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
September 18, 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
March 15, 2015
Running backwards
I cast off from the dock and strain against the oars, the gentle slap of waves on the hull accompanying the rhythmic sounds of my efforts. I watch my lands recede slowly before me, sea ice thumping past my boat and swirling into my wake, seeming to close my path behind me and follow me out of the cove.
I pull harder on the oars, driving my boat against the current, through the frozen sea, larger pieces of ice diverting me, resisting, but unable to turn me from my path. A gentle wind begins to blow against my back, casting my hair into my face, my eyes, sticking to the sweat already formed on my forehead.
I rage at this and throw myself against the oars, dragging them through the field of ice closing in around me. I lean back on them, my joints cracking and popping, the oarlocks screaming in protest. I can't bear to turn and set my gaze upon the sheet of ice in my path, and so again I throw myself backward, the flesh of my hands tearing as I stare at my home, dead and empty, lost to the cold. My boat groans in protest of my efforts, every board and plank straining and creaking, as desperate to let go as I am to hold on.
The ice seizes the oars, refusing to release them, refusing to give even an inch's passage. I clench my eyes shut tightly, and again I throw myself against the oars, redoubling my grip against the betrayal my blood presents, the slickened wood threatening to escape me at any moment, and then it happens: an oar snaps, and with it the oarlock. I tumble backwards against the mast, still clinging to the handle of the oar and rising just in time to see the splintered shaft of my oar slip under the ice.
I rise and seize my remaining oar, yanking it free of the clinging ice and raise it over my head, crying out my fury and despair as I turn and bring it down on the sheet of ice at the bow, feeling the impact shudder up my arms as I'm sprayed with tiny bits of ice, my desperate attack having only the meanest effect on the ice. Again and again I raise the oar high and bring it down, my cries breaking down to choked sobs as my desperation sees my confidence flag.
I set the blade of the oar down on the ice and lean my head against my hands, still gripping the handle. The fog of my breath swirls about me in the new stillness, my heavy, shuddering breathing the only sound to my ears.
Then I think I hear her voice whisper past my ear before that too is taken from me, snatched up and carried off to sea by a sudden breeze from across the ice. I raise my head, now smeared with the sticky blood from my hands, and I swear I can feel a lingering warmth across my cheek, half-remembered as a lover's sigh upon waking, fading as quickly as it came, taking my strength with it.
My shoulders sag and my head bows, but then without a sound the oar slips through the ice and into the sea, loosing itself from my grip and disappearing into the brine where the vast sheet of ice before me has split and gently opened, a path to the bosom of the sea gradually widening as I look on.
I raise my sail and see it ripple slowly in the gentle breeze, filling reluctantly and coaxing my boat forward through the ice to the open sea. I seat myself at the rear of my boat, my hand on the tiller, and close my eyes, letting the breeze play across my face as it slowly carries me out of sight of land.
I pull harder on the oars, driving my boat against the current, through the frozen sea, larger pieces of ice diverting me, resisting, but unable to turn me from my path. A gentle wind begins to blow against my back, casting my hair into my face, my eyes, sticking to the sweat already formed on my forehead.
My oars fight to find purchase in the sea, scraping atop shattered sheets of ice that ripple and convulse at my passing, however slow and labored.
My progress is halted with a jolt as I meet a sheet of ice too wide and far too obstinate to be turned aside. I lift my head and look to my lands, fallow and gray. No smoke rises from my chimney, no hides hang drying. I set my teeth and plant my feet, pulling against the oars with all the strength I can muster. As I strain against the ice, fragments of the sheets around me bump and jostle, knocking against the hull and each other. I reset my grip and again pull on the oars, my breath hissing out from between my teeth, and I watch as the sea ice gathers around my boat, crowding in close, seeking to resume its previous form, a solid sheet, impassable by boat, yet unable to bear my weight on foot.
I rage at this and throw myself against the oars, dragging them through the field of ice closing in around me. I lean back on them, my joints cracking and popping, the oarlocks screaming in protest. I can't bear to turn and set my gaze upon the sheet of ice in my path, and so again I throw myself backward, the flesh of my hands tearing as I stare at my home, dead and empty, lost to the cold. My boat groans in protest of my efforts, every board and plank straining and creaking, as desperate to let go as I am to hold on.
The ice seizes the oars, refusing to release them, refusing to give even an inch's passage. I clench my eyes shut tightly, and again I throw myself against the oars, redoubling my grip against the betrayal my blood presents, the slickened wood threatening to escape me at any moment, and then it happens: an oar snaps, and with it the oarlock. I tumble backwards against the mast, still clinging to the handle of the oar and rising just in time to see the splintered shaft of my oar slip under the ice.
I rise and seize my remaining oar, yanking it free of the clinging ice and raise it over my head, crying out my fury and despair as I turn and bring it down on the sheet of ice at the bow, feeling the impact shudder up my arms as I'm sprayed with tiny bits of ice, my desperate attack having only the meanest effect on the ice. Again and again I raise the oar high and bring it down, my cries breaking down to choked sobs as my desperation sees my confidence flag.
I set the blade of the oar down on the ice and lean my head against my hands, still gripping the handle. The fog of my breath swirls about me in the new stillness, my heavy, shuddering breathing the only sound to my ears.
Then I think I hear her voice whisper past my ear before that too is taken from me, snatched up and carried off to sea by a sudden breeze from across the ice. I raise my head, now smeared with the sticky blood from my hands, and I swear I can feel a lingering warmth across my cheek, half-remembered as a lover's sigh upon waking, fading as quickly as it came, taking my strength with it.
My shoulders sag and my head bows, but then without a sound the oar slips through the ice and into the sea, loosing itself from my grip and disappearing into the brine where the vast sheet of ice before me has split and gently opened, a path to the bosom of the sea gradually widening as I look on.
I raise my sail and see it ripple slowly in the gentle breeze, filling reluctantly and coaxing my boat forward through the ice to the open sea. I seat myself at the rear of my boat, my hand on the tiller, and close my eyes, letting the breeze play across my face as it slowly carries me out of sight of land.
4 March 2015
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