VEIN INTO DARK

Sword and hockey helmet, Lot’s ready to go. His arms swing down from the Sun and slice through the razor wire. He sheathes, bends, sighs, and lifts the heavy log to his waist. He wraps his hairy arms around the hot bark. With one ram, he breaks through the barrier to the cave. 

“Doh! A guard!” Lot squeals at the tiny knife hole in his side. “Ah-ha! Another one!”  With a battle grin, Lot prances, cheerfully swatting at the two sentinels with his sword. He decapitates what’s left and steps over the bodies. “Peeee-youuu…” he whale calls into the cave. “Peee-youu darling I knoww you’re inn there.”

Two better guards rise from the dark. Their advance is as wide as the rock around them, their swords as big and sharp as Lot’s. One head rolls. “Peeee-youuu.” A second. “Peeyou honey, I’m going to come in, umkay?”

*  

Ahead in the cave comes a bend, a last foyer of direct light. New sentinels step out into this. Style shining from their armor, they take glamorous positions. There are three this time. Two slice air with swords. Between them, the third prepares a crossbow. 

Lot sees this in the light. When the arrow is released, he has brought an edge of his sword up to his kissing lips, the blade against his forehead and face marking the cerebral symmetry of his campus collosum. The arrowhead shatters, the shaft splits into halves that shoot past his ears. 

The swordsmen frenzy their slicing cloud and pull together in front of the reloading crossbow. Lot kills one immediately. The prettiest one. The swordsman with a fashion sense that made Lot self-conscious of his own. Lot ripped the heavy arrow off the reloading crossbow and rammed its tip up through the man’s chin. Up through the center of his tongue and out through a hole between his eyebrows. Lot hands this swordsman on a stick to the bowman. “Peee-youuu… Peeyoupie, how about you come out here into the light, instead? Wouldn’t that be better?”

Lot waits. Sighs. He doesn’t kill the other two. With three swings, he takes all of their feet. “Guess I’m going to have to come in and find you, huh?”

*

“Ah, I see,” says Lot in the dark. “When I move that gives you a chance to move. I can’t hear your steps when I got my own under me, is that it? That it, Peeyps?” Lot laughs. “Not so fair, you know. Not so fair me not knowing the way around the cave. Being pitch black and all.” Lot softly side-steps, sensing the rocks around him with his sword. At times his sword scrapes. “Though maybe ‘pitch black’ isn’t what I should be calling it yet. Is it, Peeypee?” At times his helmet scrapes. “Maybe I should just skip right on up there to you and get all of this done while I’m still able to follow your shadows on the walls. What do you think?”

*

“Where are you taking us, Sunshine? I don’t know where you think you’re running to, but we both know it’s a dead end. A dead end, honey.” Scrape. “And the darker it gets, the less of my good mood is left.” Scrape. 

 “But don’t you—” a rock above brings a hollow thud against Lot’s hockey helmet. And then a scrape. “---don’t you worry. Don’t you worry, honey. I’m not going to hurt you.” Sword scrape. “Of course when I finally feel something soft…” He laughs. “…I’m probably going to have to poke it to hold it still.” 

*

“See, light…light’s only relative to dark. That’s what I’m guessing.” Lot rakes his sword against granite, sometimes leaning his face over to better see the sparks. He laughs. “I know, I know. They still don’t look like much.”  He rakes further. “Not yet. But if you keep leading us away from the light, into the dark, away from the light Peeyps…see honey I figure there’s got to come a point where it’s so dark these little sparks light you up like they’re Christmas candles.” 

*

“But you know what? You know what, Madame Smarty Pants?” The vein has been narrowing as it sinks into the hot mountain. Lot is on hands and knees, shirt off. “I can hear. I can hear you. How do you think I’ve been following you?” Lot wipes his face with the shirt on his neck. 

“You know how? Watch; I’ll show you, watch. When I do a little dog sprint…like this…” Lot sprints. Suddenly stops. Listens. “Hear that?” He Laughs. “That’s you up ahead.” His sword and helmet scrape. “Didn’t quite stop in time, did you?” He sprints forward on fours again. Stops again. Listens. Sprints again. “I’m gaining on you, Peeyou dear.”

*

Lot’s lips are parched. “You know…you know we talked earlier about what made sense. In any of all of this me crawling around underground after you, I mean.” His shirt, now tied around a wrist, wipes the sweat from his face. “Of course none of us really know, none of us really know how long we have. To romp around under the sun of god.” Scrape. “Before we sink forever into a black grave.” Scrape. “But honey why are we spending what god gave us in the dark? This is our sunshine time, Peeyou.”   

*

Lot stops. Listens. Speaks: “I understand I didn’t do right back there. Back there in that prego part, where the cave was big for a while, maybe I shouldn’t have jumped in swinging my sword around at everything like I did.” He stops. Listens. Speaks: “But you’re anyway just delaying the inevitable. Delaying the inevitable, my sweets. And what you’ve done by now is make me absolutely sure I got to get to you.” He laughs. “Because how else am I going to find my way out of here?” He laughs again, sprints forward on his fours. Stops. Listens. “That’s why I got to keep gaining on you.”

*

Lot sighs. “Really didn’t figure this is how it’d end. Didn’t figure this at all. Didn’t need to be this way.” He runs a finger over the blade of his sword. He brings the blood up to his lips and tongue. “All I wanted to do…all I wanted to do, Peeyou…all I wanted to do was talk.”

*

Lot holds the shirt of his wrist against his face. “I’m going to have to go soon.” He coughs on the rock on which he lies. “I’m going to go soon.” He coughs again. “But tell me this. Please. Just this. Before I go. To the darkest place. Peeyou honey, how long have I been following the sounds of the bats I stirred up, while I thought I was following you?”