The Trail
by Alexei Raymond
“Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.”
—William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”
The white package has text all over it. He’s heard of the medication before but knows it’s not for him—the tablets inside the box. He only agreed to take the prescription to keep up appearances, for the sake of the plan. Still, it begs to be opened, and so he peels the sticker on the packaging to get in. The sticker clings to his fingernail as he tries to flick it away. Finally, it blinks away behind him—taken by the wind.
Adam is on his way home, and the guards at the gate pay him no mind. The afternoon sun illuminates everything: the bricks of the pavement, the accompanying asphalt, the white tablets in the clear-and-silver blister pack he pulls out. He’s not sure what to do with them now that he’s handling them. He has no intention of taking them, because nothing is wrong with him. He just looks that way, smells that way, talks that way, cries that way, shakes that way. But despite appearances, he’s in control. It has a purpose. After much research, he’s proud of how fully he’s embodying the pain, the deterioration—how he hosts the chronic ailment of the mind, the soul, without succumbing to it, without revealing the true rebellion. He believes he’s been forced to invite it in as a guest. And these—he crinkles the pack--these are props. He plunges the package into a deep pocket and keeps one of the two blister packs in his hand.
He’s by a row of parked cars, and, by force of habit, he studies himself in the bent reflections of the windows. Glimpses, snapshots. He can see what he looks like on the outside, to his ever-present audience. Hair disheveled, unkempt, illegal stubble, despondent eyes. The olive-green he disrespects appears darker in the flashing reflections. For now, he remains a frayed symbol and a representative of the flag he sees dancing in the wind. It’s tied to a pole. There are more flags further down the road. He concedes that the sway of the blue-white cloth is beautiful, and wonders how loyalty to it, despite total immersion, never did take root. The flag sways, and the wind is blind; it doesn’t know what horrors it caresses so lovingly. Blindly, it also billows his baggy pants, his loosely fitting shirt. On his skin, the wind’s caresses turn to cool bedsheets. The sensation is utterly incongruous.
He fidgets with the blister pack--one, two, three. It holds eight tablets. The tactile sensation demands he pop one out. Smooth, rounded chalk between his fingers. They can mark the path he is taking. He lets the first drop.
“God, I can’t wait to see what you look like with the buzz cut! Oh—oh! And the uniform? Please, please come over wearing it. I need to see what it all looks like together!”
“Oh, I don’t know… I’m exhausted and it’s dirty, and—”
“Please, I want to see my handsome boyfriend. Won’t you let me?”
“Ok, ok, but just because you’re using the voice. I’m taking it off right after!”
“I’ll help you. Come quick!”
He turns—gripped by momentary shame—to see where the first tablet dropped. A white dot in a crack between sunblasted, grey bricks. For a moment, he worries about someone eating it, but dismisses the thought. He pops out another one and loads it between curled fingers and spring thumb. It flies hard.
“Hakshev! From now on, when I tell you to run, you run! When I tell you to crawl, you drop and crawl! Do you understand!?”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Where is your fucking energy?!”
“YES, SIR!”
“Good. Sticklight’s thrown. FETCH.”
“YES, SIR!”
He follows the tablet’s trajectory into some fragrant, blossoming bushes. Dark green, white petals, hidden thorns. The bushes that accompanied him anywhere he went, throughout the years. He loads a third shot. He doesn’t see where it goes.
“Our pride—the role you’re training for is far from trivial. If you think you’re about to enter some half-hearted, bullshit service where you kick back and sleep through these three years, then you’re sorely mistaken. You’re at the beginning of a journey, and at the end of it, you’ll have trained your own classes of recruits, the way I’m doing it right now. We are all integrated. And I’m not speaking about just recruits. Here, at Bislah 314, we are humbled by our duty to train and prepare pirhei tayis. You’ll be dealing with the best of the best—one destined to serve in the skies—so you, in turn, have a duty to become the best of the best. Together, we will strive and go beyond our limits, for our homeland, for the Israeli nation, for our legacy. So, look at the soldier beside you, feel your shared mission, your fate, and be proud. You are privileged and have been chosen to take part in one of the most crucial aspects of our service. Tomorrow, you will—”
There’s no one around aside from the occasional car. Some puddle is running alongside the road, allowing sky and liberty to become grounded in the blue reflection. He lets the next tablet slip from his fingers and crushes it under dusty black boot. The resulting gore is but a powder.
