Heart Shaped Things and Contours of Flame

“It’ll be nice to get that beer huh?”

My mechanic asked as he reached out grabbing the flashlight I’d been holding beneath my chin, I squinted when he pointed the light in my eyes softly laughing.

I wondered why so many people thought such a thing funny as I reoriented the final piece my uniform – the piece was my patrol cap, which wasn’t authorized to be worn backwards beneath the helmet but…. Meh. I slapped my ACH over it just the same. It was the weekend of the Fourth of July in the States and if we managed to make it back to Camp Echo, we’d apparently get a beer or two.

I liked my mechanic, he was a simple kind of man, slow on the get and a little too quick on the go but being on the right side of his fist made you quite formidable. 

This is what we get excited about out here, a cold beer maybe two, in the middle of nowhere but somewhere near where they say civilization began. Where was here?  Not sure, middle of nowhere Iraq? I lost track of time and our location a few times, those were things you left stateside anyway. They were things you might make it back to someday, like shower water that didn’t reek of chlorine, and good ole’ fly free food.

We had been standing in front of our truck for over an hour and when the cold whipped over the desert, I thanked myself for adding all those layers beneath my gear. The plan originally had been to pick up a load and get to the next base quickly, but thanks to a few issues with our infantry unit escorts and our own tractor complications, myself, my mechanic buddy, and another soldier who rode with us had been temporarily forgotten about while the everyone else had shifted to the other side of this makeshift camp. I say camp but that is even a stretch, because it was only marked by three ‘porta-johns’ and a single military ‘connex’. 

There was something different about the night out here in the middle of the desert. Heck, knowing my hand was in front of my face was not enough. There was no moon this night and the light that the stars emitted did nothing to aid the sight. It was the kind of darkness that swallowed the light. I mean the kind that even the headlights of the truck looked like thin laser beams barley illuminating what they could directly touch. They seemed… well, meek really.

“Can you believe what they’re doing?”

My mechanic buddy ever vigilant causing the breath to catch in my throat.

Be still my heart, it pittered, pattered and… waited a long pause before it resumed its normal rhythm. Huh, I noted the difference and realized, if literally everything out here, didn’t make you nervous, you just weren’t right.

After a moment I looked toward what he had indicated. Where, maybe three hundred yards away some truck headlights were trained on a crowd of soldiers who stood in front of what looked to be a tractor and loaded trailer stuck in the sand pretty deep. Though these trucks were designed with swift vehicle recovery in mind, these soldiers thought it wise to wrap an 'anaconda' chain, designed to recover tanks, around the front bumper of the tractor. This was just before a line of about twenty soldiers; with Platoon Sergeants observing and likely instigating this nonsense, proceeded to pick up this massive chain. From a distance you could see the lot of them back to chest as they heaved forward– and froze. The sound of metal creaking and cracking seeped through the desert toward us just before we saw the front bumper snap and the entire line slump forward.

"HA!"

Luckily, I had only begun to lift my drink to my mouth resulting in minimal loss when I spewed the liquid out ahead of me. I couldn't help myself from giving away our position as my laugh carried it's way to the ears of my NCO's who were roaring with laughter themselves.

These guys really thought they would pull over two hundred thousand pounds out of the sand? Why wouldn't they unload the tank from the trailer first? ...And wait? What is the myth behind the pyramids again?

My heart shuddered suddenly and I stopped laughing. I sought the origin of this distant but increasingly piercing hallow sound engulfing the area. I looked back to the entire row of soldiers and reached out about to yell as a gush of wind and something too bright and too fast for me to define, dropped like a heavy rock at the center of crowd.

When the solid wall of heat slammed against my body so completely it took my mind longer than it took my body to land, to register that, yea, that? That was a bomb.

I did feel my body and my head connect with the ground, more like I felt flattened though, or as if I were squished like cheese between two hot patties. My limbs leaked around the flak vest and the steel plates inside that kept my chest and back supported from whatever I had landed on. Thankfully the force threw my helmet over my eyes, as many tiny hot shards slashed at my face. Again my brain took to long searching for an answer to the pain as the darkness closed around me. How did they make glass again?

When light blasts you out of complete darkness and fades just as suddenly, the brain's synapses runs a bit haywire, lights flicker behind your eyes and things don’t quite compute the way they usually would. At least that is my explanation for the fact that I could see and feel my body lying in the desert, as well as I could see and feel a version of myself standing outside and looking down at my body. Experiencing what I have come to consider ‘now’ in our dimension, and ‘now’ in the spirit dimension; this other realm that is right beside ours yet invisible to the human eye.

Something tugged at the edges of my spirit self, suddenly pulling me alongside a man walking in a suburban neighborhood. I still could see myself in the desert too, where explosions continued, and people scrambled this way and that. I felt content following this other self, due to my physical body laying beneath and behind several massive pieces of shrapnel. I was certain I was still alive as these fascinating contours of dim swirling lights surrounded my present body. I concluded that this must be what spiritual people referred to as an aura, and scientists called a biofield. Another tug at the other me to pay mind to this strange and yet oddly familiar man. Somehow I began to know things that were not mine to know and I could hear his thoughts as if they were mine and I cringed at the feel of his energy, sticky like tar, and just as dark.

