The subject matter of this story may be too harsh for sensitive readers.
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The ordinary pleasures of life at home -- |
CORUSCANT, outside the former Imperial Palace
The air draped loosely around the crowd that had come together to watch the inauguration of the Princess Leia Organa as President of the New Republic. Although there was no wind to add to the unusual chill for that early day in autumn, the ruddy complexions of the faces sitting solemnly on the podium underscored the fact that even living legends were vulnerable.
The newly sworn in President was, in person, smaller in stature than the holovids led viewers to perceive. As was the fashion of the time, she cut had cut her silver streaked hair short and wore no pigmentation enhancers. The 'natural' look for humanoids held sway in the fashion industries on many planets for longer than the so-called experts had anticipated.
In dress, the former Rebel Leader wore a simple earth-tone business suit beneath the more elaborate Robes of State. She was, nevertheless, the jewel in the centre of drab military uniformity. Even her husband, who sat beside her, wore his hazy grey dress uniform; the only splash of colour on it was his General's insignia and valour tags.
The Jedi, Skywalker, sat to the President's right: silent and rigid as an icon. The hood of a simple, midnight-grey cloak puddled at the base of his neck. It contradicted his dark blond hair and pale complexion, almost as though the dark attire did not suit him. Unlike the other familiar faces surrounding him, his defined no emotion. As Rick walked past him, he felt the penetration of the Jedi's icy blue eyes ease as they settled on the musical instrument dangling around Rick's neck.
Nodding to the President in acknowledgement of her new status and the honour her request for his performance brought to him, the musician turned to the shivering crowd. Closing his eyes, he let the images of the especially composed song resurface. Almost in an induced trance, he placed his fingers in the position on the instrument that would incite the first cord and the resultant catharsis performance always induced in him.
FUASGAILIDH MI E A NIS, twenty years later
Rapidly surfacing pain gripped his consciousness to force awareness. Richard Seinn, a musician of some notoriety during President Organa's first term, now found himself sprawled on a slab of concrete in a filthy, unfamiliar subsurface room.
As he gingerly raised his hand to feel the size of the bump that had formed at the nape of his neck, a weight shifted on his wrist. At the same instant, the sound of rattling metal detoured his attention to the fact that he was manacled and chained to a wall, like a menacing animal.
It was hard to concentrate -- the pounding of his brain synchronized with that of his heart; but he was cognizant enough to know that unless he could escape, he would die. Recalling the events leading up to the assault he knew that, even if he was able, he could not simply walk up the stairs and into freedom.
He sat there, shivering in the musty darkness, as a rash of questions rioted through his mind. His focus dove deeper to sift through measures and steps he had enacted in the last few weeks. Obviously, he thought, there must have been something he had done wrong to attract imparity; something he hadn't account for.
There hadn't been enough time to learn all the possible security precautions necessary to prevent this from happening. Maybe he hadn't taken the stalking seriously enough to be constantly vigilant to everyone around him. After all, why would anyone target an obscure entertainer whose only successful album topped the local music charts twenty years previously?
Twenty years was a lifetime ago.
His oldest child just turned twenty. This coming Coruscant-main autumn, she'd begin her third semester at the University of the Republic, Capitol City, as an astrophysics major. Ever since she read A Theory of Time in her sophomore year of high school, she had wanted to become an astronomer, like her hero Dr. Eun Rìgh. Despite having being written for laymen, Rick could only base his limited comprehension of the overwhelming terminology and formulae used throughout, on his foundation of vaguely remembered science courses. He managed to digest only a quarter of the dissertation before a headache forced him to shut it down. His daughter would sit with him for hours, patiently explaining Eun Rìgh's ideas of the relationship between astronomical phenomena and his theories on the origin of the universe to her dull-witted father; but, his admiration of her intellect and his lack of interest in the subject matter undermined his ability to listen. He still didn't want to watch the publication any further, but he could spend eternity contented in her company.
Gods, he missed his family! He physically ached for them. If he could see them, even briefly, he would be all right.
One thought broke through the fear and despair to speed his heart in an irrational panic: where was his attacker now?
Rick could not get to his family. He wasn't there to protect his wife and children. What if that lunatic had -- ! No! He could not allow that thought to mutate into a kind of reality. He had to believe that they were safe, or he wouldn't be capable of reason. If he could just ascertain the flaws, then he could better protect himself and his family if this ever happened again.
