Walk the Dog Ride the Sword~Editilla notellas~ As we mentioned earlier in the Anniversary, the event of the storm happened on the 29th,
then the Levees failed thereabouts and thus began my story.
The Event stretched time, unfolds literally, as a screaming comes across the sky, familiar, but with nothing to compare it to now.
I'm going to take this little bone in my heart.
I'm gonna put it in a glass box
with some candles and some broken clocks
just to see the sea of faces
stopping in the dark dark.
I had not thought of it this way until now, that each day after the 29th marks a particular movement through this history until
7 days hence when I escaped New Orleans.
So, I have tried to post "memories" or a "memory" from each day. There were no good days, no art, no music, birds, safe laughter. But some days there were happenings which did not rise to the level of trauma. This day is a nightmare.
Please forgive me for this truly gruesome tale.
This happened as I remember it still. The nature of the trauma simply doesn't lend itself to tasteful grammar or elegant pacing.
Left boot: 8" folded serrated produce knife,
Right boot: 8" folded Buck knife,
Right Belt: 2, 4" folded Buck knives,
Left Belt: 2 foot long antique Navy Sabre,
Left wrist: push carpet razor and ice pick,
Right wrist: bicycle chain wrapped tight and tied,
Right Back pants pocket: Big Maglight,
Left back pocket: small Maglight...
OK, now we are ready to take out the dog,
on the 4th dark dark night after the levees failed. She has to go outside, and frankly so should I, but the dog just won't do it in the building for obvious memories of Hell House Training. It is around 9 pm and I know she's got to go.
We don't want to go out because of the total darkness, where it was not the procedure to shine your flashlight as that would announce your presence to whoever might be ahead.
You had to be Very Quiet at night. It is hard for me to describe such an awareness of the quickness of death. I had already seen 3 people killed all by gunfire. I could smell someone in the darkness 30 feet away even without a good wind.
I could smell their fear and knew that they smelled mine. Smell mattered despite the cadaver blanket lain over the city. I was on my tenth dead body seen. It was getting pretty damn grim.
So you moved very slowly at night due to all the debris kicked down from the storm and because you did not want to meet anyone in the dark. No. No. No. No.
The neutral ground of Elysian Fields was a labyrinth. By the 4th day a sort of pathway had developed which looped around and under the trees and large piles of limbs. How can I describe such utter darkness, but to liken it to the inside of the Reaper's Cape. There was no moon, no glow on the horizon, no little red lights flashing and it seemed no stars as if they too had fled the scene.
It is hard to achieve such darkness in the modern world.
That world was gone that first week of the flood, at least at night. Daylight offered even more avenues of Kafkatrina Nightmare.
Why the neutral ground, you might ask? Why not wherever closer to my place of refuge? Well, 2 reasons at least: 1) During what I euphemistically refer to as "The Troubles" during that first week of the flood, I came to realize that taking a shit is THE MOST VULNERABLE position to be in if trouble starts --and Trouble was starting earlier each day-- so I didn't want to be near my place of refuge in that event. 2) Dog Flora was also tweaked by this whole scene, and it just sorta worked out that way.
So step by step we needle our way into the neutral ground
--not onto, but into the scene.
It was so dark my eyes were sweating.
About middle of the block I smell humans, more than one, at least two different scents. They were drunk too. Gin.
Then I hear their blades click open on either side of me and dog Flora, limbs breaking as they advanced. It happened that fast and I drew my sabre across the chest at my left and into a thigh on the right. Back again to the Left into a human shoulder I think. Down, crouch, sideways to the right into probably the same thigh this time screaming from the right, running through the limbs away to the left... I raise my sabre and begin hacking down into probably the head of remaining movement. They never laid a hand on me or dog Flora, but their blood began to drip down my cheeks and all over my arms, warm. Yet I continued to swing my sabre now calmly intent on killing this person. My soul seemed at a distance unconcerned. This person was now on their back on the ground screaming crawling backwards beneath some limbs when I believe I saw their face in that darkness. Perhaps it was a reflection from a Ship in the river. I swear I could hear them bleeding.
I swung between their eyes and hit a limb just above their head.
My sword stuck in the wood and it was in that moment that I came back into my body as if sliding into base on my ass, a long fast slide down a tunnel of broken glass and fire in my ears.
I smelled burnt rubber and tasted copper beneath my tongue.
I fell to my knees, listening, as the "person" slid away through the brush, and hearing this "person" I used to be falling deeper into Hell. I grabbed dog Flora still on her leash and also covered in blood though I don't remember her joining in the fight,
goddamned wet with it all over us...
and headed for the river a few blocks away.
I stripped off all my weapons and blood-soaked clothing down to my boots like some creature from Lord of the Flies meets Jacobs Ladder, picked up dog Flora and waded into the current down by the wharf. The water was low and there were streaks of light from distant ships on the surface. With a viscous sheen of something other than oil, bits of debris and garbage floated by as I covered her nose and dunked us both beneath the waves... suddenly the screaming inside stopped. A hopeful coldness surrounded me as I realized we were sinking deeper into the current. I released dog Flora who immediately made for air... but thought myself to continue further, honestly damned, soul'stripped and gone.
But Goddess wasn't having any of that.
I popped into the air, just before striking a pylon beneath the wharf square on my back. It was then that I saw the City silhouetted by a rhesus grin. Dog Flora was barking incessantly, as if there was yet more to come, when indeed a body struck mine in the current... fully clothed face down and I think... male.
I made for the bank retching breast strokes.
As I lay on the gray rocks, looking into further darkness, dog Flora began to lick away some of the blood still caked in my brow and continued over me for a long time, until the trembling filled.
Since I had thrown all of my clothing into the river but for the belts, boots, bicycle chain, torches and weapons, I strapped up best as possible naked and we made our way, again so quietly and by another route, back to our building and studio two floors above this broken plane. By now it was probably around 2am, I guess, as even the choppers had mostly gone to bed.
The city rested as if in a Benzedrine dream.
You could still hear the dogs left as hellhounds though, as they had begun to grow in number, packs and tenor, howling, calling,
crying across the abyss with the rest of us.
~Wit'Special Editillos to the 30-Mighty-90!