“I can’t stay there any longer, I’m running out of time. I have to do something.”
“Okay, I get you, but please, you have to think of the consequences. If they find out—I don’t want to say jail, but… And what about later on? People will know you didn’t serve, or worse. What about a job? Our friends? Your family? Didn’t you say that your dad is—”
“Please, not now. I just—Please, let’s just focus on—”
“No! You have to take this seriously! I mean, your role wouldn’t be that bad, would it? Or if it bothers you, then you can try asking for a simpler role, if it makes it easier to stay. I’m just worried you haven’t thought this through. If you try to get out, how could it hurt you?”
“Nat, are you kidding me? Haven’t thought this through? Never in my life have I taken anything more seriously than this. Trust me, I know. I know everything you’re saying, but everything in me is screaming to get out. I viscerally reject—do you get that? I can’t be a part of this. So, I’ll deal with this now, and what comes after—we’ll see.”
The fifth tablet is launched with his entire arm, the way he would a rock. The release is pleasing, making it evident that there is strength in him still, despite his cultivation of atrophy. They cannot have it—although the body, in its vigor and egoism, is eager to impress—and so all must be suppressed. The tablet ricochets off a tree trunk in fragments.
“Your face—oh, God—your cheeks—why did do that? Are you insane? Just stop, please! Please don’t hurt yourself—don’t you dare! Listen to me, please. I’m begging you.”
“Nat, I’m fine, it’s not that bad. It worked. I scared them—that’s all that matters. They’ll take me seriously. They have to.”
He’s walking by his old elementary school, and his fist holds the eighth tablet until sweat begins to melt it. He relaxes it and wipes off the white residue as the tablet falls away. He stares at the empty hand; was he supposed to be holding something else?
“No, no, no… Listen to me—LISTEN TO ME! I’m telling you that all I can see is BLACK! There’s nothing there. Day, night—NOTHING. I—I just hate, and I’m weak. I loathe myself and I need to—stop, stop, STOP! I’m done, it’s over, it’s over, it’s over. I want—I need to go to sleep—please, PLEASE. Can—can you help me go to sleep? Maybe if I just go to sleep. I think I don’t want anything anymore. It’s all over. Forget everything. If you just help me—if you just give me some pills—”
He passes by a bin lined with a black trash bag. The silver of the empty blister pack dives into it. He takes out the second pack and discards the white box, then continues. Home isn’t too far now. A weekend’s respite. The struggle ahead.
The twelfth tablet lands ahead of him. He sidesteps it—no longer worried about whoever might ingest it. It’s another marker. The houses he passes by are silent. Beware of Dog. Gates garlanded with more flags.
“Adam, I have to ask you… You know you can tell me, right? Are you… Are you really okay? It just looks like—”
“Oh, c’mon, Nat, not again. I’m fine, don’t worry. Like you said, it just looks like that. I’m just taking it seriously. You get that it has to be believable, right? All of it and everywhere.”
“I know, but… Are you sure it’s not getting to you? I trust you. But, I mean, you’re home, you’re with me, aren’t you? Nobody can see you. You haven’t eaten, you barely talk, you don’t touch me… Seriously. I can’t even remember the last time I heard you laugh.”
“Nat... I mean, this is what it takes. Please. Don’t make it harder on me. I promise—I promise I’ll snap out of it once I’m out. I will. I just can’t now. So please. Help me do this, okay? You just never know what they’re capable of. I don’t even know. Maybe they listen, or read texts, or...”
