by Pete Kahle
His hand was turning the doorknob, almost outside, when he felt the thud against his back. The goldbug clung to him. It began to dig.
A shriek arose from somewhere deep inside Karl. His back seared with red hot pain. The fucker was tunneling into him.
His panicked screams grew weaker as he struggled to breathe, tears coursing down his face. The goldbug stripped away skin then muscle, burrowing deeper and deeper until its head and thorax writhed under his flesh. Beneath the tissue, it continued to cut and tear.
Karl reached behind him. His arm bent at an awkward angle, swiping and groping for the creature. Its bulbous abdomen wiggled, driving the head in deeper, each time his fingers made contact. His efforts to remove the bug only exacerbated his anguish. Pain, centralized around the bug’s entry point, spiraled out through his nervous system.
His thumb and index finger finally latched around the goldbug’s abdomen, halting its progress. “Got you!” he shouted, laughing hysterically. Karl pulled and twisted in spite of the pain, but he couldn’t wrench his tormentor free. For a moment, they had reached a stalemate.
I’ll call 9-1-1, he thought. If I can just hold it where it is until help arrives…
His grip began to slip. “No, no, no, no!” he stammered. “Why is this happening?” He had the bug firmly within his grip, but suddenly, holding it was like squeezing wet soap. Agony shot through him with renewed intensity. The goldbug was free, and it was tunneling.
Karl glanced at his hand just long enough to notice some kind of yellow secretion covering his fingers. The goldbug pushed itself inside him, now entirely under his flesh. It burrowed along his ribcage from the center of his back outward. Without Karl impeding it, the goldbug soon made its way to his side.
“Where are you going?” he cried. “Get the fuck out of me!”
Karl’s pain was nearly debilitating. Still, he clung to hope. It took all his strength to remain on his feet. The light seemed to flicker. His hearing dulled. No! He shouted inside his head. Fight it!
Shaking off the dizziness, Karl clawed at his side. The goldbug mounded his skin. He cupped his hands around the lump, trying to stop it, but it was no use. The creature only burrowed deeper.
He stumbled into the kitchen and grabbed a knife, the longest, sharpest one in the rack. The pain he’d have to inflict couldn’t be worse than what he already felt. With only a second’s hesitation, he took aim and plunged the knife into his side.
Clink.
It barely broke his skin. The goldbug’s armor-like exoskeleton repelled it. Karl’s hope faded. I’ll have to cut it out.
Without giving himself a chance to change his mind, Karl stabbed again, this time a quarter-inch in front of the bug. He shrieked. The cut had been deeper than he had intended. Still, it had blocked the creature’s path. It stopped moving.
The knife jiggled in Karl’s hand. Every minute movement brought with it a surge of pain. The knife fell away from his body. The point of the blade was missing, lost somewhere inside him.
“You have got to be kidding me!” he shouted. He was furious with the goldbug—furious that it had defiled him, furious that it yet tormented him, enraged by the fact that no matter what he tried, he couldn’t beat it.
Karl paused to collect his wits. He would defy it at whatever the cost. Whatever the cost.
As if mocking him, the goldbug squirmed forward. It lodged itself behind his pectoral muscle. Was it going for his heart?
Desperate, terror blanking out logic, he grabbed his butcher’s knife. Its stainless steel blade gleamed under the light above him. He hoped it would cut him as cleanly as it did meat.
With a howl as wild as his thoughts, Karl hacked at his chest. The blade cut deep, severing the muscle from his frame. The knife fell bloody from his weak hand. The amputated tissue, with the goldbug embedded inside, fell to the ground beside it. So did Karl.
He looked down at his chest. Blood poured from the wound. He tried to stand, to reach his phone and call for help, but he lacked the strength and collapsed against the stove. He prayed a neighbor had heard his struggles, maybe had called the police. The sinewy mass that was once part of him lay flat against the floor like a raw steak. Karl laughed, pain and desperation blending into mania. The bug had exacted a pound of flesh. The flesh twitched.
Schickt-schikt.
