On the Loop I

The darkness bled away, peeling off his eyes like a layer of snakeskin. His head felt wrapped in two pounds of gauze, his arms felt like they were on the other side of the room, and his legs seemed to be in some kind of 15-foot-deep pool. His eyelids fluttered. At least he wasn’t dead, but maybe death would be better than this. Maybe death would be a relief.

Telos tried to move, and his hand maybe did move, he couldn’t tell, it was so far away, why was it cowering in the corner? Come over here, you’re my hand, you have to do hand-like things, such as wave about, maybe touch this metal slab I’m lying on, maybe, if I’m really lucky, you’ll have enough strength behind you to push me up off this slab, at least so I can get a good look around this place. Be reasonable.

His hand sheepishly waddled over to the metal slab, eyes downcast, face forlorn. Oh, hand. Don’t be like that. Why are you such a prima donna? You act as if this is my fault. You shouldn’t have left in the first place. Like a child blaming his parents for getting robbed after running away. Well, maybe things are bad here, but really, giving up and running away doesn’t solve anything. If you had some stones, boy, you’d stay right here and give it the old college try.

But maybe you don’t have the stones. Leaving is easier. Bailing out. Grabbing the parachute and ducking out the open hatch. But silly hand, then you have to deal with this. Shamefully returning. You should have just been a man and stayed. Come now, see if you can push me up.

And Telos, propped up on his weak left arm, glanced around the room he was in. Long, halogen lights in the wall. One large, steel door, firmly closed. A table to the left. Sharp things, medical things, on the table. Bottles of pills.

Fuck, he thought, and fell back onto the table.

Desertion III

Beatrice was roaming the countryside, north of the encampment and southeast of Damascus, when she encountered the scene of a massacre. She combed through the bodies, and cringed when she realized they were her compatriots. Suddenly her heart leapt into her throat: Telos usually went on missions like this.

Oh God. What if he was dead? Beatrice screamed his name, pulling bodies off other bodies, searching hungrily for any sign of Telos. She did this for many minutes, and only after an hour did she realize it was probably better she hadn’t found him. But what if he had been kidnapped? That would be a huge blow to the resistance. God, why did she even care about the fucking resistance anymore!

Revenge… what a useless goal. Completely unsatisfying. Draining. Dehumanizing. This what they had all become–splashed blood and lifeless bodies across some rocks. The walls of Damascus loomed large in the background. Beatrice had let the city control her–no. She had controlled herself.

Come now, Beatrice. Don’t blame a place for what was your own desire. You were mad. So you killed. You killed them just like they killed your family.

We’re all even now, aren’t we?

Coins III

What they expected to be a simple return to the encampment turned into anything but. They had lost a number of men on the streets of Damascus, and while they were on the path back, children sprang out, from behind trees, rocks, from hiding places underneath in the ground, from dark places, not simple caves but the real dark places of this world, the true nether regions, the bottommost areas, beyond the river Styx of man’s heart.

Telos and his men became pinned down around a rocky ridge, trading gunfire with the children who seemed to be everywhere. They would shimmer against the muddy-green landscape: appearing, shooting, vanishing.

Was it a trick of the eyes? Was it a trick of reality?

The fight was lasting longer than Telos would have liked, and he could sense that old panic returning. They had to fucking get out of here. If they stayed, they were going to be slaughtered. Telos couldn’t focus, he couldn’t breathe, Jesus, holy fuck, they were all going to be murdered, right here, right now, we have to leave, oh my God we’re all going to die, here it comes now, here comes the spirit of Damascus, it has come to kill us all, all I can do is open my arms and embrace the coming oblivion, here I am death: take me.

Through Her Mismatched Eyes III

Cavillace languished on the tree, desolate, staring into the ground. She had spent most of the day crying but she could cry no more, she was dry. Maybe she had gotten over the whole thing, or maybe she was beyond sadness, some strange realm of unemotion where nothing really affected anything and it was all just a bad dream, separate from reality.

