I feel it circling us out there in the dark, and I pile some more wood on the fire. It cracks and pops, sending tiny embers careening up towards the sky, the trees around us casting dancing shadows as the flames climb higher and hotter. I peer out under the branches and try to convince myself that every glint I see isn't a glimpse of firelight on eyes or teeth, that the hungering dark can be held back for one more night, a few more hours, until the dawn comes, gray and cold, but bright, and we start to run again.
I look down at you, curled up facing the fire, and watch the light play across your features. You've always slept better than me, bundled up in furs and scraps, immune to the wind and the rain, sleeping the sleep of the just, your slow, steady breathing ticking away the hours as I watch over you and tend the fire, keeping my promise by keeping you safe, for however long I'm able. Tonight's no different: a black sky broken by the shattered moon, the silence of the tomb hanging heavy over the woods, oppressive and suffocating. But we have fire, so we have light. We have our health, or you have yours, anyway, so we can run. And we have each other, so we have a reason to.
I put another log on the fire, the thin white bark flaring up quickly as the wood slowly blackens. I reach over to you and brush hair from your face with clumsy fingers. You frown slightly and mutter your dreamspeak, half-formed syllables to go with hazy visions, worlds, I pray, unlike our own. Never could I escape into sleep and dream as you can, slipping into comforting obliviousness with an ease that I can't even hope to match. There you find freedom, where I remain a prisoner: ever observing, ever marking, ever fearing.
Poking at the fire, I stir up the embers and coax new life from them, their heat slowly consuming the stubs and ends of the burned logs and branches that have served us through the night, morning still a long way off.
My poker flares up and I douse it in the ashes before, thinking better of it, lighting it again, the flame growing quickly. Standing up through aching knees, I step over you and walk towards the edge of the light cast by our fire, holding the makeshift torch out before me. I raise it up and look out into the darkness, trying to, but hoping not to, catch a glimpse of our pursuer. I hear the groaning and cracking of some ancient tree off to my left, and before I can even turn, I hear another, right before me, just beyond the feeble light of my torch, and I swear I see that glint, that predatory malevolence lurking out there in the night, that which has dogged our every step and turned our nights to terror. Never had I seen its face, though long have I lived in fear of it. For miles and years, it seems, we've fled, and I've done all I can to keep you safe. There is, perhaps, one last kindness I can perform.
I turn and walk back to the fire, casting my torch into the dying flames. I ease myself down to the ground and curl up behind you, feeling you burrow into me as I wrap my arms around you. I watch over your head as the flames sputter and die, bit by bit, and the circle of light surrounding us shrinks and shrinks, and they close in. I bury my face in your hair as the last orange flame gives way to embers and I close my eyes rather than watch the end.
12 December 2018
December 16, 2018
May 1, 2018
Emergencey
I wake with a start, blood red skies burning away in my vision, replaced by the inky blackness of the bunker. I lie back, catching my breath, staring off into the darkness overhead, and I wait for her comforting arm to drape across my chest.
My breathing slows and I look over to the few lit dials on the console across the room to my right, the only source of light. I roll over and curl up, staring at those dials, trying not to acknowledge the void behind me, the space where her sleeping bag once lay, but I swear I can feel her fingers at my neck, brushing through my hair, so I squeeze my eyes shut and bury my face, trying to hide my tears from who?
Eventually morning comes, near as I can tell, and I set about busying myself for the coming day: routine is the enemy of madness, so I've been told, and it's all I've got left. I go through the motions of keeping myself alive: I roll up my sleeping bag and put it aside, clearing a space and putting myself through the poses she taught me. I sweep out quarters unoccupied for months. I take readings on dying batteries even as they leak onto the floor and into the air. I crack open a can of what the label tells me used to be beans, and this is what's left of my life.
We were safe down below as the fires raged above, death raining from the sky the world over, the world torn asunder and not one stone left set on top of another. Humanity cast down from our dizzying height by the push of a button, as if by design, all that was left a single family huddled deep underground, surrounded by the same weapons of war that bathed the earth above in nuclear fire, protected and sustained by and from that selfsame beast, the all-consuming monster war itself. It seemed poignant at first, these small lives spared while so many burned, or worse. And fear melded with gratitude for the first days, days of exploration and tentative, careful explanations to the children, until eventually fear was forgotten, and gratitude, as it does, died, and there was only life underground, drive more by inertia than will, momentum carrying them forward.
Days turned into months, and the horror of listening to the smattering of broadcasts on the radio was replaced by the horror of the silence that crept in their place. The cries of the dying gave way to a yawning nothing. Familiar voices calling for help for days and weeks, growing ever feebler, eventually faded away as the prayed-for deliverance finally arrived, though not in the form requested, torn to pieces by wasting and disease, or the diseased themselves. She wanted to help them, wanted to throw open our doors and welcome them into our home. She knew better, but knowing doesn't stop the tearing away, the loss and the pain.
The strongest voices rang out as long as they could, citing all the good books and holy words they could muster, pounding the pages to remind any who were listening that this destruction was a holy thing, brought upon us as a tool of purification, a test for the worthy. The twinge of madness was always present in these voices, creeping in around the edges, until their ends came, too. Some simply vanished, voices lost to the world, their apocalyptic transmissions echoing out for an eternity in the void. Others met their end head on, still thumping the pages and cursing us for heretics as they pulled the trigger.
It had been a long time since we let the children stay in the room while we listened to the radio, scanning across the bands, reaching out into the darkness above our heads, hoping to find what? Our deliverance? Companionship? Eventually just a reason to continue.
But the months stretched on, and routine became our ally. The children grew, and we regaled them with stories from before they were born. Long drives to the lake. Half-remembered arguments. Blue skies and pine trees. Birth and death and loss and love. Her mother. My father. She knew all the details; I was always bad at that.
