Unwritten

Unwritten: Billy Driscoll

"The sun looks down on a beautiful summer day." That's why this devil-snot storm is so gosh darn distracting. The alternating red and white parasols that used to remind him of shady palms, now appear to him as guillotines - only cheap cardstock reigning in their furious, flapping, destruction. The water reminds him less of the placid blue ponds which ebb at The Ibigos, and more of cottage cheese.

Billy closes his eyes and listens. Waves crash into the rocks of turquoise and pearl which are the foundation of the peninsula he, a little palapa-based boutique, and some scenic dining are trapped (the path out was, well, minimalistic at the best of times, and currently a current shoving the user back and back further to sea). They - the individuals in cacophony - mimic the cry of a lawnmower on rough terrain. Most people musing over war novels would probably say a Gatling gun, or something like that, but that's not how Billy sees war. He sees overgrown lawns and empty beds. Pin-striped pajamas, baby blue, and strewn on the straw mattress like an outline of a son, brother, friend.

"Baby blue," he mutters, smudging his nose with a pineapple-peppered Hawaiian sleeve. The resultant cock of his head allows him to see what he didn't know he was looking for. One of those pocket voice recorder things the pros use - rows of them actually- in the gift shop, between barrels of Pam and Chucky plushies, which are just plain wrong, by the way. He fights the wind on the way over for a closer look. Fifty bucks? Exorbitant. He glances around the perimeter of the hut, and doesn't see any cameras, so he just pockets it. The clamshell packaging is hard to chew through, but doable, and the pop it makes at the end is all the more satisfying because of the effort. They say the best things in life are free. "I say the best thing in life is me," Billy tells the gadget, then thumbs the playback button, laughing all the while.

"I say the best thing in life is me," it parrots. Cocky bugger.

Still smirking, Billy marches back to the bluff and lets the swirling winds molest him like an angel. Speak. Let each word paint a thousand pictures. "The sun looks down on a beautiful summer day. The blades of grass upon which they sit are long and springy, and the sky pervades baby blue. Up the mud and thicket road, the village which the company made no more spews anguish like a geyser. Genreral Potag whimpers like a crick. New paragraph. His camouflage jerkin has been repurposed as a sponge for hard alcohol, some of it peroxide, the rest is whiskey. The liquor can be compartmentalized further - a portion of it purposely administered to the area around a gaping bullet wound, and the rest dribbled from Potag's quivering lips. The divisions are not distinct. Blood crawls up his throat, so he kisses his flask and drives it back down. Swallowing brings a ticklish sensation where his gut is blown out to the elements, and a bout of dry coughs, but then the warmth hits, and he melts. Twenty-Two tells him he isn't going to die, though the news is qualified with the information that his experience consists of a month or two as a hand in the national hospital. War time, so he knows how to wrap gauze, tell convincing lies, and not much else. It doesn't stop him from glancing his way every few seconds. It seems to be the activity of choice - laying against palm trees and looking his way. It's annoying, but one of the many chemical imbalances insides butchers the translation between synapses and sends nervous laughter down the neural chain. Desperate to get himself off his mind, he lifts his head and addresses his unit. 'Somebody tell me something. Something that would make me proud to die with only youse around, cause right now I've got nothing', he says, emphasizing the slur of his words. He holds his liquor well, but not a man who's shared a drink with him would believe it. 'Twenty-Two, Seven, Sixteen, come on. I don't care if its some schoolgirl diary entry, but at least give me something,' he hiccups, 'anything.' New paragraph."

Billy gives the device a funny look. Is that what you're supposed to say: new paragraph? It's the second time he's done it, and this one's come at the perfect time to distract him from his work. Pros probably just take a nice long breath, but in his short experience with the method, he's always stopping for random periods to think of tripe puns to force into his prose. Give those things significance, and he's looking at something so staccato a drumroll would fall behind. It's meant to be sweeping and ruminative.

"Marco elbows Edwin Martins, 'Tell him about your mowing.' New paragraph. Edwin Martins is a twenty year old kid who was once somewhere between the ages of twenty and nil - such is the nature of time. Back then, he was living on Mariba, as it used to be thought customary for Maribans to do - before they, or rather, their Rista, Rista Verra Kaze, woke up with delusions of grandeur. Enough about the invasion, though. Edwin lived under his parents and over a much younger brother. He was self-employed as a lawn mower, and work explicitly for a per-lawn rate because speed was his specialty. Every new employer he picked up, he would sit in his room with a pad of graph paper and map out their premises. Days of optimisation later, he would walk out into the world with a pocket full of sunk opportunity costs to be reimbursed. Some of the neighbors would complain that they were paying him for an hour and he was giving them five minutes, to which he would politely apologize and tell them to hire someone else if they must, which they would often do. After paying the same amount for the next guy to do the same job but be loud and generally inconvenient for a whole fifteen minutes longer, they would come back. Edwin had blocks on his books, and would mow the whole street in long efficient lines. It was a good life: retro tunes blaring from the FM radio he tied down to the top of his trusty Toro, Ice cold soda supplied by his friendliest neighbors, and quick money. People raved about him like they would have gunslingers in the cowboy movies, and indeed, in everything but the official record books, he is the fastest to have ever done the chore. One lawn, he was on pace for breaking the five minute watershed (a feat Larry Henderson, two time American League champion for those living under rocks, said would never be done) when the soft-spoken ABBA hit Fernando blossomed through the radio. No matter the stakes, Edwin will always stop whatever he is doing and dance to that song for its entirety. He let the mower slip from his palms and die, and then lost himself in the music. When it finished, he carried on like nothing happened, and eventually clocked in at 8:13 on his stopwatch. New paragraph. Now his parents leave his bed unmade, because they're too sick with worry to even open his bedroom door and face it. Their baby isn't with them anymore, he's been sent off to The Ibigos, for Rista Verra Kaze's power-grabbing whim of a war - more commonly known as nothing. Absolutely nothing. New paragraph. 'Mowing, yes! That sounds perfect,' Potag almost claps his hands. New Paragraph. 'I'm not going to tell him about my mowing,' Edwin mutters, to which Marco protests that the man is hurt real bad, to which Edwin repeats himself. New Paragraph. Potag rolls his eyes; it would be just like them to let him down one last time, if it is to be like that. 'You tell me, Sixteen.' New Paragraph. 'Okay. Well Edw- I mean, Seven, says he was the fastest lawn-mower in Mariba, and would have the world record if the overseers were only there to watch. He says he mowed a lawn once in under five minutes.' New paragraph. 'Five minutes?' Potag smiles, and the boy even smiles a little as he nods. 'You must have been using a very hungry goat.'