We Knew...Smell the Indonesia

We Knew…(Part II)

Smell the Indonesia

         The air is a little bit thick around here.  It catches in my throat.  We can barely breathe.  It’s been days since we bathed and well, you know, you can just smell the Indonesia.  Maybe tomorrow we’ll get some rain to help wash the mud from our skin and hopefully return us to some semblance of what we once were, but I wouldn’t count on it.  Somehow, hoping and praying is just that, hoping and praying.


         It’s not that there isn’t any water, but I’m afraid of it.  It’s just a little too risky right now to bare one’s healed skin and invite attention.  Better to smell. Better to smell.  If only I had to smell myself and not all the others, not all the others.  Again, hoping and praying.  Praying and hoping.  Taste the disease.


         We’ve taken to signaling one another rather than risk the spoken word.  My fingers hurt from the duress.  Words can be so concrete at times and signals allow the smallest margin of reinterpretation should wandering eyes chance upon their meaning.  Mud simple is best.  Nothing fancy about dried mud tinged with blood.  Teeth come in handy when chewing raw foods, so risk is not respected.  Risk can be lethal.  Risk can hurt.


         Angry mobs once gathered around the abandoned school and tried to smoke us out.  They had no idea we didn’t need air.  The smoke couldn’t even elicit a cough.  We counted on the seedy smoke as a source of added calories amongst the cobwebs and dustballs. 


The lightweight daffodils just scattered and ran.  I think the silence scared them.  None could countenance entering.  Some may have been draftees from the last group that came in, but were too scared to cross the threshold.  Fear can be useful.  Fear can keep you alive. 


We caged the brave ones in the basement and forgot about them.  The crying and pleading eventually turned to screams then in turn to hoarseness and later silent sobbing.  Grainy eyes and dry sockets got no response whatsoever.  Bring forth the Kalajari.  Silence begat an echoing silence so cavernous and deep no one could return or could they? Who knows?  Some of them may now be us.  Deprivation can do that for you.  So can love.  We’ve heard that, but never been able to prove it.


         A particularly inventive group sent in dogs, but the ones that remained became ours.  The others were more afraid of us than we of them.  We could smell it.  Surely, they’d never seen men who forgot they were human.  How could we forget?  Easily!  Initially hard, it just got easier with time.  Simpler to forget that which we were not allowed succoring.  Taste the time as it goes by.  Hear the blackness descend within you.  Embrace what you’ve borne.


         Once darkness had arrived, as though from deep within, we decided to gather together our things and leave.  We quietly gathered the few things not tied down or too heavy to carry, and calmly with concerted purpose, we simply walked out of the building.  I should have been afraid, but for the life of me, I couldn’t figure out why. 


With no one to follow and no one behind, we left.


         
         Picking up one foot and placing it squarely before the next, eluding all cracks, soon we were many miles away.  Still not speaking, but conversing by signs, we constructed a course to take, though the direction, the purpose, the risk, all unknown. 


We knew we had to find cover soon, the nightly winds would soon be upon us, and with the winds our scents would cover the landscape and attract a Saigon of invasion, Tokyo no less.


         Creeping along, we could hear them, even before they hit.  It was as though sounds had wings and air its transport.  Blindly searching out the best, we settled for the nearest, a cave transfigured by algae constructed to protect and destined to domicile.  The wetness was welcome and the roughness stood purpose to remove the loose scales and filth about our bones.  The pain was almost clarion in its purity; resplendent in its tone.  Could we be home once more?


         As we tore through the entrance, the wind arrived to tear through us, but was sifted by the algae and made docile and kind.  Luck, not luck, no matter, we were safe for now. 


Sitting in the darkness, adjusting my eyes, my ears felt a movement more subtle than sound.  The awareness descended upon us, we were not alone.


         Had we been sloppy?  Surely, we could not have been unknowingly followed, as God himself didn’t know the course we would take.  Had we been broadcast in our ways or predictable in our course?  Or had we been traded once again for something expedient and brief?  Could there be a traitor amongst us?  How?  When I was we and I told no one, and I didn’t even know.


         Our body tensed.  We waited what was surely to come.  But alas, all that arrived was more darkness.  Perhaps I had just felt the wind as it blew like warm moist breath about my neck.

         Led back like chattel, no collar or chains about our body, the miles or feet we’d traveled hurriedly spent beneath bare feet.  Even before light arose, we were back, scarcely a hair of evidence we had left.


         For breakfast, familiar cobwebs and dust, a few daisies gathered along the way for dessert.  Think again of sand and quiet as signals abound with no voices or verbs.  Voices would mean insanity and answers to questions to a person alone.


         I could taste the fear rising in us, rising up from my toes and urging me to run.  If I didn’t run, and run soon, I’d still be having air and feeling ribs crack from the strain.  All in all, it was still much better than bile stuck in the back of my throat struggling to become visible, struggling for display.


         As I feel the anxiety, taste the blood from my tongue, and strain to hear the rhythm of the clapping, we realize it’s just the blood rushing in my neck and the rap of my knees now clasped together.  I decide to take an extra pill.  They said I could if we needed to.  We needed to.


Sleep comes quickly as only it can and crystalline insanity is once again delayed.