Bright Purple Like Nothing Mattered
by Dan Dellechiaie
“Wake the fuck up and repeat the message back to me,” Comrade Bex says, interrupting my drowsy darkness again.
“Kill…Target…A199,” I yawn.
“That’s the second part.”
“Tell Cell…17…”
Bex slaps me awake.
“You want a cup of expired tea?” I ask her.
“Tea doesn’t expire. I’ll make it when you leave.”
She tosses her scarf on my scuffed dresser. Her moldy hideout now.
“I better get dressed then,” I say.
“No time,” she says.
“What? Like now?”
“Yeah, the revolution awaits. Get up, Comrade Pen.”
I can scoff, but I can’t complain. Only I know where Cell 17’s damn safe house is because no Iron Hand comrade can know more than what they’re needed for. Makes you feel important. But not at 5:00AM, not while you’re still in bed.
“You can’t walk two more miles?” I say. “I’ll tell you where the safe house is. It’s not like you’re a double agent. Unless you are, then can you just shoot me and save me a walk in the cold?”
“I’m gonna forget you said that, comrade,” she says, getting in bed.
“Can I at least take off my pajamas? Shower? Shave? Can you tell the cadre to send me more razors? No razors, no new shoelaces. It’s like I’m on suicide watch, not the front lines.”
Bex is asleep next to me. I poke her with my deodorant to make sure she wasn’t poisoned.
“Either sing me a lullaby or get on with your mission,” she says.
“Fine.”
“And repeat it one more time, for good luck.”
“Tell Cell…17: Kill Target A199.”
“Perfect, good night.”
“Good night? It’s a shit dawn.”
Time for me to hit the street in my pajamas, I guess. I swipe my snoring comrade’s jacket, pocketing a glorified water gun I’m not supposed to bring. The butt-ugly fascists’ll kill me regardless of what’s in my pajama bottoms.
“And, comrade,” Bex yawns.
“What now?”
“I recommend not staying long at the safe house. Please.”
I slam the frozen door. Deformed snowman in the vestibule. Fucking winter.
When your time to be a good comrade comes knocking, it’s when the sky matches the city’s blue-gray bricks.
It’s quicker to get to the safe house via rooftops, but these thin-soled excuses for footwear turn roof-hopping into water-skiing on an ice rink. The army shot everyone who was wearing boots. Silly communists and their boots.
“Tell Cell 17.” FUCK!
Cell 17: hopefully, ten maimed but alive comrades, including my ex-lover and…her husband. The last people I wanna see on Earth, besides a firing squad. I was happy that they’d escaped the forest, that the fascists hadn’t bushwhacked them into red slivers. Not happy that they were also shivering in Gari.
Don’t shoot the tolling clocktower you hate so fucking much, Pen. Be a good comrade and remember if you’re supposed to take a left by the wanted posters or by the roided navy billboard. Posters…Billboard.
The forest raid rocked my motherfucking heart. She might be dead, but maybe only him: a sucker punch from the right, a caress from the left. I stewed in the moldy hideout for weeks waiting for Bex to deliver the verdict. I drank too much expired tea and wished I liked smoking.
Allison smoked in college, after the study groups for…theory I can’t remember. Ideology and memory are enemies.
Her and I fucked years too late. Six months ago. Camping trip across the mud mountains to nab rocket launchers. Half-moon. Piss break from guard duty.
She stretched out in the long grass, not where we’d peed.
“We have ten minutes before they come looking for us, comrade,” Allison said, unvelcroing her fatigues. Love me, quickly.
I hate how Allison always says two things at once. One spoken, the other silently whispered. The milk messages between the lines.
And we kinda fell for each other, right? Or at least I did. Salvatore had fallen for her too. She wanted him at first. Then me, then him, then him again, then me, then I don’t know.
He ended up cadre. She did too. And me? I ended up in my pajamas on my way to tell them that they had to disappear some fool.
Am I going the right way? Am I ever going the right way?
My legs are leading me in the right direction, I think. I miss GPS so fucking much. But the fascists had to buy those drones. That’s how they got Comrade Trish: on her way to grab a hot dog.
Damn, now I want a hot dog. Damn, Walla Ave is deserted. Damn, where are all the fucking people? This shit is lonelier than my moldy hideout. I hope Bex is dreaming of hot dogs right now. Allison too. Not Salvatore. Fuck him.
