Happy Birthday, Lolly
Wednesday, July 28th, 2010Another year has passed and four birthday reminders from LiveJournal hit my mailbox. One will never due for her. There’s something fascinating about that.
Anyway, since I am notoriously bad about making it to the post office on time, I have written my good friend a little something in honor of her birthday. Lolly, please feel free to edit it. That’s your present. *g*
By Any Other Name
for Lolly
At night, she crawls through the barbwire fence. Its rusty spikes claw at her skin. Thick, dark mud covers her and her wounds so the guards can’t see. She pulls along as slowly as she is able, past their long grey coats and black boots. Their wooden stock guns and proud eagle emblems don’t frighten her. She knows their bullets cannot hurt.
It’s the smell. As she crawls across the open ground, she can smell it. It’s faint, buried beneath the urine, feces, and decay. She passes the open, mass graves filled with lifeless bodies to stay out of the search lights. She stops when a guard dog lifts its head.
The little, squat huts never have lights or locks. Only after she opens the door can she smell it. Stronger. It calls to her. On her hands and feet, she edges along the center aisle, flanked by rows of rotting, cheap platforms, until she finds the warmth. On to his bed she climbs. Her dirt-matted dress covers his skeletal body.
He opens his eyes. With his dry, pointy fingers, he scratches at the star sewn into his stripped shirt. His lips crack when he smiles. “Pi?kne. Tak. Prosz?.”
He shivers when she sinks her fangs into his neck. His blood tastes as weak as his body is, but she doesn’t mind. She drains him and leaves him to move on to the next. He thanks her for her mercy in soft whispers with his last breath. After she drinks her fill, she crawls back to her hole in the forest far from the sunlight and soldiers.
Before she sleeps, she thinks of their words. How their names for her sound wrong. They shouldn’t thank her. She knows what mercy and beauty are. She isn’t those things. She closes her eyes and mutters the word that is her true name. Monster.