How long it was, we couldn't say, but the air soured, and the stores began to dwindle, and her eyes hollowed, taking on an edge I hadn't seen before. The children didn't play anymore, and I found my stories, lopsided and incomplete as they were, simply weren't enough to hold them close and keep them from drifting any longer. Sickness had stolen into our shelter, the same sickness that had spread across the world above, and it stole my world from me a second time.
I buried them as best I could, and visited them every day. My momentum was spent, and I found will a poor substitute. Routine stepped in and I rose every morning, went through her poses, swept and recorded, ate and said her name like a prayer.
And then one day, our home became a tomb. It didn't happen all at once, but happen it did, and I could look away from it no longer. Dead children. Dead wife. Dead husband just waiting to join them. I talked with her about it, many times, and I could always hear her voice, her gentle and not so gentle urgings, some so old and familiar they brought a smile to my face even as they admonished me, not to be better, but to be as good as I was. Not to be stronger, but to be as strong as I was.
That doubt in me she was never able to break, that shadow she was never able to dispel, grew wider and wilder, and I knew I wasn't fit to rest with her. I knew I had to be stronger, fuller, better, before I deserved to lie with her again. I knew only weakness and a wasting death waited for me down here in the darkness, and that the only way into her graces was to crack the ancient seals and swing wide the doors on their great, groaning hinges, and to walk out into the light and whatever awaited me.
I'll make her proud, I think, as I put my weight against the last door. Bones and waste clatter as they are swept aside, and even the dim daylight filtering in from the cave's mouth is blinding. I adjust the pack on my shoulders once more and take my first step out of the bunker.
1 May 2018
September 25, 2017
Toward the Light/End of the Line (Apostasy)
I follow the light on the horizon for hours, pushing on late into the night. When I finally crest the top of the ridge and look down into the valley, what I see shakes me, surprises me enough that I forget years of experience, years of care and caution. I stand there, the tallest thing for miles around, and stare down on the first living, breathing city I’ve seen since we went under the mountain. Despite myself, despite the horror and death of the wasteland, the fear and mistrust start to fade away as I look down upon this first new city, amazed: they have lights. They have water. They have life.
And I’m not the only one. I see other travelers looking down from other ridges, as spellbound as me. I see them picking their way down the mountains of rubble, descending on the city from all directions, crossing the great dusty plain before the it, casting shadows miles long. Men and women, the women traveling in the open, all of us driven to carelessness by the ecstasy of hope on the horizon: that nameless city, that beacon of humanity’s finest aspirations, greater even than that which came before the bombs, tried and tested by the fires of annihilation and murder. Here, in this city with no name, in this city with The Church, here we will find salvation.
I make my way down along a long-dry arroyo, and climb up to the long plain before the city, baked hard by the sun and then vitrified by atomic fire, dust billowing up with every footfall to be carried up and away by the tugging breeze, betraying my path to any and every interested party for miles around. But there are no interested parties, none to mark my passing, as we all trudge forward, drawn across the continent to this light of humanity, the flame of hope carried far and wide by travelers and traders, thought by so many to be a myth, or worse, and yet here it stands, this beacon in the wastes.
We march on, oblivious to each other, drawing closer to strangers than any of us have been in years. I can’t remember the last time I saw this many people this close together without chains around their necks. But there are no slavers here. No bandits, or cannibals. Only the faithful, completing their great pilgrimage.
We enter through a great gate, left open even in the middle of the night to welcome the weary travelers who were drawn like moths to the flame of the city’s lights just over the horizon, those who abandoned caution and braved the terrors of the night to arrive even hours earlier. The amazed looks on the faces of the stupefied wanderers match, I’m sure, my own. We pass tents, then shacks, then honest to God buildings. And everywhere there are the faithful, praying and holding services anywhere they can stand: in pig sties, on waste heaps, right in the middle of the road. The stink and the press of the crowd is foreign, but welcoming. Truly, this city stands as a testament to something vast and beautiful, something we’d forgotten, something we had to be brought to the brink of destruction to be reminded of: this is our natural state. We are good and pure. We need each other and we need to be near each other, and in the face of this truth we indeed become the divine that we seek, that we trekked across the wasteland hoping against hope to catch even a glimpse of.
I feel a great joy swell up within me, unfamiliar at first, a feeling so long suppressed as to be forgotten, but there it is, filling me with its glow as I bump and jostle through the throng, hearing voices raised in praise and adulation, not crying out in pain or screaming, begging for mercy. No hushed whispers of the hiding, fearful even to breathe lest they be discovered and taken. As I weave through the streets towards the center of the city, towards The Church, I feel my throat start to loosen, and my breath presses past my voice box, my tentative voice uncertainly joining the great din of the crowd, growing stronger and louder with every step, the fear and dust and silence of the years falling away as I join in unfamiliar chants, the light in my heart guiding my voice and my thoughts, delivering me to the same revelation that the studied faithful have discovered, my soul crying out in the universal tongue of hope and aspiration, climbing to match the soaring ambition of this place, this first new great city, this place where it will all begin anew, better and grander than ever before in our lost history, made stronger and purified through the purgation, tempered and cleansed by nuclear fires wrought by our own hands.
I think of my wife and our children, long buried under the mountain, and I think on their faces, no longer twisted in hunger and fear, but aglow with the same vibrancy and hope that threatens to overwhelm me as I draw closer to The Church, the crowd thicker now, joyful hands clasping anyone they can reach, a frenzy of fraternity overtaking the masses, sweeping me along with it as I smile widely, looking into the eyes of the ecstatics around me, my own hope reflected in their perfect faces.
Then the crowd parts and we surround The Church, and I finally see it, the great darkened structure that this city has built itself up around. It seems to writhe against the night sky, the undulating voices of the great press of humanity echoing, seeming to alter reality as I find myself reeling, my mind trying to make sense of the structure before me: the faces, the walls, the great jabberwocky construction seeming organic and grown, rather than built. Something I can almost see, something moving in The Church...