“No,” Karl mouthed, his fear paralyzing him. “Leave me alone!”
The goldbug crawled out from beneath the meat and lifted its wings. They beat at the air, the rhythmic buzz drumming into Karl’s ears. The creature rose, hovering higher and higher until it and Karl were face-to-face.
With the remaining power in his lungs, Karl screamed. The goldbug struck.
The shopkeeper heard a knock at his door.
“We’re closed,” he said. “Can’t you read the sign?”
The knock came again, this time louder, more urgent. He rubbed his eyes and headed toward the door, muttering curses the whole way.
“What do you want?” His breath turned to frost in the night air as he swung open the door. He stared into an empty alley.
A broad smile wormed its way across his face as he looked down at his feet. “Back so soon? I take it your new home was not to your liking?”
The shopkeeper crouched. He placed his hand flat against the pavement, palm up. “Well, don’t just stand there. Come in! Come in!”
The goldbug walked onto his hand.
He stroked its shell-like exoskeleton as he carried it back to its shelf. “Don’t you worry, my little friend. We’ll find you a new home soon enough.”
In his head, Jason Parent lives in many places, but in the real world, he calls New England his home. The region offers an abundance of settings for his writing and many wonderful places in which to write them. He currently resides in Southeastern Massachusetts with his cuddly corgi named Calypso.
Please visit the author on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorJasonParent?ref=hl, on Twitter at https://twitter.com/AuthorJasParent, or at his website, http://authorjasonparent.com/, for information regarding upcoming events or releases, or if you have any questions or comments for him.
WAR WITHOUT
AN ENEMY,
ENEMY WITHOUT
A WAR
By Adrian Chamberlin
That great God who is the searcher of my heart knows with what a sad sense I go upon this service, and with what a perfect hatred I detest this war without an enemy; but I look upon it as sent from God...
- General Sir William Waller, 1643
With the trickling of blood through his fingers, jubilation turned to guilt. His pride, his sense of victory in capturing the Royalist colours vanished into the twilight, just as he himself was swallowed by the mist that followed him from the soggy battlefield like the ghosts of the slain.
Matthew Collier halted, then stared at the crimson fluid that coated his knuckles – knuckles that had tightened on the flagpole, tore it from the ensign’s grasp and not loosened since. He whimpered, and felt a chill finger poke his empty stomach through the thick hide of his buff coat.
He was just a boy, the same age as myself. Did I have to kill him? He lowered the pole and felt the blood-soaked flag wrap itself around his legs, coiling like the hangman’s rope.
Yes, I did. He was but a junior company officer, his role as ensign was to protect the enemy regiment’s colours with his life. He failed to do so.
That was what he told himself. But Matthew couldn’t prevent the guilt take a full hold of him. In God’s name, the ensign had been just a boy! Seventeen summers, my age!
Battle frenzy. His first kill, and it sickened him. Yes, it was a great personal victory, one that would surely see him rise within the ranks. From apprentice blacksmith to infantry recruit in the London Trained Bands serving Parliament, now a fully blooded soldier. Cavalry or ordnance next, and then, when he had proven himself with horse and cannon, maybe a commission to officer and the chance to serve directly under Fairfax - or even Cromwell�
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That was what he had wanted. What he had believed he wanted. But the barely human cry of pain as the ensign’s guts slipped to the ground, trampled underfoot by Matthew’s spurred boots, still rang in his ears and dispersed any sense of glory. The bulging, terror-stricken eyes that pleaded with Matthew to stop; the hands raised in futile defence against the mortuary-hilted rapier that slashed again and again into the ensign’s body; the blood that splattered the flamboyant clothing…
It was the ensign’s dying plea for his mother to make the pain go away that finally parted the veil of red mist that had blinded Matthew Collier.
This was no enemy, no ravaging Papist hound of hell. This was just a boy, and closer inspection of the tiny burn marks and scars on what remained of his hands told Matthew that this ensign had been a blacksmith’s apprentice as well.
In truth, what difference is there between us?
“Well done, Master Collier!”