This couldn’t be real, this couldn’t be her life. What had happened to her carefree years, what had happened to simplicity, to earnest living and happy times? There was shit on her feet. She gagged and tried to throw up, but only a small stream of yellow spittle dribbled out.

How could this be reality? This was so different from before. Such a stark contrast. Such juxtaposition. She didn’t even blame Telos anymore, she was too tired of blaming people and especially him, she was exhausted from hating and wanting revenge, that wasn’t her, that was the other man, the other man that was him, he wanted revenge.

She screamed, loudly and shrilly, purging herself of both of them, both of those men, those men who didn’t really care about her, they had just used her, they had abused her! A few people near her stopped and stared, shrugged it off and continued on. She isn’t either of those things, she isn’t naive love and she isn’t vengeance.

She is Cavillace.

But what does that mean?

Coins II

How many of them are kids?? Are all of them kids! Holy shit. Telos didn’t know what to do. His troops were still firing; apparently they hadn’t realized they had just murdered seven kids. In fact, it felt like they were shooting more, the bullets were coming faster and louder. Telos felt suffocated. He had to get out of here.

He couldn’t just leave his group though. They were in a firefight! Fuck, Telos, stop being a coward. This is war. Eoin sent those children out to die, out to screw with your head, it wasn’t your fault, it wasn’t your fault, he put them there, in front of your bullets, Jesus, don’t let it get to you okay, throw it off, this is war goddammit!

Seized suddenly with an unknown furor, Telos grabbed a gun from one of the people next to him, and stood up above their cover, firing directly into the windows of the building. He slowly walked sideways out into the middle of the street, firing the whole time. When he stopped walking he stopped shooting and there was silence.

Everyone in the building was dead.

Slinging the gun across his back, he began to walk back out of Damascus. He didn’t understand what Eoin had done to this town, but it was unspeakable, irreversable, and fighting for its freedom was a lost cause.

Coins I

Telos had decided he needed to test the power of the city, now that it had decided to rise up against him. He put together a large contingent, over a hundred men, and marched on the south-eastern gate of Damascus.

They approached in two columns, hidden down on the sides of the main road. Surprisingly, they encountered no resistance while entering the city. Telos became wary, but wanted to see this force that he had heard of. So they continued into the city.

Damascus appeared deserted. Cars were stopped in the middle of roads, papers blowing around, sort of apathetically, as if to make the gesture of emptiness, yes, look, it’s barren, nobody to see here, just us pieces of paper dancing around like it’s the goddamn prom!

The silence was broken eventually. A gunshot here. They took cover behind the cars, the opened doors, the empty facades and upturned counters. Faces appeared in buildings across the streets. Flashes of gunfire. Telos didn’t shoot, he just watched. He was fascinated.

Soon the battle was joined as the shooting became regular from both sides. There was some screaming from around one of the corners, and a small group of people ran out, wielding guns and knives. Their guns blazed wildly, but they were quickly killed.

Something was not right, though. Their bodies were too small, too youthful. Telos choked. Jesus. They were children.

Eaglets V

It was so damn hard to think about the campaign after Cavillace had returned. Plus, Beatrice was nowhere to be found. Telos’ head hurt. Every day when he woke up, he felt washed up and beaten, exhausted, as if he hadn’t slept at all. Wiping his face with his hands, he exited his tent to find the whole camp in an uproar.

He grabbed someone and found out that Eoin had managed to mobilize the entire city against Telos. The news had come from an early morning raid, organized by one of Telos’ chief captains. The raiders found themselves up against overwhelming numbers and were quickly gunned down. Only a couple men made it back, at least one bullet in each of them.

Telos found himself ruffled.

He didn’t understand this new tactic, he couldn’t envision how the entire city – the whole city, men, women, and children, right? – would stand against him. Didn’t they hate Eoin, too? How… why… he didn’t, just couldn’t fathom it.

