‘Injections today, then you take a weekend furlough. ICE won’t kick in until you get back. We take a pill and a plane and go win this war. Dismissed, Soldiers.’
Jas and I made promises. She’d write. I’d do what I could from a combat zone. I took a lock of her hair, and she took a cheek swab for a slide. Jas had funny ideas about what was romantic, but she said it would keep me close. We partied, fucked, and stayed up late holding each other, making plans. She drove me to the base the next day, and as we parted she told me something, but I can’t remember what.
As I sleep, cliffs crumble. Water destroys the rocks that held it back. Floods roll in. Jas’s voice ripples through me.
‘I’m pregnant.’
Sadness that originates there flows forward, covering me. Is this the truth the drug obscures? I kissed her and walked away, ICE already forming layers. Left the country and didn’t return. Was that ICE? Or was that me?
‘You ok, bro?’
I wake, not ok, but I cannot tell my squad-mates. We have a job to do. I kit up and we move. An hour later I’m on the streets of what used to be a city. I’ve never seen a landscape like this without ICE. Buildings are skeletons and stones, history told only by outlines and detritus. Figures stagger from the shadows, dark eyes looking at us with no hope, no hatred, no interest. All landmarks are gone, leaving only memories and damage.
My stomach churns. The chiaroscuro of the day makes my eyes hurt. I hit the ground but I’m missing something. Fire is still inside me, old layers of ICE peeling back like wallpaper strata as a house burns. I can smell the scorch marks on the walls as my unit moves forwards. My gun is out, pointed, but I don’t see what surrounds me.
My Captain seats me in the oddly empty tent. Words fall from her mouth to my ears, but they don’t stick.
‘News from home. I’m afraid it’s not good. Jasmine is dead.’
I am not present in my body as I shake my head, looking like I don’t understand.
‘Jasmine Alvarez. She had you as next of kin alongside her parents.’
Jas. Oh. I stagger and take a knee in the dark squalor of the building. My partner hears me go down and turns.
‘You ok? Raf?’
A weak nod and raised hand buys me time.
Jasmine. How? How did I forget? Why did I give this up?
‘You know Jasmine, from home?’ my Captain asks me gently, and I nod. I remember, but through fog.
‘Your daughter is fine. She’s with her grandparents.’
Chills run through me. Jas, her laugh, her smell. Remembrance comes at me like a truck and I drop my gun. I have a…
Bullets run dry. I fumble for a reload as I hear footsteps. ICE reflexes drop my empty rifle. My pistol comes free as a crouching figure leans from the doorway. Full face mask and filthy clothes rob the figure of gender, but it steps back. Eyes widen in terror behind the mask, shadows moving beneath dark water as I fire, splashing bright blood on shattered black plastic.
‘Raf. What’s up? I need you, brother.’
He’s shaking me and I see shrapnel-marked walls and a corridor. A door ahead.
‘We’re nearly there, but I need you here. What’s going on?’
Pushing memories from my head I take my weapon and stand. I am needed here. I hear the radio in my ear, see remnants of the surrounding building, rubbed away by the bombs.
‘Door on three, two, one…’
We move forward, opening and passing through. This is what we came for, where the target should be. I have a daughter. Our target, dead or alive, will be here. Intelligence tells us this is true.
She must be three now, three and a half. When do children stop counting half years? Behind these doors, in these tunnels, is the man we seek. The man we are hunting. His team, his people, his nexus. Have I ever seen my daughter? What does she look like?
Dark shadows in every room hold fears and danger. I enter, check my corners, kneel, aim, confirm, and room by room we continue. The building is empty. Stairs down.
I catch sight of myself in the broken glass of a door. Black hair, brown eyes. I know what I look like, but do I know who I am? Who’s inside? We would have made a beautiful baby, Jas and I. She must be special.
Stairs down. Focus. Stairs into darkness. The torches we carry poke holes into the unknown, exposing edges and walls, dangling lights that no longer have power. We build a picture of the unseen from glances in our beams. I lead down, open a door and stop.
How long ago? When did I learn that Jas died? Why did I stay here?
I am in the chair again, Captain standing before me.
‘I understand if you want to go home. Be with family. We can make that happen.’
There’s nothing in my face, behind those eyes. I see the words hit and slide off as if my mind was greased.
‘We can put a replacement into your unit until you get back.’
I shake my head. These men and women rely on me. Brothers and sisters. Leaving them in the hands of a stranger is unthinkable.
‘Your daughter is well looked after. We’ll ensure her grandparents have all they need. When your tour is done you can go home a hero.’
We stand at the bottom of the staircase, clustered around the doorway. The room is crowded, but not with insurgents. Children fill it. There is no blood, but no life either. They have died from smoke inhalation. Older boys and girls with their arms around younger ones. There are three adults, teachers perhaps. Everyone is dead.
The unit leader turns and points back up the stairs.
‘He’s not here. RTB. We keep looking.’
My ride back doesn’t stop at the base, I take it all the way. The Fire doesn’t wear off, it keeps finding new layers to peel back. Memories I don’t want. All I can think about is Jas and my daughter. I don’t even know her name.
All I can see is destruction. My actions causing death. My finger on the trigger. Blood, pain and darkness spilling from me, fear and hatred pooling around me as we travel through the warzone we have created. The melt comes and brings floods of poison waking me nightly, bombed out skeletal structures like hands reaching for me, awareness of my complicity. Emptiness in my eyes as I kill or brutally interrogate. The defence of my sanity at the cost of my soul.
I find the house where my daughter lives. A blue front door, narrow yard with a potted plant and a child’s bike. Chalk on the pavement. I watch her scamper from the house with her grandparents. They are happy. They have grieved and recovered, and I cannot approach them.
I stand at the bottom of a precipice. The sea of memories which surrounds me is dark and freezing. Atop the cliff my daughter dances, unaware.
the end About the author
Dan Staniforth is a Theatre Technical Manager who grew up in Chilcompton and has wound up in London via Manchester. He enjoys making things. He is father to an energetic daughter and husband to a playwright. They all love stories and he is lucky that they put up with his. He tweets as @theonlygolux
Forged was the overall winner of the Fire and Ice competition.
ALL THE TIME IN THE WORLD
JX Plant
‘Oh… the children are in the machine…’ – pause – ‘… or the furnace.’
Suliman hears the words, softly breathed though they are, and well out of his range. The emotion he used to call panic twitches muscles at the sides of his mouth without evoking any tangible feeling. If he were to make a noise, not that he has for many years, it will be the noise he used to call laughter.
She speaks. He knows that already. He’s known for almost as long as he’s known her.