The beaming face of Colonel Lewis swam through Matthew’s red mist, the snorting plumes from his mare rising with the steam from the ensign’s innards. The hearty slap on his back that followed, one of congratulation, froze at the sight of the slaughter. Matthew thought for a moment that Lewis whitened, as if he himself had not witnessed such brutality. Self-control was reasserted almost immediately, a mask of congratulation over the look of horror and disgust.
“The battle is almost won. Now, take up that piss-stained rag and return to Haverton. Post haste, Master Collier! Post haste!”
The guilt was momentarily assuaged by the sense of victory and purpose he felt when he lifted the enemy colours. The six-foot square flag was emerald green, of pure silk and taffeta, a contrast to the dour grey canvas of his own regiment’s. The flag of Lord Meekins, leader of the Royalist army that Lewis’s more disciplined force had engaged.
Matthew grinned, felt power surge through him as he brandished the Royalist colours. A power that was far greater than that obtained from wielding a firelock musket or a sword, far greater than carrying a pike or halberd.
This was the enemy’s colours! Taken by force, a great dishonour and a destroyer of Royalist morale! As he raced past the ranks of battling infantry, pike blocks fighting at point, mounted Royalist officers aimed flintlock pistols and fired at him, their whitened faces disappearing in a fog of smoke.
He laughed, full of joy and life as the musket balls flew wild and the flag billowed in his wake, a taunt to the supporters of King Charles. He thrilled to the thunder of hooves behind him, the cries of pursuit and fury. He ran into the autumn sunset, delighted in the golden rays that painted his face and dried the sweat, ran until his lungs felt fit to burst, his body as hot as the forge the War had taken him from, his legs pounding like the smithy’s hammer he used to wield.
The sun sank below the cliffs of the rocky headland, turning the sea beyond a dark crimson. Only when he was certain the battlefield was far behind him did he allow himself to pause. Panting with exhaustion, he looked behind, into the darkened expanse of moorland that gave rise to October mist.
Neither sight nor sound of Royalist pursuer. He turned again and headed for the woods that bordered the road to the garrison hamlet of Haverton.
He must have been more tired than he first realised; it took a monumental effort to climb the rise. The sodden grass sucked at his heels, the ground beneath as marshy as the bloodstained battlefield he had fled.
His breath came in ragged, uneven bursts. Sweat poured down his face and back, the shirt beneath the buff coat a sticky, uncomfortable second skin. The sweat soon chilled on his body as the day gave way to night.
He thrust the pole into the marshy ground with trembling fingers; whether through the adrenaline coursing through his body or fear brought upon by the sudden cold he didn’t know.
Only then did he feel the blood dribble around his bruised knuckles, the pole coated in a slippery fluid that he had taken for sweat. Only then did the full horror of what he had seen – what he had done – return to him. He sank to his knees and wept.
That was not battle frenzy, surely. It was the action of a demon.
His tears of self-hatred ran dry, and exhaustion took him. His eyes closed, and his dreams filled with the sounds of hammering, screaming, and dying.
Rain roused him. He sniffled and looked up, wondering if God was mocking him for his actions. Only then did he become aware of his surroundings, and the shifting things he had taken for boughs creaking in the breeze.
They were not tree branches. And the fluid that fell down and splattered his upturned face was not rain.
“I will have none of it. The standard has been lost by your own stupidity, and I’ll not risk further loss of life to salve your tarnished honour. My lord.”
The last two words were sneered, an insult to the corpulent man who stood with pudgy hands on hips, his jowls wobbling in astonishment at this open defiance from the seasoned soldier whose cold, grey-eyed glare never wavered from the watery blue of his commanding officer’s. Around the two men, the tattered remnants of the Royalist regiment stood, silent and motionless. For the moment, weariness and despair were forgotten. So too were the dead and dying.
The blood of the butchered ensign had ceased to flow, but the flies clustered around the gash in his dismembered torso furthered the illusion of movement.
