Flash Friday 4-25-14 me and my shadow (third in series) in Flash Friday

I recorded a com message for my colleagues, set to send a half hour out. The third shift siren had peeled, and I wanted to see the kwanset empty. It happened to me last night. After the last patient and before chow, a montage, like tidal memory; a wave, an under-tow, a wave. The clickity-clack of a jumping rope, the sweet lips of some stranger in a rover obsolete before I was born, and, stars. A scratchy blanket, a child’s warm hand in mine, and a black curtain of night littered with stars, my own voice, deeper, pointing out the constellations, telling their legend, to this ghost child whose warm hand squirmed in mine own.

They weren’t my stars. The constellations had names like Chase Fargone and Honey Lightfoot. The bright guiding star at the horizon was not in the north but the west and the sun gently died in the east.

I’d been to the third shift kwanset four times in the last month. It felt like a ward or a barracks; broken men in various shades of ill repair and expectancy. They don’t talk much to one another now, and they aren’t talking so much to me either. They haunt their own lives. I’ve seen the men individually, I’ve seen them at home collectively, I’ve watched the third shift run their machinery, I’d seen the factory between shifts; I hadn’t seen the kwanset empty.

I was vague in my recording; I didn’t know what I was looking for, I just knew that every other angle I’d been looking at this from hadn’t answered any question except for what. The answer to what is two distinct foreign memories, and, the third, which might have only come to me, so far, and I haven’t told anyone. If my colleagues show up in a half hour and find me wandering the kwanset with a plasma lantern looking under mattresses and staring at the wall I will tell them about the foreign constellations, the child, me.

The door seal is loose, unlocked, opens at the push of my shoulder. I flick the lantern switch and it crackles then hums to life. The air is stagnant like swamp water and thick, the pale light gives things a second skin.

There is a spark, a scent, an intuitive wrongness. I follow it twining through the rows of bunks to where it puddles. The pale light ghosts Parkers body, carelessly laid beneath his bunk. Three days ago Parker had --- stopped breathing. There was, is, an investigation. Third shift asked to have the body. They --- we --- I assumed some sort of burial ritual, letter home, ceremonial preparation. Parker is stuffed, uncovered, under his bunk like contraband or an overcoat. My own skin feels itchy and uncomfortable.

Fifteen minutes and my message goes out. Hopewell will probably come first, he’s a friend, he’s curious, it was always going to be one of us standing here and one of us coming. For a moment I saw those magnificent stars, felt that warm childish hand, and I longed to relax into the memory. I look at my watch; still fifteen minutes. I look at Parker; still dead.

Shit

Looks like it'll be five.