Long Distance To Go
Written by Blaze Van Wham 2003
Copyright Blaze Van Wham 2003+
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Feelin' like it's all over, feelin' like there's no love
Feelin' like it's not easy, breathin' life in the dust
On a countdown to zero take a ride on the nightmare machine
Blaze traveled aimlessly through the sands of the Martian desert. The wind whipped at her shoulder length hair and bits of dust travelled into crevices of her eyes, making her vision obscurred. She looked out into the vast space of the desert before her, and knew she had more to travel. Letting out a sigh, she picked her pace up a little, with nothing but herself and her clothes inhabiting her space. As she continued, keeping her eyes on her eventual goal, her thoughts drifted back to those of her days on Plutark, in the slave camps. Vivid memories, full in colour, in emotion, and image.
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There ain't gonna be heroes
There ain't gonna be anything
Oh
Here it comes, here comes the night
Here it comes, hell in the night
Here it comes, here comes the night
Blaze cringed in the corner of her cell. "Please!
Stop it!" She begged. The Plutarkian overseer sneered overtop of her young
adult form, and brought his arm back again, the whip snapping coldly against
Blaze's exposed back. Tears ushered themselves out of her eyes in sobs.
Words came in the forms of screams, as she was hit time and time again.
She never slept at nights. The fear invaded her mind and soul, and it ate
at her so much that she couldn't bring herself to close her eyes. To close
her eyes and let her body rest, even for a few moments time, meant letting
her body fall prey to the sheer horror that the Plutarkians could devise
in their free time. It meant feeling pain, and fearing her overseers.
It meant hell.
Her small body uttered out another scream as the Plutarkian hit
her one last time. He leaned down over her.
"Now, are you gonna be a good girl for us?" He
asked snidely. She nodded up to him.
"Good." He placed the whip curled into his hand,
and stepped out of her cell, leaving her battered body to bleed into the
night to learn her lesson.
She had no one to save her, no one to take her
away from this, and there was no one to.
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She knew the scars were there. They were ugly, all over her back, and there was no cosmetic surgery that would be able to remove or cover them up. The most she could do was wear full backed shirts so no one would see them. As it was, every Martian mouse she had run into so far, from the escape ship to the ones on Mars, knew her face and hid well from it. She was a monster to them, a disgrace and a murderer of her own kind. No one would want anything to do with her. She knew nothing of her family on Mars either, who her parents were, if they were still alive, if she had any siblings. Mars had been torn apart again and again that she wondered if she would ever find out who her family was.
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When we all fall down
When we walk into silence
When we shadow the sun
When we surrender to violence
Oh
Then the damage is done
Put away that gun!
Blaze watched from her cell as the Martian Mice were marched to a different section of the camp. Her eyes were wide, intrigued, but also scared. These were new mice. She hadn't seen any of the faces before. She recognized most of the Martian faces she saw every day, and these weren't any she was familiar with. More mice had been captured by the Plutarkians, she figured as they marched along in silence. The only sound she could hear was of their feet scuffing the dirt floor and that was it. She peered up hoping to see something of what she had been told about the sun, but there was no sky to say of from her viewpoint. Her eyes glinted back to the Plutarkian leaders who were ushering the new mice into camp, guns in their hands. A threat to any who dared opposed them. Blaze had been feared into submission with those guns. With those whips. With those beatings. She was still only a young adult, and her body had already managed to earn scars and other reminders of the violence she had dealt with. As the last of the Martian mice marched past her, she could only hope they wouldn't endure the same fears she did every waking moment.
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So many lives destroyed. So many promises
broken. So many hearts torn. She couldn't begin to feel the pain of the
Martian mice who were held as slaves in the camps; only because she hadn't
been a slave herself. She had been raised since birth as a slave overseer
by the Plutarkians. She was meant to be ruthless, cunning and a killer.
The pain she felt, was nothing like the pain the Martian slaves felt. They
feared for their families and their lives and who would come next to take
it. She feared for what she did, and what she would continue to do to wreck
those families and the lives they had once known. She had every right to
be seen as monster because that's all she ever was to the Martian mice
in the camps.
She looked up again from her viewpoint, the wind
having calmed a bit and she could see a bit more clearly. She rubbed her
eyes for a second. She blinked and looked again.
A building made out its shape before her. Hundreds,
probably thousands. It looked like a little dot, but as she focused her
eyesight, she could make out the shape of a building. Her hopes rose a
little higher as she saw it. With all the strength she could find in herself,
she forced her legs and feet to keep on moving.
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I don't wanna be there
I don't wanna be anywhere
Oh!
That's right!
We're fightin' for the gods of war but what the hell we fightin'
for?
We're fightin' with the gods of war but I'm a rebel
And I ain't gonna fight no more no way!
On a countdown to zero
Take a ride on the nightmare machine
There ain't gonna be heroes
(Whoa)
There ain't gonna be anything
No!
Her nightmares came in many shapes and forms if
she happened to get some sleep. Horrible visions of the Martians she had
killed, of the physical beatings she had done, of everything. She didn't
want to do this anymore. She didn't want to hurt her species, her people,
her kind. The mice she should have grown up with, and at least lived half
a decent life on Mars. Not this hell she endured every day, since before
she could remember.
Often, she wished not for an escape, but for
death to come upon her. To escape everything she faced every day, every
night, every moment. She knew that when her life was over, so was the hell
she knew. She would rather have death come to her, then be alive in the
Martian slave camps. There was no one to save her, to release her, to stop
her from being what she was. She wondered when the day would come that
she would rebel too much against the Plutarkian leaders and deserve a beating
to the death. One that would finally put her at rest from the existence
she knew.
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She continued to walk, the dot becoming larger
and larger with every step. She hoped it was a Martian base, or something
remotely Martian that she could rest, even a few days worth at. She had
no direction in her life since she had been liberated from the slave camps.
She was a wanderer now. She had no family that she knew of, and no friends.
Not from the other Martian slaves that had been freed as well. She didn't
recognize this base as she got closer and closer. It was still far in the
distance, but to her it was mere lengths away. The wind picked up around
her, tearing at the hard sand beneath her feet. She had to keep her eyes
fully covered with her hands, enough so she could see the goal ahead of
her, but not to let sand into her eyes.
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Don't ya know that's right!
And (a) I ain't gonna fight no more
(Stop)
Stop fightin' for the gods of war
(Stop fightin' for the gods of war)
Yeah what the hell we fightin' for?
(What in the hell we fightin' for?)
We're fightin' with the gods of war
Heavy!
Her body collapsed onto the floor of
the base as she finally made it there, several hours and several miles
later. Her feet ached with a pain she had never known, and her leg muscles
had cramped up. But she was here. She was in a familiar place, or something
resembling that.
As she lay there on the ground, she could hear voices
around her, and suddenly felt her body lifted up onto something. A bed.
It was soft underneath her, and comfortable. More voices, and she felt
herself moving, along with the bed. She closed her eyes, knowing that she
could finally rest with no worry of slave overseers, or beatings, or nightmares.
Just rest.
She had made it to a safe haven finally, and she
wasn't going to kill anymore. She wasn't going to murder or hurt anyone
else. She was going to sleep, rest and let herself recuperate. She didn't
have to fight anymore. She had already come this far, she didn't have to
continue anymore. Relief washed over her body, and she let herself lie
back into the moving bed, already heavily asleep, but peaceful for once
in her life.
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Song lyrics are taken from Def Leppard's "Gods of War"