Captain Rick's Eye

"Captain Rick's Eye" - a reading (on YouTube)

I saw the fight outside my window the night Captain Rick lost an eye. It didn’t last long, just some yelling then a crack that sent him sprawling before the shadows disappeared. His eye flew across the alley like he’d spit out a jawbreaker.

Captain Rick knocked over trashcans looking for it until Crash threw a beer bottle at him. When Captain Rick began to sob Crash burst outside and kicked him like a dog. “I’ll give you something to whine about.”

When I heard Crash stumble down the hall, I crawled back into bed and pretended to sleep. He stood swaying in my doorway, watching his little cat he always told Darlene. Then their bedroom door slammed shut and I knew I could sleep.

I heard Captain Rick back in the alley the next morning but I’d gotten out there first. I’d found his eye near the storm drain, resting against a needle and a balloon I wasn’t supposed to touch. It felt cold and hard inside the pocket of my dress.

I was eating a baloney sandwich in the kitchen when Crash woke up. He opened the fridge for a beer.

“Captain Rick lost another eye last night,” Darlene said.

I asked Darlene what would happen to him now.

“The VA will give him a new one just like last time.”

“Maybe he’ll get a blue one this time,” Crash laughed. “Then he could pass for a husky.”

I laughed, too. Captain Rick reminded everyone of a mangy dog no one wanted to be around.

Darlene didn’t laugh. She liked to talk to Captain Rick on our way to school each morning. He was almost nice when he remembered to take his pills. Crash said he’d lost his eye in the war along with half his mind from killing so many people. Darlene said he only killed the evil ones.

The glass eye didn’t match his real one. The brown was darker and the white brighter, like his real one had faded in the sun. Crash said that’s what the desert does. And it never pointed exactly where his other eye was looking. It followed me even when I hid behind Darlene.

That eye was clearer, too. Like it saw all the mean thoughts inside my head and made me not want to think them. Like the eye of God, Father William said.

We stopped going to church when I told Father William that Crash kept a box of teeth under his bed. I got a quarter for each of mine. I wondered how much Crash had gotten but none of his were missing. Crash hit me when he found out I’d told. Darlene got mad.

“Little cats need to learn that curiosity can kill,” he said.

“Crash, she’s just a little girl.”

“Not so little anymore." He'd looked at me funny.

Now, Crash had that same look in his eye. I sank down in my chair and drank my milk. He tickled Darlene’s ribs instead, his fingers creeping higher like they always did. She giggled and swatted away his hands just like me.

That night, I set Captain Rick’s eye on a bottle cap between the paws of Mr. Whiskers. Crash had won him the first Sunday we went to the boardwalk instead of church. Darlene wouldn’t let me have a real cat.

Captain Rick’s eye watches over me now where it can see and not be seen. Maybe it will keep the mean thoughts out of Crash’s head on the nights he stands outside my door so I can finally sleep again.

© 2013 Edward P. Morgan III

This Is a Non-Secure Line

555-1212. Field office red phone. Please leave your designation, agency and condition code after the tone and we will contact you as soon as possible. This is a non-secure line.

You have seven new messages.

*beep*

“I don't know which one of us is leaving this message. I hear your voice and it sounds familiar, but he has become adept at guessing my innermost thoughts. I found this number in my pocket. I didn't know who else to call. Help me before he finds me again.”

Monday, 11:24 p.m. You have six new messages.

…

*beep*

“I change hotels thinking he won’t find me but each night he does. He beats me until I can no longer tell good from bad, cause from effect. I know from the bruises I wake up with each morning. I don’t know where he takes me but I think I've never left that place. He must be tracking our communications. I won’t use this phone again.”

Tuesday, 11:45 p.m. You have five new messages.

…

*beep*

“My memory has become fragmented beyond my age. I suspect he slips something into my drink at night. Each morning I wake up groggy and disoriented. I constantly flash back to random events I’d forgotten or images of a life I never lived. I don’t have much time. I need you to re-establish the protocol.”

Wednesday, 4:58. a.m. You have four new messages.

…

*beep*

“Why are you ignoring my messages? I wouldn't risk calling if I weren't desperate. Or maybe I would. Like a moth with a flame, I am drawn by the echo of his words inside my head like an instinct turned deadly wrong. Only you can tell me why.”

Thursday, 4:16 a.m. You have three new messages.