He pauses by a low garden wall and carefully places the fourteenth tablet on it. Further down the wall, a lazy cat slowly blinks at him—is it love? He continues, and the pavement is interrupted by an electricity tower jutting into the pedestrian path. He reads Danger of Death! on a yellow sign at the tower’s center as he steps around it and continues to lay down his trail. Some sputtering hum of leaking electricity makes him look back. The purpose of it all is lost on him. The trail doesn’t make sense, anyhow. Breadcrumbs are supposed to lead back home, not back to the base. Still, the penultimate tablet is flicked into a patch of grass—its white winks out of the blades. The trees he now walks under are loaded with red flowers. Fallen petals are droplets underneath, and some are blood spatters on the pavement. He drags them with his soles.
The sun is too much maybe if I drive this shovel into my foot or more cuts deeper this time or swing it into his head like a mad dog they say—they say someone shot himself in the bathroom years ago right over there how horrible is that where we wash our faces I have guard duty this weekend they will hand me a rifle they will hand me my rifle touch of metal and I can prove my state they will think it’s real and I make my escape am I hyperventilating now that’s good I’m shaking now they’re leading me somewhere right to the doc I can’t feel my hands now that’s a performance I didn’t even know I’m that good they’re holding me down on the gurney they look worried and white gather round gather round but I’m in control and it’s all a show is this good enough do you believe me do you do you?
As he approaches his apartment building, he holds the sixteenth and final tablet. Once he gets rid of this one, what then? The air is stagnant now that the wind is gone. Perhaps he hasn’t done enough, but he’s dedicated to the craft. Some say there are ways easier, braver, more cunning, but his heart’s been called to this one. And, well, if he’s predisposed, then why not?
The sixteenth dissolves. It’s bitter on his tongue.
Black as the pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.”
—William Ernest Henley, “Invictus”
The white package has text all over it. He’s heard of the medication before but knows it’s not for him—the tablets inside the box. He only agreed to take the prescription to keep up appearances, for the sake of the plan. Still, it begs to be opened, and so he peels the sticker on the packaging to get in. The sticker clings to his fingernail as he tries to flick it away. Finally, it blinks away behind him—taken by the wind.
Adam is on his way home, and the guards at the gate pay him no mind. The afternoon sun illuminates everything: the bricks of the pavement, the accompanying asphalt, the white tablets in the clear-and-silver blister pack he pulls out. He’s not sure what to do with them now that he’s handling them. He has no intention of taking them, because nothing is wrong with him. He just looks that way, smells that way, talks that way, cries that way, shakes that way. But despite appearances, he’s in control. It has a purpose. After much research, he’s proud of how fully he’s embodying the pain, the deterioration—how he hosts the chronic ailment of the mind, the soul, without succumbing to it, without revealing the true rebellion. He believes he’s been forced to invite it in as a guest. And these—he crinkles the pack--these are props. He plunges the package into a deep pocket and keeps one of the two blister packs in his hand.
He’s by a row of parked cars, and, by force of habit, he studies himself in the bent reflections of the windows. Glimpses, snapshots. He can see what he looks like on the outside, to his ever-present audience. Hair disheveled, unkempt, illegal stubble, despondent eyes. The olive-green he disrespects appears darker in the flashing reflections. For now, he remains a frayed symbol and a representative of the flag he sees dancing in the wind. It’s tied to a pole. There are more flags further down the road. He concedes that the sway of the blue-white cloth is beautiful, and wonders how loyalty to it, despite total immersion, never did take root. The flag sways, and the wind is blind; it doesn’t know what horrors it caresses so lovingly. Blindly, it also billows his baggy pants, his loosely fitting shirt. On his skin, the wind’s caresses turn to cool bedsheets. The sensation is utterly incongruous.
He fidgets with the blister pack--one, two, three. It holds eight tablets. The tactile sensation demands he pop one out. Smooth, rounded chalk between his fingers. They can mark the path he is taking. He lets the first drop.
