Adelia sat on a latrine, with one needle between her eyebrows and another on the top of her head. When she exited the toilet and re-entered the infirmary, the acupuncturist barked at her for moving and then proceeded to extract the tiny silver spears. She found needles all over, but felt perfect, a symphonic wave of calm lapped from her feet to her head. Why there were acupuncturists in an infirmary was beyond Adelia, but there they were and so was her team, rocking listlessly on hammocks under a tree on a desert bluff just outside the billowing ivory tents. She found her own hammock and joined them, laying down slowly to accommodate an awful oceanic rush in her head as she looked above at the cloudless sky.
There was a speck in it, very high up, and then there were four specks that drew closer, falling rapidly-- four airmen were parachuted down. How nice of them to come so close to the front, she thought, as she looked beyond the bluff at an army of teenage soldiers running up from the water to the shore. They had descended from a large ship like ants in a recently flooded mound. The queen had yet to show herself. Each young soldier carried one grenade and two rusty pistols, the shinier versions of which Adelia remembered ladies back at home carried in their purses. "Futile," Adelia thought before the morphine kicked in and two rows of foreign peacekeepers materialized with their body-length polymer shields. One row blocked the movement of ragtag soldiers aiming for the base beyond a vulnerable stretch of northern beach, the other kept their targets on a cluster of local militia and several unmanned aerial vehicles nestled in the nooks of cliff.
Atop the bluff, a smooth oak floor sprawled out underneath the tents, ivory curtains waving royally in the South Pacific breeze. It was only an infirmary by name. The four gentlemen were armed with mobile controllers, and they each took shifts with these devices as the others sat with Adelia and her friends on their oversized bed of white couches. A strong smell of pisco consorted with sea breeze. Tom was among the four, to Adelia's surprise, as it had been almost a decade since she had seen him last. They had met in Austin some thirteen years ago, where Tom was trying to make it as a musician, but his reckless habits always got the better of him. After three years, he had asked her to marry him but she declined replying as gently as she could that she could never marry a drunk.
There he was, a somber ten years wiser and a Captain, with that same mischievous sparkle. He hesitated as he made his way across the room, and yet Adelia surprisingly took his hand and rose. Jack laughed. Between distracted cat calls, he pushed buttons and watched little balls descend in pixelated screens. There was thundering outdoors and then silence.
No matter how little both Adelia and the Captain believed in fate, they couldn't help but feel that this was serendipitous. A distant smile here, a memory there. On went the night, more dancing and conversation, more pisco until the winds subsided and all fell into a quiet, satiated slumber.
No matter how little both Adelia and the Captain believed in fate, they couldn't help but feel that this was serendipitous. A distant smile here, a memory there. On went the night, more dancing and conversation, more pisco until the winds subsided and all fell into a quiet, satiated slumber.
When Adelia awoke in the few dark hours before dawn, the moon was hanging low and cast a floodlight on a smoking fixture in the ocean and the vulnerable stretch was speckled with local militia and not just a few mistaken, aerial blasts taking at least a hundred young lives. It turns out the queen had never showed. With the beach secure, the peacekeepers were still moving between the wounded and dead. Adelia quietly negotiated her phone from a tiny clutch and snapped a photo. "Massacre at Paracas," she labeled the gif and off it sailed up through two continents before landing in an editor's inbox.
