13 Thorns

I glanced at our sticks only several feet away, canted in the sand, their shafts crude but straight- then at the thing, which was nearly to its ship. And the truth of it is I was running before I'd even made a conscious decision to do so, running with the friends I'd had since 4th grade at Broadway Elementary, both of whom beat me to the pikes. Nor did we stop to think about it as we chased the thing down like chieftains and Orley delivered the first blow, lancing its back decisively and pinning it to the earth as I slid mine into what would have been its rib-cage and Kevin impaled its neck, all of which caused the thing to struggle furiously even as it tried to scream-this most assuredly-but found it had no mouth; as it melted away from our sticks like butter and reconstituted itself on the go, finally closing to within a few feet of its ship before Orley ran it through its back yet again and smashed it to the ground, stopping it in its tracks-even as Kevin and I stabbed it repeatedly-the sun filtering through the pines as it shuddered and bled, its ship beginning to falter, growing cool amidst the shadows.And yet we kept stabbing as though infected with blood-lust: exhilarated by each blow, hot for the kill, while nonetheless feeling as though we had lost something with each strike. Something of who we were and might have become. Something which felt good and bad at the same time. Like romantic love, I suppose, which we had yet to experience. Or the bite of cigarette smoke into the throat and lungs.Until at last the ship lie dormant and the Thing from Another World was dead, if it had ever lived at all, at least in the way we understood it. And then we just stood there for a time amongst the shafts of light and brooded in our youth and vigor and passion; there in July of 1980 in the sweltering heat and humidity of the day. There in the forest by the lake, which was shot through with orange and gold, in the brief, burning cathedral of summer.