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Poetry
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| No Man's Land is an Island | |
| By russ11 | ||||||||||
| 03 April 2007 | ||||||||||
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Is the twist too obvious, I wonder. Any comments and help much appreciated. Thanks for reading. I was sick, the salt water rushing back up from where I wished it had never gone but bringing with it whole chunks of new friends who were never going to make the ‘A’ list - old food, stomach acid, what have you. The sand on my palm was hot, gritty. Tried to wipe it on my shirt but only found skin. I flicked my eyes open long enough to see most of my shirt was gone before crushing them shut against the glare that started out there and ended up pinching the back of my eyes. I remember...dinner and an attractive companion but… I heaved again as fragments of my memory screened briefly before the fear and more seawater washed over me and out of me. There’d been an explosion below decks, a fire, a blaze that absolutely would not stop. I saluted my forehead and my shielded eyes scrunched open. I was on the edge – in several ways – but mostly about 4 feet from the breakers fingering the beach. Its white sand made an inlet, a comma punctuating the shoreline of a tiny atoll. Further down were some rags and flotsam. The flotsam moved. There were two of us. Like me, a survivor. My companion grimaced but it might have been a smile. We walked towards each other and then together for a bit. But for a few tatters we were entirely naked. It felt safe, the two of us. “Could have been worse”, I joked, “at least we weren’t flying”. This produced what was definitely a grimace and then some vomiting. Probably the sea water I thought not prepared to acknowledge the quality of my jokes. “My name’s Terry” I volunteered when the noise had died down. I couldn’t hear his name but it sounded like Allan. He folded in on himself, slumping to his knees in front of me. His head pointed away towards the waves foaming russet as the sliding sun immersed itself. Silhouetted there, the darkening grey concealed his pain. Rocking back and forth in agony, his burnt raw and ragged hands were clasped to his head. I felt helpless and guilty. He was muttering, saying his name and something else I couldn’t catch. It was gibberish, caught and blown garbled on the breeze. Then I had it. He hadn’t said “Allan”. What I’d misheard was only part of it. “God help me, god help me” I said as his words droned on, repeated over and over, ebbing and flowing in and out of sense as the burgeoning night wind held them to itself. He wasn’t Allan at all. I listened to it all. “Allah, accept the death of these infidels as a gift from this loyal servant and give me strength to serve you again, to kill all the infidels"
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