More 100 Themes - 61-65

61. Bugs

Whether this was heaven or hell or purgatory or any level plain in between, the insects were real. The grasshoppers chafed in the grass, flies and butterflies flew up in clouds when she walked, mosquitoes sometimes buzzed high-pitched and menacing near her ear. When they bit her she knew they were real. Pain was real here, and the air tasted real, and the earth felt as if it went down for yards below her until it hit rock. This was real. It had to be. There were no aeroplane trails and no fences and no roads marked out by thick tyres. There were only the few wagon trails and her, and Ed, and Amriel. It was outside of her experience, but it was real.

62. Effort

Climbing out of the machine he always felt as if he were coming back to life. His arms and his legs and his spine felt wooden with the cold that had driven into him. He flexed his fingers with effort, moving across the concrete strip in slow, stiff steps. After a few yards things loosened. The blood began to flow again, warmth began to creep back into his face and feet, he began to smile and to talk loud and lightly about the flight, laughing at things that should make men cry.

63. Bandaid

'Darn!'

She knew that another man would have sworn more forcefully, but he never swore. She ran out of the house to see him standing there, clutching a hand to his upper arm with blood seeping into his shirt behind the cover of his fingers.

'Branch just bounced back up and hit me,' he said through gritted teeth, slowly pulling his fingers away.

'Well, this is real enough that you can bleed,' she said, lifting the torn flap of sleeve delicately to see the oozing cut beneath. 'I don't think it's so bad. I wish we had plasters…'

He angled his neck to inspect it himself, and shook his head. 'I don't need a band aid, honey,' he said – and then seemed to catch himself at using that term of endearment. 'No, it'll stop on its own,' he assured her. 'You go back inside. I'll carry on chopping.'

But she stood there for a while, just watching him raise the axe and bring it down with a swing on the wood. It was like watching music.


64. WRYYYY (I have no idea… apparently it's some kind of anime warcry or something…)

Sometimes he wanted to shout as he shot, just to pour something of himself out with the bullets that were spitting forth like hail. No one would hear him, he was sure, over the constant drone of the engines and the sounds of his gun and other guns firing almost constantly. But he didn't shout. He bit his chilled lip into his mouth and hung on to the gun and felt its vibration run up the bones of his arms to his shoulders as it spat metal into the air. He let the vibration ease the thought out of his mind until he was nothing but an extension of that gun, nothing but the impetus that squeezed the trigger and swung it round after the circling sharks that were trying to bring them down. And sometimes he caught them, or someone caught them, ripping their sleek bellies with a streak of holes, and he watched them tumble from the sky.

65. Imaginary

She wondered what was real in this unreal place. It was far less unreal to him, she was sure. For all his protestations that he had grown up in a city and knew no more about the open prairie than she, a few of the plants were familiar, and a few of the birds were familiar, and the wide sky and the flat land were familiar to him. To her it was beyond imagination. To him it was just a few miles beyond the city limits. He had driven through this kind of territory. He had holidayed in it and visited relatives in it. For all she puzzled at who he was and how she knew him, she was glad he was here. He knew about the garter snakes and the spiders and how safe they were. She watched him, and she wondered, but still she clung to him as her only guide.