by Russell James
We stood alive on the beam. White light changed to a cloudy blue around us, then to a soft shade of green. The beam stayed black beneath our feet. It had been three days since we’d been caught, three days seeming an eternity. Three days standing on the beam. After the first day, we all stood, alive on the beam. There was nothing around us, nothing on the spherical screen surrounding the beam on all sides. We stood, shoulder to shoulder.
On the second day the ache began deep within the arches of my own feet, but I didn’t dare lift one in relief of the standing, I didn’t dare risk losing balance. Aches grew in all our feet that day, none more than Ryan. We stood along the beam, and we heard him, first squeaking then groaning. When he cried out the screen around us and above and below us abruptly displayed a picture of great violence, great inhumanity, from the past, from the ages of barbary. It showed men, in a line, naked and blindfolded, dirty, and bruised. Behind us other men stood in green uniform. They shot the blindfolded men with ancient and outlawed projectile weapons. The blindfolded men fell in a heap, a mist of blood trailing in the air where they stood.
Ryan cried out again, in shock of the image. Ryan lost his balance and fell below the beam, where blue bolts of electricity shook his body, lighting his eye sockets and teeth aflame. Ryan screamed until he could no longer and only writhed and hiccupped below the beam. We saw this. We smelled the burning hair and candescent flesh, heard the sizzle of skin being fed thousands of energy watts. Then Ryan was dead. But we, we stood alive on the beam.
I looked to Stinson, on my right, her eyes wide and a tear forming in the corner of one.
“Never in life, love,” I said, and twitched a smile. “Never in life.” And I slowly raised a hand to wipe her tear.
Now, Stinson was gone, below the beam in a smoking pile of human-shaped ash.
Violence of the past flashed before us when someone cried out, no doubt triggering some manner of noise gate. The shock of the images lessened for some of us, seeing as we could at least predict when it was going to happen.
Day three. Today. There are now three. Below the beam the blackened heaps who were our mates, comrades. Now there are three. We stand alive on the beam. The screen morphs between soft pastels. The beam is black. We make no sounds, the aches in our arches and cramps in our calves’ mere memories of life. While we stand, alive on the beam, and try and feel nothing.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Russell James (He/They), a student in Eastern Oregon University’s MFA in Creative Writing program (’24) focuses on fiction and nonfiction influenced by wilderness, ecology, and community. He is autistic and an enrolled member of the Pamunkey Indian Tribe of King William, Virginia. He resides in Corvallis, Oregon with his wife and 2 dogs. He is at home when he is writing, fly-fishing, exploring, and living the PNW life. Russell has previously published with Pretty Good Pieces, NeuroClastic, and Pyragraph and was the 2016 National Parks Arts Foundation Artist in Residence for Big Bend National Park.
ABOUT THE ARTIST
Matthew McCain is a published author and painter who has collaborated with artists ranging from Billy Morrison to Star Wars icon Billy Dee Williams. He’s currently working on his 8th novel, and his paintings are represented by the Billota Gallery in Florida.