Chaos Intrepid: In Her Shoes

Prompt the Fourth: Oogie Boogie Woman

What Dreams May Come

“Shit Chaos,” Taz said, her voice as sympathetic as he’d ever heard it, “And they blame you?”

“They say that’s not it.”

Taz squirmed upright in the bed, “But that’s not what they think.”

He shrugged. It was an off-hand gesture that he knew she hated, but his only willing reply to the question. He could see the slight flare of her nostrils even though his eyes were tightly closed.

A light hand landed on his bare stomach, just below the thin shrapnel scars that were slowly fading into the tan of his skin. “That sucks,” she said. Her hand ran up to his ribs, then back again to the same point on his stomach, so light he thought it might keep on going lower as the fingers gently tapped on his skin, so gently. It wasn’t asking for anything, he realised, just letting him know that she was ignoring the shrug, she was truly sorry for him, and all she could offer was her touch.

White girl, blond hair, perfect breasts, gap-tooth – he’d never imagine that they’d end up here.

“Seriously, though,” she murmured, “what kind of society blames the victims for their injuries?”

“I’m not really a victim, Taz.”

“No, no, of course not,” he could feel the bite in her voice, even though she was used to talking to him about it. About the leg he lost, the nightmares he had but won’t talk about, “but you see it all the time. Soldiers who are injured – their fault. Women that are raped – their fault.”

“I know.” Sighing, he opened his eyes to meet hers. They are brown, flecks of light and dark inside them.

Her hand traced circles and he flinched, caught between wanting to flee from her touch and trying not to laugh. She arched an eyebrow, “Tickles?”

Not replying he offered a hesitant grin, letting the conversation fall out of the bed they’d been in for hours. The silence lay, so unnaturally safe between them it quickly turned to an uneasy wariness, one quickly filling up with an alternative promise. Their eyes caught and snapped at each other, heat building in the place where her finger tips slid, almost scratched, across his prickling skin.

His own hands crept to her thighs. Her eyes began to burn, bursting almost to red. Her nails curl into his stomach. And dig.


Chaos lurched awake, could hardly breathe from the weight on his chest and the throb in his leg. But this isn’t one of the dreams where all he remembered was the sand and the ringing ring of his brain in the heat, the second wave that slammed him with a shock of hot air like it was going to rip his head off. It wasn’t one of those dreams, he didn’t see the stunned faces of men that moments later were ripped apart by a spray of bullets, or the globules of glinting red that spattered in uniform patterns across the desert sand. Those dreams, he could deal with, they were the sort of fear he had lived over and over since he was twenty-three. And though he found it strange, that he dreamt of being afraid, when all he remembered was stunned silence and the odd warmth that trickled from his ears... those are not the dreams that brought him scrabbling to consciousness.

Oh fuck, he thought, Goddamit no.

He raised his hands to his face to see if the scent of Taz’s perfume was still there. Unsure if it was relief or despair when his hands are clean. “Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit. Shit,” he muttered to the silence, to the empty bed.

His heart beat hard in his chest, the rush of blood in his ears, hairs on neck and arms trembling at attention. He curled into himself, skinny body folding so that instead of a grown man of over six foot, he looked like a child trying to rock himself to safety, to forget how awful life can feel, to ignore the monster under the bed.

It didn't make much difference.

When rage reprised itself, when he finally fell back again on the old bitter tit for tat, when the need to escape finally left him glaring into a screen, scouring the news for the most brutal headlines, it had hit him. Leave Taz or keep playing their game, their cycle of accusations, the verbal flames when his skin was doused in love’s kerosene. They could keep going and going, locked into their tender sadomasochism, but they both needed it to hurt too much, to burn too bright and beautiful. Those rare moments became what terrified him most. Addiction to her meant feeding it, slinking back into the nightmarish rush that neither of you want and both of you want, slipping the quiet little needle into each other’s waiting veins after months of delirious withdrawal.

But god the ache of it. The ache of missing Taz, of feeling so safe, so cared for.

Perhaps even loved.

He shook his head, refused the thought. He replayed the last phonecall, her shrieking performance, “Come back, Doran. I can be better. You can.”

The accusation that maddened him to the point that he hung up, the last of his lackadaisical nature shredded. Him: better. She punished him for being him. Just the way his father did, the way his mother did. For not being Soraya. For dropping out of university. For wanting to be a writer not a lawyer. For getting himself blown up in Iraq.

And unlike them, he’d let Taz do it again, again, again.

And still those moments... when he remembered that he loved her... the white girl with front teeth too far apart, with breast so perfect he could but worship them with his touch... those moment set his stomach into writhing snakes, made him restless: caught between fight or flight.

He swallowed and kept on swallowing.

After about thirty minutes, he felt his heart beginning to calm, to slide towards steady. He uncurled, reaching one hand towards his bedside drawer where old tobacco and papers jumbled together. Fumbling fingers create a perfect roll and a match struck cast the sharp angles of a too-thin face into sharp relief. He lost weight in the last weeks, weight he couldn’t really afford to lose. His eyes looked too big when he caught them in the mirror, his neck craned and bony.

Somewhere in the background, a radio crackled into life: We gotta code three ten-fifty-six on Middlestone Drive, Crouch."

Chaos’ ears pricked. Ten-fifty-six was a suicide. So why a code three use of lights and siren?

Previous ache pushed to the side, a crooked grin passed over his face. Perhaps it was time for some excitement. 

He pulled the radio from its place on the table, and listened.

Word Count: 1,101