Again? He didn't know if he had the strength to hold out against this suckling of vitality. He was scared, and it immobilized him, even as it gorged on his imagination. The wait for a resolution was, of itself, a kind of torture. Making himself small, he watched his mind parade a gruesome series of prolonged, agonizing, deaths before him. And what of his death? He had thought more of it as an adolescent. Then, he had had more time to contemplate how mortality affected him. There had been only himself to consider. He'd always hidden behind music and irreverence in the presence of his parents, siblings, and friends. They meant something else to him, perhaps something less, because he didn't want to feel openly vulnerable.
Despite his desire to commune with those whom he held close to him, there was a hierarchy of affection. He would not -- he could not -- hide from his wife. He had made his beloved Mary cry too much over the years. He couldn't bear the thought of her tears and the pain his death would cause her. Even after twenty-one years of marriage, his heart was still hers. He had to live, for her.
As escape scenarios played through his mind, he didn't realize that his fists clenched tight enough for his fingernails to leave indentations in the soft skin of his palms.
"Looks like your friend's back." Rick glanced up from the food dispenser he was re-programming to follow the direction that his wife's nod indicated.
The young man, with golden blond hair, stood a couple hundred metres across from their entryway. It was hard to see him clearly in the paltry light from the twin moons, but Rick had observed him enough times lately to separate his motionless form from the murky vegetation behind him.
It was unnerving to watch him, mannequinised, staring at their home. It was as if he was possessed. His obsession seemed to have overwritten his life.
Rarely in the last few weeks had the family been able to leave their home that this stranger was not watching or following them. Rick had thought of confronting the man directly to resolve this impasse, but his wife had persuaded him to keep his distance. There was something in his stance, she had said, that belied a dangerous imbalance.
After hiring a private investigator to put a name to the stalker, Rick had obtained a restraining order. The power the order chip held had relaxed the extraordinary caution the frightened family had employed.
"This time," he said as he turned triumphantly to face his wife, "we can do something about it."
Snatching the copy from the file container, he ran to the comm unit. His wife picked the fallen container off the floor, looking down the hallway to their two children in the living room.
The vid had been muted, as they motionlessly concentrated on the events in the kitchen. They were an eerie parody of the stranger outside. Turning back to the window, Mary wondered if fame wasn't so brief after all.
"An officer's on the way," Rick told her.
Mary watched his features transform in his excitement. His eyes had widened and seemed brighter. A flush had reddened his cheeks and the lobes of his ears. His chest rose and fell in quick bursts. This situation had reached a point where constant elevated emotional reactions to it now adversely affected his physical health.
As the victims, they existed in a photographic negative; it was their peace and their lives that had been violated. The pressure of reducing their world to 3,000 square feet had strained the family's ability to function in even a mockery of normalcy.
This was their home! It was the stalker whose freedom should be crushed!
The powerlessness Mary felt gnawed at every thought and every task performed. It was almost impossible to maintain the shelter of calm that her family needed -- that she needed. This had to end before they all went crazy, but the only end she could foresee was in violence; and so, she maintained the bleeding of her feelings to forestall it.
"Let's wait with the kids," she coerced.
"No," he said breathlessly, and looked back out the window. "I've got to keep an eye on -- ". His voice faded as he leaned forward, eyes darting back and forth.
"He's not there! Damn it! Where is he'!"
"Calm down, Rick!" He wasn't listening anymore. She'd lost him.
"We had him, " he screeched as he ran to the door. Horrified, Mary ran after him, grabbing for his arm to pull him back inside.
"What do you want?!"
Standing in the middle of the walkway, silhouetted by the porch light, this shadowed thing that was her husband railed uselessly at the night, finding kinship with the barking of neighbourhood animals.
He wasn't human anymore.
None of them were.
The soft hiss of the subsurface door flooded the floor with a blazing rectangle of light. Rick brought shackled hands up to shade his starving sight. Trying to quiet his panicked breathing, he slowly stood up and inched into the shadows.
In the few seconds it took him to complete this action, he found himself wondering why he was trying to hide. The kidnapper would not have conveniently forgotten about his caged trophy.
