MARCHPANE

the boys, crawling over the dead and the dying, the boys screaming for their mothers as they split open the corpses of their enemies, the boys with smoke and tears in their eyes, searching for teeth while their brains fall onto the grass, the boys vomiting onto other boys, the boys hacking at the stomachs of horses, the boys pulling out the warm insides of horses, the boys crawling into the womb-like absence of horses, the boys shutting their eyes against the blood, the organs, curling up like a baby inside the beast, hoping to be lost at war, the boys thinking about other boys, the boys pissing on other boys, in their mouths, down their throats, the boys pushing blades through other boys, hoping to stop the breathing, the boys laid down in the turf, being trampled by man and beast, feeling the soil push into their mouths before hooves crash over their skulls, the boys lying top to toe next to the dying, the dying, the death and the sky is still blue but the dying are screaming blood into their mouths, the boys losing their voice as windpipes are severed by rusty pikes, the boys holding their softest parts in their arms, crying for home, pleading with the sky, their heads full of the promises of god as told to them by their desperate mothers, the cannonballs blasting them back to a wet infancy, the clouds of smoke and their beautiful faces, the boys walking through the dying, the boys breaking the legs of the dying, the boys laughing with one another as they leave their enemy in pieces, the boys praying to god, the boys racked with fever, the boys racked with hunger, the boys covered in shit and mud, the boys finding their friends, stuck like fucked pigs, choking on their teeth, always blood running through the earth, boys split in two, boys with pikes through their throats, boys with swords run rusty across their throats, boys with stomachs full of musket fire, boys with their scalps removed, boys with their eyeballs crushed underfoot, boys still alive, breathing bronchial thickness, wheezing, asthmatic corpses lining the fields of bloody england, the dead boys attracting flies, the sick boys crying for the pain to stop, to stop screaming, please stop, the boys with flintlock powder under their nails, the boys asking if they will live, asking if they will go to heaven, asking if they have pissed themselves, asking why god has forsaken them, asking to be put out of their misery, asking for their throat to be cut, asking for a lance to be driven through their heart, their heart that still pushes blood around the wither of their body, asking for their mothers, begging for their mothers, the boys screaming for their mothers and the ghost, a royalist, a cavalier, a scared child, cornered by dragoons, their mouths brimming with fire, they lay the ghost down in the grass and place feverfew in his mouth, they hold him down until he swallows the pale yellow flowers that taste slightly of pepper and they hold him down while his pupils dilate and they hold him down until his penis stands erect against his sodden trousers and they hold him down with strong hands until he begins to drool thin wires of phlegm onto the battlefield and they leave him as the sky becomes heavy with afterbirth and the hedgerows become rib-cages and the grass becomes pubic hair and the screaming of the dying boys becomes music and the blood soaked field becomes his mothers skin, the skin that he nestled against so often when he had been a screaming child and really what was he now except the very same, a screaming child left to die alongside one thousand others, all day the sound of metal slicing to bone and the dull metallic clang of weapon hitting helmet and the piles of bodies strewn over vast expanses of red and brown earth and the turf matted to the ground with viscera, the ghost trying to scramble through soil and roots, the essence coating his fingernails, the boys desperate to get off this field and make something of their life, to return to their homes, to their families, to the sunlight through the windows, away from the smell, the fucking awful smell that cuts the back of your throat, the smell that you cannot stop tasting even after you bury your face deep into the ground, letting the soil pour through every hole, stretching out your fingers, grabbing huge handfuls of soft clay and stuffing them into your mouth as you feel the hand of the lord on your back, the golden hand of the lord lifting you up and away from this fucking disaster, the lord telling you to close your eyes and wait for the rain to come and run the gore into the rivers, the lord telling you to close your eyes and remember last summer, before you had been old enough to kill,  when the baker’s girl had lifted her skirt and shown you every pink thing you need ever hold dear in life and now, oh lord now you were going to give your whole life for nothing, you will never feel anyone’s soft tongue asking beautiful questions inside your mouth, just warm blood and the senselessness of war, just warm blood and some cold steel metal point pressed through your stomach, one man walks past with a servile grin on his face, shell-shocked, warm orange piss running down his leg, no worry for the arm that has blown off in the wind, he sings a song about little yellow flowers falling from the sky, and that night you dream of cromwell, forcing himself onto your dying body, his penis thick and heavy in your throat, his face always changing, but always cromwell, cromwell inside you as you die, laughing at you as you cry out for him to end you, as you beg him to end you, as you drink the cum of a thousand roundheads while eighty miles away in the palace of st james the cunt king eats marchpane, and hundreds die in some awful field next to a wood, from the trees walks something giant, something made of maggots, the maggot king, the maggot king who crawls slowly towards you, killing the earth with every torturous movement, the maggot king whose eyes are buckshot, who sits on a throne of effluence, who drags the stars towards him with awful long pink claws, the maggot king crawling towards you while you die, the maggot king who opens his mouth and screams a thick trail of bile onto the grass, who smells of cut chicken necks and