Flashback Trouble's Braids

[Seju]

i spanked cold red mud
where the hornet stung deep
and i tossed in the ditch
in a restless sleep
and i pulled on trouble's braids
- tom waits

63 Summer, 504AV

Night came. Flies swarmed.

Tall mangroves twisted from the marsh. They raked at sores and tangled legs, topped by slithering canopies of vipers. The hisses were inaudible. Seju trudged through fetid pits, jailed by a sticky daze. There oozing blisters on his palms from mauling low-hanging creepers. The sword hung lankly in his grip, his left eye swollen to a slit. Dyah limped behind him, shaking with fever. Seju thought he heard muttering of djinns, and he glanced back at Dyah. That was bad.

Raising the torch higher, he made the shadows jump. They cavorted wildly around the silent stumps. The pitch-smoke curled by red-lidded eyes, and he shivered, yanking skin over too much bone.

Taking unsteady steps, he waded by a moss-bearded monolith that was ringed by glowbugs. They cast an uncanny green light. The reddish muck sucked at his feet. Dyah fell heavily, but got back up. Seju crossed mazed vines on his aching legs, sidled by reddish brambles. They snagged at his filthy rags and he jerked angrily away, sucking in a pained gasp. That cudgel had cracked a rib. The further he went, the more it lanced at him. Things could've been worse, though. Dyah's leg looked nasty. Seju cajoled him on, even as tendrils of dread choked at his own chest. They can't all be killed, he trembled.

But nobody was there.

And he plodded against the ebbing nightmare, to its juncture with the red mud and the shackles. And the big black man with the split grin. There was no getting away from it. The spirits had deserted him.

Seju dipped under a toppled mangrove. Yanked at the bark to keep him steady, felt it slimy under his palm. The marsh sloshed at his knees, filled with rotting leaves and likely worse. Dyah aped him but failed, splashed into the jetsam. Just knelt there coughing up sludge. Seju seethed with impatience, and he tottered over with a grimy palm. Tugged up the other man. “Don't give up on me,” he snarled. Dyah groaned, just fell back in the marsh. Seju slapped him. “Dyah, if you don't listen to me you'll die,” he was yelling and spitting now. “That what you want to that happen? Then get up. Just do it, damn your miserable hide. I'll leave you here."

“Don't.” Dyah clutched at him. “Don't leave me.”

“Then get up.”

Dyah crawled on his knees. Desperate to get out, but it was apparent he didn't have it in him.

Seju dragged him up. “Do that again and I'll kill you,” he snarled at Dyah. The devils hissed through him leaving angry blisters. They made him hate, like the blind man hates the seeing.

You ain't nothing to me.

Further they stumbled into the marsh. Fronds cuffed at his jaw. Kreshy grass picked from the margins. Seju raged at them, ignoring his stinging blisters, but he couldn't slice through. They just veered before him again. Dyah suffered quietly. Drooped over the mess of his leg. Seju finally gave a snarl and pushed by the tangling grasses. Dragged the sword behind him. Fat leeches jumped over his arms. Dyah slumped again. Seju jarred him with a shove.

“Keep going, y'fetcher,” he rasped.

Their slog carried on, pushing by decay-softened trunks while lizards hissed from knotted foliage. Then, quite abruptly, the marsh receded into a jumble of shallow tributaries. These twisted around small knolls, sluggish and choked by bullrushes. Dyah collapsed then, his cheek slapping against the mud. Seju gazed uneasily at him, slouching against a decayed stump. Lips curled in contempt. Lips that he bit until they bled, for he had a dilemma.

Dyah was all he'd got left.

Seju groaned, tried to conjure up the power to stand again. Tugged at his side as the slow agony shook him again. Dyah saw it coming.

“Don't do it,” the man gasped. “I can't go on. It just hurts too bad.” They looked at each other with mongrel eyes. The hurts and hostility mingled. There was a pall over the swamp, tension choking even the bullfrogs.

Seju slumped further down. “This'll do,” he grunted. Took a look at his grimy hands, then jammed the torch into the mud. There it guttered quietly while the crickets hummed. And as he peered into the flames, he felt like he was being crushed all over again.

[Seju]

The marsh buzzed with activity. Tiny beetles crawled over black mud. Thin leaves slithered and scraped, and hoppers skittered over the silty creeks. The waxing gloom was fringed by tassels of hanging moss.

And the torch was going out.

Seju slumped across the itchy grasses, assailed by an inveterate desperation. Anguish bristled against his festering scabs. As the flames shrank, the devil receded within him. There was so little of it left, but he clung to it terribly. That hatred was his. And it couldn't be taken.

Dyah was a twisted lump. The pinched slant of ribs rising under rags, discolored by the night. Seju cuffed the jagged cut on his lip. Dulled worries clung to him. Agitation that he might be just as misshapen. Plucking at a fern, he turned it over in his stained fingers. Then he began to divest it of delicate fronds. They spiraled into the dirt, slowly at first, and then with a frenzied rapidity. There was an absurdity in it all, he thought, and his lips curled in a sneer. Picking up the ragged fronds, he ripped them into even smaller pieces. Perverse joy ran through him. Dejection also followed the disassembly. Agency claimed many forms, but he felt subjugated still. Basalt sepulchral at all sides, lashes biting his back. Red tendrils flowing from guttural exhortations. Bones sundered after wills.

Tinny cries ululating across the mazed jungle. The bugs stirred then scuttled back into their holes.

Seju cradled his thin arms. Tried to close his eyes but they just snapped wider. Troubled sleep wouldn't come. The reek of naphtha intruded upon him, and he rolled over so yellow flames dwindled before him. Pitch dripped from it.

Then he gazed at the sticky sword by his side until even that was plunged into the despondence of night. He held his breath. Reached for it. Ran his fingers over the rough handle. The leather strips were coming loose, and though they tugged at his oozing blisters he didn't stop, just grimaced at the sting.

Dyah squealed a bit. Seju looked over, then quietly lifted the sword so its metal kissed his cheek. Tried to imagine jerking it savagely against the bulge of an ignorant neck. That would've been a kindness, he thought. They'd cheated the caves, but scars remained. Poyut had perished like a man. Tugak less so, but at least he was gone. There'd be no mongrel existence for them.

Seju held his chin in his hands, as serpents slid over hanging moss, and waited for the light.