Balloons as a base

Everyone was prepared. They each had weapons and some defense, strips of old tire rubber strapped down their arms, a gun, a knife, football helmets.

We raced into the trees and hacked through them. We ran them down with ATVs. We swung machetes from the back of motorcycles. We blazed through dark shadows among the trees and nobody fell.

Everyone was strong and confident, had put all fear away and kept going.

We came across the field with strong gestures like professments of faith. We stood together as the whole street came into view, full of strategies:

Men raced on motorcycles dragging tripwires. Bicycling boys with bats, geriatrics in reinforced golf carts, a woman in hysterics guarded by chainsaw-wielding muscle men. The night was full of triumph. Everywhere people became symbols of activating forces.

My own troop arrayed on the slope, renegade champions one and all, regrouping, catching their breath, surveying what went on below along a row of suburban lawns.

Everyone was a whirling razor. We skirted what we could. It was best to keep our distance from the others. Leave each to his determination. We found a two story ranch house with a lower deck giving out to the field and a pond.

It was cleared and barricaded. We were tired. We slept in the mud and the blood. Some bathed in the pond while others stood guard. It was a good place for the moment. Room enough for all of us.

We preferred it cramped. We liked to pack against our neighbors in the warm safety, the swaddle.

It was hardest in the kitchen. Everything was eaten before most had awakened. We would need to barter weapons for food, begin the work of constructing new safety. We lost some good people right off as they raced into new opportunities. Some never intended to stay with us. They went off deeper in their directions. We never saw them again.

In my dream, there was a membrane that held us apart from the others. An impossibly thin, nearly invisible bubble we pressed against to no avail. We could not be parted, nor could we bother with what lay beyond the will of us all.

In my dreams, sometimes I am beyond the membrane trying to get back in. But it is impossible. The membrane exists, a veil that distinguishes an impossible distance of space, a void that will not suffer return.

I am mainly concerned with this membrane that separates, the most substantial of all materials and no material at all. The zero to hold among the aces in cosmic certainty.

Sometimes I dream I am all of shadow and the false choices of the past have led me to believe untrue things of an essential nature. Sometimes I am so shocked by panic and shame that I believe I have taken up the Hindu Zombie Fever.

Mainly, I am here to study the membrane. I am here to draw the invisible line of some just importance. I am a discerning instrument in the hands of this scattering troop. I am a surgeon and the infection is clear. I can tell at a glance.

I am Adama, giver of names.

When the troop came together, we laid claim to each other with such names as could be conjured. We forged a new language with just these names. Our names are what we belong to.

We have a symbol. I have sewn it on everyone’s jerseys and jackets so I can know at a glance who to worry over:

It is the river that flows into the cave and the cave itself. The flow of water into the emptiness where it is again purified, through a myriad permutations, into just itself.

It is the membrane and the flow of life, the forces dwindling in the darkness. Where man will grow back into the light perhaps, back in the caves.

I am always counting us. Our numbers rising. Our numbers falling through chance, accident and urgency.

If someone falls among us, I cannot cure them. I can only point and stare, hysterical. I can only cry out:

“The membrane! The membrane!”

I shine my fear like a beacon in the night.

Sometimes, when fear is at its worst, the others start when they see me, as if they had lost certainty of just those things which I can answer to.

Each day, I count them. In truth, I just count the symbols. I know by their disposition which are in deepest doubt. I urge them to polish their symbols, keep them sparkling, so I can see the change. All will be safe if they revere the symbol. They need only fear a stain. They wash them every chance they get.

It was important to discern those to call in times of particular alarm. Sometimes we are well spread out. Some wear two symbols and are counted twice. We need a certain number to stay safe.

There were those among us who had fought in many battles, whose limbs had been severed, who had lost so many things and yet kept on, perversely racing with no other concern than the race, ancient soldiers who would bear all and sacrifice themselves to the membrane one day. Their worst shame would be to survive to the last. They must choose how best to save us, which tree to vault from, what dim spark to blow into new flames. They stood among us, half-recovered from heart attacks, staunching fresh wounds.

There were those that broke and rolled against the membrane for some fleeting glimpse of something lost teasing them beyond. Some abomination of the past haunted still to scar the membrane, claws tearing for release.

Sometimes a scratch was just enough.

I heard the sound of thudding against the double pane glass of the slider.

Beyond the membrane, some chrysalis melted down to essentials, whatever goo next things would manifest from, whatever form sought flesh.

The cage of my thoughts shook with each thud. Wavelengths of sound filled with intention, boiling over with desires, just those forms I am most afraid of. I peek from behind doors. I am always spying. I just want to know where we stand. What is the situation? What is our number?

I smell worst of all of us. I haven’t changed my clothes since the troubles began.

The one I call Henchman stared out into the darkness, not seeing anything to be riled about, in fact, just sleeping, standing on her feet, in that place of ultimate vulnerability we lapse into at the end of exhaustion, strung out on worries, dead tired and no longer afraid. Sometimes we get to have that time.

The thudding grew more pronounced. She did not stir. There was only shadow heaping on shadow beyond the membrane, scraping the walls of the embankment, darkness growing denser, nothing signifying, no purpose, no symbol.

I touched her sleeve near where her symbol was pinned. She started and snapped to attention. She saw my face and trusted it. I was never in question. That was the rule. I had the one job and if it were inviolate yet, then we were safe. If not, then what else mattered? The membrane rent open, each on his own.