abandoned rooms, whose eyes are buckshot, whose long pink claws drag the dying stars towards him, the maggot king who consumes the sky, who takes your genitals in his hand and squeezes, who crawls over the dying soldiers and leans over your body, whose face hovers inches from your face, who drops maggots onto your face as his whole body vibrates, the maggot king who slowly becomes something else entirely, who slowly becomes another soldier, who slowly becomes just another soldier that slaps your face, looks into your eyes and says wake up you cunt, this nightmare isn't over yet, there is a firm hand on your shoulder and then suddenly you are somewhere else, somewhere dark and brown, a hole, a hole dug in the battlefield, and where the rusted pit in your stomach was there is now only pink skin, a smoothness, you open your eyes and it is so mercifully dark even though the sun beats down through the entrance, the wet soil comforts you and you look around the hole to see others there, one of the fucking enemy and three of your own and you want to scream at the fucking cavalier, want to tear chunks from him with your bare hands, want to reach into his fucking awful mouth and rip out his tongue, but he is dying, he is dying, and for just as moment you feel sorry for him, he is alone, a boy like you, a boy like the rest of the boys dying for some fucking king who would not take a piss where you lay, he is a boy and he is dying and next to him is another boy, half naked and feral, desperately clutching the damp space where his arm once was, his eyes bright white and crying, and next to him another boy, another boy, another boy, another boy, another boy who kissed his mother before leaving on a cart, to war, to glorious fucking war, this boy has musket fire in his stomach, he is trying to pick it out with shaking fingers, but it is wedged between the bottom of his rib cage and he cannot touch himself for long enough without passing out, his screams are making you retch, and eighty miles away in charles’ kitchen, that bastard, the king of fuck all, his chef makes him brawn, his chef cuts the ears and brain from a pigs head and the king sits at his fucking table, his table stacked with food that you will never even come close to, and he eats while the final boy, the boy next to all the other boys, he has shit himself, an awful stench, and my god he looks ashamed, actually ashamed of what he has done, when he spent the last day maiming and killing, torturing other humans for some bloody king, he looks ashamed to have released himself so completely onto the dirt floor, this boy has dysentery and you, the ghost, slowly dying, will spend some time in this mercifully damp hole watching him painfully expel everything he has inside him, weeping each time he does so, even saying sorry, sorry for this, i am so, so sorry,  and the dying boy next to him passes out and comes round again and again, his whole body trembling, searching for the metal balls that have obliterated his insides, trying to lever his ribs just a tiny bit, just enough to stick his rancid fingers far enough into his warmth to reach the shot, and none of you will ever get out of this hole, will ever see another person, will never fuck or brawl or bring in harvest, or watch the stars become bright in the north sky, or taste food again, the most basic things will be denied to you because someone, somewhere, decided that you should go to war, fourteen groats a week to leave that you should leave your dying father, that you should leave your mother, though she is half mad with fear of being alone, that you should leave your little sister, who is just learning to say i love you, that you should go to a field in england and spill your insides for the king, and you wake by the dank sulby hedges with rain hitting your forehead and oh my god how fucking cruel that you must live another day among the dying, must lie as the grass grows through your skin and the worms find their wet way inside you, and all around you babies scream and wail to return to their mothers and all around you is the fevered snarling of wolves, waiting for a silk throat, all around you the earth turns the colour of week old bruises, and soon the sun beats down on your face, and the sun dries the clot that is your stomach, dries the blood and the soil into something that is neither one nor the other, dries your eyeballs and your throat until you are sure that, actually, it is the thirst that will kill you, the thirst that cannot be slaked, a soldier dances casually around you, spearing the dying like fish, a form of mercy that you will not be shown, he whirls a dervish around your dying eyes, a soldier not much older than you, a soldier with a family and a home, a soldier who helps his father in the fields and who helps his mother make pottage in the kitchen and who just last night sang songs about raping dead women and who drank piss wine with no thought of dying boys, this is the soldier who walked past you and saw the edges of your wound crusting in the heat and who saw your eyes darting from side to side and who saw the pleading in every last bit of the body parts you could still move and who walked on, walked on, left you to a slow, torturous rotting during which you cry for your mother and you cry for your father and the sun sets on another day of your dying,  and now you are alone, left with the bodies, the field slowly becoming quiet, it feels good to become compost, to become part of the world where the little things thrive, and the hole is back in your chest, from where you are lying above your near-corpse you can look right into your body, through the skin and the fat, push aside the organs and there is a ballroom with mahogany panels and ornate cornice, with tiny dancers whirling round, no care in the world, no care for their mortality, nor of anyone's, just spinning like ribbons, crazed and barbaric, full of fine things, fine wines, fine meats, full of sun kisses fruits and brandy from iberia, crazed and spinning wild in the ballroom, they fuck each other’s throats, they scream laughter in your face, they swing from your rib-cage, they lick the sides of your stomach until you fall back to your body, the ballroom fading, blood running down the