Thursday, June 13, 2024

The Collapse CLI: Smoldering Stalks

 30 July 20XX +1

My Dear Lucilius:

Pompeia Paulina sleeps away behind me in the other room.

I write this in the darkness of night, by the light of the almost full moon, awake from a dream as I have been for the past three nights.

Each night it is the same: We are in the field of wheat where we met Epicurus and Themista. It is later in the year; the wheat is brown and dry and bowing down slightly in readiness. The winds of September, bearing on them the hint of Winter that will come in less than a month, whirl fleeting ripples into the ocean of grain.

Pompeia Paulina is there. So is Young Xerxes and Statiera. We are sitting on the rise of the hill, a picnic of fruit and cheese and wine on a blanket.

Then- soundlessly - the field suddenly erupts into flame.

It is not as the movies of wildfires that I have seen, an advancing wall of flame driving all before it. It is a singular eruption into a fireball without an explosion. I smell the scent of scorched hair; my own, I see by the withered hairs on my arms and the ashen eyebrows drifting into my eyes.

They are all gone – Pompeia Paulina, Young Xerxes, Statiera. It is just I and the picnic blanket, undisturbed by the fire.

One of the wine glasses pings and shatters. From nowhere, everywhere – gunfire erupts.

I fall to the ground, wildly looking for a weapon. There is no weapon of any kind, except the cheese knife that sits idly on the plate of cheese, now stained with red wine from the shattered glass.

A hand shakes my shoulder – startled, I turn and look. It is Blazer Man out of nowhere, handing me a rifle. He smiles bleakly at me, then takes aim at unseen enemies who cannot be seen on the road or in the smoldering field of wheat that is now naught but black stalks and seared grain heads.

With that, I awake. Every night, the same dream, at the same moment.

I am no soothsayer to see the meaning of this. The things are real, the facts are not: Pompeia and Paulina have never been to the field of wheat, it is not September, and Blazer Man has handed me no rifle – or anything else for that matter, fields do not spontaneous erupt into flame, and weapons are only shot by people using them.

It troubles me, Lucilius, more than I care to admit. There is no horror in the dream, just confusion and fear and a lack of understanding as my surroundings collapse into flame and death and last stands.

And yet sitting here I can still smell the smoldering stalks and see the drops of the dusky red wine staining the cheese beneath it.

Your Obedient Servant, Seneca

19 comments:

  1. A disturbing well written reaction to seeing combat personally.

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    1. I would say thank you Michael, but I do not know that being able to write such a thing is a good thing. And to be clear, this is 100% generated from my own imagination and non-combat-related-anything experiences. Which may say something about my state of mind...

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    2. Not something to talk casually about. I'd have guessed despite you saying otherwise, you seen combat.

      From later comments, the scars of trauma and war remain often for more than a generation.

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    3. Michael, all I can say is that I imagine what it would be like if I - now - had those experiences and extrapolated from there. If that extrapolation is as horrible as it is real, another really good reason to work for any way possible for non-violent solutions.

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  2. Yes, well written and adding an ominous veil to the story.

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    1. Thanks Leigh. At least in the "survival" literature I have read, the reaction of people in their personal lives never seems well addressed. Surely such events as one might expect in an economic hardship (or worse) would manifest itself.

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  3. Anonymous7:53 AM

    Fire is an object that inspires Fear and Chaos. You want to distance yourself away but it is all around. No where is safe.

    Much like the active battlefield. Aware that at any second, a well aimed or stray bullet may hit and possible kill you instantly with no warning. Or maybe the bullet only wounds you, leaving you in pain. Pretty scary stuff - I know I would want my money back. :^)

    Scary dream.

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    1. Thanks Anon.

      I literally have no idea where any of this came from. I just started writing and out the words flow. Your fire interpretation makes a lot of sense to me.

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  4. Nylon127:54 AM

    A vivid picture results from this post TB, let's hope it doesn't occur in real life.

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    1. Nylon12 - Writers want to leave vivid pictures. Sadly, not all of them are good.

      Honestly, this is the sort of thing that always worries me when people defer to the idea of Civil Unrest. Not only does it have a tendency to rapidly get out of control, it leaves people with memories for a lifetime.

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  5. The farmer in me can't help but to point out that wheat harvests usually start right about now and wraps up by mid to the end of July. By September, all there would be is stubble.

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    1. It is interesting Ed. Everything I have read about this location tells me the harvest takes place later in the year.

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    2. It is Winter Wheat, if that adds any information. Planted in September, harvested "at the end of Summer" from my sources. I extended it a touch, but not outside the realm of possibility.

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    3. Most wheat planted around the Midwest is winter wheat. The harvest crews will be starting soon down south and will be working northward and end up in the Dakotas sometime in late July if the weather goes well. But saying that, I'm not familiar with the area around your Ranch which I assume is where this takes place so it is perhaps well within the possibility that harvest takes place much later. There may also be different breeds of wheat that take longer to grow in certain climates.

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    4. Ah, makes sense Ed. To be fair, this region is in fact in the North and not at the Ranch (which is indeed farther South than this location.

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  6. Maybe dealing with all your personal issues, while trapped in Clown world, might work on yer psyche, a little.
    Even living in Mayberry, one is only relatively safe, Clown world hurls insanity and planned chaos out into the sane world for planned and random mayhem.
    Seems it may have affected my psyche.
    Good writing, story telling.

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    1. T_M - That could be; I will not in any way allege anything I have ever done remotely resembles the experience of combat, but I have been situations which induced astonishing amounts of stress with no simple way out (mostly work related, of course). And even that certainly does not go away - even now, I find myself on eggshells around my bosses lest it happen again.

      And thank you for the compliment. It is very much appreciated.

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  7. Anonymous10:27 AM

    I missed checking in here yesterday for the Thursday installment. Agree with all of the above. This was a very enjoyable chapter of the story.

    I’m six months post bone marrow transplant. Still a bit slow getting around too commencing. But I do enjoy reading here.

    Keep it up TB

    Franknbean…

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    1. FnB - I did not know at all about the transplant! Prayers up of course, and I am glad that you are here to read them.

      Thanks for your kind and encouraging words.

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Comments are welcome (and necessary, for good conversation). If you could take the time to be kind and not practice profanity, it would be appreciated. Thanks for posting!