REALITY, THE THIN ICING ON A CAKE WITHOUT SUBSTANCE

 

Like a "peón" on a checkerboard, my protagonist, Richard Blaine, finds himself being moved across the board of Time without his consent.

As Sentient tells him: 'You are under the illusion that you matter. You do not. Only my wishes matter.'

Like Blaine, you are now skipped ahead a year and a half a world away ...

(You will have to read my novel when it comes out to find the mysteries and dangers faced by he and Helen Mayfair in a year of surviving and growing closer)

THE ANGER OF GENERALS

“Lost time is never found again, and what we call time enough, always proves little enough.”

- Benjamin Franklin

 

What the? Where was Helen? She’d just been stretching up to kiss me … and when did I get taller than her anyway?

Now, I was here, wherever “here” was. And I couldn’t move a muscle. I suddenly smelled apple blossoms mixed with pineapple.

I ground my teeth. That I could still do. The Voice.  The Voice was behind this somehow.

She had robbed me of my first kiss.

‘Make me joyful beyond dreams and cease your whining about that kiss.’

That now, I could hear the Voice was shivering weird. I thought back to the Voice: ‘I haven’t whined about it! And where the hell am I?’

‘In your unconscious you have complained ad nauseum of that lost kiss. And you are in the outer office of General Omar Bradley, commander of the American forces on the eve of invading France.’

‘What are you talking about? I’ve just been drafted.’

‘I have taken control of your body for the past year and a half, thus saving your life numerous times, Captain.’

‘Captain?’

‘You are laboring under the misimpression that you matter. You do not. I am not in your consciousness to say “please.” There is much I need you to do for me, and so I have positioned you where you will be of the most use. But ….’

‘But what?’

‘But not being human, I may have not had you function within the American Military in the most … congenial fashion, getting you in some … difficulties.’

The door before me thrust open, and a haggard young officer stood glaring at me from the opening. Words of ice appeared under the man’s chin like credits in a movie’s beginning: CHET HANSEN, closest and most trusted  of the general’s two aides.

Officer Hansen grumbled, “If you two believe in God, I suggest you both say a fast prayer. I’ve never seen the general so angry.”

Both?

It was then that I noticed the grim-faced sergeant sitting stiff in the chair to my right … though it took a wrench of sluggard eyes to see the bullet head of the man.

Like with Officer Hansen, strangely colored words appeared beside his head: Sergeant Theo Savalas, twenty-two years of age, drafted the same month as you. B.A. in psychology, trained as a carpenter by his father. Considers you cold, remote, but eerily intelligent.

‘I wonder whose fault that could be, Voice.’

‘If you must call me something, call me Sentient. Now, hush! Observe how I arranged your first meeting with the sergeant, obtaining you his fierce loyalty despite his puzzlement about you.’

Like a movie fading out only to re-focus into another scene, the world before my eyes blackened and changed locales. I was standing in the shadows of a dingy alley. Five laughing soldiers, the stink of their whisky breaths reaching easily to where I stood.

The drunks were kicking the hell out of a prone officer. I couldn’t make out his rank. But rank was no armor for the beating they were giving him.

‘Lieutenant’ murmured Sentient. ‘Lieutenant Stein.’

“We don’t like Jew Boys,” they hooted in unison.

Sergeant Savalas walked calmly around the corner. “That’s no way to treat an officer. And I thought we were fighting Nazis not becoming them.”

The biggest of the bunch turned to face Savalas. “Now, you done it. Now, we got to kill you, too.”

Behind the sergeant five more soldiers appeared from the encroaching shadows. The look on his face said he suddenly realized he was in deep … merde.

Even though I realized this was only a memory, I tried willing my body to stand still. No good. I saw myself step out in plain sight.

I heard a deeper version of my voice speak, “In this global conflict, there is no room for cowards on the side which fights for sanity.”

“W-Where did you come from?” frowned the leader.

Sentient spoke through me again. “You do not possess the mental capacity to understand a truthful response to that inquiry, so I will merely cripple the lot of you.”

My head spun as it appeared as if my body bounced through the moments like a stone skimming across the surface of a lake.

‘A more apt analogy than you realize, Blaine.’

As the world slowed to a stand-still, I stood over the broken, bleeding attackers. I had a flurry of images of my feet and hands darting, hitting, and thrusting. To my utter surprise, I was not even breathing hard.

I turned to the sergeant and spoke in Sentient’s deeper voice. “You failed to maintain a proper assessment of your surroundings. You will have to do better when you become one of my Spartan 300.”

“Y-You can’t make your own squad.”

“Sergeant Savalas, in the days to come you will be surprised at what I can do.”

The sergeant must have been reliving the same incident for he muttered under his breath, “Surprised at what you can do? Like getting us shot by a firing squad?”

I felt sorry for the guy and managed to force out of numb lips, “It is when we feel the most lost that sometimes we find our truest friends.”

He grunted, “That Marcus Aurelius guy you keep quoting?”

“No,” I smiled with lips that fought me. “The Brothers Grim.”

Come the dawn, come the cold

Calm the beating air

Chill the night, soldier light

We'll be dancing there

Rise up, rise up

Days stretching weary wings

 

Come the day, come the dawn

Somewhere in the rain

Low my heart, Low my life

Forget everything

Come the day, Thief of the night

Lifts his voice to sing

Rise up, rise up

        Ever victorious  

- Thea Gilmore