#strangeground

Fragile Bonds:

Former Republic of Congo, Africa- 2087

Blood covered her from the forearms down and stained the front of her cotton sundress; the fabric was soaked through with gore, turning it from a spring green to a sickening coppery brown. She’d been working on victims for hours, it seemed; stitching and cutting and wrapping as quickly as she could. Her medical knowledge was limited, just a CPR certificate and basic first-aid training under her belt, but she made the best of what she had and plowed on forward.

A baby screamed.

It had been days since the last bombing campaign. Or was it weeks? She couldn’t tell; it’d been so long since she’d seen the sun. The windows were boarded up against the tremors of explosions and return fire; the backup generators were timed to kick on at night so she worked by weak candle light during the murky days, alongside the other volunteers who stayed behind to save the citizens of Pax Vallus.

Someone shouted for more water.

The man she worked on, in his elder years, cried out pitifully when her needle pierced his flesh. But she couldn’t stop. If she didn’t suture him quickly, he’d bleed to death right there on the tile. And she’d seen too much of death in her short life.

A fight broke out in the back of the OR.

Her job was done; there was little else she could do for him now. The gauze she wound around the stitching would protect against infection for a time. And then she moved on; she didn’t dare look back.

The noise of the sick and injured rang through the small one story hospital, reverberating off of the slate walls and pushing further in on her mind, drawing the walk to the nurse’s station out longer than usual. She had to take care to not accidentally step on the bodies laying shoulder to shoulder in the halls, all of them moaning and grabbing and begging for her.

A young woman, probably around her age, clutched onto the hem of her dress as she passed. She looked up at her with horrible blue eyes, eyes yellowing with infection, and asked for her baby. The crude stitches keeping her leg attached to her hip oozed through the stiff hospital gown loosely covering her.

With little effort, she pressed forward, pulling free of the woman’s grasp. There was nothing she could do. The baby was most likely dead by now, and she’d had enough of death.

The lights flickered on.

Rotting bodies covered by sheets blocked the entrance to the garden, so she detoured to the lobby, made into temporary lodgings for volunteers and defenders who risked their lives to keep marauders from their supply stores. It was crowded, like every other inch of the hospital, with people sleeping wherever they seemed to fall.

A stack of clean clothes sat on the floor in the center of the room. She grabbed another dress from it, changed where she stood, and took a look around. Because of the bombings, she’d taken to sleeping in corners of the room where the most cover was. But it seemed all the corners were taken. She frowned.

“There’s room over here.”

Two men were leaned up against one another beside the receptionist’s desk to her right. There was just enough space for her between them. Without question, she walked over and managed a small smile.

“Thank you.”

The two helped her kneel. She settled in, looking up at the men, and struck her hand out.

“Carter.”

The man to her right shook her hand first.

“Pickering.”

Then the man to her left.

“Taki.”

Their fragile bond, a simple exchange of last names, was a comfort; it separated them from the victims, it separated them from the dying. It meant they were safe with each other until the next bombing campaign.

Then they’d be nameless again; possibly injured, possibly dead.

She’d be alone in the morning, wandering the hall of the victims, to sort through the slaughter. But not now.

On the Floor, in the Corner :

American Northeast- 1973

Delicate fingers brushed along the padded walls of his room and small bare feet stepped feather light across the floor.

He watched the young woman wander around the cell; walking along the walls until she reached a handle-less door and rose to her tiptoes to peer curiously out of the window into the hallway.

“No color at all.” She complained, a little frown marking her brow. “It's even more boring than the last place...”

He could hear her disapproval and fidgeted from where he sat on the floor, in one of the corners; his long legs splayed in front of him. He had never handled her disappointment well, an issue that worsened after his short termed 'stay' overseas.

They told him war wasn't for everyone, as if that would fix everything that had gone wrong.

“The food's a little better here, at least.” He mused back, pressing further into the corner. It was the only place he truly felt safe. Back in Nam, the corner furthest from the door was his only friend. No one could catch you from behind and you could see every inch of the room clearly. Safe.

She rocked back onto her heels, hands clasped behind her, and slowly turned around to face him; all long black hair, wide amber eyes, and graceful features. Beautiful was too lame a word but it was all he could come up with. She had these hands that fit perfectly in his larger ones; had fit perfectly...had always fit perfectly...

He was glad she could not see his hands now; he knew she wouldn't approve of the fading wounds or the fresh burns pocking the skin. The blood just wouldn't come off, no matter how hard he scrubbed or how hot the water ran. He even tried boiling it first but no, the blood was as red as ever.

But he wouldn't think of that, not now. He would content himself with watching her.

She wore that blue silk dress he liked so much, the one with the black sash that tied around her middle. It hung off her slight frame just the way it should. No other woman could wear a dress like she could. She was just so, damn, beautiful! He wished he could hold her again, but the jacket made things difficult...

The jingle of keys and the clack of approaching steps interrupted his thought. The Beautiful Woman in Blue sidestepped carefully as the door swung open and two others entered from the hallway.

