Saturday 26 January 2013

In the army barracks

In the army barracks, prison block of the new recruits.
60's functional architecture, godless and soulless. A main housing block and two outflung wings. Sounds: Coughs of angsty recruits and swing and clutter of cagedoors shutting at dusk.
And all the army newboy recruits are snoring except for one newly-shorn recruit. He lies facedown and bellydown on the rough sheet and embraces his pillow, screwing up his eyes and burying his face in the coarse grey material. At length he drops off but then awakens again when his own fitful snores are mistaken by him for the far-off cries of men echoing in the dormitory, like cries of battle. Near him sleep peacefully, as though dead, worn-our crewcut recruits, tangled in their blankets, feet jutting out at strange angles.
Now day is already breaking and from his bed he gazes out of the large window down past the perimeter of the barracks to the scrubby semi-rural semi-suburban wasteland beyond...
Between the angles of an electricity pylon and a wire fence and a grey administrative building in concrete is a grassy mound and a trickling stream, that in a burst of early morning sunshine seems like a rural idyll, a mini-Eden, to him in his captivity.
And now early to the nearby college dorm steps a statuesque and proud college girl, a brunette neatly and primly dressed, framed by the electricity pylon and the corners of the admin building, and seen by the soldier as though on a catwalk, jauntily stepping. She loves to taunt and encourage the awakening soldiers, who whistle and call out at their grey windows, this girl with her grotesquely proud and chubby face, her shapely calves, her lively, downturned grin. Something to tell the girls about later.
And she looks up at the high windows of the barracks, raising her skirt to show off her legs, patting her behind, mouthing words, seen distant in the early sunshine, pale and fresh.
-Is she an angel or a devil? Still lying face down on his mattress, the insomniac's hand passes below to between his legs.

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