The Nightmare War

By James Antell

The Nightmare War is a work of speculative fiction that plays with the notion of closed loops of time. Each of the fourteen chapters contains a complete narrative incident with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Each narrative incident is followed by an appended commentary (or two) spoken from outside the loop. The fourteen chapters of The Nightmare War collectively tell a story with a beginning, a middle, and an end. That story, however, begins on page 1 somewhere near the ending and ends on page 75 somewhere near the beginning. Careful readers may note that the story ends, chronologically, on page 15 with the phrase, Not another word! But that is not the last word.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Feb 8, 2008
• ISBN: 9781469113890

James Antell

James Antell was born in 1947 in Minnesota and lived in Los Angeles and San Francisco variously from 1960 to 1978. He returned to Minnesota during 1978 to 1982 where he wrote poetry. Thereafter he has resided in California (Los Angeles, Joshua Tree, Redding).

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Copyright © 2008 by James Antell.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

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Contents

1

SIXTH YEAR, MONTH OF MARCH

2

SIXTH YEAR, MONTH OF FEBRUARY

3

SIXTH YEAR, MONTH OF JULY

4

FIFTH YEAR, MONTH OF FEBRUARY

5

FIFTH YEAR, MONTH OF NOVEMBER

6

FOURTH YEAR, MONTH OF SEPTEMBER

7

FOURTH YEAR, MONTH OF NOVEMBER

8

THIRD YEAR, MONTH OF JUNE

9

THIRD YEAR, MONTH OF JUNE

10

SECOND YEAR, MONTH OF MAY

11

SECOND YEAR, MONTH OF FEBRUARY

12

FIRST YEAR, MONTH OF FEBRUARY

13

FIRST YEAR, MONTHS OF MARCH-JUNE

A Journal Of

THE NIGHTMARE WAR

Including Diverse Events & Characters

Representative of the Conflict

Compiled at the discretion of:

Yesterday’s Archives/Winter Palace

1

SIXTH YEAR, MONTH OF MARCH

Gefjon and the Oxen

I was almost home, halfway across that narrow wooden bridge from the old days, when I heard them behind me. Turning, I saw the approaching oxen—no team of gentrified plow pullers, these, but a pair of enhanced Ancients. They must have been eight feet at the nose, I guessed. With no chance to reach the other side before their long strides overtook me, I stood my ground. Would they shoulder me into the abyss? Perhaps unintentionally?

Then I saw the woman trailing after. Hola! I hailed.

She pushed between the beasts and halted their noisy march with a word.

Newborn leaves chattered with the wind as we stood taking each other’s measure.

At that pivotal moment I made my habitual gesture of greeting, swinging the left hand slowly upward on hinge of elbow, palm open, fingers loosely spread, a gesture that perhaps wavers indecisively between ward and welcome.

Some who have suffered the War a long time, she called, hands on hips, have learned to read ambiguous gestures. Not this one.

I’ve been scolded about that particular ambiguity before, I murmured.

I ventured a step or three in their direction. Where do you fare with these unique specimens?

He has little politesse, she observed to her creatures. You haven’t the manner of a farmer. Are you a soldier then?

Soldier Dane— I offered—serving the Rational Empire.

Ah, that soldier, she nodded. I am Gefjon, glad in mind, and these are my companions Loop and Link. Their sisters Yawp and Yawn have already crossed over. We seek some small plot, Soldier Dane, where we can mark furrows on the generous land.

(Long intelligent sloping faces narrow to black smudge of nostril, unthreatening horns bend away from groomed tufts of russet hair above twin-mooned brows—crescent moons, white-edged. Loop’s lunar lineaments spool outward—convex silvery slivers, suggesting circle and troth. Link’s milky inkings slink inward—concave neighbors yoked, suggesting crossings and gifts. All these blessings, and more, they possess—yet their eyes are liquid with lamentation.)

You see? Gefjon whispered. The fire . . .

She lifted my arms left and right to where the sweat ran from soft breasts. Feel, she urged. Feel within. Her fingers on my forehead touched faint raised edges of scars I rarely thought of now.

The fire was low and weak.

I once wore a gift about my neck— she murmured—it was a bauble of the Brightlings.

I closed my eyes. Remembered my own gift.

The land you see around you, I said, was entrusted to me by Emperor Marcus. May I make such an offering?

Your gift shall be your increase, Dane. Old Mother will bless you for it.

Last time I saw Old Mother, she threw a rock at me!

Gefjon laughed, Loop and Link lowed.

We were as one during those days of springtime when we marked the good land.

They crossed over.

I remained.

The old wounds never heal—memory will not permit it. Why is it that we are unable to read the impressions made upon us until long after the events that traced them, when it is always already too late?

[Aktive Vergeszlichkeit (purposeful forgetting) here mingles with Wiedererinnerung (coming around again to the inward) in a manner that almost lets Dane say what needs to be said about that peculiar gesture of his. But always the simple things intervene when we attempt to imagine truth. Intervene, that is, by remaining unnoticed, even though they be the very ground upon which truth must stand. That bridge, for instance . . . ]

—Comment by Marcus

2

SIXTH YEAR, MONTH OF FEBRUARY

Two Dreams

I was surprised to see the following words penciled onto my dream pad when I awoke one morning:

the perception of possibility

the possibility of perception

I didn’t remember writing them. I closed my eyes, trying to retrieve some trace of the dream that must have confided those parallel phrases into my keeping. Nothing came.

I sought out Marcus to see what he had to say about it. He was in his library, cup of coffee in one hand, heavy antique book in the other—multi-colored wavelike patterns gilt the edges of the closed pages. I asked him what it was.

A Greek-English lexicon, he said. I had a strange dream last night and I can’t quite see what it was all about. Look here. He showed me a piece of paper on which he had scribbled:

ZERA / CHERA ? ? ?

What does it mean? I asked.

Well, he explained, I was awakened by a dream in which I heard a woman’s voice cry out a Greek word. Still half-asleep, I tried to write the word down but I couldn’t seem to recall whether it began with the Z or the CH sound. The distinction, I thought, or rather my waking self thought, was important. Yet here in the lexicon I see that ZERA means dry land, CHERA means widow. My dreaming self was correct to merge them. The exemplary phrases in the book confirm it. For CHERA we have: A piece torn from the stem. And for ZERA: To leave the ships aground. The two words, you see, are related metaphorically.

I was more than a little deflated by all this. Marcus’ dream, dressed up in vivid imagery, made my bare phrases look all the poorer. Nevertheless, I showed him my scribbled mirror-script for the pleasure of watching him think (something he does with joyful somberness, if I may be permitted to conjoin two such contrasting emotions—which in the case of Marcus I think I may).

He paced back and forth, scrutinizing the words intently, mumbling to himself, his bearded visage glowing with anxious eagerness as it did whenever he pondered things. He placed my dream-text side by side with his on the table, taking occasional automatic gulps of java from his deep wide mug. At length he spoke:

Just offhand, it seems to me that those of us who have been torn from the stem, we who are now nourished solely by the War, have indeed become perceivers of possibility. However, the very possibility of perception depends upon leaving the ships aground—that is to say, one needs terra firma against which one’s perceptions may be tried.

Yes, well, that’s a clever reading, I