But then one great voice rises above the din, and calls the newcomers forward, calls forth the families, the core of this new city, of this new pure and ambitious humanity. They bring their children forward, presenting them to the priest, and he welcomes them, placing his hands on their heads, each in turn. His men step forward and take the children, their parents falling to their knees in joyous, rapturous prayer, as the voice of the crowd rises as one. Somewhere a great lever is thrown, and ancient floodlights hum to life, blinding me for a moment as they bathe The Church in light, and the chanting of the crowd rises, nearing frenzy, loud enough to drown out the screams of the children as they are added to The Church, living sacrifices to this grand new humanity, long spikes and ropes marrying them to the structure, the mass of bones and flesh and mad ambition, and I recoil in horror, finally realizing that I was right: this is who we are, and this is where we belong: monsters and butchers scurrying in the shadow of The Church of Children.
25 September 2017
And I’m not the only one. I see other travelers looking down from other ridges, as spellbound as me. I see them picking their way down the mountains of rubble, descending on the city from all directions, crossing the great dusty plain before the it, casting shadows miles long. Men and women, the women traveling in the open, all of us driven to carelessness by the ecstasy of hope on the horizon: that nameless city, that beacon of humanity’s finest aspirations, greater even than that which came before the bombs, tried and tested by the fires of annihilation and murder. Here, in this city with no name, in this city with The Church, here we will find salvation.
I make my way down along a long-dry arroyo, and climb up to the long plain before the city, baked hard by the sun and then vitrified by atomic fire, dust billowing up with every footfall to be carried up and away by the tugging breeze, betraying my path to any and every interested party for miles around. But there are no interested parties, none to mark my passing, as we all trudge forward, drawn across the continent to this light of humanity, the flame of hope carried far and wide by travelers and traders, thought by so many to be a myth, or worse, and yet here it stands, this beacon in the wastes.
We march on, oblivious to each other, drawing closer to strangers than any of us have been in years. I can’t remember the last time I saw this many people this close together without chains around their necks. But there are no slavers here. No bandits, or cannibals. Only the faithful, completing their great pilgrimage.
We enter through a great gate, left open even in the middle of the night to welcome the weary travelers who were drawn like moths to the flame of the city’s lights just over the horizon, those who abandoned caution and braved the terrors of the night to arrive even hours earlier. The amazed looks on the faces of the stupefied wanderers match, I’m sure, my own. We pass tents, then shacks, then honest to God buildings. And everywhere there are the faithful, praying and holding services anywhere they can stand: in pig sties, on waste heaps, right in the middle of the road. The stink and the press of the crowd is foreign, but welcoming. Truly, this city stands as a testament to something vast and beautiful, something we’d forgotten, something we had to be brought to the brink of destruction to be reminded of: this is our natural state. We are good and pure. We need each other and we need to be near each other, and in the face of this truth we indeed become the divine that we seek, that we trekked across the wasteland hoping against hope to catch even a glimpse of.
I feel a great joy swell up within me, unfamiliar at first, a feeling so long suppressed as to be forgotten, but there it is, filling me with its glow as I bump and jostle through the throng, hearing voices raised in praise and adulation, not crying out in pain or screaming, begging for mercy. No hushed whispers of the hiding, fearful even to breathe lest they be discovered and taken. As I weave through the streets towards the center of the city, towards The Church, I feel my throat start to loosen, and my breath presses past my voice box, my tentative voice uncertainly joining the great din of the crowd, growing stronger and louder with every step, the fear and dust and silence of the years falling away as I join in unfamiliar chants, the light in my heart guiding my voice and my thoughts, delivering me to the same revelation that the studied faithful have discovered, my soul crying out in the universal tongue of hope and aspiration, climbing to match the soaring ambition of this place, this first new great city, this place where it will all begin anew, better and grander than ever before in our lost history, made stronger and purified through the purgation, tempered and cleansed by nuclear fires wrought by our own hands.
I think of my wife and our children, long buried under the mountain, and I think on their faces, no longer twisted in hunger and fear, but aglow with the same vibrancy and hope that threatens to overwhelm me as I draw closer to The Church, the crowd thicker now, joyful hands clasping anyone they can reach, a frenzy of fraternity overtaking the masses, sweeping me along with it as I smile widely, looking into the eyes of the ecstatics around me, my own hope reflected in their perfect faces.
Then the crowd parts and we surround The Church, and I finally see it, the great darkened structure that this city has built itself up around. It seems to writhe against the night sky, the undulating voices of the great press of humanity echoing, seeming to alter reality as I find myself reeling, my mind trying to make sense of the structure before me: the faces, the walls, the great jabberwocky construction seeming organic and grown, rather than built. Something I can almost see, something moving in The Church...
But then one great voice rises above the din, and calls the newcomers forward, calls forth the families, the core of this new city, of this new pure and ambitious humanity. They bring their children forward, presenting them to the priest, and he welcomes them, placing his hands on their heads, each in turn. His men step forward and take the children, their parents falling to their knees in joyous, rapturous prayer, as the voice of the crowd rises as one. Somewhere a great lever is thrown, and ancient floodlights hum to life, blinding me for a moment as they bathe The Church in light, and the chanting of the crowd rises, nearing frenzy, loud enough to drown out the screams of the children as they are added to The Church, living sacrifices to this grand new humanity, long spikes and ropes marrying them to the structure, the mass of bones and flesh and mad ambition, and I recoil in horror, finally realizing that I was right: this is who we are, and this is where we belong: monsters and butchers scurrying in the shadow of The Church of Children.
25 September 2017
September 18, 2015
Only miles to go
I shake my head to clear it as the world starts to slide into gray. I won't do to fail now, not when I'm so close. I rub the sweat out of my eyes with the back of my hand and try to focus on the road as it shimmers and weaves before me. I feel every bump stab through the wound in my belly, not doing as much to keep me conscious as I'd like.
As I leave the warehouse behind, the ashes of that part of my life still cooling, I think I feel something like hope, or maybe confidence in a plan is closer to it. Not everything went exactly right (getting gutshot wasn't something I was counting on), but I'm free and clear and I've got enough gas to get to her and get away clean. Well, mostly clean.