“God, I can’t wait to see what you look like with the buzz cut! Oh—oh! And the uniform? Please, please come over wearing it. I need to see what it all looks like together!”
“Oh, I don’t know… I’m exhausted and it’s dirty, and—”
“Please, I want to see my handsome boyfriend. Won’t you let me?”
“Ok, ok, but just because you’re using the voice. I’m taking it off right after!”
“I’ll help you. Come quick!”
He turns—gripped by momentary shame—to see where the first tablet dropped. A white dot in a crack between sunblasted, grey bricks. For a moment, he worries about someone eating it, but dismisses the thought. He pops out another one and loads it between curled fingers and spring thumb. It flies hard.
“Hakshev! From now on, when I tell you to run, you run! When I tell you to crawl, you drop and crawl! Do you understand!?”
“Yes, Sir!”
“Where is your fucking energy?!”
“YES, SIR!”
“Good. Sticklight’s thrown. FETCH.”
“YES, SIR!”
He follows the tablet’s trajectory into some fragrant, blossoming bushes. Dark green, white petals, hidden thorns. The bushes that accompanied him anywhere he went, throughout the years. He loads a third shot. He doesn’t see where it goes.
“Our pride—the role you’re training for is far from trivial. If you think you’re about to enter some half-hearted, bullshit service where you kick back and sleep through these three years, then you’re sorely mistaken. You’re at the beginning of a journey, and at the end of it, you’ll have trained your own classes of recruits, the way I’m doing it right now. We are all integrated. And I’m not speaking about just recruits. Here, at Bislah 314, we are humbled by our duty to train and prepare pirhei tayis. You’ll be dealing with the best of the best—one destined to serve in the skies—so you, in turn, have a duty to become the best of the best. Together, we will strive and go beyond our limits, for our homeland, for the Israeli nation, for our legacy. So, look at the soldier beside you, feel your shared mission, your fate, and be proud. You are privileged and have been chosen to take part in one of the most crucial aspects of our service. Tomorrow, you will—”
There’s no one around aside from the occasional car. Some puddle is running alongside the road, allowing sky and liberty to become grounded in the blue reflection. He lets the next tablet slip from his fingers and crushes it under dusty black boot. The resulting gore is but a powder.
“I can’t stay there any longer, I’m running out of time. I have to do something.”
“Okay, I get you, but please, you have to think of the consequences. If they find out—I don’t want to say jail, but… And what about later on? People will know you didn’t serve, or worse. What about a job? Our friends? Your family? Didn’t you say that your dad is—”
“Please, not now. I just—Please, let’s just focus on—”
“No! You have to take this seriously! I mean, your role wouldn’t be that bad, would it? Or if it bothers you, then you can try asking for a simpler role, if it makes it easier to stay. I’m just worried you haven’t thought this through. If you try to get out, how could it hurt you?”
“Nat, are you kidding me? Haven’t thought this through? Never in my life have I taken anything more seriously than this. Trust me, I know. I know everything you’re saying, but everything in me is screaming to get out. I viscerally reject—do you get that? I can’t be a part of this. So, I’ll deal with this now, and what comes after—we’ll see.”
The fifth tablet is launched with his entire arm, the way he would a rock. The release is pleasing, making it evident that there is strength in him still, despite his cultivation of atrophy. They cannot have it—although the body, in its vigor and egoism, is eager to impress—and so all must be suppressed. The tablet ricochets off a tree trunk in fragments.
“Your face—oh, God—your cheeks—why did do that? Are you insane? Just stop, please! Please don’t hurt yourself—don’t you dare! Listen to me, please. I’m begging you.”
“Nat, I’m fine, it’s not that bad. It worked. I scared them—that’s all that matters. They’ll take me seriously. They have to.”
He’s walking by his old elementary school, and his fist holds the eighth tablet until sweat begins to melt it. He relaxes it and wipes off the white residue as the tablet falls away. He stares at the empty hand; was he supposed to be holding something else?