Briefly, Rick allowed a seed of hope to take hold. Surely, the merchants had witnessed the kidnapping and had called the authorities. It had happened just a few steps away from a currency exchange office! Weren't they part of the government?
With the restraining order on file, all the officers had to do was look for the address of this lunatic and then Rick could go home. It must be the police at the top of the stairs, he listlessly surmised, they were just being cautious.
That laboured hope emerged stillborn when a figure, obscured in shadow, descended toward him. Stopping mid-way, an arm reached out to flip on a light. They had purposely disabled, then.
Rick's throat constricted, his skin turning cold, as he recognized his attacker. They stared at each other for a suspended moment, controller and controlled.
The young man's high-pitched voice dissipated the repugnant silence. "I brought you some food."
Rick looked at the contents of the bowl in the other's long-fingered hand, hoping that his face expressed the disfavour he lacked. Swallowing dryly, he licked his lips before speaking.
"I'm not hungry." He hoped his voice had held steady. He couldn't be certain.
"Surely, you are," he was told. "You've been here for some time."
Rick was almost desperate to know exactly how much time had been wasted in senselessness; but, to ask would be admitting a certain need -- a reliance on his captor for provision, so he remained silent.
"I would have expected nothing less." The assailant's initial nervousness had completely evaporated. "But now that you've demonstrated your obligatory resistance, try to be more accommodating the next time I come."
The food was left on the bottom step, just beyond the reach of Rick's extended body and the chains that islanded him. Another test? If Rick passed all the tests this madman set before him, would he be freed?
More than that, by all expectations, he should be furious. Instead, the approval he was given ... pleased him.
Praise from instability. Was he that starved for it? Troubled, Rick sat back against the wall he was chained to.
He had always drowned himself in music. It was where he hid in fear from his stepfather during childhood and adolescence. He could tune out the galaxy and just listen to the themes meandering through his mind. He felt safe there; relaxed; at peace with himself.
He chose it as a career because the chances of a positive reception to his compositions and their performance eclipsed his fear of criticism. As he got older, however, the need for security obscured his creativity. Still, the approving sound of recalled cheers and applause satiated him, even after years of semi-retirement.
There were enough people who enjoyed his past creations so that he could live very comfortably, unrestrained by financial worries. He was happy, secure in a loving circle of family. He had everything he ever wanted, except for confidence and self-reliance. He shouldn't need anyone else's praise to feel good about himself, not anymore.
The stern disapproval of his stepfather perhaps hovered over him still. Music had not, after all, destroyed the bitterness of the past; but, it was one of the few things Rick could always do better than most others.
His mother half-joked that he got his talent because she sang to him while in her womb. One of her unfulfilled dreams was to act and sing in a musical drama. Watching Rick perform was the closest she ever came to fulfilling that desire. Nevertheless, she would incessantly lecture him concerning her conviction that performing music was not "real" career.
Even after Rick found main stream success, his mother would roll out one of her ancient clichés to caution him against relying on the whimsicality of public taste for monetary security. That he had a modest web-ring devoted to him, after so many years away from the public, did not impress or deter her at all. Although she sometimes bothered him by this, he tolerated it because he knew she did so out of love for him.
He missed her. If he got out of this alive, Rick swore he'd make the seven-day journey to visit her.
Shaking his head, as if to physically clear these thoughts, he squinted, trying to discern more details of his dingy prison. Escape should be the focus of all his efforts, he self-chastised, everything else could wait until he got out of there. If he got out.
On the shores of an alien river, he found himself wounded and at bey ...
Before the darkness on the other side of his eyelids was revealed, Rick became aware of the assailant's presence. He entertained the thought that pretended sleep would resume his isolation. Then, he felt a hand placed gently on his outer right thigh.
His eyes snapped open in shock. This could not be happening!
Fully awake, Rick could see nothing. No light had been turned on. Blindly trying to push the other away, the arrhythmic alarm of his chains rattled as effectively as a vapid ghost. There was a pause, as if insurgency was unexpected, then the warm weight of a body pressed into him. The rough probe of fingers and sour stench of alcohol intensified, paralyzing him in piercing denial.
"No! Wait! Stop! Stop!" His voice squeaked. It wasn't his. He wasn't there ...
... He lay on the irregular floor, curled with his back thrust against the wall, frozen. Time was irrelevant.