Not even the drunks are out at this frozen hour. Wrong. A tour bus rushing to bring overstuffed imperialists in thick green socks to steal more from my country. The tour guides can speed in the Tack Projects because if they hit someone here, the bastard generals will pin medals on ‘em.
“Kill Target A199.”
Who’s A199? The secrecy is a fun game. Who’s who of assholes. But who? Is it me? That thought should’ve stopped me, but my legs think I’m innocent.
Fuck, it’s cold. I could go back to the hideout and say I did it. Who would know?
Oh wait, Iron Hand shot the last comrade who dillydallied. I wish bullets didn’t kill and did loop-de-loops when they flew. I miss cartoons. And GPS. And hot dogs. And boots.
“I recommend not staying long at the safe house. Please.”
Something’s up. Bex has told me not to dillydally while being a super secret mailman before, but we’re beyond this “please” shit.
Do we have a mole? I hope Salvatore is the mole. No, I don’t. Yes, I do.
I’ll have to see how Allison or—ugh—Salvatore reacts. Maybe I’ll get lucky and talk to neither of them. I’m not lucky.
I fled down that pink fire escape last time. Good times. No, not good times. The convoy we blew up was the good part, not the impromptu half-marathon.
Fuck, Iron Hand must know Allison and I fucked. No, no way. We were totally discreet. Totally discreet…
Someone’s found out. Comrades are stern and rehearsed and all, but they’re total gossip whores. Instead of being an actual whore like me. Iron Hand is much better at finding the rats than the secret hook-ups.
There were never this many condom wrappers until the military crushed the fledgling democracy. Iron Hand was also trying to smash the state, but the crayon eaters beat us to it. And then they disemboweled all the opposition parties except us. Fuck History, back to sex.
You put two ideological monkeys in the same moldy hideouts and expect what? Three-thousand games of patty-cake? No, they’re gonna pass along much more than six words.
But Allison wanted me, for some reason. A few reasons: my good looks, my revolutionary bona fides…school? Is history an aphrodisiac instead of a curse?
Her and I (and him, ugh) stickered and flyered and rallied and agitated and revolted on these streets. That sun bleached apartment building has fifty mini-manuals hidden inside. Pesky communists and their books.
What beautiful blue-gray brick disasters. The military were real buzzkills when they shut down the nightlife on Chrisanto Drive. The drinkers on stacked pallets. Musicians trying to flirt with everyone. Night shift workers high-fiving the whole way down. Yes, the military had been saying it was gonna shoot us for years. Everyone assumed they’d shoot their lower halves, near less valuable material.
But the loiterers were communist spies. Correct, sometimes. I mean, right now it’s true.
A military dictatorship is so fucking lonely.
I used to love Mr. Melk’s bakery. They disappeared him for giving Iron Hand too much stale bread. Plate glass too smashed to check my reflection. Only my smile. I gotta stop grinning like a devil, but I’m excited to see her. She defied death. So did he.
Hey I’ve defied death too, by not crossing paths with any grenades recently. Lucky for me, the helicopters waited until after I left the forest to burn it to less than ash. We’d blown up four of their bases, but a whole forest is overkill.
“You’re hurting our cause by abandoning the forest,” Allison said. Please don’t leave. I think I love you.
“I can’t stay,” I said, glancing toward Salvatore’s tent. “Too many bugs.”
Then she punched my chest. Then she hugged me. And then Bex and I drowned in yellow onions in a truck bed for six hours.
I think I’m an asshole. I think I think too much.
This frostbitten street is suffocating me. But I should be thankful. No checkpoints, no old women begging for more rations from AK-47s wearing dorky aviators. My footsteps are as silent as they can be. Fuck this fucking echo.
I’m too slow. History is waiting for me. And maybe some basement sex.
Another tour bus. I wish I had a phone and headphones.
“You won’t need a phone with all the music in your head,” Allison said before we marched into the forest. And the paintings I’m gonna etch in your mind.
I feel no guilt about our memories. No guilt. None. Should I?
I’ve never felt jealousy, that our love was a private gallery. It would be against the ideals our comrades were Tetris’d in a mass grave for. So is lying.
“I never lie to Sal,” Allison said after she sat on my face. But I never never never tell him the whole truth.
