A Name on the Wall

It is like being shot down in WW2. A flak hits your plane and the debris from that shattered shrapnel of iniquity cuts through the plane and into the cockpit. Blood is splattered. There are no 12 enzymes to stop your blood flow. Why? There is no source. Your suit is covered in blood; there is blood on the altitude indicator, the clutch, the flap controls. There is a puddle on the ground. Everything is blood. It runs down your face as tears, and like tears, blots out your eyes. You can’t see. Suddenly, you are a child again running on shaky legs over the cracked sidewalks. The sidewalks appear as the desert, stretching into a vast nothingness of somethingness. Adventure lies beyond the view; imagination dictates a new world to play in. So you run run run in a frenzy of anticipation and glee. Yet, the world keeps disappearing beyond the horizon every time your hand reaches out. Soon enough your feet stray wildly off the track and search for new horizons. Screech, scream, and a near splatter. Frantic sputterings of words you don’t understand. A beast is next to you, breathing loudly in a warm aura, mustering mean mumblings. You were later told that you had nearly been hit by a car. The car stared you down and suddenly sounds much like……. The plane is now spinning. “Mayday” you plead and those comfortably listening at command merely mark another friendly lost. They quickly skim over the remaining bogeys and estimate the chance of victory. Expendable, but not dependable. Your voice cackles on the radio as your blood seeps over the transmitter. You scream and cry, but command can’t help you. You scream and cry, but your mother is dead. It is raining and the tears merge with the falling rain and drain into the filling drain. Emotions washed away beneath the red umbrella held over the casket. Beneath the wooden coffin lies a corpse, a shell. The one who screamed in love when you nearly died to the bumper of a car. The one who won’t scream to the death of shredded metal and a glorious blaze of…….. Wind howls into the cockpit spurring the blood, swishing it suave. Like a martini. The kind you get on an Alaskan cruise. You had never seen such blue eyes under blue lights of the northern lights. You tell her she is fit to be a Valkyrie, triumphantly riding the Pegasus across the sky. It is merely a joke, a bad one at best. You knew she knew it was coming. But, you both adored the mythology, the stars, the perfect moment. The warm embrace, the last touch……. The snow fell all around; the ashes fall all around. The ashes from the burning buildings, a street filled with soot, ashes and ashes scattered. Like those of your mother glittering, flickering as they slowly descended down the coast; it was where she first met your dad. He wore a blood red smile of gums bleeding around the teeth. Eyes filled with greed, thumping red, thumping red, pounding, pounding red. A sticky silk substance covers your face, a malevolent mixture of blood and sweat coating the flesh before it is scorched in the explosion. Soon to be….. Annihilated. The buildings are closer… the fires, the bombings….. A city you had to protect, a country you had to… to… die for? An etching on a black wall, merely a name, merely shapes put together to resemble your identity, your life, your love, your loss. Nothing, but a compilation of small scratched names, so some rich fat child can maybe appreciate sacrifice…….but….but…… Those names mean nothing to him. (Andrew Sippie)