I ease my hand away from the wound in my belly and see the blood is still pouring out pretty good, with no signs of stopping. I guess that's a good sign, means I've still got plenty of it left. That's me, though: ever the optimist. Silver linings and all that.
The car shudders along as it drifts over a rumble strip and I cringe as the vibration tears through me. I yank the car back into my lane and put my eyes back on the road. It'd just figure: not a soul for miles and I'd manage to get into a wreck. And on the most important day of my life, too.
That's not true. Important, yes. Very important, yes. Not the most important. That begs the question though, what is? I know the easy answer, the obvious one, but then I always do. I don't think it's the right one. The day we met. Naturally. That's the clear choice. That's what you're supposed to say. But I don't think the answer to a question like this one is supposed to be a choice. It's supposed to present itself to you if you've got the eyes to see it. It's supposed to slide up into your consciousness and remind you of that day, that moment, when everything changed. It's supposed to make itself known, and it's not for you to choose.
It's the day I saw her smile.
Not like that, I mean. She's always smiling. Everyone's seen it. I saw it before we ever met. But not that one.
There's another smile, a secret smile, that I like to think I know what it means. It's slower, quieter. It doesn't blow up across her face and make her eyes go wide. It's not a smile for anyone else. It's not even for me.
So that's the day. I can feel the sunlight on my face, making me squint one eye, but I can still see her, not really facing me, looking away, and I can see it start. I don't even know what I said, but I see it start, and I see that smile spread across her face, slow, and I know it, I just know it: Nothing's ever going to be the same again.
The engine coughs and sputters, shaking me out of my reverie, and I feel the cold grip of fear reaching into me, right through the hole in my gut, spreading across my insides and sliding up into my heart. Not now, I think. Not when I'm so close. Only miles to go. The hard part's done. Just keep moving and it'll all be okay.
The car rumbles and I don't even mind the pain this time because after a moment the engine settles down and runs smooth again. I breathe again, but I don't dare relax. My eyes are still wide, flying across the gauges as I try to blink away the fresh panic sweat. I breathe shallow, scared even to move lest I do something to upset the vehicle and be forced to listen to it cough and die, rolling slowly and quietly to a stop on this deserted stretch of road, the only sound the crunch of the tires and my own labored breathing. I close my eyes, desperate, for a moment, realizing I've done it again, my imagination has run away with me and I've scared myself beyond reasoning, beyond reality, and my abject terror will certainly drag me down to despair if I allow it.
I breathe shallowly and put a little more pressure on the gas pedal, willing to exchange a little caution for haste. I keep my eyes on the road, flicking them here and there on the dash to check the gauges. After a while I'm able to shift my weight in the seat and breathe a little easier. The engine purrs and the wind whistles outside the windows and everything's going to be okay again.
The miles roll past, the dark and desolate landscape I'm fleeing through illuminated here and there by shafts of sunlight punching through the thick clouds above. The song of the tires on the road is hypnotic, singing me to sleep, and I want so badly to rest, if only for a moment. I feel the weakness prowling through my mind, through my heart, and I think myself already too weak to fight it. I feel my head start to droop, my eyes begin to go dark, as the thrumming of my pulse in my ears grows slower, and quieter.
You looked up at me and I lost myself in your eyes. I never could drag myself out. I suppose I didn't want to. I told myself I was strong enough, smart enough, to do anything in the world, and I told you that I'd do anything in the world for you.
But then I didn't.
I stumbled, and fell, and after a while I didn't see that smile anymore. Not even the big one, the public one. The one for Joe on the street. The one for anyone because that's just who you are. Instead I saw sidelong glances. The back of your head. Half-asleep whispers that weren't for my ears to hear.
But I can fix it. I can make everything right. I'll prove it to you.
I drag myself up out of the darkness, forcing my eyes to open and focus on the road again. Only miles to go.
The engine coughs and the car shudders and suddenly everything goes quiet and my worst fears come slithering out of the pits and crawl through my mind. I steer the car off the road into the dust on the shoulder, cursing it all the while.
We grind to a stop and the thick clouds of dust thrown up by our passing billow around us, mocking our plight by rolling on down the road ahead of us.
I try the ignition over and again, my efforts greeted by silence: not even a whine, no sign that the car is willing to struggle through this with me. I stomp on the gas and pound on the steering wheel, splitting my wound open anew, trying to bully this machine into compliance, to bend it to my will, but it remains silent and cold.
I lean back and lay my head on the headrest, feeling despair not for the first time, but finally recognizing it, maybe, admitting it. Suddenly I'm face-to-face with the reality that it's not going to be okay again, and that's not a realization I can ignore any longer.
I ease myself out of the car and crunch through the dust and gravel, opening the hood and staring down at the engine as though I know what I'm looking at, or for. The fact is, I'm as lost as I ever was.
I hold the hood open with one hand and rest my head against my wrist, surprised for a moment at how cold my own flesh has grown. I close my eyes and I'm there behind you, whispering something into your ear, through your hair, something that makes you smile that secret smile again, and I can tell without even seeing your face. I can feel it, my arms around you, and everything right in the world.
I collapse in the dirt, kicking up little whirlwinds and dust devils, dirty little storms that twirl around me and are destroyed by the cough forced from my lungs. I don't even get to die on my back, the last thing I see a darkening sky overhead.
As my world grows dim and cold, my last gasp becomes a goodbye, a whispered prayer carried off on the wind, I hope, to her ear.
But she isn't listening.
18 September 2015
As I leave the warehouse behind, the ashes of that part of my life still cooling, I think I feel something like hope, or maybe confidence in a plan is closer to it. Not everything went exactly right (getting gutshot wasn't something I was counting on), but I'm free and clear and I've got enough gas to get to her and get away clean. Well, mostly clean.
I ease my hand away from the wound in my belly and see the blood is still pouring out pretty good, with no signs of stopping. I guess that's a good sign, means I've still got plenty of it left. That's me, though: ever the optimist. Silver linings and all that.
