Stomp

My feet hammer against the steel under my boots with each bounce of the truck.  The ruts in the dirt road compete with the music beating in my ears and my body doesn't know which rhythm to follow.  I stare at a 45 degree angle at the equipment across from me, willing the hours to pass.  A deep boom in the distance.  The radio squaks.  Where was that?  Not us.  Relief. 

I look at the escape hatch above me.  Many times have I used it.  Never to escape danger, but to fly headfirst into it.  We are children on a lazy saturday afternoon.  The floor is lava, don't touch or you'll lose your foot.  Climb over the furniture laughing, but don't look down. 

When I was young, I'd be condemned to daily naps with my sister in our parent's bed, the bright sun teasing us from the windows one room over as we pleaded into our parents closed ears.  We'd lament the lost rays of the day which were of course better spent excavating velociraptor tree root bones or playing freeze tag through the cut grass. 

Finally, growing frustrated and bored, we'd make up games ourselves, the same ones each time though always somehow new.  With long fluffy pillows over our heads, we'd pull our parent's thick woolen cover up to our chins and imagine the world spread out far below us.  We were Power Rangers, our great robot stepping gingerly around frightened citizens and fragile skyscrapers as we pursued the evil running from us.  We were going to set the world right, fight the abomination of the day, his taunts already fading with strength as his tail settled between his legs. 

Our laughter would exhaust us into sleep in spite of ourselves and as we lay there, fighting our eyelids, my idle hands would gather fluffs of loose wool from the underside of the covers. 

I'd awaken with fistfuls of it and call it "lud" when my mother would inquire as to the strange fluff littering her room. 


I jolt back to reality, the unimproved road not helping in my childhood revery.  In one hand, I hold a tourniquet taken from my cargo pocket.  In the other, a fistful of lud pulled from the velcro of the strap.