The Doctor, a thin man in a long white coat, flipped absently through a stapled stack of papers in his hands. He stood tall in his Italian leather shoes and his smart glasses and didn't bother looking up when he finally spoke.

“Samuel Jensen, Patient 12G, a paranoid schizophrenic with Obsessive Compulsive traits; convicted of murder last summer-”

“It wasn't murder.” The Beautiful Woman in Blue growled from behind them. She went ignored.

“-and transferred here on request of the deceased's surviving family October 1st. Former private in the US Army 1966; shipped home after three years in 'Nam'.” The Doctor finished, handing the papers to his companion.

She was tall for a woman; early 30's, homely, green eyes, and blonde hair piled on her head. Her hands looked clumsy; a few faint scars marked her knuckles, most likely from careless handling of a kitchen knife.

He didn't like that; clumsy hands noted a sloppiness which invited accidents.

He had clumsy hands sometimes...

The Blonde stepped further into the room. She gave a smile and nodded to Patient 12G in the corner on the floor.

“Hi, Sam. I'm Addison....I'll be your case worker here at Lily of Fire.”

St. Dymphna, the Lily of Fire, a more obscure Catholic saint born and buried in the seventh century. The 'holy virgin' martyred for her beauty at the hands of her father. He'd heard the story from a passing chaplain outside of Hue.

Patron saint of the mentally afflicted...

He stared past her to the Beautiful Woman in Blue. Her own eyes were fixed on the Blonde.

“ Sam.” She snapped moodily. Her amber eyes arrested him with their intensity. He swore the Blonde would catch on fire any minute now. “His name is Sam, not Samuel, Cow.”

When the man on the floor in the corner failed to respond, Addison stepped back to The Doctor's side.

“That's alright, Ms. Cain, you'll get a chance to talk with him during Session tomorrow.” The Doctor supplied.

Cain? What a horrible name. What a plain woman with a horrible name.

The man on the floor in the corner felt a small something pull at the corner of his mind.

He felt his hands getting clumsy...

The Doctor gestured at the door, still open to the hallway.

“I'll walk you to the Nurse's Station, 'Addy'.”

The Beautiful Woman in Blue watched them go with eyes full of hate. When the handle-less door swung shut and the jiggle of keys and the clacking of steps grew further and further away, the man on the floor in the corner relaxed.

“It wasn't murder.” She continued to defend, though most of the fight had left her voice. She pushed off from the wall she leaned against and crossed the room to kneel between his spread legs, facing him. Her amber eyes looked dim in the poor light shining through the window to the hallway and her delicate little fingers were cold against his face. “I never thought it was murder, not once, you understand? They can move you wherever they like...I'll never leave you alone.”

~*~

The Night Nurse made her rounds, adding check marks beside the names on her list when she looked through the windows of the doors lining the hallway. She came to Room 27; Patient #12G, Samuel Jensen and peered through the window of his door.

He sat in the far corner of the isolation cell, long legs splayed in front of him, head bowed but eyes looking up into the beyond. Room secure; the door was bolted. She checked his name and made to move on...

“I love you, Kitten.”

The Night Nurse paused. Was that him? This was the first time she'd heard him speak...huh, she'd have to tell the other girls about it. She took three steps forward before a sound, muffled and cold as death, croaked from the other side of his bolted door. Her blood turned to ice in her veins.

The Gravedigger's Son:

Verdun, France-1916

He worked by lantern light; striking the tip of his shovel downward and throwing scoopful after scoopful of bloodied soil over his shoulder in the dark and the quiet.

Despite the cold, sweat poured down his face and soaked through his thin shirt and into the lining of his heavy coat. Splinters from the long wooden handle bit into his calloused fingers through the threadbare gloves he wore.

A poor man's brazier, an old coffee can and lid with a short bit of iron pole forced through one side for a crude handle, sat on the hard ground beside the hole he dug. A scant layer of snow settled over the landscape; the last breath of winter pushing spring back another few weeks to punctuate the misery of the battle.

This wasn't his fight. He was brought to the battlefield only to shovel as his father had before old age took the dexterity and strength of his large hands. He was a gravedigger, his father had been a gravedigger, and his father before him and so on and so forth.

He didn't particularly believe in any sort of religion, but his father was a devout Catholic. He'd never known his mother. Well, he hadn't met her; he would sit on a bench his father had built beside her grave as a child and watch the flowers that grew around her headstone dance in the breeze while his father kept the grounds. Day in and day out, he would watch the headstone; go to school, come home and watch the headstone...wash up for supper, eat, clear the table, come out and watch the headstone...

And as he dug deeper into the earth, he wondered if his father had felt any kind of particular way while digging her grave as he dug graves for nameless soldiers in the bizarre, early, March snow.

It wasn't enjoyable but it wasn't terrible either. He found a sort of peace working with the silence of the bodies piled nearby and the pulsing light of the lantern. The dead didn't judge; they didn't demand or fight. They only sagged tiredly into their resting place and swallowed the soil he pushed back on top of them.