…

*beep*

“I know what you’re doing now. Why did you have him tell me? Was it revenge? Or was he trying to warn me of the damage he’d seen your memories create inside my head? Today, I can’t cleanse my mind of either violence. I refuse to be your pawn.”

  

Friday, 8:23 a.m. You have two new messages.

…

*beep*

“He didn't come to me last night. My mind is clear. I finally remember. In the interrogation room, I saw the shadow of someone watching us. You allowed me to graduate into ignorance, remaining silent until he spoke in anger. Even then, you chose your words to set everything in motion. You won’t use me to betray him. Don’t contact me again.”

Saturday, 1:44 p.m. You have one new message.

…

*beep*

“This will be my final message. I refuse to play your game any longer. He found me again last night. This time I was waiting for him. He confirmed you were in the debriefing that day. I know you've heard the messages. He played me the recording. I still don’t know how my voice ended up on your machine. But if you betray me again, I’ll…”

*crash* *smash* *scuffle*

“Quick, get him in the restraints.”

*thump* *thump* *thump*

“Hold him still. I don’t want to break the needle.”

*rustle* *rustle* *mmrph*

“Ok, that should keep him quiet. Throw the equipment on the gurney. We’ll wheel him out through the lobby. Let’s move people before someone calls the cops. You, hang up that phone.”

*step* *step* *step*

“Young, Karl G., Rendition. All clear. Subject is in custody. En route to main facility for debriefing and psychiatric evaluation. Terminate this extension and erase all messages. We’ll pick up his partner next.”

Sunday, 4:05 a.m.

End of messages.

Text © 2013 Edward P. Morgan III

Photo © 2013 Tim Fritz
     see more at Tim Fritz Photography

Peacekeeper

"Peacekeeper" - a reading (on YouTube)


She closed the book, placed it on the table, and finally, decided to walk through the door. Her die to cast. Her Rubicon.

Her fingers tarried on the lavender silk scarf draped beside the book, her only decision left to make. The scarf was a memento from her final mission abroad, keeping the peace after someone else’s war.

Her mother would say she was throwing away a perfect career. Her father, were he still speaking, would say it was no career at all, just a rest stop on the journey to her ultimate destination of nurturing her children’s destinies.

The book had been her guide, her field manual with all its rules and regulations. The Book of Life in which she had once thought all her scribed deeds would serve as the counterweight that would open the gates of heaven. Now, that life with all its discipline and order was being erased one page at a time as popular protests had transformed into an uprising on their way to revolution.

If she walked out that door and gave the order, hers would become a Book of the Dead, no longer filled with rigid formulae but imprecise incantations that she hoped might shepherd the dying martyrs back into the light. First, she would have to share their darkness and pray she didn’t join them on their odyssey through the underworld, a world lit only by fire with the screams of innocents serving as its siren song. Theirs was a code that demanded eye for eye, limb for limb. A redemption of blood.

Her men awaited her decision. Would they follow a woman into the chaos? Her second said they would if she gave the order. If so, there would be no turning back. If not, there might be nothing to turn back to. The embassies were burning, the airport had been seized, the institutions of a crumbling government served as the strong points to oppress the streets.

Her loyalty lay in question only with the generals, the cabal, the junta. She had sworn an oath to an ideal not an individual. Better to die in the square performing her duty, she told herself, than cowering here obeying lawful yet immoral orders. This is not Srebrenica. We are not the Dutch.

She turned to the window. Deep in the rugged hills she had once called her home, spring had unfurled its multicolored banner. In the city, trees lined the ancient processional, standing at attention in their bright dress uniforms of yellow-green. Golden allamanda trumpeted their victory over the tyranny of winter. With fireworks of pink and red, the azalea celebrated the lifting of the long, dark siege of night. In the public gardens, stately roses stood sentinel by the monuments, festooned with lavender blossoms that had come to symbolize her people’s struggle. Early on, those blooms had adorned the soldiers’ rifles in the square. Now, their petals fell like velvet tears as they daily mourned the martyrs’ graves.

At home, she was the peacekeeper, the one who kept her father and mother, her father and brother from open conflict. Her father remembered only their people’s victories, a golden age when few dared oppose their might. She had witnessed the ambiguities of war. Here, there would be no peacekeepers, no foreign intervention. The only peace would be one forged within.

Slowly, she wound the scarf around her sleeve, knotting the silk as tight as a tourniquet, its color reflecting her decision. Quietly, she closed the door behind her, shutting the book out of sight even as she began issuing her orders.

© 2012 Edward P. Morgan III