This is just to say
if you think you’re
so much better than
me,
love,
if you think you’re
so much wiser than
me,
love,
if you think you’re
so much more than
me,
love,
I think you’ve got to start
locking your door when you
sleep,
love.
You Think
Return 21
Our Captain dreamt.
In the red dark, he walked in the footsteps of those before him.
He walked in his own footsteps.
He saw the Desolation, the Central City, the sprawling tides of the dead, the skeletal faces of those he’d known. Those he’d fought with. Those he’d killed.
He remembered the day of ruining. The orders from Echelon.
It had all been a long time in coming; for decades, the agricultists had been allowed to work their dark science, at the behest of the military. As a people, we strove to unlock the secrets of life, and we used whatever technologies we could, whatever advances we imagined, whatever methods had not yet been tried. We dug into the ground to find the perfect soil in which to sow the abominable seeds. We sent rockets into the starclouds to gather space dust to feed them.
What we had hoped for was forever lost because of what we found.
In the bowels of the earth, we awoke something with an unstoppable, damning hunger.
Creatures with skins of rock and hearts of fire. They inspired us with power.
In the heavens, we awoke something with a terrible justice, a merciless song.
Creatures with feathered wings, and breath of music. They infused us with pride.
We learned to twist everything we touched to our own needs, driven by a desire not to know what we found, but to master it. Some had used the fire as inspiration, as warmth. Some had used the music for beauty. But most, hungry and greedy and wild-eyed with newly-discovered power, used them both for something else altogether.
We took our discoveries, and we made them monstrous.
We enslaved them in our greed, never realizing that in our arrogance, we were destroying ourselves. We thought we could use them to annihilate those who stood against us, those who were different. Other countries, other industries. Other people.
Where we could have found a way to save the world, to feed the hungry, we instead found a way to weaponize life. We learned how to use the fire of the beasts to suck out the spark of creation locked away inside each seed, each cell. We made the things of feather and song teach us to create soaring devices that could infect farms, flocks, the very grass of the earth. It would grow, lush and thick and beautiful, but sterile. When it died, there would be no seed to the fruit, no foal within the workhorse, no chick within the egg. Ever.
The firebeasts raged. The musicthings sang. They tried to tell us of balance, of danger, of life and death and chaos.
The world had nightmares, in the weeks leading up to its death. Bad dreams of a bloodied moon and unending fire.
Only a few of us listened, but by then, it was too late.
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Return 20
This is Part 20 in an ongoing serial. Visit the ‘Serials’ tab at the top of the page to read parts 1-19.
* * *
Time passed — slowly.
Without Luroteo, a great and dismal sadness seemed to settle over the camp. It was not until Riesa began to round that we behaved as anything more than lost children ourselves. She had taken to staying in the Captain’s hut during the long nights, and working in the gardens during the day. One afternoon, as she stood up and stretched, it was obvious what had happened — the Captain seemed shocked nevertheless — and from that moment on, we were determined yet again to find our joy.
Under the greydome sky, we persevered.
The days and nights were filled with light and music; we took every opportunity to celebrate, spending many evenings in revelry and love once the children returned from their journey.
The Captain, who had seemed lost and fading, after Luroteo’s disappearance, reawakened, with new strength, new purpose. He sang again, sang with us in the gardens, with Riesa at the pool, with the children as they came back from their journey.
One morning, as the pale of dawn suffused the dull sky, we woke to find several of the older children left behind. We found them in the gardens, listlessly touching the plants, meandering as though half-asleep. It was heartwrenching to see them struggle to come to terms with the change in duty, in life, in expectation. We showed them what they were to do, and they did it, singing quietly, watching one another with sad eyes.
What was harder, still, was the sight of the rest of the children that came home that night straggling into camp, pale and wan, stumbling, all of them that could carry were carrying an infant — some were carrying two, one on each hip, while toddling ones sobbed as they walked, wanting nothing more than their mothers’ comforting arms.
We had long since learned not to ask them of their task. We tried to ask those who no longer went, but their attempts to explain were like children attempting to explain a dream from which they’d awakened, and no longer remembered. They knew they were in the Desolation. They knew they were together. They knew it was important. But that was all.
Days and days of this went on, and though the children eventually stopped crying when they came back home, they looked more and more tired as they returned.
We grew used to it, as we grew used to the grey sky, and the rocky earth surrounding our oasis, and our garden that bore fruit but could never bear seed.
The months began to flow by, like water, and Riesa grew ever more round. The Captain made plans, made his hut larger, provisioned it, crafted a bassinet, helped to weave blankets, worked hard to make Riesa comfortable. He would often reverently lay a hand to her belly, and simply look at her. In this way, without words, he would tell her of his love. She was no longer a child, and she worked alongside him, stood in the gardens, made little clothes, carried water, and sang with joy.
All this time, the feather sat near the hearth, white and perfect and shimmering and forgotten.
One night, as they made ready for bed, Riesa froze, looking startled as the first of the pains at her back came. She could not sleep, not for all the tea, the hot rocks, the oil rubbed into her back and belly. The Captain looked helpless; he sent for the women who had birthed and who had seen births, and they came and filled his hut, and sent him away to pace the night, to talk with the other men. Without thinking, he took the feather as he went, clutching it in his strong hands, fingers curled around the rachis, familiar, comforting. Those who had recently gained children sympathized with the Captain, promising him that all would be well, even as these moments seemed fraught with effort and pain and worry.
