Delta Green: Tales from Failed Anatomies by Dennis Detwiller

Author:Dennis Detwiller [Detwiller, Dennis]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3, mobi
Published: 2014-05-23T00:00:00+00:00

Coming Home

(1970)

The world had conspired against him again. The vistas and places he had walked as a child were gone, replaced by boxes, cement and garbage.

McDonalds restaurants crawled across the landscape and strip malls and car dealerships and signs. He thought of the jungle, and strangely found that he missed it. At least it was alive, that smell, not like the city. Not like here where the city had heaved itself out into the open fields at the edge of everything.

This place, the stop, stunk of old cigarettes and piss and alcohol, empty and artificial things that washed out the real smells.

It was May 1, 1970, and his hands were not shaking, so it was a good day. Each day he marked the calendar on the wall at the Pentagon with an X—each day his hands did not shake—that was a good day.

There had been a lot of X’s lately. He was doing well, but he had begun to think about the boy again, and the temple, and the—

He dropped the thought like something hot, pulling away internally, closing his eyes.

It was replaced with an image of his daughter skating on Silver Lake when she was six, the winter of 1967. The ghost cut lazy arcs on the black ice, spinning with a grace and consistency never mastered in real life.

He knew it was an illusion. He didn’t care. Anything was better than the alternative.

He waited on the bus stop along with everyone else, the folded leather valise at his feet. He was a soldier. He stood ramrod straight in his uniform without turning his head. Others shuffled and fidgeted. He did neither, watching the air ahead of him instead, his thin face carefully set in a bland expression of order.

When the bus came, he waited for the others to board, picked up the valise, and climbed aboard last.

In the valise was a shotgun he had sawn down in his empty garage while Gail and the kids were at the super market. He had smiled then. He had grinned like a mad dog, shaking and laughing and wiping sweat from his face, working his way through the barrel, the saw shrieking in time with his arm.

When the barrel dropped away and clanked to the cement, he shouted with joy, laughing until he was doubled over in pain and the world swam before him with blotches of blooming color.

He nearly blacked out from the laughter.

That had been during a span of empty calendar days. White rectangles infinite in their blankness, echoing their indifference towards him, leaping off the wall, eating the room, the Pentagon, the world, drowning his mind in the nothing. Still, it was best not to invoke the calendar. Only when it was needed would he think about it. A totem to ward off the worst of the blankness. The calendar was something dangerous to be worshipped.

Only shaking or laughing or weeping could make the feelings go, and sometimes not even then. The valise was insurance, and he took it everywhere.

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