The car shudders along as it drifts over a rumble strip and I cringe as the vibration tears through me. I yank the car back into my lane and put my eyes back on the road. It'd just figure: not a soul for miles and I'd manage to get into a wreck. And on the most important day of my life, too.
That's not true. Important, yes. Very important, yes. Not the most important. That begs the question though, what is? I know the easy answer, the obvious one, but then I always do. I don't think it's the right one. The day we met. Naturally. That's the clear choice. That's what you're supposed to say. But I don't think the answer to a question like this one is supposed to be a choice. It's supposed to present itself to you if you've got the eyes to see it. It's supposed to slide up into your consciousness and remind you of that day, that moment, when everything changed. It's supposed to make itself known, and it's not for you to choose.
It's the day I saw her smile.
Not like that, I mean. She's always smiling. Everyone's seen it. I saw it before we ever met. But not that one.
There's another smile, a secret smile, that I like to think I know what it means. It's slower, quieter. It doesn't blow up across her face and make her eyes go wide. It's not a smile for anyone else. It's not even for me.
So that's the day. I can feel the sunlight on my face, making me squint one eye, but I can still see her, not really facing me, looking away, and I can see it start. I don't even know what I said, but I see it start, and I see that smile spread across her face, slow, and I know it, I just know it: Nothing's ever going to be the same again.
The engine coughs and sputters, shaking me out of my reverie, and I feel the cold grip of fear reaching into me, right through the hole in my gut, spreading across my insides and sliding up into my heart. Not now, I think. Not when I'm so close. Only miles to go. The hard part's done. Just keep moving and it'll all be okay.
The car rumbles and I don't even mind the pain this time because after a moment the engine settles down and runs smooth again. I breathe again, but I don't dare relax. My eyes are still wide, flying across the gauges as I try to blink away the fresh panic sweat. I breathe shallow, scared even to move lest I do something to upset the vehicle and be forced to listen to it cough and die, rolling slowly and quietly to a stop on this deserted stretch of road, the only sound the crunch of the tires and my own labored breathing. I close my eyes, desperate, for a moment, realizing I've done it again, my imagination has run away with me and I've scared myself beyond reasoning, beyond reality, and my abject terror will certainly drag me down to despair if I allow it.
I breathe shallowly and put a little more pressure on the gas pedal, willing to exchange a little caution for haste. I keep my eyes on the road, flicking them here and there on the dash to check the gauges. After a while I'm able to shift my weight in the seat and breathe a little easier. The engine purrs and the wind whistles outside the windows and everything's going to be okay again.
The miles roll past, the dark and desolate landscape I'm fleeing through illuminated here and there by shafts of sunlight punching through the thick clouds above. The song of the tires on the road is hypnotic, singing me to sleep, and I want so badly to rest, if only for a moment. I feel the weakness prowling through my mind, through my heart, and I think myself already too weak to fight it. I feel my head start to droop, my eyes begin to go dark, as the thrumming of my pulse in my ears grows slower, and quieter.
You looked up at me and I lost myself in your eyes. I never could drag myself out. I suppose I didn't want to. I told myself I was strong enough, smart enough, to do anything in the world, and I told you that I'd do anything in the world for you.
But then I didn't.
I stumbled, and fell, and after a while I didn't see that smile anymore. Not even the big one, the public one. The one for Joe on the street. The one for anyone because that's just who you are. Instead I saw sidelong glances. The back of your head. Half-asleep whispers that weren't for my ears to hear.
But I can fix it. I can make everything right. I'll prove it to you.
I drag myself up out of the darkness, forcing my eyes to open and focus on the road again. Only miles to go.
The engine coughs and the car shudders and suddenly everything goes quiet and my worst fears come slithering out of the pits and crawl through my mind. I steer the car off the road into the dust on the shoulder, cursing it all the while.
We grind to a stop and the thick clouds of dust thrown up by our passing billow around us, mocking our plight by rolling on down the road ahead of us.
I try the ignition over and again, my efforts greeted by silence: not even a whine, no sign that the car is willing to struggle through this with me. I stomp on the gas and pound on the steering wheel, splitting my wound open anew, trying to bully this machine into compliance, to bend it to my will, but it remains silent and cold.
I lean back and lay my head on the headrest, feeling despair not for the first time, but finally recognizing it, maybe, admitting it. Suddenly I'm face-to-face with the reality that it's not going to be okay again, and that's not a realization I can ignore any longer.
I ease myself out of the car and crunch through the dust and gravel, opening the hood and staring down at the engine as though I know what I'm looking at, or for. The fact is, I'm as lost as I ever was.
I hold the hood open with one hand and rest my head against my wrist, surprised for a moment at how cold my own flesh has grown. I close my eyes and I'm there behind you, whispering something into your ear, through your hair, something that makes you smile that secret smile again, and I can tell without even seeing your face. I can feel it, my arms around you, and everything right in the world.
I collapse in the dirt, kicking up little whirlwinds and dust devils, dirty little storms that twirl around me and are destroyed by the cough forced from my lungs. I don't even get to die on my back, the last thing I see a darkening sky overhead.
As my world grows dim and cold, my last gasp becomes a goodbye, a whispered prayer carried off on the wind, I hope, to her ear.
But she isn't listening.
18 September 2015
May 18, 2015
Ya'aburnee
The steam of my breath curls around my face in the stillness. The snow on the ground seems to muffle all sound, but the thin layer of ice that has formed on top of it lends a sharpness to whatever's left. Even my breathing, calm and even, seems to come to my ear forcefully, piercing the silence that lays upon the forest.
I lean my head back and breathe deeply, the late winter sun playing across my face, casting red shadows through my closed eyelids. This is my first peaceful breath in months, and I savor it. Spring is coming, halfway here, and with it the thaw that drives our enemy north, out of the valley that we have made our home, back to the inhospitable waste through the high pass, the land an endless cratered plain, littered with icebergs though the sea is months' travel away, a land we dare not tread upon until our teeth grow soft and our minds begin to wander, then we take that long walk to the north, disappearing over the ridge and living on only in memory.
