Slow Recoil by C.B. Forrest

the street, or say in this movie theatre, it is murder, a senseless act of violence. Even if there is a root cause and effect, even if that cause is righteous. It makes headlines in the newspaper. Shocking. And yet, if the same players are lifted and carried to a war zone, any war zone with any number of geo-political roots and causes and righteous notions, then we say, this is simply war; this is boys being boys, it has been this way since the dawning of the first sun.
    When the war is done, when the politicians have stood for photos and the signing of peace agreements, then it is back to the rules again. The switch is thrown, and you wash the blood from your hands, and you smile and wave at your neighbour again, the same neighbour who raped and killed your sister, the very same neighbour you had in your rifle sights only a month earlier—how you fired and missed, the physics of fate. Yes, you are told to forgive and forget, to drive within the lines on the highway, to wait your turn in the queue for bread. But nobody can ever completely forgive and forget. That’s why the wars are fought, then peace is called, then the wars are fought again. Because there is always a germ of the cause left untreated. Grandfathers tell their grandsons stories of the war, of the old days, of what is right and wrong. And the seed is planted. And it germinates like a speck of rust.
    The man purchased two boxes of popcorn, soft drinks, and a bag of red licorice. With his hand still on the back of the girl’s head, they walked through the foyer and down the hall towards theatre number 4. Lilo & Stitch was playing. The same show that Kadro had come to watch. He waited a second at the door, gave them time to choose seats and get settled, then he slipped inside the theatre. It took his eyes a moment to adjust to the darkness. He went up the stairs with his small bag of popcorn, scanning the rows that were two-thirds filled, and found them close to the middle, over to the right-hand side. He went one row up and settled in just behind and to the left of them.
    The previews came on, and Kad settled back and ate his popcorn. It was stale, and the butter tasted of chemicals. Yes, everything had changed. Movies were ten bucks and the popcorn was shit. Gary Cooper was dead. No more simple Saturday afternoons at his uncle’s house, the TV playing old movies, then he and his cousins acting them out in the barns and the fields and the woods, those days of wide-open wonder. He looked over to the family every now and then, and he watched them, the back of the man’s head, and he wondered what the man would be thinking right now if he knew that he would be dead in a matter of days.

SEVEN
    T he brain is a yolk that floats in a sea of cerebrospinal fluid— that briny flotsam of all we’ve learned and tried to forget. McKelvey woke the next morning with his circuits misfiring: bits of grade school math questions, the combination to his high school locker, the faces and names and rap sheets of a hundred criminals. Reminders to pick up milk bread eggs, everything spun together inside the swollen globe of his fragile skull—shaken and stirred. He was alive, of course, but he figured there must be a good part of him left on the grille of the truck that had hit him, backed up and run over him again. He lifted his head from the pillow and knew instantly that the day would require him to meet and exceed the limitations of his physical and spiritual capacity. He stayed in the shower for thirty minutes, the hot water a balm of sorts against the intense swelling pressure that threatened to stretch his face to the point of explosion. His teeth ached at their very roots.
    He was gingerly running a razor down the silver stubble on his chin when the phone rang. He wiped away the creamy lather with a hand towel as he moved across the condo to the single phone on the desk by the window.
    â€œNineteen ninety-five Honda Accord registered to Ontario