Comrades for years, lovers for minutes. Is love a conspiracy?
“The military skinned her brother alive with a bayonet,” Salvatore told me one night after a brutal firefight.
Salvatore’s way of dealing with fear was to freak us all out. So was the military’s. His eyes were always black.
Allison’s eyes were always bright purple like nothing mattered. She was staring down time, like how I keep glancing at these unsalted stoops. Unswept sidewalks. The clutter is a protest. It can’t be apathy. The overflowing trash cans are cheering me on.
Revolutionaries aren’t supposed to have private lives. They are the public. I swear Salvatore wrote that party resolution. Yes, private property is a lie we tell ourselves, but personal lives?
A secret yesterday is a weak will tomorrow. Cadre craft this shit to make us hurry. I hate that clocktower. Let me live out of time!
Her perfect back, rivers of muscles and scars that I traced with my sand-papered fingertips. She pulled my hair. Our love, adventurism.
Great, the pigeons haven’t fled yet. Gray-purple-green messes. In the forest, a delicacy. Now a city nuisance. My shoes are too emaciated to kick them away. Not enough crumbs to go around.
Those tanks piss me off. Unmanned, but we haven’t the guts to steal one yet. We had to burn them in the forest. Nothing sticks out in a forest like a tank.
“When you’re on a mission, your orders should be your only thought, comrade,” Salvatore said when he handed me my first pistol.
The water gun with bullets in my pocket is my fifth. Only lost two.
Allison knows where all the guns are. She can rub her hand against tree bark and point to the nearest depot. It’s—
A little boy in a gray knit cap. He’s spotted me. I can’t turn around. How did I not see him sooner?
“Don’t think, act,” Salvatore said.
Okay, gimme a second. Which pocket is that damn—right.
What the fuck is he doing out this early? I don’t wanna kill a kid. I also don’t want a kid to kill me.
“So you’re descending into the concrete depths,” Allison said when she heard about my requested transfer to the urban struggle. I can understand this as a revolutionary, but, as your lover, I’m disappoi—No, not now. The little boy has taken off his hat.
He looks up. So do I. Is it gonna snow?
Soldiers have strapped bombs to baby carriages to eliminate losers like me. They burned my parents’—the little boy is carrying something. A stick? Safety’s off. Has it really been on this entire time? How did I survive in the forest?
The stick bends into a hundred different browns in the blue-gray light. It’s nothing. Please be nothing. I don’t wanna bleed out in my pajamas.
And he’s tapping the store windows like a drunk blind man. Hat in hand like he’s begging. I should pistol-whip him for being a dick.
He shifts the stick to his other hand. We’re close. I can see his future acne scars. Hollow gray eyes.
“Good evening,” I say.
Shit.
“All the same to me,” he says.
“I like your stick.”
“Not my stick.”
He stares at me. He tries opening his chapped lips again but shuts them and keeps walking and tapping. Someone took his soul. Almost me.
I left the forest because of—
Ow! He hit my ass! I’m fighting for your future! You think I wanna be up this early? I’m gonna—Gone.
No rusty nails in my ass. Nothing but black ash. Little bastard stole firewood.
I lean against a scarred tree. I need a break. My warm palm fills the lacerated bark.
There were no ass-thwacking brats in the forest. Just mountain lions, malarial mosquitoes, and army patrols. And both of them.
She tented with us losers like Bex and I. Had to keep up her street cred in the forest. We never shared a tent. Moonlit puppet show.
“Salvatore says ‘Pen is lazy and doesn’t shut up,’” Allison said. You fill a bed like no other and could make a poet chop off their tongue.
“Am I being purged?” I asked.
“I just thought you should know he thinks you’re the worst comrade ever,” she said. You’re actually the best because you’re the worst.
Where are the fucking patrols tasked with stopping bad comrades like me? A sky without drones is beautiful, but where’s their buzz?
Despite his organizational knowledge, she was the real brains. It was her hair: long and blonde, always tied back. Her purple hair ties held her authority. She would snap them against my neck.
I’ve never marched down this street. I hope I’m alive to see the victory parades, the red flags hanging from these concrete-rust balconies, the cheers, the orange and white petaled flowers.
We won’t march together, unless I move up the ranks. I’ll be in the back, slipping on their petals. Will we meet during that bright night?