-

The air was humid, it was always humid in this city. Hot and humid, or wet and rainy. If things were his way he’d pack up and head north to some old, small town he could disappear in. Somewhere with winter year-round, somewhere far removed from this hot and humid version of fall. Though it was hot, the one thing he did enjoy was how his sweat mixed with the stench of the woman he had the night before.

When he walked into the pool party that sunny afternoon, no one knew him really, but he knew many of the guests and he figured he would get his one way or another.

-

As I watched the man walking toward a vaguely familiar house, the sound of something like fire crackling on wet wood caught my attention drawing my gaze down to the animal trap sized hole opening up before me. I stopped just before the edge and was briefly distracted by the man who moved closer toward what I began to remember as the gate that led to my family’s backyard.

As he neared the gate the scenery began to change rapidly, once healthy trees and plants withered and died as he passed them by. It was as if his energy was some invisible force that sapped the life and love from around him. I searched for answers to questions I had never asked just as the image began to crisp and flake, disappearing like ash would from a fire, into the grey of the spirit world.

It was then I looked back at the hole which was suddenly too close. I jerked back and away, hearing the sound again like crackling and popping of wet fire wood. Almost without thinking I leaned too far forward again, this time scattering rocks and dirt into the hole. When I did not hear them hit a floor, I knew there was no end to its depth.

A nervousness grew in my stomach as a tightness formed in my throat. I waited a moment longer breathing slow and shallow, listening and leering into the hole. It was then I saw a small flicker of light and heard the crackles again, like flames, just before the light shot up toward me like a flash. In an instant I saw there was in fact a fire, a heartbeat passed, and then another as stared into the depths waiting. In the blink of an eye I could see the thing clearly then. An outline of fierce, fiery eyes and lips parted slightly with a permanent sneer that encompassed the entire circumference of the pit. I marveled at how the flames creating the contours acted as if each had their own fuel source, rising and moving like the snakes of Medusas head.

As we looked at each over, I realized this was the only way that the spiritual could convey a question – of sorts. 

The spirit world was grey, and though I had not heard any distinct sounds aside from fire, when Reba’s voice touched my ears it tugged me away from the pit and back to that day that man entered my backyard.

“She handed me a heart-shaped locket that said, ‘To thine own self be true.’”

We had a pool that was ten feet deep, and all the kids lined up at the diving board to jump off. When a man opted to throw some kids in no one seemed to notice him. The music was loud and there were many, many people. As he smiled at the nine year old version of me, I noticed everything about him felt wrong as he waved me over to him, beckoning me closer. No one saw me shake my head, cross my arms in front of my tiny chest and back away. 

Too fast for me to move, he swooped me up and put his big hand beneath my bum. I felt a burning pain as things slide against and inside me. When I wiggled to get away, he kind of grunted walking to the edge of the board with his other hand gripping my thigh, holding me in place. I hit his hand and screamed just as he threw me nearly into the shallow end.

When climbing from the pool, I noticed a few other kids adjusting their clothes and walking to their parents with their heads down. I didn’t understand what I had felt or what I had seen. Within minutes though I went inside the house found a dark room and curled on the floor. A few people heard me crying and checked my temperature. When they brought my mother into the room I was rushed to the hospital because I had suddenly, and mysteriously spiked a fever over one hundred and four.

It was then the cold of the desert seeped into my bones and brought me back to… reality? I pondered this as being reality as I felt my vest pushing against my chin and a hot hand slide against my lower abdomen. The energy radiating around and against me at first was confusing. This wasn’t my light body, the other me. What was this? Then hot breath touched my neck, and I could smell the stench of chewing tobacco as he pushed inside me. I opened my eyes just before lifting the very real barrel of my pistol to the side of what appeared to be a head. 

“H- I thought you were… Hey, don’t, ok?”

When my finger instinctively reached for the trigger, instantly found myself, the other version of myself looking down again at the mouth of that pit. 

The fiery eyed creature looked pleased as its mouth formed into the shape of a laugh. The sound was not heard but felt, like a vibration deep in the marrow in my bones. 

A roach distracted me from the creature and as it scattered across my boot and down into the depth, I did an about face and walked away from that pit.

When I looked up again, pistol in hand, both versions of me noticed my mechanic buddy and his beautiful energy approaching. 

“They say nukes hit the states babe. Uhh... What the? No, just no." 

As he leaned down, I felt him push the pistol away just before I heard a sharp crack and felt the sudden increase in weight atop me. I exhaled and watched breathless as the man's dark aura seeped out of his body and down into that hole.

If my mechanic saw any of this, he never said. I felt him shove as I heaved what was left of the man to the side. My cheeks become wet with tears when my mechanic yanked me to my feet, straightened out my uniform and put his shoulder underneath my arm half carrying me toward a few Humvees and the rising sun.

“Interested in that beer...? We got a ride.”