The village has been spared the horrors of winters past this year, and for that I am thankful. One safe winter, one kind season, spent nestled under furs next to the fire with my new wife. Our first winter; we mingled blood three days before the first snowfall, before the days turned gray and the nights grew talons. The wind howled outside, clawing at the walls of wood and hide, finding no purchase, no ingress. Though I doubt we would have noticed if our home had blown down around us, so enraptured were we with each other's bodies.
A smile spreads across my face at the memory, not cursing the long nights for the joy they brought us. Our first winter. The first of many.
I roll my shoulders under my hides, eager for the spring, eager for the river ice to crack and recede, eager more than anything for her to join me in the river, to strip off her hides and-
I hear a crack, wood snapping, made more sharp against the thin sheet of ice stretching across the snow into the mist through the trees. I turn quickly, scanning the forest with my eyes and ears, my heart already racing. I haven't seen any sign of elk in days, and I want to believe it's simply a fox or hare, but I know better even before I can smell it, the stink of death screwing up my face. I feel its breathing in my chest more than I hear it, rumbling deep and slow, with a poisonous, nameless malice we don't even have words for.
I peer deeper into the forest, every fiber of my being tensed and screaming to flee, but I find myself motionless in the snow halfway to my knees, staring into the woods, praying I'm wrong.
Then the trees begin to fall.
First one, somewhere out in the mist. I can hear it groan and crack, straining to stay upright before succumbing to the irresistible force that assails it, and it crashes through the canopy towards me, snow tumbling down from the branches in its way.
Then another, closer, and I take a step back, the ice resisting my weight for a moment before splintering under my foot. Another tree falls, and another, more quickly now, but I'm frozen, unable even to flee, that first step back all I could muster. Terror rises in me, clawing at my throat something like a scream, and another tree falls. I feel the ground trembling with each step, my heart far outpacing the beat, though that lead is narrowing.
Finally two great trees tumble down before me, and I see it, through the falling snow and pine needles, steam billowing from its mouth in great clouds as it stares at me with a hate more pure and ancient than anything I can imagine. It bellows a roar at me, its ragged maw a mass of fangs framed by jagged tusks, and I break.
I turn on my heel and sprint away from the great beast, my feet punching through the ice and into the wet snow beneath as my legs pump furiously, frantically, trying to carry me away from this doom. The beast's roar echoes through the woods, shaking the snow loose from the branches above me, shaking my teeth in my head. As the roar echoes through the woods, I hear trees crashing down behind me, the earth shaking as my pursuer thunders after me.
I run through groves of the biggest and oldest trees, trying to find something, anything, to slow the beast, but it snaps them like kindling, laying low stately pines that stood tall when my father's father was a boy as if they were twigs. I cannot escape this thing.
I take long, leaping strides down the hillside and across the riverbank, reaching the frozen river. I can race along the rough, pitted ice all the way to the village, definitely faster than struggling through the wet snow that has soaked through my furs, chilling my feet. I run along the ice, the sinking sun throwing my shadow out before me. I'll be back at the village soon. I'll be back with my wife-
My wife.
I stop suddenly, skidding on the uneven surface of the ice, and turn back. The beast crashes through the treeline on high on the riverbank, leaping down towards the river, its long, matted fur trailing behind it in the air. Watching this creature, the hate and bloodthirst in its eyes, its cracked and stained claws and fangs, I know I cannot lead it back to the village, to her. My father's father told me they'd fought one before, in his father's time. They'd driven it away, but at great cost and after great suffering. He wasn't able to protect his wife, and he was a man ten feet tall. So what hope have I?
The beast crashes to earth, smashing right through the thick river ice, bellowing its rage as it sinks into the surging water, great chunks of ice as thick as my leg sailing through the air, tossed like leaves. I know what I must do.
I wait on the river until I see the beast's head rise from the black water, already beginning to climb up onto the ice. I wait for it to see me, and then I run again, up the riverbank and away, back into the trees and into the fading sunlight.
I hear ice cracking like thunder behind me, the river ice shuddering and giving way under the weight of the beast, under the intensity of its pursuit, and I keep running.
My feet are blocks of ice, the furs wrapping them soaked through and matted with ice and snow, growing heavier at the ends of my leaden legs, but I keep running.
My lungs burn, the winter air slicing down my throat and into my chest like a knife, my beard crusting with the frost of my breath, coming out of my mouth in great gouts of steam, tears running down from my eyes as I flee, trees crashing down behind me as the beast pursues, gaining ground, getting ever closer, its stink preceding it, choking the desperate breaths out of me, but I keep running.
Finally, as I can feel its breath upon my neck, its claws tearing at my trailing hides, I break through the treeline and into the clearing atop the cliff overlooking the valley, my village somewhere below, safely out of sight around the bends and twists in the river. I stop, doubled over, at the cliff's edge, my chest heaving, my lungs burning. I grit my teeth and my choked sobs are carried off by the winter wind across the valley.
I whirl, pulling free my father's stone knife as I cast aside my hides and furs, and I stand to face the beast, gasping for breath, weeping and desperate, damned and terrified. I choke out my last breaths and raise knife, defiant and hopeless, praying I've led it far enough away from the village.
It lumbers slowly towards me, a growl deep in its throat sounding like a laugh.
I plant my feet and hold the stone blade out before me.
For her.
18 May 2015
I lean my head back and breathe deeply, the late winter sun playing across my face, casting red shadows through my closed eyelids. This is my first peaceful breath in months, and I savor it. Spring is coming, halfway here, and with it the thaw that drives our enemy north, out of the valley that we have made our home, back to the inhospitable waste through the high pass, the land an endless cratered plain, littered with icebergs though the sea is months' travel away, a land we dare not tread upon until our teeth grow soft and our minds begin to wander, then we take that long walk to the north, disappearing over the ridge and living on only in memory.