He would not think. He could only feel, and he knew he would forever feel this rape, so that no other could touch him.
Humiliated, ashamed, repulsed, overwhelmed, miserable.
The stain of a horror, by nature unacknowledgeable, would not wash away. He felt immutably dirty.
Unremarked by him, his creations had been a siren's song that seduced time and events to this climax. It signified his nothingness. He was less than human: a kept thing, hidden away in the darkness.
If outside the sky was bright and the breeze was warm, he did not desire it. He could tell no one of this.
He was broken, and he wanted to die.
How long this eclipse of life continued, Rick never wanted to ascertain. He mechanized himself, becoming numb within the darkness of his mind's protective skirts.
He thought that the depth of his misery should bring him to tears; but, when he wanted to weep for the death of his soul, he could not. He told himself that he needed to find something vital, but he was too tired to search for whatever it was.
He ate when given food; the bowls now always placed within reach. He slept a little, and when the assailant came to him, he no longer rebelled. He just made himself limp, like a breathing corpse.
It was better to web himself within a protective dullness of everything surrounding and composing him. It ended faster; or maybe it didn't.
"I'm tired of this," the assailant announced at some point. "And of you."
The light had recently been turned on whenever he came to Rick. The other's interest in sexual dominance had gradually diminished, so that now he would just sit, unmoving for a time, to stare at his possession. The emptiness in his voice mirrored the blackness behind Rick's eyes.
"Yes," the assailant continued, "You no longer interest me. There's no challenge."
"Then why don't you kill me?" It had been so long since Rick had spoken aloud, that his voice cracked and lacked enough power to rise above a whisper. What effect the challenge had was indeterminable, for the other simply smiled and ascended the stairs.
Rick's stare dug through the back of his captor's head, solidifying his vow to end this hell, now. At the top of the stairs, the other turned to him, as if the silent declaration had been audibly hurled.
"There's enough length in your chains to strangle yourself with. It will be a struggle; your emotions will have to override your instincts for self-preservation." Pausing he considered the possession. "Interesting. I wonder if you have the will to do it."
Left alone with the means of escape, Rick found that he wanted to live. Unconditional life, endured even in stagnant depravity, was what motivated and inspired him. The things he had collected over the years -- original concept artwork for Old Republic era Ckochetih holovid dramas, graphic-vid serials, and paraphernalia of the Mos Eisley Cantina Band (they were like him after all: achieving unrivaled popularity because of their connection to former Rebel leaders) -- all these things were insubstantial.
What was substantial was the tranquilizing squeeze of his wife's hand in his. He valued the pride he felt in his son when he graduated from high school. His pride immersed him even more when his son told him that he wanted to pay for his own post-secondary education. The boy worked as an inventory clerk for a small student-run business on his days off.
He had mentioned a few times that he'd like to go on a camping tour of Endor, and in recognition for all his hard work, Rick and Mary planned to surprise him with a two week trip before he began classes next fall. He wanted to see his son's reaction when he drove him to the spaceport.
All these things brought him pleasure. The taste his mother's programme for old-style sour roots, the sting of a chilled ocean wind, the reactions the fiery words of Anlahr Ellie evoked -- these, then, were the rewards of accomplishment. Challenges were necessary for growth. He had maimed his potential when he chose the safety of sterility. He needed to compose new music, to re-animate hope -- to reconstruct Richard -- before he lost, forever, his ability to strive for the goal.
He didn't want to dream of life, he wanted to experience it. He could not deprive himself of that possibility. He would not become his own assailant.
A vanquished smirk perverted the assailant's face when he observed the re-animated life in his possession.
"So be it," he said in a venomous calm.
In one practiced motion, he brought an illegal Bàsian jectile to bear from behind his back, and shot the caged man. An explosion of white smothered Rick's mind as he crumpled into a dilating puddle of his own blood.
The assailant knelt by the still form and, almost tenderly, brushed a drooping lock of hair from the closed eyes. "You understand now," he murmured into insensate ears, "It was I who made you. Without me, you'd content yourself with mediocrity. I am what you're loath to acknowledge: your alter ego; your mortality; your talent; your insecurity. I didn't imprison you; you did that to yourself, because you never wanted to face me."