“No, no, no… Listen to me—LISTEN TO ME! I’m telling you that all I can see is BLACK! There’s nothing there. Day, night—NOTHING. I—I just hate, and I’m weak. I loathe myself and I need to—stop, stop, STOP! I’m done, it’s over, it’s over, it’s over. I want—I need to go to sleep—please, PLEASE. Can—can you help me go to sleep? Maybe if I just go to sleep. I think I don’t want anything anymore. It’s all over. Forget everything. If you just help me—if you just give me some pills—”
He passes by a bin lined with a black trash bag. The silver of the empty blister pack dives into it. He takes out the second pack and discards the white box, then continues. Home isn’t too far now. A weekend’s respite. The struggle ahead.
The twelfth tablet lands ahead of him. He sidesteps it—no longer worried about whoever might ingest it. It’s another marker. The houses he passes by are silent. Beware of Dog. Gates garlanded with more flags.
“Adam, I have to ask you… You know you can tell me, right? Are you… Are you really okay? It just looks like—”
“Oh, c’mon, Nat, not again. I’m fine, don’t worry. Like you said, it just looks like that. I’m just taking it seriously. You get that it has to be believable, right? All of it and everywhere.”
“I know, but… Are you sure it’s not getting to you? I trust you. But, I mean, you’re home, you’re with me, aren’t you? Nobody can see you. You haven’t eaten, you barely talk, you don’t touch me… Seriously. I can’t even remember the last time I heard you laugh.”
“Nat... I mean, this is what it takes. Please. Don’t make it harder on me. I promise—I promise I’ll snap out of it once I’m out. I will. I just can’t now. So please. Help me do this, okay? You just never know what they’re capable of. I don’t even know. Maybe they listen, or read texts, or...”
He pauses by a low garden wall and carefully places the fourteenth tablet on it. Further down the wall, a lazy cat slowly blinks at him—is it love? He continues, and the pavement is interrupted by an electricity tower jutting into the pedestrian path. He reads Danger of Death! on a yellow sign at the tower’s center as he steps around it and continues to lay down his trail. Some sputtering hum of leaking electricity makes him look back. The purpose of it all is lost on him. The trail doesn’t make sense, anyhow. Breadcrumbs are supposed to lead back home, not back to the base. Still, the penultimate tablet is flicked into a patch of grass—its white winks out of the blades. The trees he now walks under are loaded with red flowers. Fallen petals are droplets underneath, and some are blood spatters on the pavement. He drags them with his soles.
The sun is too much maybe if I drive this shovel into my foot or more cuts deeper this time or swing it into his head like a mad dog they say—they say someone shot himself in the bathroom years ago right over there how horrible is that where we wash our faces I have guard duty this weekend they will hand me a rifle they will hand me my rifle touch of metal and I can prove my state they will think it’s real and I make my escape am I hyperventilating now that’s good I’m shaking now they’re leading me somewhere right to the doc I can’t feel my hands now that’s a performance I didn’t even know I’m that good they’re holding me down on the gurney they look worried and white gather round gather round but I’m in control and it’s all a show is this good enough do you believe me do you do you?
As he approaches his apartment building, he holds the sixteenth and final tablet. Once he gets rid of this one, what then? The air is stagnant now that the wind is gone. Perhaps he hasn’t done enough, but he’s dedicated to the craft. Some say there are ways easier, braver, more cunning, but his heart’s been called to this one. And, well, if he’s predisposed, then why not?
The sixteenth dissolves. It’s bitter on his tongue.
Alexei Raymond chases visions of unspeakable loveliness from a world lost. He is an ardent fan of rabbits, insects, and monkeys. Born in the Middle East, he is currently based in Belgrade. His stories appear in publications such as The MacGuffin, Sublunary Review, and Phylum Press. Connect with him on X at @enemyofcruelty.