Skating on Thick Ice by Ron Riekki

from TIGHTROPE: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series

Nov 15, 2025

We’re at a thing for PTSD sufferers. Or however you word it. I don’t know. It’s not a camp. It’s not a rehab center. It’s just this thing for a week, this place that feels placeless.

And he’s a cop and he quit after he got shot in the leg and he walks fine, mostly, but the bullet hole is no joke and he says, “No, I’m not a cop no more and I’ll never be again.” And I’m a vet and I’ve never been shot, but had worse happen, but I won’t get into that. And we’re at this ranch thing, except we’ve escaped. Meaning we got sick of the Big-Brother feel, how they were watching our every move. For our “safety.” Because they said “things have happened” with people in the past, which is as vague as you can get.

And we’re in the woods and we can hear the horses who aren’t sleeping and it’s late, real late. It’s bleak, motherless, mononucleosis-colored night, and we’re free, huddled, looking at the weird dorm-barn thing where we’re staying and the lights are on and there’s flashlights in the field and they’re looking for us and it’s amazing to be looked for and we’re probably going to get kicked out of here, but it’s better than listening to a lot of lectures. It’s been endless lectures. As if we know nothing. As if it’s kindergarten. We’re both done with it. “There’s no hope,” he says. “We gotta do this on our own,” he says.

“Or with each other,” I say.

“Sounds good,” he says.

And we plot to escape, except they have our car keys and our cars and our keys and our everything, because we signed paperwork to come here to get help, except the help isn’t helping. It’s like we’re getting talked down to. Like we’re idiots. Like we never graduated fifth grade. We did. And college too, mostly. And we’re here and the PTSD is going nuts with their nonstop asking us if we’re suicidal and we’re not and we’re tucked into the branches and the vines and the Evil Dead trees and we’re going to have to step into the searching spotlights soon enough, or maybe we’ll sleep here. Looking up at the stars we can’t see because the leaves are angry and hungry and hangry. And nothing’s going to happen. There’s no revelation. There’s no excavation. There’s no realization. It’s just two hacked-to-bit humans who realized that we made a mistake, that the counseling back home was horrible, but this is worse. The V.A. is a farce. It’s a lion dreaming about old men. It’s a man becoming a pig. It’s darkness waving at your face. I never want to go back to it. I wanna stop drinking on my own. Even if it means giving up on Christmas forever. Even if it means reckoning with my guts. I can’t be incarcerated voluntarily ever again. We’re saying, ‘no, we have autonomy!’ ‘No, we’re free!’ And tomorrow aches for us. And I can’t stand the future. And he’s getting divorced. And I have more diagnoses than an entire hospital ward. And the flashlights keep playing with the grass and fist fighting with the sky and losing. And we’re devilish and angelic and silent and wild and young and old at the same time. And when I was a stripper, I remember leaving with my pocket bulging with ones, so many that it felt like my pants would explode. And, now, I make minimal wage because my body is too old to sell. And I hurt. And we lie back. And the dirt is dirty. And the woods are woodsy. And the voices yell our names with mispronunciations made for movies. And we relax. We truly relax. This feel that the PTSD is gone because we are two death-metal lyrics in a pile on cool ground, where God likes to sleep at night too and so we cuddle up with God and we wait and we feel good disobeying and maybe we’ll disobey forever and maybe that’s the cure.

Skating on Thick Ice by Ron Riekki

from TIGHTROPE: a PUNK NOIR Magazine series

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