The assailant scooped some of the slowly expanding liquid with his index finger, sucking it in a hideous parody of communion. "I am more than what I was."
The pitch of the voice lowered to a delicate softness as he smeared the blood on Rick's cheek like war paint. "It is finished."
Consciousness poked at Rick's sluggish senses. Trying to inflate his famined lungs, he found he could not suck in enough air. He couldn't breathe!
Panic impelled his muscles into desired movement, but he was paralyzed by a weight. He could see a claustrophobic blackness. The only thing audible was the palpitations of his heart against his bones. The tormenting noise of it was deafening.
The dull pain from something hard that he could feel lodged in his head had mutated into blinding agony as more and more layers of the catalepsy fell away. It shocked him, and prevented him from falling into the bonds of oblivious nonentity.
The texture and temperature of the imprisoning substance against his skin told him exactly where he was: he had been buried alive!
As his sense of existence solidified, his clawing at the porous soil grew into a frenzy. From what source he derived this strength, he was not cognizant of. Finally, the tips of his fingers were caressed by the warmth of the sun, and he re-emerged into the world, shrieking.
I had momentarily glanced down to smack the base of the perpetually malfunctioning navicomputer, when movement was caught in my peripheral vision. I almost ran over it. In fact, I couldn't be sure what it was I had just swerved to avoid hitting.
It was a while before my adrenaline saturated nerves subsided enough for me to register that if I shut down the ignition, I could release the brake.
I'm not the paranoid type, but I found myself flipping the rain tarp on and securing the landspeeder, while scanning past the bed to the pine where I thought the animal fell. The blaster was strapped to the driver's side inner panel of the bed -- having a curious three-year-old prevented me from keeping it under the seat. I was glad my daughter was home with my cousin. In order to get the blaster, I'd have to risk attack from a possibly wounded animal. If I didn't see the attack coming and was injured myself as a result, I wouldn't have been able to protect her.
As it was, I believed it was necessary to confirm the animal's condition. With a final visual check to either side and behind me, I got out of the landspeeder and scooped up the blaster in a well-practiced motion. Its familiar weight in my hands triggered untimely memories of my father.
Everything had to be done traditionally. You didn't dare use a blaster to kill game. Oh, no! You had to use a caster and a bolt; or bolts, plural, in my case. Even then, my success rate was lousy. Had I been born a century earlier, father always said, I would have been eaten by cu-chaorach. That would have been perfectly natural, according to him, because in our folklore, it was the cu-chaorach who told the cù that death would prevent overpopulation.
"You never have to worry about me shooting bolt into the earth beneath your grave," he would half-joke. "Wouldn't want you to come back to life and eat all my food!"
I got tired of hearing this sort of thing year after year. To finally shut him up I told him that it was a good thing he didn't bring his wife back, noting at the same time that the herds had repopulated.
Until her illness, she had always been plump, to use a tactful term. That hadn't mattered to him, though. Everything he did was to see her smile. I didn't realize the extent of his devotion until she died.
He will never recover. He removed himself from the council to isolate and immerse himself in the old ways with a dead man's grip.
Occasionally, I've gone to check on him. He knows I stand at the threshold listening for his voice, but he hasn't spoken to me since the funeral. He speaks to his dead wife, though, and always in his mother's tongue. He must be loosing it, because there isn't an afterlife in our spiritual beliefs, not in the way of the modern Tuskin Water Religion or North-Eastern Kashayyak Forest Bed Theology, or other Repub religions.
Everything from the rocks to the grass to humans has a spirit and is interwoven; but nothing floats out of you at the moment of death. We're already connected to the whole while we breathe, we don't need a reward system to experience the circle. But, that's the old views, and silence between us has cut off the path to the past.
I guess that's what I wanted.
I don't know why I bother to hunt anymore. I can get a nice thick steak by pressing a button on the food dispenser without all the hassle of stalking, gutting, skinning, and paying some guy exaggerated fees to carve the animal into month-long suppers. It would have to last longer than that, anyway. I can't see myself eating the same thing every night. There are only so many ways you can eat venison; hiding it in pies, stews, or under heavy sauces doesn't disguise its strong taste. My daughter would rebel at the monotony and stop eating, anyway. Besides, I can't reclaim a part of me that I did not live.
