That Bittersweet Escape ...
by Rycke Foreman
He couldn’t shake the feeling. Maybe it was the dream last night--only vaguely remembered, a crimson blur in the haze of sleep’s retreating boarders--or maybe it was the still, eerie silence of the Asian dawn. Too silent--the calm before a storm.
Either way, Holly could feel the doom slithering over his shoulders, settling like a massive jungle python’s cold weight, coiling tighter and tighter...
The hat was close.
Constricting.
Damn, he wanted to blaze up.
Francis drew his ticket. Handed Holly the helmet with the scraps of paper.
Squeezing.
Holly made his hand move. Dip. Pinch. Out.
He pulled the number eleven. For a single, eternal moment he’d been certain the second one was a seven, that he'd pulled 17--but then he realized his mind was just filling in the shadows, and that all he had was snake-eyes.
His pent-up breath whooshed from his lungs, and suddenly he was aware of a very needy pressure in his bladder. The sense of doom--the last echoes of the dream--began to flutter away. With another tranq and the joint he had tucked behind his ear, he just might get through the morning.
Jimmy Holly popped a blue capsule between his lips and went off to pee.
“Aw, shit,” Shunkamolah said; he’d drawn the unlucky seventeen. His turn to chase the rabbit down the hole. He said something about not feeling up to a dive this morning, then dove in anyway, wriggling through the gritty soil with the Captain’s .45 like an homesick earthworm.
Sensing he was no longer of any attention, Holly pulled the spliff he’d rolled earlier that morning from behind his left ear and inserted it into his mouth. Not that the Sarge gave much of a shit, anyway.
He sparked it. The thin butt was comfortable in his lips, the smoke comfortable in his lungs. Kinda like the gloriously empty relief now creeping into his bladder...or the funky haze creeping into his mind. An old pair of sneakers.
This Asian shit--take you to the moon. Ooh yeah. Escape...
The Great Escape.
He exhaled again, in much the same way as he had done before, but this time watching the tendrils of soothing smoke rush from his lips through narrowly opened eyes. No fear in that one. He enjoyed the silence now. It was not smothering him anymore. The dream was just a hint of a memory.
He stayed there until the joint was just a roach. The weight of his gear--and, indeed, fear--seeming to lessen with each magical puff. Groovy, baby. No pain no brain. Yeah--now he could go on. Now he could go on forever...
Executing a loose, casual about-face, Holly realized that his fly was still unzipped. Keeping his pace, he reached down and grabbed the thin piece of metal. A sly smile spread across his lips as he and Francis met eyes across the distance. I’d feel like a real asshole if I could feel anything.
But he did feel something. Something wrong. With his face. Almost the same release of pressure--a creeping emptiness--that had invaded his bladder earlier. But the feeling--white hot but not extremely uncomfortable--was fleeting. A crimson blur in the haze of life’s quickly retreating boarders...
Then gone.
All gone.
Holly fled into the dead silence. The greatest escape...
