Revolution

by Michael Sutherland

  And that's official.

  But that doesn't surprise me, not now, because you get the feeling that nothing dies in that place.

  I mean like really dies, like that isn't allowed to die.

  Because if it did then it would mean that the fun of the torture to come would be over too soon.

  That's the kind of place Cammo is.

  Maybe it doesn't get to you the first time you go there, and maybe not even the second.

  But by then it's too late to do anything about it, you've already been changed by it before you even get a chance to figure out what it's doing to you.

  Once you've been tasted by that place you're already owned by it.

  And it's just a matter of time before you become a part of it.

  That place doesn't just get under your skin.

  It prickles into your bones and snares into your lungs until you're choked into submission.

  And all the while you think you're in control, that you're safe, until the day you want to leave and find out that you can't.

  One step at a time you stride into a trap of corn cockles and cuckoo flowers that puff their smoky pollen at you knowing you can't help but breathe it in.

  And then you're back again for more and more to have yourself fixed by wading through the stink of treacle thick nightshade letting punch into you, and numb you, little by little.

  But that's the trick, you see, you're stunned by the time you're sinking into hell.

  Only you have no idea it's happening to you, man, none at all.

  And by the time stables came into view I could already smell mint and wild onion

  Titch pulled the tin out of his pocket and I knew what would be next, the roll up and that sweet pungent odor that went along with the burning.

  And yeah, yet again, we would be sitting around getting hammered out of our realities and end up stoned without wings.

  But desperate to fly all the same as we were going to sit and talk of nothing in particular and end up thinking everything was funny.

  Like it always was when we took that stuff.

  Nothing was funny this time though.

  It just seemed that way.

  And yeah, yet again, every single one of us was going to end up in our own personal little bubble of protection, jabbering or not, and stare at some tiny bit of Tormentil that had taken root high up on some part of a decaying wall.

  Clinging to life we'd watch it and wonder how it got there, how it could possibly thrive.

  But it must have been possible because it did grow.

  And maybe that was it.

  That the less you had the more you grew.

  Not like Pete who'd had everything but for the asking a little while back.

  And even although his roots had been fertilized to hell from birth, he might as well have been force grown in Dieldrin for all the good it did.

  I remembered how once before we'd gone up there and I'd looked over and saw that blank look in his eyes as he'd be stared at it too, at some weed doing its best to grow, to flower, as if it was trying to tear itself out of the birth canal.

  Only there was anger at the back of those ice-blue eyes of his that time, something not quite right.

  And tonight again I would have to look away from him, let my head drop and stare at the stone slabs under us to wonder at how no matter what the weather, that even if it hadn't rained in a month, they always took on this damp grey look.

  Christ, I thought as I looked up as the stable came into view.

  Turrets on a horse barn!

  Who in hell puts turrets on a stable?

  Well, if you were that rich I supposed you could do almost anything, and if turrets were in then that was it.

  The path was springy with old leaves and pine needles, which had been there for God only knows how long.

  And with that we veered off into the stables proper.

  The walls were still there, the doors long gone.

  There is no roof on the place any longer and the sky was already turning deep orange as we entered stepping past an old iron ploughshare and a rusted spade.

  There were four horseboxes in all and we scraped around on the broken slabs until we came to number three.

  Something special about it, our box, dank and depressing to some perhaps even by the light of a magical moon.

  But it was ours all right in everything but brand-ironed rock, a place with weeds struggling to exist everywhere, with some in flower still hanging onto the damp coolness within the stones.

  So we hunched down and waited.

  Titch had already licked and rolled at the paper after he'd stuffed in whatever it was we were about to ritually smoke for the umpteenth time.

  But I dragged my eyes away from him, from everyone because I didn't want to see that bored look in their faces.

  The pretence of fun had had us this far.

  But with that thing realized and out in the open the illusion of us wanting to be there would have been shattered.

  I just didn't want to be the first one to hand over the trigger.

  Besides, with that spell broken I could just see Pete storming off yelling, "To hell with it!" and leaving us all behind.

  Titch would maybe smile and think, so what?

  And Boyd would maybe look startled for a second. Grant, well I didn't know about what his reaction would be since he always seemed incapable of reacting to anything.

  And me, if Pete left us there, I would have just walked back home.

  It wasn't that far, three or four miles.

  But I wouldn't be mad.

  And maybe I would have been relieved that the coming nightmare was over, that we had escaped before it had a chance to start.

  And as Titch inhaled on his drag with a look on his face like he was about to choke to death, but holding it in anyway instead of spluttering, I took in that burning tealeaves odor of skunk.

  After that I looked around the walls again that suddenly seemed too close.

