A Stygian Episode

Can you ever be entirely certain that the past has past?

 

After three days of thunder storms the planes were still on the ground, the cadets waiting. War was coming - everyone knew that – and yet they were not ready. The enemy clearly were, and now electric storms coming in from the western mountains were holding them back from their training. The only comfort was that they at least had time to write home.

 

“Dear Mother and Father,” Jack always used capital letters. It was the time; it was the fashion but jack figured that they deserved it. He hadn’t written for some time, hoping that news from the family would reach him and he could reply to their news. Was his sister still with them, or had she been evacuated? Had they received the gifts he had sent in an effort to break the monotony of rationing? Was the house still standing?

 

It was near the centre of the capital, alongside a railway line. The area was likely to be a target. The chances of being hit….

 

Jack didn’t want to think that way and went back to his letter. 

 

“Before the storms broke …” he continued. Taking the plane up still excited him and he described the last night flight as if he was still in the cockpit.

 

“It was a flight under a full moon. As we climbed, the inside of the plane was filled with a silvery light. Seeing the moon from its own element, as opposed to the terrestrial, is chastening. Heavenly.”

 

Jack paused, looking out the window into the night. He wanted to be there now, following the light-lines or flying over a brilliantly lit city. 

 

“As we climbed, the moon suddenly eclipsed and we were plunged into a ghostly darkness.” Jack wanted to write the word stygian to describe that darkness but it was not really his word. It was a favourite of his father. Not the father he was writing to, his mother had remarried after the unexpected death of her husband, Jack’s birth-father. Jack – he was named after him – had indeed already crossed the Styx.

 

“I hope he had the correct fare,” Jack-the-younger mused as he remembered Jack-the-elder.

Insane underwear.

Jack was hot.

Worst of all, his underwear was boiling.

“I need silk under-things” he muttered, sweating profusely.

Jack had always trouble naming the things. The word underpants made him uneasy and slips always slipped from his mind when he needed it most.

To be fair though, it wasn’t a common topic of his conversation. But global warming had changed all that, and his briefs were now a hot topic for him to consider.

If only briefly.

Because he was slowly melting and would soon need neither vest nor pants.

Socks had long since become a memory.

Except sometimes at night when he wore one  on his right foot.

“If you don’t mind me asking…” the visitor watching him walk across the scorched earth paused, “ why are you wearing one sock?”

There was a reason, of course - something to do with anti-inflammatory medical adhesive patches- but he had no intention of saying so many words.

The effort, in this heat, would complete the melting process that had him decomposing into droplets of hot acid that sizzled on the path behind him.

“Why not?” He offered. A standard reply these days.

“Why not indeed,” the visitor agreed. Sounding as if such a conversation was entirely logical.

Jack stared at the visitor, trying to understand him. (It was a he).

He seemed untroubled by the blazing sun, indeed he appeared to consider it normal.

It wasn’t.

The man must be mad, Jack concluded.

“You’re insane,” he said, sharing that conclusion.

The visitor started laughing.

“Like that guy in Paris who jumped off the bridge during the heatwave?”*

 

 

* in Seine (it's an old one).