The council faces the future with the same sour expressions of the past. They do nothing to adapt our people to the ways of the present. Many members still live an ancient life, hiding ineffective leadership behind the mask of tradition in the name of identity. Even the warriors want an over-used copy of a centuries-old confederation. They've all isolated themselves in the old ways, just like my father.
We have to live right here, right now. The two sides' constant fighting only results in stagnation. I've told both sides that we must develop our own democratic laws and institutions. We need to give birth to a modern Origin Peoples' nation, unlike any the galaxy has ever seen. I want my daughter to be proud of who she is, not ashamed of it.
I could never make my own father understand that. I don't know why I wasted my breath explaining my views to either faction. Nature mysticism is outdated and backward, and is the greatest obstacle in our fight for our future against the blind vortex of Repub dominance.
Those who would affect change are blind.
Reason, apparently, is something that goes unrecognized. They don't want a solution to our cultural sterility, they want to act on their own agendas.
What was I doing?! If I didn't stay alert, that animal could make all the noise it wanted before its paw batted me back to the present, just in time to be killed! Outdated or not, when forced to confront the basics, I was grateful for father's lessons. I might just come out of this unscathed; running to the sanctuary the landspeeder would provide was still not an option for action.
Cautiously, using silent steps, I moved through the tall grass at the side of the road, plodding toward the pine where I thought the animal fell. The sun was dying, and I couldn't make out the details of the darkened form that huddled at the base of the tree.
It wasn't until I was just about the blaster barrel's length away that I noticed the hands, with long and delicate fingers. A human. Even in the woodlands, you couldn't escape from them!
Rolling him over, all thoughts of politics and comprehensive injustices vanished. His face was covered in blood and dirt, and he was having obvious difficulty breathing. Had he been a trophy of the hunt, I would have put him out of his misery. Instead, I pinched his nose, tilted his head back, and exhaled into his mouth.
In the intervals when I watched his chest rise and fall, I also took quick surveys of the immediate area. Something had attacked him -- something dangerous.
His mumbling of something incoherent -- a name, perhaps -- brought my attention back to him. He didn't focus on me. It was as if I wasn't there.
With sudden, startling, strength he pushed me back, and then tried to crawl to impenetrability. He was obviously delirious.
Using pacifying tones, I told him to lie still, that he was safe. Upon hearing my voice, he abruptly quieted and turned his head toward me to locate the source of the new sound.
"Who are you?" His voice was shredded with pain. "Where am I'"
"My name is Ataensic Glooskap. You're in no people's land, commonly referred to as an Sine Daoine reservation."
Now, why did I say that? I never wanted to leave the reservation. It's a really nice place; but all those Sine Daoines in the dramas always want to leave the reservation because if they don't, their lives will shrivel and die from lack of Repub-defined opportunities. I've got a good-paying job in the Administration Office, and if I hadn't been widowed two years ago, I'd have a husband and father to my child. I've got an inviting little place to come home to, and I bought my landspeeder brand new off the lot three months ago. I guess I'm not Mi-fhéin!
I shook my head to clear it. I'd been angrily defiant for so many years, that I wasn't sure I could be very compassionate. Taking out a wad of crumpled tissue from my pocket, I searched his head for the wound.
No animal had attacked him. It was something more base that that. How far into his brain the object had penetrated was difficult to tell, and I wasn't going to stick my digit inside his head to find out.
"Look, you've been injured, and I'm going to have to leave you alone while I use the comlink to send for an airspeeder."
I placed the tissues in his hand and guided him to the entry wound. "Here. Press this firmly where I'm holding it. I'll be back in a minute."
"It hurts so much!"
I sighed in exasperation. He'd probably die before the med-evac even left the city. "I know you're in pain, but you'll be okay," I lied. "Just hold on."
As I stood, his hand found my foot. "What time is it?"
He must have been falling back into delirium again. Who cares what time it was, I shouted mutely at him, you're going to die! "Eight o'clock."
"Morning or night?"
This time, I couldn't keep the incredulity out of my voice when I answered, "Night. Why?"
He stared at the tree bark over my left shoulder for a moment before a strained smile curled the corner of his mouth. "I can't see anything."
It was like talking to my three-year-old. I wanted to point out the obvious, that it was dark; but from somewhere, I ended up saying that we had something in common.