  I looked at the cracks between the blocks, at the dust compacted between the jibs and joins. Eyes glazing over as I looked at weeds with flower heads of piss yellow and violet struggling from cramped spaces.

  Trying to pull free, to be born, only knowing they were dying in the process.

  Then I looked over Pete's head and saw something that didn't make me feel great, because on the sandstone behind him someone had scrawled a pentagram.

  It had been drawn in red crayon.

  And I got to wondering about what kind of weirdo comes up here, all the way from civilization, to scribble on a wall miles from nowhere with something a kid would use.

  And another thing struck me.

  Up to that point the place had felt like it was ours.

  Only now it felt like someone had invaded our space.

  That was nonsense of course.

  The place didn't belong to anyone.

  But I couldn't help it, that feeling.

  And that's because that place makes its possession of you in slow creeps up your back, until it's right inside and crawling under your skin, taking you over until you end up in a red-out as it's reaching into you and whispering, "It's all yours, kid, no one else's, no paperwork required."

  Seeing that red thing on the wall made me feel like my back was growing bigger than the front of me, like this pressure was bunching a hide up my spine.

  It didn't help by wriggling my shoulders either.

  It still felt like limpets were sucking at those scars on my back.

  I tried not to show anything as Pete pulled this face, like he was about to throw up, as he passed the smoke onto me.

  When I took it from him he had this look on his face like he was drowning and his lungs were about to burst.

  I didn't want to take the damn thing, but I didn't want to look like the idiot one out either, so I did.

  I took a drag, but then let most of the smoke out without inhaling it.

  Still I choked all the same and everyone laughed.


  And as snot exploded out of me someone shouted for me to watch what the hell I was doing.

  And without thinking I stuck my hand out, arm's length, and passed the smoke on.

  I'd had enough of the shit.

  Let them take it to themselves. Let them get smashed up on it.

  I didn't want to be a part it any more.

  I jumped up and lurched past Pete and Boyd to the opening, to suck in the sweet smell of jasmine and honeysuckle.

  Anything was better than that sick house odor.

  My face was red because I'd nearly blown my lungs out of my mouth.

  Sometimes your body overrides sense and cries out to your dim wit that something is rotten.

  But by then I was in a bubble of my own as I looked out onto the trees thinking somewhere out there lies what I'm looking for.

  Only the situation was this. That somehow, with that building, with that stone built horsebox of a place, I could have been in one of the same kinds of prisons that I'd been forced to live in for most of my life until then.

  That feeling didn't make sense.

  But it didn't stop it coming at me.

  I mean there was no roof to that place except the sky.

  There were no bars on the windows, except the trees in front me.

  But I realized that I was as trapped as I ever was.

  Only this time I was trapped in a cell with four other neds bent on struggling for freedom and getting nowhere.

  Pete the rich-kid-no-more called out in that lazy drawl of his.

  "Jack?"

  But I just stood with my back to him wanting to climb out and just run away forever.

  But I didn't.

  And I knew I couldn't stand like that for long either.

  There was too much of a razorblade about to slide down my back about it

  So I turned around and looked down at him.

  Pete had this lopsided hick grin on his face, that was sort of innocent and sort of verging on stupid at the same time.

  "Toke?" he said holding up what was left of the roach.

  I shook my head and turned away again to the trees, to a scarlet sky bleeding through the leaves.

  "You're missing" all the fun," he said out, and then I heard a hiss as he took another drag.

  He choked on it but I just kept standing there, my spine bunching to them all as someone made these hollow thumps on his back.

  "Hey, enough?" Pete said and the thumping slaps stopped.

  Then there was silence again.

  Nothing was moving.

  Nothing was breathing.

  And that's when I realized that that place knew something we didn't.

  It knew we were already dying.

  Also by Michael Sutherland

  Novel

  Invisible Monsters ( Print publication from Less Than 3 Press, April 2013)

  Short Story Collections

  Passport to Phelamanga: After All, Death Trapped, Only Human,Till Dawn, The Bridge to Andromeda (MUSA Publishing, 2012)

  From Here to Hallucigenia: Aviatrix, Doodlebug, It’s Up to You Now, Bambi, What Goes Around Comes Back Weird (MUSA Publishing, 2013)

  Short Stories

  Soul Vampire (Dark Gothic Ressurrected Magazine, April, 2013)

  An Endless Harvest (Jupiter Science Fiction Magazine, April 2013)

  Copyright © 2013 Michael Sutherland

  Table of Contents

  REVOLUTION

  THE PHOTOGRAPH

  THE COLUMBUS MACHINE

  GUILTY AS DISCHARGED

  FOLLOW ME (intro)

  Also by Michael Sutherland

  Copyright