Bellum Invictum
ellu m Invictu m
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Article 29
Bellum Invictum
Christopher Miller
Sunshine bathes the green hills in a blinding white. Gray clouds
slightly laden with rain pass overhead providing shade, promising
refreshing rain. As the wind blows gently and the autumn leaves
rustle, a distant alarm mixes with the sigh of the breeze. Yesterday
was much like this. People solemnly picnicked in the park,
watching with desperate earnest the rippling of the water upon
the shore of the pond. People walked about the bright streets,
picking out the most extravagant breads and wines to eat for their
meals. People breathed in the recycled air at the Metro, going to
work with a dazed look on their faces and heightened senses in their
minds. Yesterday was much like today. Except today the park is
empty. No one enjoys the beauty of the dandelions swaying in the
breeze. Why? No one watches the water lap against the mud and
grass shoreline. Why? Not even the squirrels, the birds, the rabbits
are present to regard the beauty of nature man has allowed to
survive. Why? The city is filled with the finest bread and wine, but
nobody buys it. Why? The Metro is filled with masses of huddling
people trying frantically to get, or stay in, a prison-like room with
thick steel doors and high vaulted ceilings. Why? Outside, a distant
alarm mixes with the sigh of the breeze.
The sun beams down upon this city, this pinnacle of man’s
modernity, while the bombs silently fall. They strike everywhere.
Killing in the green park. Why? Killing in the gray streets. Why not?
Killing in the high vaulted room in the Metro. Why not me? They came
and took life like some vengeful gods of war. If I were less civilized
I would worship these fragments of sudden war as my redeemers,
the ones who spared me. I would cast off memories of the Before
and devote my life to the service of the Weapons in the present.
I would shun the ghosts of the past that I see gliding down every
alley. I would be their servant, lone and destitute, but an apostle
nevertheless. But I am too civilized to be swayed by the power of
these gods. I defy them, spit on them lying in the park, in the streets,
in the Metro. I will never bow. I will never give up my ghosts.
I awake.
The room is dark. The darkness pushes me down deeper into
confusion. The room is dark. I can definitely smell something coming
from over there—from the walls. Those rats again. I can’t keep them
out. More rats on this planet than—of course. Hunger grabs my
stomach. Grabs with stony fingers balled into a tight fist. The rats.
They’re so weak, so small. They can see here and I cannot. They are
in control. I am an outsider. I am a pillager. Something...something...
like a Viking, I am here for something. Not their fields—not their
women—water. Thirst is the only thing that distracts me from the
pain of the strong fingers twisting my empty stomach. I need water.
**
I walk to the smog green pool of stagnant water. I regard
my face in the toxic mirror. A rigid face scarred with time and visions
of horror. I peer closer. Past the wrinkled skin, past the radiation
burnt ears. Past the patches of hair clinging to my scalp into the
center of my eyes. Around this window to my soul, the once green iris
is starting to take on yellowish tint like some jaundice. The Sickness.
It is beginning to set. I have averted it (rather, put it off) before.
The crisis nears. I need water.
They cannot live off this. How can I? The rats—they snicker
at me as I fill my canteen. Emerald green eyes of their Assembly
congregate to watch this decline of man. A joy runs through the
crowd. The Emperor declares that the Enemy is in ruins. All
praise is to be directed to the god of war. A holiday is declared.
Two hundred slaves are massacred in glee. They celebrate their
continued existence with death! Barbarians. The room is dark.
I leave quickly. The chants of the masses call for my head as a final
sacrifice to the bloodthirsty, benevolent god that perpetuates their
existence. Their poets sing dreadful dirges. Their craftsmen shape
molten metal into elegant blades. Their politicians spit inciting
rhetoric at the crowd who, waiting with starving ears, crave a reason
to swing a sword with hands grown too idle. The room is dark.
I emerge from Hell through a manhole.
The streets are deserted. Below, the world thrives.
Above, the world dies, and a letter from the emissary says the greedy
Barbarian hordes grow every day at our border. Our?
“What am I saying?”
Our. Our. Mine.
Night falls suddenly over the sky like the last curtain o (...truncated)