Was he the bad guy? Was he the crazy, power-hungry tyrant?

No. He couldn’t be. He didn’t beat people at the drop of a hat, and murder them in alleys. He wasn’t bad. He was right. He was justice.

He wasn’t bad. He wasn’t evil.

I am good. I am right.

Brief Encounter III

After night fell and Telos had left for bed, Beatrice approached Cavillace, her feet stepping lightly on the trampled sod. The two women said nothing, just taking each other in. Somehow, they both knew they were looking at the only other woman that Telos had ever managed to love.

Cavillace felt jealous that her before her was his matured lover, who had benefited from the experience Cavillace had given to him. Here was the older lover, the sensible lover, not a girl who had run off with him in a blaze of youthful passion, but a slow burn of aged love.

She felt sick.

Beatrice was also jealous, because here against this tree was Telos’ first love. It had not been her, as she had always assumed it would be, but it had been this… this tramp… who had consummated his adolescence, who had shown him how to be passionate. Why couldn’t it have been her? When she and Telos had made love, she had been the only one losing any innocence. She had felt estranged already, then, that day.

As soon as she and Telos had had sex, she felt distant from him, because she understood how different he was from her. It had humiliated her at first, then she was flattered, but now she was just sad. She knew this poor wretch of a girl, chained to this tree, hadn’t really understood him either.

And for that they were sisters.

Desertion II

Beatrice had been gone from the camp for a week before she finally strayed back, lured home by food. Strangely, combining the loss of Skara Brae with her sudden distance from Telos and her destructive urges brought all kinds of emotions roaring back in her. She spent a lot of her time in the woods crying and accepting that her hometown was gone.

It was almost good for her. Every night when she closed her eyes, she saw the townhall burning again (and again, burning again and again, over and over, the screams, the screams, the smell of burning people, oh that smell is so terrible and so unforgettable she will remember it after she dies and she is nothing more than a bed for maggots and those maggots will remember the smell yes they will yes they most certainly will!

But every night when she saw the fire and smelled the bodies, every night it lasted a little bit less. The fire would come a unwillingly and leave faster, as if you’ve listened to a song a few times too many and you remember why it was good but goddammit that’s enough.

So she returned to Tell Ramad a little more in touch with herself and the world. There was greater detail in everything she saw; wrinkles in peoples faces seemed deeper, there were darker splotches of mud on their pants; but was she noticing these things for the first time, or had life gotten tougher since she had been gone? Her eyes softened. She would find Telos, and tell him what had happened.

Then she saw him staring at a woman, chained to a tree. Beatrice suddenly felt very uncomfortable.

Through Her Mismatched Eyes II

Telos refused to say anything to Cavillace. He had her chained to a tree, and would simply stare at her for long periods of time, in deep silence. She stared back, unwilling to say anything that might give away her purpose.

Many thought a duel was happening, a duel of wills, as Telos’ and Cavillace’s eyes would dart about wildly while neither of them made any noise. But a duel was not happening. A conversation was happening, a dialogue within each to themselves. They were both coming to terms with the impact the other had had on them.

For Cavillace, shame and anger were the dominant motifs. She was furious at this man who had charmed her and then robbed her of her innocence, only to leave her in the clutches of Syme. Telos had made her a woman, a woman unprepared for womanhood, and then abandoned her, to face the cruel world as an adult, alone.

For Telos, humiliation and betrayal commanded his thoughts. He was embarrassed by the memory of deserting her, especially after they had given themselves to each other so completely. He did not like to be reminded of his weaknesses. He was the leader of a revolution. He could have no faults. Her betrayal, her desire to kill him further shamed him, but also enraged him: how could she want him dead?

They had been lovers once, after all, and hadn’t that love come with some kind of transcendent understanding? Could she not see his own pain, his own struggle with his simple humanity? If she could, then she was here to strike out of revenge, a petty motivation. But if she couldn’t… that would mean she had never really loved him in the first place.

The whore.