Author : Richard Chins

Blue Squadron stood swiftly to attention. Milk dipped eyes stared blankly back at me.

Unfeeling? Indifferent?

I feel a cloud pulse behind its eye, catch a fleck of black spinning uncontrollably in its peripheral vision.

Truth and love. A dark, well trod vision slides into view. I push a smaller child and take his bike. My Mum calls my Dad an offworlder. A dog screams, my girlfriend goes to war and doesn’t come back: I see her laughing in a bunker restaurant in old burnt out London. I find a pebble with a staircase carved perfectly into it. There is blood in my cough.

I am sweating. I squirm, the beads taste thick and curdled.

My mind slips always toward the dark. Awful secrets howl their names. To turn and fight, it draws me in; I feel it tighten as I focus. But to ignore it… Terror! Thick waters drag too fast, too strong; a man insults me from across the bar; I hide it from her; I laugh as he takes my beating.

The eye is sweating, but it does not reach its cheek; it does not fall like a tear. I am a bad man.

Still standing to attention, somehow I claw my eye from its gaze. I hear my hand flap and tear at my side. The truth is ripping me apart.

It blinks, reaches for its holster, I taste blood. The gun points over my shoulder, a man’s head explodes. Six people to the left of me are sick. Someone is covered in one of the traitors, someone is screaming for mercy.