Post by Deleted on Sept 11, 2015 10:40:16 GMT -6
There are things, things a man should never have to see, but once seen, can never be unseen.
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Another time, another place.
It wasn't snowy white like in the movies. It was sort of a light, bluish-gray, with bits of blackish-brown, and frayed, frazzled, yellowish gristle holding it together. It looked for all the world like a grotesque cage, which it was. A rib cage, to be precise - human, one each, no NSN number, with most of the spine and a couple of cervical vertebrae still attached, being held together by what appeared to be bits of dried beef jerky... but that wasn't beef.
We never found the hips, legs, arms, or head, and never identified whom it had been. I suppose the parts had been dragged off into the jungle to feed a young litter of somethings. Do you bury what's left? Why bother? There is so little, and nature will take care of that, just as it took care of the rest.
You just say eff it, and drive on.
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Kids, swarms of them, at the city dump. Crawling over the refuse like so many spiders, searching for a bit of something here or there, overlooked, that might possibly be "food" or something they could sell to get food.
Mostly naked, they are, dressed in tattered rags and dirt smudges, but still searching out that might-be morsel. You have the urge to give them your own rations, just so they'll stop trash-picking, but you know there won't be enough for all of them, and what about tomorrow?
What about tomorrow?
You realize at some level that these kids will grow into the same sort of people who create macabre but unintentional art work out of what used to be parts of other people... like discarded rib cages.
You don't wonder any more how that comes to be. You've just seen it's genesis.
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Another time, another place - eventually they all start to run together and merge. Columns of thick, oily smoke. Looks like piles of tires being burned, but when you get close enough to see the source, it's corpses being burned. So many dead that the remaining living are too overwhelmed to dig graves for them all, so they burn them to avoid disease.
In piles. Fresh, grisly, grotesque piles.
And that smell! My God that smell! It gets into your sinuses, and stays with you for days, to the point you begin to wonder if it's ever going to leave. You start wondering if you're going to have to smell that forever... and you know, in a way you do. Years later you'll smell it again, at random, and you wonder if it's real, or just Memorex. Sometimes you wonder if everyone around you can smell it on you, too.
Sometimes, you just feel like walking death, and are surprised if other folks can't see it or smell it.
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Another time, another place. What was a brother five minutes ago is now just so much cooling meat. The last sounds he could make as he bled out against your chest, covering you with what used to be him, was a dying, whimpering scream for his mother to come and fix the hurt.
She couldn't make it, all he had was you, and you weren't enough. He probably couldn't even see you at the end, as the black closed in on him.
People have a habit of telling me to "get real", and maybe I should... but then I find myself praying that they will never have to.
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You wonder why you do this, or ever did. Why you went to see things that can never be unseen. Sometimes you tell yourself it's because you didn't know what was there. Other times you tell yourself it was to protect the people you love, and yet other times you tell yourself it was just for the money.
The honest truth is, however, that probably somewhere along the way you were irreparably damaged, and really, by then, it's all your good for...
... so it's what you do.
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Some people seem to like you, and you wonder why. Can't they see what's all around you? the ghosts and such? Can't they smell it?
Some even try to get close to you, and you just can't allow that. They might find out what's in your damaged head, what's locked up in there. That wouldn't be good for them, or for you. You've seen that look before, and didn't much care for it then, either. Why subject yourself to it again? They're normal, you're not. Why disillusion them?
Sometimes, a complete stranger will look at you and say "you've seen stuff", out of the blue. A statement, not a question, and the only way he knows is because he's "seen stuff" too, and knows the look - probably from his own reflection in the mirror.
The Brotherhood lives, and sometimes you wish it didn't. Oh, you're thankful enough for someone else who can understand, but you wish it weren't necessary to begin with.