life. Before I was tainted.

First, I will tell you about Bennett, and how he hurt me in the first days.

It was several days after I had first left, and I was beginning to feel like myself again. I was enjoying the fresh air, and the (valid or not) sense of freedom that purveyed my every waking moment. It was that week I believe that I saw the firefight. The last, honest to God firefight, I think that will ever happen on this pitiful excuse for a planet.

I arrived roughly during the intermission, and was just bedding down for the night, when a convoy of about five pick-up trucks and two army personnel carriers blasted by. (I had bedded down inside the garage of a Texaco). They were being pursued by a handful of 18-wheelers, and what looked like an army Humvee. The whole thing crash-landed less than half a mile up the road, and that's when the fireworks started. The Humvee opened up with some sort of gun on the roof. It sounded all the world like a giant zipper being ripped open. The lead pick-up pitched over, and screeched to a halt, two more slamming into it.

Almost before the pick-ups stopped, people leapt from them, and started firing on their pursuers. Bullets flew and whizzed, and immediately one of the rigs went up. It wasn't as violent as I thought it would be, mostly a low and heavy thump that pressed my body like an invisible hammer.

The tractor-trailers circled around in a semi-circle, and quickly opened up in defense. I'm not sure how long this went on, five or ten minutes of constant gunfire. Eventually it started to taper off, and I went to retrieve my forgotten binoculars.

The expired occupants of the exploded tractor-trailer had shambled out and wreaked a little bit of havoc on their compatriots before being put down. I could see about a dozen people firing at the pick-ups.

The tractor-trailer continued to burn steadily, and muzzle flashes lit the night. I bit into the palm of my hand to keep my laughter down. It was like the 4th of July. The firing continued almost all night, even toward dawn, when a violent snow squall dumped about half a foot of snow to the ground. The gunfire stopped sometime early the next morning. I had moved to the back of the garage after a line of gunfire had stitched across the door and windows, nearly hitting me in the process. My curiosity had quickly abated.

After the Humvee and remaining rigs left, I went to see if there was anything for me to salvage. Instead all I found were the corpses of about eight women. They were all naked and the bruises of rape still marked their bodies. Their throats had been slashed, and they'd been crudely scalped by an axe or perhaps something like a machete. I found the skullcaps a few feet away, under a truck. It was also, under that truck, that I found Bennett.

He wasn't much older than I was, but he was much thinner, and ravaged. He had been shot in the chest and leg, and was blood was clotted around him in a puddle, but he was breathing. I took him back to the garage, and patched him up as best as I could. It never occurred to me to ask who had shot him.

The thought of interfering in the gunfight truly hadn't occurred to me either. I had assumed it was a botched raid gone wrong, and the defenders had decided to teach this particular group a lesson. I'll never know exactly what it was, but I'll never forget it, either.

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