Bush Telegraph
What follows is the
Short Story that was somewhat influenced by Roger Waters. I apologise
to Roger if there is any copyright issue with the lyrics, but hey,
freedom of speech et al..
Bush Telegraph.
Chapter One Paralysed
Chapter Two The Fly
Past
Chapter Three Dog
fight of conscience
Chapter Four Bonjour
Henri
Chapter Five Mummy
*******************************************
Chapter One
Paralysed
The grey oily smoke
filtered up through the heavily wooded canopy. For three hours, it
had wafted, initially a thick choking black smoke, but now more
steady but weakening by the minute as the fuel that supplied it
dissipated in to the dense forest floor.
Weka and Kea, both
vocal in their confusion, watched the smoke from a distance. Their
safe native existence had been temporarily rent asunder by the crash
of the huge bird that the two-legged tribe liked to fly. The green
miasma of beech trees swayed gently in the twenty knot sou'west wind
being whipped off the Tasman Sea and tried vainly to cover the
remnants of the accidental intrusion.
The smoke did
eventually cease. Over the chattering of the podocarp forest
creatures, another sound emanated. Hours passed and still the sound
continued. Reggie was in pain. He cried, continually, incessantly,
and painfully. He cried and cried and cried. And for good reason. The
front of the Cessna was impaled backwards into where the seat was
normally situated. The hot steaming engine, now powerless, had been
forced backward, or had the rear of the aircraft caught up with the
front? Reggie's legs, once carriers of his athletic frame, were now a
mangled mess of ripped flesh and bone. Blood vessels had been ripped
away from muscle and were bleeding in a slow trickle. Arteries, still
pumping away in rhythmic unison, were somehow still intact. Pain
pulsed through damaged nerves and told his brain that he was in a
power of shit.
He tried wriggling his
toes and when the little fuckers, visible through the plastic mess of
his Kaydee sandals, failed to replicate his wishful commands, he
cried again. And again and again. He was fucked.
The smoke stopped. He
could smell the forest now, a little at first, but as the smell of
burning metal, flesh, and other by-products of the mangled aircraft
crash dissipated, he could smell it. The dank smell of decomposing
flora, the aged stench of decaying forest insects, the freshness of
the recent rains, all started to permeate through the pores of what
remained of his flattened nose.
The piece of plastic
dashboard ungainly protruding from where his nose used to be was a
fucking pain, though. Physically and mentally. Reggie could feel and
see it, but by the fucking lord he couldn't bloody remove it. Didn't
matter though. He had beaten it. He could still smell. Beyond the
pain and the injustice of the situation he still had ALL his goddamn
senses.
"Awhhhh
Fuuuuuucccccckkk!!!" The plane slipped off the branch of the old
beech tree and plummeted two metres to the forest floor. Ten thousand
messages of pain all advanced on Reggie's brain. They didn't bother
queuing and waiting to be processed one at a time. No, they
stampeded, all at once. For three fateful seconds, the world went
crazy, and as quickly as it advanced, it stopped. Unconsciousness
blissfully enveloped him and the world stopped.
*************************
Chapter Two
The Fly Past
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
The dream was pretty
bloody realistic. The Germanic hordes of Messerschmitt 109's flew
incessantly overhead, the buzz of their single turboprop engines
pumping out a continual thrum. The kid in the dream covers his ears,
kicks his old mans shins, and scampers in to the cold stone house on
the moor. He looks in the dark room for the security of his mother.
She is nowhere to be seen.
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
He looks harder for
her. The planes are scaring the shit out him and his hands remain
clamped tightly over his lugs. He wants his mum and wants the noise
to stop. Soon, oh, all to soon, he spots her. Slumped on the floor by
the sink. Her green gingham dress has draped over her head, exposing
her unshapely, cellulite-laden legs, her patched bloomers covered in
shit and urine. He stares hard, willing her to move, to say
something, to be mum. But he knows. In his most desperate hour of
need, she's bloody died on him.
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Muuuuuummm'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Muuuuuuummmmmmmm'
He removes his hand
from his ears and runs over to the lump that was his mother. He leaps
at her from a small distance of three feet, and lands fair and square
on her limp body. He cuddles her cold torso, feels her now grey face.
He kisses her blotchy cheek, over and over and over. He looks for his
dad. He yells for his dad. He lets out a blood-curdling scream, but
the old man is still being mesmerised by the hordes of airborne Hun.
He eventually falls asleep, the smell of shit and urine permeating
the last memories of mum. The flies gather.
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
The fly past has begun.
Reggie regains
consciousness. The dream washes off him. The dead reality of light
launches itself in to his now painless body. He hears it. At first
very faintly. Then as waves of consciousness roll in, the sound
becomes a torrent of awareness. He tries to sit up, to look up, but
nothing moves. He looks straight out with eyes now in panic. The dead
leaves and humus of the forest floor are clear and stark, being
forced into his immediate vision not half a metre from his face. He
moves his eyes around and sees a bit of the remnants of the crash.
