Archilochus Cloot

I wake.

My grumbling stomach has gone. I am glad of this.

But I am aware that as soon as I became aware of my grumbling stomach, I lost consiousness. Was that yesterday? Time is funny here. When the lights come on, it feels like day. A new day. But this might not be the case.

All I know for certain is that when my stomach is troubled or the area above my groin becomes uncomfortable, then that day is as old as it is going to get. By which I mean, I will wake up in, what seems to be a new day shortly afterwards.

It is strange.

I am not aware of darkness taking me. I am only aware of waking. Sleep is funny like that.

The drawing and the other fragments have gone from under my pillow.

I stare at a blue eye for a long time. I feel uncomfortable first and have to lie on my side.

It seems that the watchers never feel uncomfortable. I am amazed that their eyes don’t dry out. They never blink. Ever

Either that, or they blink when I do.

The light is making my head ache.

The pain is just above my eyes. It’s a gentle warm pain at the moment.

This surely must indicate that a new day is about to begin.

The blankets smell clean. I push my face into the mattress. They always smell clean.

My headache is a slow beat. Cats jumping off a wall onto a glass roof. Over and over again. I count cats. One, two…

I wake and find another piece of paper tucked between my fingers. The same thick paper fragment folded neatly between my middle and pointer finger

Unfolding the paper I discover a drawing of a gun. There is some text but It is hard to make any sense of it.

It says:

…when I go to bed…

…pretend I’m a lone (some other word)…

…when I look through my small hole in my cave…

…can see a wide dusty…

…but no one can see me…

not even with clever…

…seeking goggles

…shoot people with my…

which keeps getting b…

…shoots all sorts of…

…mostly needles…

…that explode like…

…or drive the…

…mad with drugs

They never know what

…the needles are small…

think that the val(ley?)

..is cursed

which it is

Isn’t it?

As I pore over the word fragments, I become aware of one of the watching holes in the ceiling. All the watchers normally have blue eyes but this one is green. The eyes don’t blink much. I turn back to the paper.

I think about the words and the green eye and an image comes to me. I think it is a sleep image. I see a soldier chewing gum. He is wearing broken sunglasses revealing one of his eyes. His breathing is asthmatic and wheezy. I can taste dust. Then I smell roasting meat and hear the clinking of ceramic plates. The Soldier says the words “besides you…” and turns to look at someone in the corner of a small room. I cant see them.

I place the paper under my pillow. The green watcher eye has gone and is now a blue eye again.

I have a pain in my stomach. My stomach has been complaining over the last two hours.

The words ‘bedside soldier’ pop into my mind. From where, I do not know? What is a ‘bedside soldier?’

I do something that I don’t usually do. I roll onto my back and say the word ‘bedside soldier’ out loud. My voice is thin and cracked. I haven’t used it for a while. The eye in the ceiling blinks. My stomach groans.

I think I might have smiled if it hadn’t been for my grumbling stomach.

There is no hidden text on the earlier paper fragments. I am disappointed. A close and exhaustive search has revealed nothing of significance. They are the same type of paper but that is all. What was I expecting? I’m not certain. Invisable ink perhaps? Ha! It is just the child in me that is disappointed.

I have committed the fragment of poetry ( is it poetry?) to memory. It’s meaning is unclear? Does the shield have some symbolic meaning? It is hard not to want to read the fragment again and again. But I must be careful. I am being watched. I don’t want to make it easy for them.

When I am awake, the lights are turned on. There is no opportunity to hide. No dark corner to wiggle into. I have a strong feeling that I must hide ‘the urge to hide’, but I am not certain why. This feeling belongs to my instinct.

I look at the red mark on my hand. There are many questions. Many secrets.

Where do the documents come from?

Why am I being watched?

Who is watching me?

When I sleep I dream of nothing but when I wake, and the light comes on, I remember things. Small things. For example, there’s the smell of some sort of roasted meat. There’s a girls voice. There’s a sense of losing somebody in a crowd or in… a market perhaps. There is no anxiety associated with these remembered things. They feel real but they do not scare me.

Then of course ( and mentioning him makes me feel a little foolish) there’s the rabbit/man or the man/rabbit. Laughter. Rabbit laughter!

I turn onto my side. It’s hard to explain why, but I feel less watched, when I lie on my side. I am certain that it makes no difference whatsoever.