walls, blood washing across the floors, sweeping away the dancers, the tables, the chairs, the dressers and the writing desks, the sky becoming dark, clotted like a tired wound, and you remember that you are nothing but compost, returning to the earth, closing your eyes as small yellow flowers bloom so tender inside you, feverfew that you pick and eat, tasting the mustard, tasting the pepper, small yellow flowers that you rub to a paste with spit between your fingers, that you rub into your skin, your gums, golden feverfew that seem to contain the universe itself, you travel through time and space, everything rushing towards you all at once, you are breathless as a drum tattoo spikes to the rhythm of your heart, you are breathless as in the hole, opposite where you lay dying, a large silver sphere appears, seamless and shining against the wet darkness, a large silver sphere that seems to cry out to you, touch it, touch it, touch it and when you cannot touch it, you cannot touch it because you are dying, you cannot touch it because you have a ballroom in your stomach, when you cannot touch the large silver sphere it leaves, taking the air and the warmth with it, leaving a patch of the world containing nothing but the faintest loss, a negative of sound and light, a death in itself, and you are filled with the sense that if only you had touched it then the world would have broken itself down to the most beautiful composite parts and you would be able to understand so, so much, the world would have broken itself down and turned itself inside out, to become long strips of color and high pitched buzzing, long strips of color you could have tied together to make answers, plaiting these strands of existence together like wool into twine, but you couldn't touch it, you couldn't even stand, because you were stuck inside this hole, this coffin, with the sun and the moon flicking a binary above you, days and nights strobe above you, a light, a dark, a light, a dark, a darkness, an absence and now you are back on the battlefield, back with a musket in your hand, a heavy piece of steel and wood that you can barely even lift, and when you fired it for the first time, which was only a day ago, or was it a year, you did not hold it properly, you did not expect the kick back, and a mottled welt appeared on your shoulder, a bruise the size of a fist spreading under your skin like wildfire through summer woods, like tinder, like the fire you lit the night before you left for this awful fucking field, the fire you lit to keep your father warm, to keep your mother sane, a thousand different lives now changed forever because of cromwell and charles and all these fucking bastards who will never understand anything beyond sending others to die, you would scream at them if your throat wasn't full of soil and flowers, of blood and phlegm, the other officers laugh at you while you blink back tears, hard cunts who would kill for pleasure, the gun recoiling the same way you will recoil hours later as you put a pike through the forearm of a young cavalier, you had aimed for the heart but your arms and legs went dead, your head felt heavy, things slowed, yes, but not enough, not enough to counter the shaking, and so you put it through his arm, in one side and out the other, and you tried to pull it out, you frantically shook it, but it was set fast in the bone, and so with a look in your eyes which was both apologetic and savage, you ran to the trees, you fled to the darkness of the forest, the cool greens and the browns of the trunks, the sunlight dappled onto the carpet of dying leaves, you flee to the woods having killed a man, or at least having maimed him, and you sit under an oak tree that is three centuries old, you sit under an oak tree and the sounds of battle become quietened through the trees, as if naseby was a very long way away, and suddenly the earth is alive with bright yellow flowers, the air is thick with pepper and mustard, they grow as if by magic, you lie out under the stars with your throat full of blood, the distant sound of music washing over you, they are singing a song about butchering you, they are singing a song about great oliver cromwell, the angel oliver cromwell, the naked angel who swept through the monarchy and ensured the people would be heard, the great oliver cromwell, who would never learn the names of those that died for him, who would never taste the blood that was spilled for him, who would spread his leathery wings and consume you, oliver cromwell, the maggot king, feverfew, the spit and the entrails and it is every morning that has ever been, you can see things happening that you thought impossible, time and space simply a dress to be worn by the universe, there is space in-between the stars, a lack of matter, and it calls to you like a siren, a snail glides over your naked arm leaving a translucent trail of gel in its wake, its fibonacci shell a perfect ratio, so brittle this life, you think, so very brittle, you knew nothing of death before naseby, just that things got old and weren't there anymore, not that things could simply cease to be if you hated them enough, if you stuck them like boar, a pike through the heart, a musket shot through the calf muscle, an ax crashing against the skull, a sword slicing through tendons, a bite mark left in the neck, that is terror, that is smoke in the eyes and the thunder of war, sink your teeth into another human being because if you don’t, they will slash at your tenderness until you crumble, they will rape you and cut open your stomach, they will find where you hide the things that make you work and they will take them from you, they will cut your eyes out and laugh while they do it, they are not human, listen to your commanding officer, these people are not human, they simply exist to be destroyed. and so you do.

by Stuart Buck

Stuart Buck is a writer and artist who lives between Wales, Colorado and cheap motels in foreign cities. He is also the EIC of the fictitious newspaper the Bear Creek Gazette which can be found at welcometobearcreek.com. When he is not writing or designing things for other people, he combines the hardcore pursuits of renaissance music, jigsaw puzzles and reading disgusting literature.