The village has been spared the horrors of winters past this year, and for that I am thankful. One safe winter, one kind season, spent nestled under furs next to the fire with my new wife. Our first winter; we mingled blood three days before the first snowfall, before the days turned gray and the nights grew talons. The wind howled outside, clawing at the walls of wood and hide, finding no purchase, no ingress. Though I doubt we would have noticed if our home had blown down around us, so enraptured were we with each other's bodies.
A smile spreads across my face at the memory, not cursing the long nights for the joy they brought us. Our first winter. The first of many.
I roll my shoulders under my hides, eager for the spring, eager for the river ice to crack and recede, eager more than anything for her to join me in the river, to strip off her hides and-
I hear a crack, wood snapping, made more sharp against the thin sheet of ice stretching across the snow into the mist through the trees. I turn quickly, scanning the forest with my eyes and ears, my heart already racing. I haven't seen any sign of elk in days, and I want to believe it's simply a fox or hare, but I know better even before I can smell it, the stink of death screwing up my face. I feel its breathing in my chest more than I hear it, rumbling deep and slow, with a poisonous, nameless malice we don't even have words for.
I peer deeper into the forest, every fiber of my being tensed and screaming to flee, but I find myself motionless in the snow halfway to my knees, staring into the woods, praying I'm wrong.
Then the trees begin to fall.
First one, somewhere out in the mist. I can hear it groan and crack, straining to stay upright before succumbing to the irresistible force that assails it, and it crashes through the canopy towards me, snow tumbling down from the branches in its way.
Then another, closer, and I take a step back, the ice resisting my weight for a moment before splintering under my foot. Another tree falls, and another, more quickly now, but I'm frozen, unable even to flee, that first step back all I could muster. Terror rises in me, clawing at my throat something like a scream, and another tree falls. I feel the ground trembling with each step, my heart far outpacing the beat, though that lead is narrowing.
Finally two great trees tumble down before me, and I see it, through the falling snow and pine needles, steam billowing from its mouth in great clouds as it stares at me with a hate more pure and ancient than anything I can imagine. It bellows a roar at me, its ragged maw a mass of fangs framed by jagged tusks, and I break.
I turn on my heel and sprint away from the great beast, my feet punching through the ice and into the wet snow beneath as my legs pump furiously, frantically, trying to carry me away from this doom. The beast's roar echoes through the woods, shaking the snow loose from the branches above me, shaking my teeth in my head. As the roar echoes through the woods, I hear trees crashing down behind me, the earth shaking as my pursuer thunders after me.
I run through groves of the biggest and oldest trees, trying to find something, anything, to slow the beast, but it snaps them like kindling, laying low stately pines that stood tall when my father's father was a boy as if they were twigs. I cannot escape this thing.
I take long, leaping strides down the hillside and across the riverbank, reaching the frozen river. I can race along the rough, pitted ice all the way to the village, definitely faster than struggling through the wet snow that has soaked through my furs, chilling my feet. I run along the ice, the sinking sun throwing my shadow out before me. I'll be back at the village soon. I'll be back with my wife-
My wife.
I stop suddenly, skidding on the uneven surface of the ice, and turn back. The beast crashes through the treeline on high on the riverbank, leaping down towards the river, its long, matted fur trailing behind it in the air. Watching this creature, the hate and bloodthirst in its eyes, its cracked and stained claws and fangs, I know I cannot lead it back to the village, to her. My father's father told me they'd fought one before, in his father's time. They'd driven it away, but at great cost and after great suffering. He wasn't able to protect his wife, and he was a man ten feet tall. So what hope have I?
The beast crashes to earth, smashing right through the thick river ice, bellowing its rage as it sinks into the surging water, great chunks of ice as thick as my leg sailing through the air, tossed like leaves. I know what I must do.
I wait on the river until I see the beast's head rise from the black water, already beginning to climb up onto the ice. I wait for it to see me, and then I run again, up the riverbank and away, back into the trees and into the fading sunlight.
I hear ice cracking like thunder behind me, the river ice shuddering and giving way under the weight of the beast, under the intensity of its pursuit, and I keep running.
My feet are blocks of ice, the furs wrapping them soaked through and matted with ice and snow, growing heavier at the ends of my leaden legs, but I keep running.
My lungs burn, the winter air slicing down my throat and into my chest like a knife, my beard crusting with the frost of my breath, coming out of my mouth in great gouts of steam, tears running down from my eyes as I flee, trees crashing down behind me as the beast pursues, gaining ground, getting ever closer, its stink preceding it, choking the desperate breaths out of me, but I keep running.
Finally, as I can feel its breath upon my neck, its claws tearing at my trailing hides, I break through the treeline and into the clearing atop the cliff overlooking the valley, my village somewhere below, safely out of sight around the bends and twists in the river. I stop, doubled over, at the cliff's edge, my chest heaving, my lungs burning. I grit my teeth and my choked sobs are carried off by the winter wind across the valley.
I whirl, pulling free my father's stone knife as I cast aside my hides and furs, and I stand to face the beast, gasping for breath, weeping and desperate, damned and terrified. I choke out my last breaths and raise knife, defiant and hopeless, praying I've led it far enough away from the village.
It lumbers slowly towards me, a growl deep in its throat sounding like a laugh.
I plant my feet and hold the stone blade out before me.
For her.
18 May 2015
May 12, 2015
Sins of omission
The flashlight plays across the rusted cans and stacks of flaking magazines on the shelves as I slowly sweep it across the room, breathing slow and shallow, straining to hear anything in the silence that hangs thick and heavy in the basement. This far down, past three dry bodies and through two heavy doors, the relentless wind outside is a memory, its sudden absence turning even this silent room deafening.
Particles of dust dance in the flashlight's beam, pinwheeling and pirouetting through the air, disturbed for the first time in how many years? God knows. Or he would, if he hadn't abandoned this hell, left it to burn and rot a lifetime ago, his grand experiment deemed an irredeemable failure. Can't say as I blame him.
