Alice's Part 1

This is part 1 of a longer story that will last about 5 weeks. Its dedicated to Arlo Guthrie.

Ray was crying. He’d been crying all night. He had started the second he was off the base; he couldn’t remember when he had last cried so hard. Sure he’d had a few tears here and there, but in the ’hood, where he had grown up, crying could get you killed. He was confused, unsure; he was too busy crying to think.

He had grown up in the rough part of the city. The streets were dirty, as were the bums, junkies, and renters of the area. Crime and prostitution ran rampant. The law was the local bike gang, a violent bunch of drug pushers. They only spoke to make clear that bones could and would be broken, if their rules weren’t followed. Ray had spent his adolescence floating in and out of gangs, but he had always dreamed of leaving the ghetto.

The only way out of that hole was the Army. That was fine with Ray. He’d been in love with the idea of dying for his country, in the line of duty. From the time he was old enough to be mistaken for being of age, he’d been talking with recruitment officers. He had been impressed with their medals, and he knew the promises and bonuses off by heart. He wanted to protect his family and friends from anyone who might hurt them. For as long as he could remember, he’d wanted to be honoured for bravery, he’d wanted to be given medals, and he’d wanted to be a hero. It was the only thing he could look forward to in the ghetto.

Ray still wanted to die a hero. There was a problem, though: the Army didn’t want him to be a hero. They wanted him to kill, burn women, children, and villages. In the name of what? Ray didn’t know anymore; he had thought he had, but he wasn’t so sure of anything any longer. He didn’t know what to believe. He’d been lied to by the only people he thought he could still trust. Ray had stopped trusting his family a few years before, during what he had begun to refer to as Flickergate.

The old townhouse’s lights had had the tendency to flicker. Not the type of flicker that was regular--once every few seconds--like the florescent tubes at Ray’s school. No, this type of flicker was best described as nefarious. It was like an arrhythmic heart that only acted up at the worst moments. The flicker would go away for whole minutes at a time, only to start again, with a seemingly random vengeance.

His father had once called an electrician. The man had come into the house, dragging mud all the way, looked at the lights, then at the fuse box, and said, ‘I’ll ‘ave to rewire te w’ole ‘ouse. Tat will be a couple tousand bucks.’ Ray’s father had shown him the door, and never commented on it again.

When Ray had asked him about the lights, his father had replied, ‘What flicker?’ After that, his father hadn’t talked to him for three months, and when he finally did, it was because Ray was complaining about a migraine. Ray had thought that it was the result of the lights.

‘Out! Get out!’ his father bellowed. ‘Unless you are going to shut up about those lights, or you pay for them to get fixed, I don’t want you in my house!’ The next several months were hard for everyone, and Ray couldn’t wait for his birthday, when he could finally leave.