He’ll be up late with the paperwork. He’d carry a file in the parade if he wasn’t worried about beer splashes.
“Hello, Mr. Sir,” a woman says.
I’m the mayor of this half-assed ghost town today.
“No,” I say. “Very busy.”
I try to avoid her round round round eyes. But I have to see whether she can blink. She’s nestled in the alley. Mouth twisted like a bent chimney. Dead. Long dead.
“Don’t aim for the hallucinations,” Allison said. Just the shadows.
I hope the little brat heard her. An echo of her last words. I must keep walking. Too many ghosts.
“Paranoia makes you believe anything, comrade,” Salvatore said.
Where’s the noise? That’s what Gari was: fucking noise. Car horns, hellos, goodbyes, shouts, deals, twofers, jokes, serenades, moans. The public with its guts out and pants around its ankles.
Now it’s always silence with head-smashing interruptions. You hear every footstep. The wind is bored playing the same hollow tune. Army jeeps frozen then thunder. The cracks of doorknobs against picture framed walls. Dissolution of matter. Thud.
The city is waking up. The orange sun. The blue-gray bricks. The rotten street, stacks of icy brick huts, the fucking clocktower. The huts exhale terrified corpses.
I’m two-stepping to the end of every block, out of breath. Morning and night still aren’t clicking. All that hiding out: exhausting.
Their shining faces occupy my blinks. My shallow breaths, thin steam streams. I’ll warm up at their fire.
I’m a shallow gray puddle.
The smokers are out. Shy, proud, tired, awake. First of the day. I wish I smoked. I wish I had time to smoke. On the way back, I’ll buy a pack.
Have they seen the dead woman? Have I?
A giant concrete staircase. Great.
Time to burn off the meals from the father upstairs whose son was forced to swallow magnets and was pushed off the tallest skyscraper. The magnets were useless. He fell like a tattered angel. The son’s favorite meal was mac and cheese with red pepper flakes. I got chubby for his son.
I hope to see her first. Our past selves would be proud of us. We manifested the revolution we dreamed about. But we all thought it would be easier. Less stairs.
“The people will definitely join us, comrade,” Salvatore said. “They have to.”
Do they, though? The slum dwellers are willing to hide us, but comrades have been ratted on for extra rations.
“They will love us, eventually,” Allison said. Regret is their mood, not ours.
Fuck, these stairs are brutal. At least I’m detached and worried. And out of shape.
What’s that smell? The winter wind isn’t as crisp as it should be. Fuel. Smoke. But no fire. Garbage?
The forest hikes were softer. The ground loved our boots. When this winter is over, I’m gonna lay in a field and drink red wine until I’m a shrub. Will she lay next to me?
Half-way there. Does she still love me? Did she ever love me? Was I a stress-fuck?
I should know the answers. I’ve had enough time to think them over, but extra time leads to festering. Paralysis of too many possibilities. Maybe Salvatore is right. I am the worst comrade ever.
Made it. What’s—no it they
On the ground
my comrades
barbed wire wrapped around their faces.
Necks wrung like frozen helixes.
Their limbs bent
into wicked stars of gore.
An anthill of
eyes and tongues and ears.
And they twitch.
A military jeep devoured
the safe house’s front door.
The windows gasp.
My comrades were thrown through them.
But no fire,
no screams.
Only high-pitched whines like after an explosion.
A sack doll
with barbed wire wrapped around its face.
The coils of sharp knots
loosen.
Its burning face is blindfolded.
I stare at it long enough
for the blindfold to crisp
into ash.
Allison
warming my bare chest
with her rhythmic heart
and dusty fatigues and orange moonlight and blue-gray bricks and a dream she dreamt once
but died for.
No more whispers.
I swallow her suffering
and scream
my nameless emotion
into the dead wind.
They took my lover.
I’m gonna take their veins.
Snowfall.
Two miles of blue-gray bricks.
History is now a timer.
Only one word:
Hide.
Dan Dellechiaie is a fiction writer from New Jersey. His writing has appeared in Dug Up Magazine, tongue .etc, Redemption, The Scare You To Sleep Podcast, and elsewhere. You can find more of his work at dadell.com. Instagram: @dan_dellechiaie
Image Credit: angel bubble (2023) by Natasha Zinos
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