The dust lays thick on the floor, presenting arcane messages written in a calligraphy of rat trails and ash drifts. I fight the urge to cough, an urge growing more insistent by the day, I've noticed, though I'm loath to let my companions know just how bad things have gotten. I suspect somehow they know already: they can smell weakness, their kind. They can taste it. I imagine it must be an overpowering stench in this ruined world, and almost laugh, not able to remember the last time I was so thankful to find myself lacking.
I pass the flashlight back across the room, satisfied there's nothing to find here, nothing worth choking down more of this dust for, anyway, and that laugh breaks free, becoming a cough that rips through me, weakening my knees and caving my chest as I hack, deep and wet, tears coming to my eyes.
In the silence before I can haul a breath into my flooding lungs I hear something, a gasp, a whisper, and I freeze, immediately alert, my eyes and ears straining to find the source of the sound while my lungs burn, desperate for the breath I choked off before it could do me any good.
I whip the flashlight to my left and for a moment I see it, a pair of eyes glittering in the dark, staring at me from behind a century's worth of TV Guides and bloated tin cans, split open by the force of their own decay, now long dry and dusty.
I blink the tears out of my eyes and try to find her, the girl hiding in the darkness with me, from me, but she's silent as a dream and she blows away into the dark like a cobweb. Her eyes stay with me, though: wide and deep, ringed by bony eye sockets under taut skin the color of nothing I can remember seeing, not for a long time. The moon, maybe. White and almost translucent, so thin and delicate you wouldn't even touch it for fear of spoiling it, tearing it.
I cough again, feeling something move inside me that shouldn't, and after several long moments regain my breath, wheezing harshly as I pass the flashlight's beam across the room again. How she survived, survives, down here in this tomb I have no earthly idea. How many more there might be is another question I can't answer, as I hear her chittering in the dark, like a rat. But then, I tell myself, maybe that's all it was anyway.
I back out of the room and through the heavy door, making my way back upstairs to the world, to the driving wind and the grit it carries, to the animals that walk like men that I find myself travelling with. She's better off down in the dark, alone and starving, than up here with the likes of these survivors. I know what designs they have for the women they find, what foul sin and wickedness they visit upon them and carve into their flesh, and while I'm too weak to stand against them, I have no desire to assist them in realizing these depravities.
I thump up the stairs and into the blinding sunlight, drawing my mask back across my face as I reach the burned-out remains of the first floor where my companions have already rifled through the desiccated remains found here and have grown bored and anxious to move on in waiting for my return. I meet their expectant stares.
"Just rats."
12 May 2015
Particles of dust dance in the flashlight's beam, pinwheeling and pirouetting through the air, disturbed for the first time in how many years? God knows. Or he would, if he hadn't abandoned this hell, left it to burn and rot a lifetime ago, his grand experiment deemed an irredeemable failure. Can't say as I blame him.
The dust lays thick on the floor, presenting arcane messages written in a calligraphy of rat trails and ash drifts. I fight the urge to cough, an urge growing more insistent by the day, I've noticed, though I'm loath to let my companions know just how bad things have gotten. I suspect somehow they know already: they can smell weakness, their kind. They can taste it. I imagine it must be an overpowering stench in this ruined world, and almost laugh, not able to remember the last time I was so thankful to find myself lacking.
I pass the flashlight back across the room, satisfied there's nothing to find here, nothing worth choking down more of this dust for, anyway, and that laugh breaks free, becoming a cough that rips through me, weakening my knees and caving my chest as I hack, deep and wet, tears coming to my eyes.
In the silence before I can haul a breath into my flooding lungs I hear something, a gasp, a whisper, and I freeze, immediately alert, my eyes and ears straining to find the source of the sound while my lungs burn, desperate for the breath I choked off before it could do me any good.
I whip the flashlight to my left and for a moment I see it, a pair of eyes glittering in the dark, staring at me from behind a century's worth of TV Guides and bloated tin cans, split open by the force of their own decay, now long dry and dusty.
I blink the tears out of my eyes and try to find her, the girl hiding in the darkness with me, from me, but she's silent as a dream and she blows away into the dark like a cobweb. Her eyes stay with me, though: wide and deep, ringed by bony eye sockets under taut skin the color of nothing I can remember seeing, not for a long time. The moon, maybe. White and almost translucent, so thin and delicate you wouldn't even touch it for fear of spoiling it, tearing it.
I cough again, feeling something move inside me that shouldn't, and after several long moments regain my breath, wheezing harshly as I pass the flashlight's beam across the room again. How she survived, survives, down here in this tomb I have no earthly idea. How many more there might be is another question I can't answer, as I hear her chittering in the dark, like a rat. But then, I tell myself, maybe that's all it was anyway.
I back out of the room and through the heavy door, making my way back upstairs to the world, to the driving wind and the grit it carries, to the animals that walk like men that I find myself travelling with. She's better off down in the dark, alone and starving, than up here with the likes of these survivors. I know what designs they have for the women they find, what foul sin and wickedness they visit upon them and carve into their flesh, and while I'm too weak to stand against them, I have no desire to assist them in realizing these depravities.
I thump up the stairs and into the blinding sunlight, drawing my mask back across my face as I reach the burned-out remains of the first floor where my companions have already rifled through the desiccated remains found here and have grown bored and anxious to move on in waiting for my return. I meet their expectant stares.
"Just rats."
12 May 2015
April 3, 2015
Any and everything
The wind brings her mass of brown curls to life, swirling around her head almost in slow motion as she rises. She smiles, her eyes closed, as she turns towards the sun, letting it play across her face for a long moment. Finally she opens her eyes and spots her target. I tighten my grip on her belt as she raises her weapon, pulling it tight into her shoulder and leaning into the recoil as she fires. The car ahead of us bucks and swerves, betraying sudden panic. She drops an empty magazine at our feet and I press a fresh one into her waiting hand. As it retreats I see her looking back down at me through the window she's leaning out of, still smiling. She's the most beautiful woman in the world.
29 March 2015
29 March 2015
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