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Sep. 26th, 2006 08:29 pmMaladicta remembers things that she won't share with anybody. They have nothing to do with her family and they have nothing to do with the reasons she has difficulty thinking of herself as a woman, whatever the sodding hells that's supposed to be, really. They haven't to do with Uberwald or Borogravia in a more than incidental way, and they haven't to do with the opera or kittens or anything anyone else she knows could relate to, except maybe Ozzer, but not really.
Maladicta remembers a plume of fire lighting the mid-day sky from miles away, the peculiar slick gray sheen of particularly acrid smoke billowing up and up and turning the sky a dirty pinkish color where it touched, like blood and dirt mixing with the water of a stream, fluid and uneasy. She remembers the breeze, hot and smelling of metal, following her as she trudged towards Kneck.
Maladicta remembers sitting swathed in camouflage, watching a dark world that wasn't dark to her, that was illuminated as everything is to vampire eyes, and not being alone. Yes, the girls were there, but so were the boys, all looking about her age, Ozzer's age, seventeen, eighteen, twenty at the most. Some of them had dark brown skin, most of them looked Morporkian, or Borogravian, or really, they could have been from anywhere. They couldn't have been better hidden if they had been vampires themselves; their camouflage was better than Maladicta's. Some of them smoked. They all held long, peculiarly spindly pieces of what looked like dark metal. Not crossbows. Not til the island does Maladicta come to understand that they were guns.
One of them was crying. Nobody else heard it. One of them was jotting something with furious patience on a soggy piece of paper by the light of his cigarette. All of them sat at the base of trees, behind glossy fronds of alien plants. Sometimes they spoke. Maladicta should have been able to hear everyword, but during flashsides, words could come and go.
All of them were waiting for Charlie. Maladicta was waiting, too. They weren't her boys. She wasn't their boy. They weren't anayone's boys, together. They were alone in the forrest or the jungle and they were smelling the acrid pillars of flame that had spewed up into the sky earlier in the day and they were all born to die, every one of them, even the vampire.
And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Maladicta remembers not walking with Shufti and Lofty and Wazzer and Ozzer, Maladicta remembers walking with the boys, one, two, three, wop wop wop and Maladicta remembers when most of them died. Her eyes were going red and her body was aching, and she didn't know if it was the napalm or the change or where she was, but the boys were dying that fast, fast sound of metal pellets shooting out of a vacuum, and the girls would be dying too if Igorina didn't hurry the hell up with that stake, and it's one, two, three, what are we dying for? wop wop wop wop wop and Maladicta remembers looking up and seeing the sky red, bright red with the poisonous cloud of exposion floating in over the jungle, and then Maladicta remembers waking up.
Maladicta remembers a plume of fire lighting the mid-day sky from miles away, the peculiar slick gray sheen of particularly acrid smoke billowing up and up and turning the sky a dirty pinkish color where it touched, like blood and dirt mixing with the water of a stream, fluid and uneasy. She remembers the breeze, hot and smelling of metal, following her as she trudged towards Kneck.
Maladicta remembers sitting swathed in camouflage, watching a dark world that wasn't dark to her, that was illuminated as everything is to vampire eyes, and not being alone. Yes, the girls were there, but so were the boys, all looking about her age, Ozzer's age, seventeen, eighteen, twenty at the most. Some of them had dark brown skin, most of them looked Morporkian, or Borogravian, or really, they could have been from anywhere. They couldn't have been better hidden if they had been vampires themselves; their camouflage was better than Maladicta's. Some of them smoked. They all held long, peculiarly spindly pieces of what looked like dark metal. Not crossbows. Not til the island does Maladicta come to understand that they were guns.
One of them was crying. Nobody else heard it. One of them was jotting something with furious patience on a soggy piece of paper by the light of his cigarette. All of them sat at the base of trees, behind glossy fronds of alien plants. Sometimes they spoke. Maladicta should have been able to hear everyword, but during flashsides, words could come and go.
All of them were waiting for Charlie. Maladicta was waiting, too. They weren't her boys. She wasn't their boy. They weren't anayone's boys, together. They were alone in the forrest or the jungle and they were smelling the acrid pillars of flame that had spewed up into the sky earlier in the day and they were all born to die, every one of them, even the vampire.
And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for?
Maladicta remembers not walking with Shufti and Lofty and Wazzer and Ozzer, Maladicta remembers walking with the boys, one, two, three, wop wop wop and Maladicta remembers when most of them died. Her eyes were going red and her body was aching, and she didn't know if it was the napalm or the change or where she was, but the boys were dying that fast, fast sound of metal pellets shooting out of a vacuum, and the girls would be dying too if Igorina didn't hurry the hell up with that stake, and it's one, two, three, what are we dying for? wop wop wop wop wop and Maladicta remembers looking up and seeing the sky red, bright red with the poisonous cloud of exposion floating in over the jungle, and then Maladicta remembers waking up.