I had a hard time finding another glo-rod in the mess of supplies in the back of the speeder. I'd left the blaster with the wounded man, perhaps not the smartest thing to do. I didn't even know his name.
Maybe that's what I wanted.
I wouldn't mourn his loss that way. It would take the med-evac twenty minutes to get here, anyway.
Charging the emergency beacons with a cheap hand pump; I placed them in a rough circle on the road. It helped if the pilot knew where to land. The beacons were so old, I was surprised they charged up at all. I gazed for a moment at the rapture of the night sky, and imagined that starlight called out from the fire in the dust, where a deified metal chariot would answer. A grin threatened to disrupt my stereotypical pasted-on 'warrior face' (Repub over there wouldn't recognize me as Sine Daoine without it). I didn't win all those poetry contests without having the talent to lyrically elaborate any situation. Frowning ironically at the solemnity of my poetic provocation, I made my way back to the man.
"Who's there?" Came the frail challenge.
"It's just me."
Sitting down cross-legged beside him, I brought the extra glo-rod closer to his head to better examine the entry wound. He apparently had forgotten about the application of pressure: the wad of tissue was now at hip-level, being squeezed by his spasming fist. It wouldn't make any difference anyway.
He groaned and turned his face away. "Are the glo-rods bothering you?"
"Glo-rods?" He whispered.
"Yes," I answered smartly. "Those bright things beside you."
"I can't see anything," he gasped. "I'm blind! Oh, god! Help me!"
What words could I use to soften this? Struck mute by his heedless emotion and the absolute vulnerability of his state, all I could think of was to hold his hand to make him know that I was there with him.
Unimpeded, I looked at his eyes. The pupils were unequally dilated. It was unnerving to see.
Even in the modest light, I could see that the irises were an ashen blue colour. Because of that colour, and against my will, I gave him a name. It described the blue of the sky when the sun is high, with shadowed sight, forever in night.
Damn! Why did I always create these things at the most inopportune times? My friends always laughed at this ability, saying I was so flat that I could paste myself into a stale frontier drama. They never saw me. That's probably why neither the warriors nor the council ever takes what I say seriously.
I like to think of myself as vibrant and fairly complex. No one ever saw that, except my lover; and he's dead. I haven't done anything social with my old school-friends for years. They haven't bothered to call me, anyway.
I'm as isolated as my father is, I guess. Unlike him, though, I don't plan to talk to ghosts until I become one myself.
Even while I was chastising myself for falling into the Mi-fhéin syndrome, I discovered my disobedient lips silently forming the name. In so doing, I'd made him a part of me. That portion would whither to nothing as he did. I didn't want this. I didn't need to suffer.
"What's your name?" I asked, poisoning myself.
"My -- R -- k." He couldn't assemble the movements or inflection to be understood. Then his eyes rolled back and his muscles tensed.
Alarmed, I shook him. "Can you hear me?!"
His whole body started to convulse, violently. It took me a moment to realize he was having a seizure. I managed to turn him onto his side, despite being hit once, so that he wouldn't choke on his own tongue.
I was scared and I hated not having any control.
The fit passed quickly; his expression smoothing as he relaxed into a deep sleep. The usual quietness amongst the trees now served to place unbearable pressure on my back. I couldn't stand waiting. I was the equivalent of a sentry, and that wasn't enough.
I sat there, rusting for infinity; straining my hearing for any signs of -- there! Forty-five degrees up and to my right: the steady thumping sound of ion engines that cut through my idleness.
Running to the clearing, I flailed my arms wildly. The harsh glare of the airspeeder's flood light hurt my eyes, and I was almost felled by the mechanically induced wind.
Two paramedics approached, dragging their equipment on an anti-grav bed behind them. They were backlit in a manner that eclipsed their faces. The whole scene was like a surreal experience; almost nightmarish, as if a Wendigo had materialized to take possession of the sleeper. I guided them to his quiet body.
"That's Rick Seinn!" One of them exclaimed.
The other responded with a disinterested shrug, and began her examination.
"You know! That musician who's been missing for weeks! You know him! He's the one who played at President Organa's inauguration. He did that song ... ah ... I can hear it in my head but I forget the title."
Ignoring this prattle, his partner announced, "He's had a seizure, probably as a result of the head wound. I'll need phenytoin."
