And so they caught me, bound me, raged me, dragged me. I, Union Goon Second Class and humble narrator! What ignominy, ruin, disgrace. Dragged free and away from the asylum of my whiskey tree. My cries of ‘I ent dead’ largely ignored, the source of mirth and much pleasure. Yes, caught, dragged, found and bound like a hare soon for the pot. And I said through lips daubed rouge: ‘But sirs and enemies, I en't dead so much as I know.’ They laughed and spit: ‘Soon to be corrected.’
Desolately drawn, kicked, prodded shoved through the streets, trailing an assortment of fluids, clear or red or green/yellow, thick, thin or viscous. Other’s poor fortune turns to my luck as captors trot off, in pursuit of these and lessen in number. Through the streets they drag and haul, roped up like a like a sacrificial dishonoured lover, like a broken bird of prey, like fear and like sin caught in the open day light. ‘Bring out your dead’ more cries of, and the wagon piled three deep with corpses and dust in my eyes making tears of mud and choke. Just hoping to survive the day and welcome the embrace of night. And then they are fewer even, my captors and unwanted honour guard down to two, and falling behind the wagon, isolated and struggle and ropes made looser and reaching and a razor from my boot finds my hand and I am on him, I bite him, I bite him hard, in the knee and in the groin bringing him down and upon the other, said razor between teeth now kissing his neck slowly all the way across and more rouge flowing. ‘Bring out your dead’ he shall cry no more.
Now further freed and it tastes like copper. My velocity of escape is as fast as the half deead may limp, but fast enough, and much faster than corpses. Soon to rest and sleep in the warmth of mud... But first to seek the source of a new and uncompromised whiskey tree.
By: Daniel Smallegange
