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This writing was accepted for publication in the 108 page perfect-bound ISSN# / ISBN# issue/book “Sprung from Grief” Down in the Dirt, v184 (the June 2021 Issue) Order the paperback book:

Order this writing that appears in the one-of-a-kind anthology Lockdown’s Over the Down in the Dirt May-August 2021 issues collection book		get the 420 page May-August 2021 Down in the Dirt 6" x 9" ISBN# perfect-bound paperback book:

A Change of Key

Harrison Linklater Abbott

    I’m in a dream. A crash wakes me up. The barmaid from downstairs is in the doorway and I remember where I am. Her face is panicked.
    “The soldiers are coming for you!” she whispers.
    I slip out of the bed. I’m already dressed because I always sleep in my clothes. I put my boots and coat on and make sure I have my knife, wallet, flask and tin of sardines.
    “Thank you for the warning,” I say to the girl, “it’s okay – you can go. Tell them you know nothing about me. Shut the door. Thanks.”
    “But how will you get out?”
    “I’ll be fine. Leave me, please.”
    She leaves. I go to the window. There’s a snarling army truck paused on the street, perhaps fifty yards away. Three armed soldiers pummel out of it and disappear from view, running towards the front doors of this motel. I open the window and look down, into the back garden. It’s too high a jump to make without injuring myself. But I see piping down the walls.
    I saddle up on the ledge and then clutch onto the piping and lever myself down. It’s cold and windy and wet and the rain whips my face. And through the walls I hear the soldiers rampage into the house, barking and stomping. As I descend they ascend.
    Just as I get to the bottom of the pipe and into the garden the soldiers appear in the room I’ve just come from. One of them yells when he sees me. He pokes his rifle out the gap and shoots. The concrete by me spits up. I run. A second bullet whacks into a poplar tree right in front of me and the leaves whoosh out like bird feathers. I go beyond the trees and there’s a third shot which I only know the noise of.
    At the back of the garden there’s a wire fence. I jump up onto it and make my way to the top and jump off the other end and find myself in a little alleyway which trails into the distance and I run down it. Bushes hang by the path. Birds sing in them explosively.
    I come to a bicycle. It’s a kids’ bike. As in, adolescent-size, and not quite big enough for me, but, Christ, I need a bike right now. And I feel bad for robbing the kid’s bike, whoever he is, but there’s nothing to be done about it. Perhaps if I survive I’ll go back when the war’s over and buy him a new one.
    The bike has a good action to it. I ride into the street. It’s filled with sandbag walls and dormant shops with their shutters up and in the air is a chronic whiff of gunpowder. I cross into a new road where I meet the river and I go over the bridge. In the water there are floating blocks of debris carried down from the bombed buildings upstream. After the bridge there’s an abandoned civilian car upended in the middle of the road. The windscreen is smashed open and I cycle around it to avoid the glass.
    A screaming sound makes me flinch and turn around. That’s the army jeep coming down the road the other side of the bridge. They’ve not lost me. I swear and swerve to the side. I get off the bike and run to the bankside. The water swirls in manic brown.
    The soldiers stop atop the bridge and tumble out. Their hollering wavers in the wind. I jump into the water. They shoot at me. The current flumes me downstream and my body is turned over and over. Reminds me of rolling down a hill as a child. I get a few glimpses of the soldier trio on the bridge. The water goes up my nose and mouth. I’m taken around a bend. I try to keep my head up and not swallow too much.
    I’ve gotten control of my balance now and am doing my best to swim.
    Warehouses, factories and train tracks hang in the long industrial yards by the river. Many of them are spliced and crushed by the air raids. One factory has half its roof caved in and I can see its gory metallic entrails sticking out. The scenery changes key as I’m flown down to fields and woods. And the breadth of the river narrows. Crows and pigeons burst out of the canopy.
    I swim toward the bankside and manage to crawl out of the water. I take my coat off and hang it by a tree. Then take my inner shirts off and rinse them. I’m shivering crazily. When the clothes are done I head into the woods.
    The trees are mostly pine and I get that acidic luscious scent of the sap and the needles on the floor are cushiony underfoot. I run without direction. Time meddles with the evergreen. I stop now and then to sip from my flask. Must save the sardines for the time being. It rains more heavily and then it changes into sleet and snow and the sky darkens in a purple grace above me as the flakes tingle down.
    I find a road. It pops up randomly, slinking through the forest. I follow it. It might lead me back to the army and there might be troops patrolling the road but I’m too cold and dying to care much. All I have is this hook of urbanity.
    And indeed the road leads me up to a house. I see a big building on the horizon. I go through its gate. No lights are on in the windows and the place looks deserted. The building is lavish; I’m suspecting it might be a home that belonged to one of the rich families that fled the country when the war broke out.
    I find a stone ornament in the garden and I go up to the nearest window. I throw it through the pane. And climb into the house. The cradle of shelter settles over me. I’m in a kitchen. I sit against a cupboard, exhausted. Snow wisps into the room through the broken window. So I go out the kitchen and into the living room. I collapse onto a couch there. Suddenly I’m hungry. I open the tin of sardines. My tastebuds explode.
    And I’m about to eat, when I hear a scarpering in front of me in the dark. Something else is in the house with me. I put the tin down and listen.
    After moments of silence, I flick my lighter on and look ahead.
    There’s a cat, poised on a carpet, watching me. Its pupils are huge in the flamelight.
    “Hello there, cat,” I say, and I offer my hand out to stroke it.
    Then I hold out a piece of the sardine. The cat’s nostrils squirm and it moves closer. But there’s something wrong about the way the cat moves. Its back legs are lame. The cat can only move on its front paws. I put the food in front of him so he doesn’t have to crawl so far. Are his hind legs broken? What’s up with him?
    Either way it’s satisfying to hear him chomp. He’s very thin. Did his owners leave him in the house? He obviously needs the food far more than I do. Maybe tomorrow I can take him to the next village. Try and find somebody that knows of a vet. Get him some help.
    For now I just need to sleep. I take my coat off and then lay it over me as I lie on the couch. After the cat has finished the sardines I lift him up onto the couch with me. He nuzzles into my legs. He purrs. It’s hard to relax in war but the cat makes it easier. If I can just get one dream in before the daylight I should be restored. Visit another world, and don’t be shy in pretending that it’s not real. Then wake up and embrace reality. This is exactly what dreams are for.

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