He recognized the necessity of Life, but it was loud and messy and confusing. Death was clean and final, quiet.

The ceasefire would end soon, and Life would get noisy again until they'd go silent.

Strange Ground:

The American South- 1859

She held his face in her leathery hands and studied him with her failing eyes.

Massa’d said he would have been ready for breed’n come fall, but he was far from Manhood yet.

Her boy woke that Saturday morning and took to working the fields and yard-barn; his hands rough and his back broad like his Daddy’s. She’d only met his Daddy once when they bred; but she remembered the great span of his shoulders beneath her clutching fingers that night in the shed.

Early the following year J was born; named after his place in the White Man’s alphabet. He was her first to survive infancy. A, F, and I had been failed breeding; the rest were Massa’s and so they took them from her to be killed or sold off down the road.

This was her son, the only child she’d ever known.

J had left their cabin with the first rays of sunrise and came home on the shoulder of fellow slaves the same day; dead before supper.

They said the fall from the barn ladder had been an accident; the Foreman was the only one who had said anything. The others were silent as graves themselves; kicking lamely at the dirt and clay she now knelt in, holding her boy in the tepid night as a simple hole was dug.

The funeral began just after sunset on Holy Sunday; a processional of slaves from surrounding plantations marched from the cabins to one outlying patch of trees and scrub-shrubs where their ancestors watched down from Heaven.

The glow of torches softened the harsh features of their faces; the rich and varied browns of their skin bleeding back into the soil where they prepared to lay her boy for good.

Massa and the Foreman stood by, rightly keeping their distance from the makeshift graveyard; their pearl skin an ugly glare in the moonlight. They had no power or control over the small plot and they knew it. This was familiar ground to the slaves, where they’d laid their dead for generations, and White Men had no place there. On familiar ground, the slave was truly free; the loss of life was no less important than any other life and Massa couldn't take that from them.

Though he had tried to send her boy’s body away to strange ground, she’d hear none of it. J’s soul wouldn't become an angered spirit if she could help it.

J had freedom now. He would stay on familiar ground until Glory came.

The grave was ready and so was she.

The mother laid two kisses on each deflating cheek and stood back with creaking knees as they boarded her baby in that box and lowered it into the earth.

An Old Grey began to pray aloud, a Young One sang “Walk With Me, Lawd”, and others screamed and cried and tore at their clothes; none of them having really known her son well but all of them willing to share in her pain.

And though she would feel the terrible pull of separation from him her tears were for the living; left behind to an endless hell.

Each member of the processional gathered close and threw a handful of dirt on top of the rough casket. They also left offerings to mark the finished grave; tin cans, cups, spools of bright thread, shards of colored glass and mirrors, anything they thought was precious.

She placed a small cloth pouch at the head of the grave pointed West, toward home, to show him where to go. A delicate clam shell lay inside the pouch, an heirloom from The Homeland, or so her mother had told her.

“Don’ rize til Glory Day, hear?” She whispered as the others made their way back to the plantation in a dark stream of beating feet. “You’ze home, an’ safe, an I keeps you so.”

The Will of GOD:

Jerusalem, Israel- 1099A.D.

The Will of GOD was undeniable. From as far back as she could remember her parents had drilled that into her very fiber; morning, noon, and night, at prayer five times a day…following the teachings of Muhammad and the commands of Allah would guarantee her a long life full of joy and peace.

Her right leg ached.

She sat at the mouth of her cave and looked out across the span of desert where trails of smoke rose into the sky from within the breached walls of the Holy City.

The warriors from across the sea, wearing robes of white over brilliant suits of woven metal, came and waited outside of the high walls like cobras coiled in the hot sand; biding their time until the moment to strike came.

She knew the city had finally been taken when the food stopped arriving. Every few days, a basket would appear filled with bread and cheese and water and bandages and ointment…

But now there was nothing but smoke and silence.

She rubbed at her oozing stump of a right thigh through the soiled bandages and grimaced.

For years, she lived a life worthy of heavenly reward; there was no good deed left undone. But, despite her faith and great works by her fellow man…she was cursed with a death slow-coming. A fierce rot set into her flesh and ate away at her body. Day by day, more of her fell away; skin from her arms, a few fingers from her left hand, most of her right leg a piece at a time.

The Will of GOD was supposed to be undeniable; she was supposed to have lived a wonderful life serving Allah in humility and grace…

Her family had turned their backs to her when the sores on her arms began to blossom; her elders had spit and cursed her as she fled to the caves. And now, Jerusalem was gone; her home was burning. She had no way of knowing what became of her people as she died uselessly in exile.

Does Your cruelty know no limit?

This was the Will of GOD? This was their reward for following His commandments?

Never have I strayed from you.

She leaned back to rest against the wall of the cave and continued to watch the smoke rise.

What a miserable joke; I am spared from the annihilation of my people to rot to death in a cave. You have set evil in my flesh and have raised Jerusalem to the ground.

The wind dragged ash across her cheeks. Her eyes lifted to the sky; glossed over with fever and bitter tears for a deity as dead as she would soon be.