"Awwwwwwhhhhhhhhh
Ffffffuuuuucccccccckkkkkkk!!!!" The scream emanates forcefully
from his dry, blood-caked lips. He hears the sound again.
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
"Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzz'
He knows it's not
planes. He knows they're not looking yet. He knows they have no
shitting, crapping idea where the hell he is. He knows that noise.
The flies from his mums' carcass zero in on his legs!
His cellphone, lying
alone on the forest floor twenty metres from the mangled wreck,
bursts suddenly in to life. It rings and vibrates incessantly,
forcing the quick evacuation of weta and ant from the immediate
scene. In the deadened life force that is the beech forest, the sound
is totally alien, sharp and loud against the sound of the West Coast
forest.
"Piss off"
says Reggie under his now resigned breath.
********************************
Chapter Three
Dogfight Of Conscience
Two flies, sated from
hours of gorging, sit alongside each other. Perched on the now
lifeless legs of the human, they share anecdote on the tastes each
has partaken in since it fell on to their section of the forest
floor. The first fly is convinced that the rotten burnt and bloodied
flesh is the best feed its ever had in its' short life. The other is
convinced the smelly rotten diarrhea and urine mixed faeces are the
top delicacy of the year. They argue, allowing for the time to pass
and their own dietary tract to process the unexpected feast.
They agree to try the
others preferred delicacy. Once again they hoe in to the banquet.
After a while, they stop for another break. For some inexplicable
reason, they both look up towards the hairy part of the feast, the
area where the movement is. They both observe the orbs that serve to
make the banquet see, and watch them turn toward them. They step back
a little, ready to vacate the area should it decide to terminate
their existence. But the orbs just stare at them. They both get a
case of the guilt’s. The first fly spits out a piece of meat. The
other disgorges its load of crap. They fly off into the forest
searching for other carrion.
A conflict of
conscience. Reggie is pleased they fucked off.
***************************************
Chapter Four
Bonjour, Henri
"Floating down,
through the clouds,
Memories come rushing
up to meet me now,
And in the space
between the heavens,
and the corner of some
foreign field,
I had a dream,
I had a dream."
Between the
ever-increasing bouts of unconsciousness, Reggie sings songs penned
by Roger Waters. Apart from his passion for flying, his other
obsession is Roger Waters. Reggie knows every song backward,
frontward, and sideways. Not that they were of much use now.
Physically that is. But as a mental backstop, the songs are bloody
magic.
"Satellite buzzing
through the endless night,
Exclusive to moon shots
and world title fights,
Jesus Christ, think
what it must be earning,
Who is the strongest,
Who is the best,
Who holds the aces, the
East or the West,
This is the crap that
our children are learning,
But oh, oh, oh, the
tide is turning,
The tide is turning,
Oh, oh, oh, the tide is
turning.
Reggie hears the bloody
cellphone ring again. A bug jumps in fright, sails nonchalantly
through the air, and lands heavily on the send button on the phone.
The voice leaps out from the ear piece, sending the insect into
another aerial catapult.
"Hey, Reggie ya
gormless dickhead, how the hell are ya?
Reggie tries to say
gidday but as the proverb goes "Man who try to talk with mouth
full of swollen tongue, not make a great deal of fucking sense."
"Awwwwwhhhhhhhhh
Shhhiiitttttttttt" he screams silently.
"Hey Reggie, I
know ya there. It's Henri mon, back from Jamaica. Got some good gunga
for ya ta try. Awh, come on mon, talk to me." Henri pleads.
A heavily laden forest
pause permeates the air. The cellphone crackles into life again.
" Awh get fucked
ya shithead. Hope ya fucking kill yourself." The phone clicks as
Henri hangs up.
Reggie mouths the words
to himself. 'Bonjour, Henri. Ya wanking shithead.' And as he flakes
out again, he thinks, "you never wrote that, Roger!"
*******************************
Chapter Five
Mummy
Reggie feels the hand
on his cheek. He can't open his eyes anymore. The nerves have died
there as well. The only thing he feels is his skin and the movement
of his thoughts through his brain. He feels it again. Then he hears
it. Above the sound of the forest and the rain. The silver rustle of
light cloth on dead leaves. The light tread of footfalls. The scent
that he once smelt before. It invades his senses. He's been in it.
He's dreamed it. Over and over.
"Mother, do you
think they'll drop the Bomb?" Fuck off, Roger. This is for real.
"Reggie"
The voice rockets
across time and space. She's here. All these years and finally, she
is back. Great Balls of Fire. Yaaahhhhhoooooooo.
"Come on, Reggie,
time to go."
Reggie lifts his
consciousness as high as he can and whispers to her….
"Mummy".
And dies.
No comments:
Post a Comment