“You disobey me, sir?” Lord George Meekings spoke in a high pitched, tremulous voice. “You dare to disobey His Majesty - ”
“I disobey you, my lord.” Captain William Lambert forced himself to speak calmly. Losing his temper would not help him. But by God’s truth, dealing with this fat, self-important buffoon does severely test me!
The young Parliamentarian trooper’s ferocity had shocked them all – even Lambert, who saw shades of his own youthful, adventuring side in the lad who had hacked the ensign to pieces.
Small wonder that Meekings wanted him caught and made an example of. But it was futile. The young trooper was long gone, doubtless back with his comrades.
A new hero will be made tonight. But at what cost to his young soul? Will he remember the berserk he succumbed to? Will it sicken him, fill him with remorse and guilt? Or will he relish it, tap into it again...as I once did?
Lambert had resisted ever since: now approaching his fortieth year and his second decade on earth as a professional soldier, he had not succumbed to that spirit of rage and ferocity.
The young ensign was barely seventeen summers old. A boy. And yet all His Lordship had been concerned about was the loss of his precious colours. And now this. To be ordered to race after it when men are dying…
“It is pointless to retrieve your colours. The battle is lost.”
The battlefield was a smoking ruin. White smoke from musket and cannon remained in the air, cooled by the approaching night into a thick fog that obscured the few moving figures. Wounded infantrymen writhed on the sloping ground before being despatched by swords wielded by victorious Royalist cavalry. Their horses whinnied at the fresh flow of blood, as though they too gloried in the slaughter of these traitors to King Charles.
The last of the sunlight faded, the tired orb slinking away between a gap in the woods beyond as if it, too, was sickened by the day’s slaughter. With the failing light, the shining – and untouched, Lambert sourly noted – breastplate and crimson sash of the commander of the Royalist forces began to lose their lustre. Meekings had already discarded his zischarge helmet, the piece of armour thrown to Lambert’s feet. The articulated metal plates, designed to protect the neck, reminded the captain of the scales of a dragon.
Or a lizard, he thought. Truly, this “gentleman” belongs under a stone! He kicked the helmet away and forced himself not to betray any signs of pain.
“Your tactics, my lord, have ensured our defeat. You ordered your horse to charge at full gallop into the rebel infantry!”
Even now, Lambert could not believe what he had seen. Meekings had thought artillery would be enough to break the Parliamentarian lines, despi
te Lambert’s protestations that the range was not sufficient. And then to compound his mistake by ordering the entire main horse into the enemy lines – without even waiting for the white smoke to clear – was unforgiveable.
That was when Captain Lambert had been proved correct. The lines of infantry were untouched, their pikes standing firm despite the terrible noise of ordnance and the ubiquitous smoke.
Meekings’ eyes shifted guiltily, glancing at the nearest trooper who held a sodden piece of cloth to his comrade’s chest wound. Lambert caught the exchange between the men, saw the hatred and accusation from the soldier attending the dying sergeant.
Another victim of his Lordship’s incompetence! He snorted. The main horse would have been safe had the Parliamentarian infantry not pounded metal-tipped stakes into the ground. The fog of war blinded the Royalist horse, and the wickedly sharp “swine feathers” did their lethal work, to both trooper and mount.
Granted, the terror of charging cavalry could have a fearsome effect on men unused to such sights – especially fresh soldiers who had not been trained to stand firm. But horse could only break resolute infantry by attacking the rear or the flanks of tired men already engaged in fighting other infantry.
The opposing army was too well-disciplined, too battle-hardened, to fall to Meekings. Colonel Lewis had trained under Cromwell, and his regiment was just as effective as Cromwell’s Ironsides. And professional, Lambert thought sadly. Discipline before rank and privilege.
If Meekings’ desire to reclaim his colours was born from a sense of vengeance, a desire to ensure the young ensign’s death was avenged, Lambert could have understood. But his Lordship’s first reaction upon hearing the news was to kick the mutilated torso of the ensign and spit in his smashed skull pan.
Weakling! Losing my colours to a mere strip of a Crophead bastard! You are naught but a peasant boy, undeserving of the honour to bear my standard!