Edition #132
28.05.24
~
Newsflash⚡ writes fictional stories inspired by what is going on.
This story is about a sign that caught fire.
Estimated read time: 1.6 minutes.
LINK: the story behind this story. (BBC News)⚡
“Deadly strike on Rafah a tragic mishap, Netanyahu says”, by Matt Murphy & Paul Adams @ BBC News.
(27.05.2024)
-
A man once told me that after much bludgeoning, a fish can still vaguely sense what is around it, however faintly, and that it will go on being a fish, as best it can, until the life has been utterly thumped from its tail into the plankboards, until the languid, unintelligent and dumb look of a witness has been well and truly stomped from its eye.
I do not know why I think of this. I think somehow I am reverting; somehow I am preparing, also, to burn, for the thin wisps of dirt to finally crackle between my lips. I do not try to think such morbid thoughts, but who is now to stop me? I think, now, we are all becoming like the fish; innocuous in the basin, staring up at our hunters, undead, but somehow here to witness all the same. By the arrival of dusk, the heat had begun to recede, from a white of apparently infinite depth to a much milder tone of grey. Some of us even began to joke of rain and how it might help with the digging. We were sitting in something of a semi-circle, at the edge of a stained canvas sheet, which stretched for six feet along one of the camp's central highways, like some forgettable flag, on a fencepost halfway around the world. It was quickly becoming dark; the inky black that brought with it the columns of fire and soot was bleeding dryly through the horizon; one by one the clouds appeared to be losing their colour. A seagull shrieked over the camp with a sound like paper being torn from the wound. For a moment, the crying of a nearby child fell quiet, and that was when we each heard it. There is something about the hiss of an ATS missile that singes the nerves of the feeling mind - let it be this, if nothing else, if there is no other way to describe the sound of this cylinder, of nickel-plated death, whistling on its way down from the heavens we had once known and worshipped: it will silence the mind for a moment. Before the heat of the blast. And, if you are lucky, before the taste of the dirt. I do not try to think such morbid thoughts - but what of it, when I have been struck, now, to only my senses? When I awoke, I was aware of my arm bleeding, and a crackling pain in my ankle, which crunched with even the smallest of movements. I let out a cry. It was panicked; confused, like the bleat of a maddening lamb as it is stunned into nothingness for the slaughter. I was lying face down and something had become stuck to my lips; something black, ashy. A metallic taste of blood and survival mixed on my tongue. I was here. I coughed, and carefully moved my neck to look upwards, and that was when I saw it. The gates of the peace camp were on fire; framed by it, in fact. I could make it out with only one eye. Kuwaiti Peace Camp '1. The faint words now looked little, very little, before the blazing towers of smoke, and childishly innocent next to the newly blackened edges of the gateposts. Deep, painful cries for which we have lost the power of description broke out over the raging fires, as if at war with their sound, with the demonic rush of wind and its crackle. I could hear them. The impenetrable roar of heat was being broken through by the most haunting of notes, the note of unwanted survival. Gusts of wind carried the howl of the smoke and the deathly echo of its victims - an inseparable cacophony; the fire and the fuel it must burn, the fuel and the fire it is thrown to. Burnt in disbelief and in agony. Singed from the skin to the spirit. From somewhere nearby, a sound of sobbing hammered up into the blackness. The knife of the human voice fought with the lull of the destruction. How much worse the human soul can sound, than all the elements! I could have been dead. Spit was forming in my mouth. I let it trickle to the dirt. I was not dead. For those hunters of mine, lurking not above the water, but behind the columns of smoke, I was something not worse, not inconvenient, but certainly not pleasant. Suddenly I became not a thing but a thought - a thought they would not like to admit to themselves, for the sake of their own, twisted and faintly glowing souls... I was not one of those whom they killed; I was one of those who was beat and bore witness. And - if not now, when to say it - I will, like that story of mine, go on, I will go on, I will go on now, as usual, as though it has never occurred, as though there will be a cool heat tomorrow, as though I will be able to walk. As though, I suppose, a bloodied and bludgeoned fish, I will go on as best I can.
-
if you dig it…
Newsflash’s first 500 subscribers get paid access, for free.⚡
Current subscriber count: 207.
Just make sure to select “free” out of the membership options. Once you’re on the list, your membership will be comped within twenty-four hours.
ALSO:
(^^ really helps)
Contact:
disclaimer:
This is fiction. The views expressed in this publication do not reflect the views of the author. The stories themselves are based on imagined events. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is fictitious and should not be taken as representative.
Read the full disclaimer.
Netanyahu has said "oops" one too many times. Most of the world is no longer sympathetic to Israel's cause since he continues to murder thousands of innocent and blameless people. He has become a madman. Elizabeth, www.democrazy2020.org
As said before I take no sides----the RICH/ROYALS/POLITICIANS/ESTABLISHMENT etc create the wars and troubles and they make money whilst the people pay with BLOOD and DEATH! People world wide need to say to the SATANIC EVIL ONES----NO MORE!