While the injection was prepared, she slipped an oxygen mask over Rick's nose and mouth. "He's probably got a subdural hematoma, but I don't want to chance giving him diuretics and corticosteroids until he's immobilized and ...
The voice through my mind drowned out those heard through my ears. Musician, it chorused.
Authentic and popular holovid cultural legends still influence some of my actions. I didn't expect him to understand or even hear what was spoken in obscurity, but I hoped it would be sung in clarity. Acting on the dictation of the power that drove me, I leaned down to ear level to murmur in my father's tongue: "We've buried ourselves alive for a long time, and no one hears our shouts. Give us the voice that will open hearts."
If the tendrils of what I planted took root, a whole people could pass from death to life. It could only happen slowly, with a slap from without. It was time to wake up.
Before long, he was taken away. Tracking the airspeeder, I watched as distance dissolved it into a star, and then faded into black.
Twenty years was a lifetime ago.
He had already died to what he thought his professional life was about. He didn't need music to hide behind, he needed it to complete himself.
The industry was notorious for its cruel capitalism, politics, favouritism, and general lack of regard for talent. Rick believed then, as he did now, that his creativity was, at the very least, misplaced in such an environment. The publication label he had contracted with expected him to reinvent himself as a component, and a small one at that, in their industrial machine. He was to regurgitate two evenly spaced, similarly themed, albums per year for the first few years, after which time, his contract would be re-evaluated for renewal by the company based upon profit values.
In a self-righteous fury, Rick had reneged on the contract. The resultant lawsuit served by the company had bankrupted him, and the publicity surrounding the event labeled him as unreliable and unprofessional. His cousin, a lawyer, had managed to rescue the rights and profits of Rick's independently produced album from the vice grip of the company by transferring them to his under-aged son. He couldn't stand the thought of his greatest professional accomplishment being reduced to a settlement clause.
Trying to climb back up the cliff he threw himself off of, Rick took sound editing jobs, despising every second spent in front of a holocom in sub-surface, dingy workshops. Mary had to retrain and take similarly loathed employment, because editing positions were intermittent in availability and duration. It seemed that he only smiled in that time when no bills waited to greet him when he arrived home. Financial stress made him miss-out on his oldest and middle children's childhood. It made him miss the pleasure of cuddling with his wife. He still felt that he cheated them and could never atone for his emotional absence.
Ten years ago, at a friend's urging, he scraped up enough funds from various sources to re-release his debut album. A local vid-com jockey featured it in a prime-time album review a few weeks later. At once, the station was immediately inundated with requests for airplay, and as one vid-com station after another dominoed with the popularity of Rick's compositions and performance, he was able to recover some of the objects the lawsuit had snatched from him.
His recent popular disinterment had allowed him to slither back into the industry as a composer; although, the only things he had produced lately were songs for children's visuals. It was marginally challenging, but the contracts with these specialized companies pulped him with the same, familiar terms.
He turned his face toward the present and the warmth of the spring sun felt through the hospital window. Exhaling noisily, he acknowledged that it was his pride, not the company's lawsuit that forced him to start all over again. It was his pride that nearly cost him his marriage, because he couldn't emotionally deal with the resultant strain.
He would have to accept his blindness, the kidnapping, and the rape -- but not just yet. He needed time and a means to resurface from the pit he had tumbled into. The specters of fear and pain conjured by the assault eclipsed even the mundane.
He hadn't created anything he could feel proud of for a very long time. He hadn't composed music for himself in twenty years. He was long overdue: he needed to mourn; he needed to heal.
| V1: |
The world assumed A semblance of night And all the fears And childhood tears |
| chorus: |
They track you down: Unbounded reign. Binds you with shame. Keeps coming ' round |
| V2: |
Into a death Terrified of light Seeing the kill Shivering still |
| (chorus) | |
| V3: |
Little is left To heal the rift Medicine song Keeps going on Bridge: And we're all gone
'Cause it's not strong |
|
(solo)
|
|
| V4: |
Even now we sleep Signed over to greed Buried by lies No piece of pie |
|
(chorus 2 X ) |
|
| ad lib: |
"Keeps coming 'round " |
|
(fade and end) |
Visit more of the author's fiction at: http://www.westies.com/misc/