Novel Idea, Day 9

I don't want to write today, but I will.  I want to be huddled in my bed, like this nightmare isn't happening, but no, I woke up and got out of bed.  Funny that today, the clouds are grey and overcast, and there is a pall of silence draped over this city.  It feels surreal, and hollow.  BUT, regardless of who wins, who loses, and how it impacts our lives, we will continue on.  Dramatic?  yeah, a little.  It's how I feel, dear readers.  I make no apologies for it, nor do I ask you to like it.  It just is.

So, what to write?

Theme: Phrase, "The wind shakes me."

Initial thoughts:  I've seen a very interesting perspective on this phrase already, and to be honest, I have no idea where it came from.  It was simply a phrase that entered my head, and I couldn't get rid of it.  So here it is.  What does wind shake?  How does it shake?  Metaphor or real wind?  Have I ever actually been shaken by the wind?  I have....

     The wind blew fiercely.  It was a hot wind, the kind that only soldiers knew about.  It brought with it the smells of fresh gunpowder, freshly turned dirt, and blood.  There were the noises, too, of explosions and screams.  But mostly, it was the feel of the air Danilee remembered most.  It turned his stomach then, and even the memory of it turned his stomach now, as he sat by the window looking through the old clippings from the war.

     He was a lot younger, then, sent off to battle by politicians who never knew what it was like, making decisions from behind large heavy desks in comfortable offices, sending the young and able to die in their stead.  He didn’t understand that, at the time.  They simply told him it was his duty to go and fight on some other country’s soil, and so he did.  There was no thought behind it.  He always regretted that decision.  It wasn’t that he regretting fighting, the lives he was forced to take, or even the lives of the friends he lost.  No, that wasn’t the worst thing about the war.

     The worst was by far the wind.  When he left, he loved the small of a gentle summer breeze, just enough to wave a flag in the air, or a tablecloth drying on a line.  The smells of honeysuckle wafting at you while you worked in the garden or sat back on the porch and cracked open a cold beer in early June, before it got too hot to want to be outside, were never joyful for him after he got back.  He tried to enjoy it, and after many years, he could finally be out in the wind and not feel afraid of it, but he still had to exert a conscious effort to not recoil.

     That was something they never told him about.  It made sense, of course.  If you told young men they would never be able to stand in the wind and not be looking over their shoulder for the bullets flying at them, how would you ever get them to sign up for war?  No, that’s not how it was done.  They told the men they would be honored, favored, and would return home to a hero’s welcome.  And maybe they were.  Some were.  Danilee remembered coming back to a parade, where they were required to march down the streets of the city as though they were on inspection from their Drill Sargent.  He stood tall that day, but that was easy to do, with his brothers-in-arms beside him.

     It was when he got back home that he noticed the wind.  It didn’t matter how soft and gentle the breeze, it shook him to the core, made his knees go weak and turned his stomach.  The rainstorms were the worst, especially if there was thunder and lightning.  They took him back, each and every time, to the battlefield.  The flashes of light and the sounds of explosions in his ears had him diving under his bed the first few times he heard them.  It drove him mad.

     They called it being “shell-shocked,” and there was no cure, the doctors said.  He knew better.  There was a cure, and he was the one who found it.  The wind still got to him, and still nauseated him, but he could control it now, thanks to the ancient medallion that hung from his neck.  He didn’t know where it came from, exactly, only that it was the acupuncturist that gave it to him.  He thought it was silly, at first.  He was told to simply hold it in his hand when a storm came, and he would be fine.  The first time he did was the first time since the war – some thirty years ago now – that he slept well.  He decided to wear it from that moment on.

     That was the mistake.  While it was true he no longer had to fear the wind, what he didn’t understand was the magic the medallion needed to work, and the blood sacrifice necessary to keep it working.  Now, when the storms came, Danilee would black out, with no memory of anything.  The police, meanwhile, would a fresh body soon afterwards.  They’d dubbed him, “The Thunderstorm Killer.”  He’d already put the pieces together.  He found the bloody clothes in his closet.  He tried to quit.  He took the thing off.  He buried it in the backyard.  He even went to the lake and threw it in.  He would wake up the next morning with it around his neck, with no explanation how it got there.

     He needed to move, to get away from the thunderstorms.  His house had been packed up for weeks, the furniture sold off.  He was going to load up his van and move out west.  That was the only solution – to get away from the storms.  No storms meant no sacrifice needed.  Maybe he could get away from the need for the medallion, then.  Maybe.  

Thanks for reading,

Me