Published CYBER-PSYCHO'S A.O.D. 1992
The row of derelict chicken sheds had open hatches three-quarters of the way up to the ramshackle roofs. These were ready to launch spluttering rockets in a war between squatter tribes who had soapcart boneshakers instead of metal tanks to use in their battles.
I slept in the house nearby. I was one of those toffs whom the squatters so loathed and would really liked to have fought to rid their bloodlust of the salt in the wounds rather than between themselves in running skirmishes of hand-to-hand brawling to which they eventually resorted as the next best thing. I preached peace from my open window, because I believed that was preferable, whatever the cause thrown away.
Peace came too late, however.
I recall that particular evening, with the sun low in the sky casting doubts as well as twirling girders of translucent gold. First one gnarled head, then another, poked from the chicken hatches, tousled mops coiffured into coxcombs. With jabbing glances to either side, I was soon to be treated with the sight of their knees for ears and scrawny thighs clambering out in piecemeal contortions.
Eventually, they scuttled across the allotment, repeater guns like knobbled elbows ratchetting out in skewed angles, rehearsals of bullets rattling into my fence. I waved a fist at them from my bedroom window, only to discover they were already doing likewise to me, in unison, wishfully thinking I would come out to play an enemy, a killable customer for their cutthroat war-mongering. My principles did not, of course, extend to jeopardizing my own preservation to provide a catharsis that would in turn prevent a bloodier battle.
In any event, as I say, peace came too late.
When things got a bit quieter, with the squatters out on their jousting jaunts, I did venture into my garden which was next door to that allotment with the now empty chicken sheds. The wood of the leaning gap-toothed fences, and of the tumbledown sheds themselves, and of the near-by goose run, and of many of the makeshift. trees, had all been blackened by the recent climatic changes. If I did not know better, I would think I was in a particularly bizarre dream.
One of the squatters, previously concealed from my view by its own shadow, jumped out and started squawking so frantically, it was difficult for me to pick out the words. Its knees and elbows were somehow conjoined like outlandish lips, with its elongated neck and narrow head the tongue.
"They've gone off for the last battle."
"How do you know it's a last battle?"
"Because ... because there are no real enemies left to fight against." The squatter surveyed me quizzically as if sizing me up for sacrifice in the very last campaign of all.
Deciding to tack against the natural drift of the dialogue, I asked it for its name.
"None of your business."
"Nonefer Yerbizniz? That's an interesting name."
"Mama Yerbizniz, Dada Yerbizniz, Cousin Yerbiznizes, they've all gone off ... I'm just a sad critter compared to them, left here to guard nothing but ruins."
"You're squawking again, Nonefer ... what's the point of speaking when he to whom you speak cannot make head nor tail of your gabble?"
Whatever was said, there was indeed an argument for saying peace had come too early. Nonefer was the real victim of the war, the only one left alive.
In the distance, we heard the grumbling hills, much like the thunderheads bubbling up in the olden days before the climate changed, with clouds now clashing more in the mode of tongues clucking than lightning flashes sparking off Heavenly removal men's clumsy attempts at preventing the ricochet of angels' furniture in spur-of-the-moment elopements to Hell. Phew! It was a good job, I wouldn't be called to write all this down.
That night, I heard Nonefer's squawking plaintive crooning about the way death was only sad for those left behind. He envied Cousin Yerbiznizes their corpses.
Nonefer had so dreaded being infiltrated with the human emotion of grief. Corpses had it lucky, since they never had a duty to don widow's weeds for the customary length of mourning for themselves.
And it was morning by the time I truly fell into a sufficiently peaceful slumber, thus blotting out Nonefer's plangent wails. I hope I don't wake up till much later, or I won't be in a fit state for digging or putting a sad critter out of its misery.
