The breakdown on the valley walk

The bunk room was empty except for the stringent smell of sweat and  dirt layered on thick under the years. She lay stiffly, fighting her mood; watching the bunk  above as half submerged ideas, swirled into increasingly lost and far away places. How many years had she been on this ship?.  She tried to follow it back, grasp the intangible line, that coiled all the way back, into a distant beyond of now long gone comfortable and familiar, roads and spaces. Friends, home, green, the sad memories of that other life. At that moment, the engine roared, rolling the ship, limping it on slowly  into  ever deeper and darker space. Instinctively she grabbed the edges of the bed, steadying herself. Everything  was falling apart. This fact alone seemed to add to her gloom. She closed her eyes settling into the dark trying to bring the thoughts back, gathering  them in like unruly children being herded into more manageable space.  

What was this mood ? This ever returning kink of mind, the urge to never settle that pressed and pushed at her.  An uncomfortable yet familiar  taste. Today it rattled like a fist. A hot and heavy reminder of the mean reds.  Those ever present close veterans of unheard of wars in uncomfortable places. Remnants of the strange.

At that moment, the room trilled to the sound of  whistling. Bright and jangly and strangely at odds with the gloom which had settled in. Grimes she thought, reflexively turning her back, her hard body   indicating a solid  no go from her bed. But it was no good,  the space was penetrated, disrupted;  and with it her irritation grew. She knew he would be naked, his half-cocked  smile , as usual would be stretched like a grimaced scar bending unevenly across his not too impressive face. Trills of dixie,   shooting out from fleshy, voluminous lips like the piercing shots  from some unwanted Gun  She stiffened trying to close her mind against him, but it was no good. His odor like his smug satisfaction preceded him. The total dominance of his taut musculature  always suggesting that grimes had just fucked or murdered something. . Forced contact. Inwardly she recoiled at Grimes and all the others like him. The ones that always find their way in; with their grunts, and dirt, and smells.  She fought the feeling rising, the hot liquored truth pf it as it shot round her veins, making her cheeks burn, and her eyes hate. And at that moment, she knew deeply,  instinctively and with absolute clarity; that without a doubt  she wanted Grimes dead. The ship rolled again, correcting itself, from it's divergent course. The low hums  of the engine settling like a familiar mantle within the distant dark, heading  into the dark sided  crescent of a distant dying  sun. The battered hulk glinting  in the emergent glow of the far off  faltering light;  carrying  within it the last vestiges of the human race. A broken  and  half failing  fragment trying to find its way out to somewhere on the last imperial boat. MB