The women cared for Riesa, on into the night, letting her eat and sleep when it was clear the child was not yet ready, and the Captain paced, finally nodding off to sleep in Luroteo’s old hut, holding tightly to the feather.
There in the red dark, with no candles or song or lover to hold back what he had avoided these long months, the Captain dreamed.
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Life Is Hell
“I didn’t end up quitting,” he said quietly, one hand curled around the stems of a slowly-wilting bouquet. He dragged hard on the cigarette; they didn’t stay lit like they used to, especially in the damp. The thick, sweet taste of clove clung to everything, and the blue exhalation from his lips mingled with the steady fog. “Hate that fucking job,” he said. He knew he’d told her that a hundred thousand times before. Didn’t matter. “They had another assignment,” he noted, frowning, “after. Went overseas and dealt with a small cult in Zaraysk. Used to be called Krasny, but when it was under Yury’s son’s rule, bunch of people came and laid siege. Fedor’s wife grabbed their baby son and threw herself out the window of her room in the tower. That word — zarazit’sya — to throw yourself to your death from a tall place — so they renamed the town Zaraysk, in honor of Evpraksia, who did exactly that.” He paused again, his eyes narrowing, as though to rethink all he’d just said, to make sure that’s how it went, that’s the way the story went. “So the cultists were the kind who drew shit in blood and chalk on the floor,” he explained. “Slaughtered lambs, read entrails, all that. Wasn’t working, wasn’t bringing life back into the city fast enough, so they started picking tourists, snagging them from bars and shitty hotels. Reading their entrails. But that got hard and they almost got caught when one of the vics got away. They started picking ones that couldn’t fight back. Tourist’s kids. They liked picking up babies out of prams while mothers were looking in shop windows.” He cleared his throat, his eyes falling shut for a moment. He could picture the place he’d found, stone floors, stone walls, stone ceilings with wooden joists. Hooks in the beams. Hooks in the walls. Meat hooks.
She said nothing. She couldn’t.
“After that, it was debriefing, then catch up on paperwork,” he murmured, blowing a smoke ring into the cold. The ground around his feet was mostly frozen, still, but the odd warmth in the air made the snow on the ground sublimate into fog. He didn’t bother to look around, to see if he was followed, to see if anyone watched him talking to her. He didn’t care anymore. “Then it was out to Metz. Standard Omega Class. Some stupid idiot who can set the world on fire if he gets pissed enough. Gave him some haldol,” he said dully. “Paperwork. Debriefing. Paperwork.” He shifted how he was standing, uncomfortable, and tucked the flowers under one arm, moving to light a new cigarette off the old one. He held the old one awkwardly for awhile, trying to figure out what to do with it. In the end, he pinched it out, burning his fingertips, and then put it in his overcoat pocket, smoking the new one almost defensively. He looked around for awhile, closing his eyes, and let the cold and damp soak into his fingers, his face, his bones. “Another one, after that, and then another one, and another one,” he sighed. “I hate that fucking job. I’m gonna quit.”
She said nothing. She couldn’t.
“Hurts,” he noted. “Still hurts,” he amended. For that, he looked around, as though to challenge anyone else who might have heard it. To dare them to say One. Fucking. Word. “Still fucking hurts,” he said, amending a third time, and for a moment, the ghost of that agony shaded his pale, stark features. The too-blue of his eyes was a mask of anguish, the kind of a naked thing that clutches the heart with a cold hand and speaks only in the language of begging. He dropped the flowers atop the packed earth, (where the stone would be, if it were ever made) atop the withered pile that was already there, turned on his heel, and walked away.
She said nothing. She couldn’t.
* * *
Another of Wendig’s challenges: Life is Hell — this one’s 659 words.
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Return 19
If this is your first time here, go up to the tab marked ‘Serials’ and begin at the beginning. This is Part 19 in a series — and while I’m sure it’s lovely on its own, it makes far more sense (ostensibly) when you’ve read parts 1-18 before it.
* * *
When we discovered Luroteo was missing, it was as though the heart of Songfall had suffered a blow — while the Captain was our spine, Luroteo had been our spirit. He had sung with the children, had inspired us to follow the Captain when we were frightened. He was loyalty and kindness, and we felt his absence keenly. We all went about our duties as we had to, children gathering, adults tending. The camp continued to move on, as it had to, as all things must. Days went by without him, and we begged the Captain to let us send out a search party, but he would not — it was like when we lost the children at first, and had no idea how to find them again. He told us we would simply have to wait. He asked for patience.
We did not know how to give it, not anymore. We had grown used to our lives, used to this time, after the ruining, our little world, there on the shores of Songfall. This abrupt change was too hard, too much.
We did not see how hard it was for the Captain, as well.
Night after night, he dreamed of Luroteo, and simply did not tell us of the screams he heard within his heart, unending.
It was Riesa that found out.
She, too, had been touched by the fallen thing, and she could hear the song within herself, if she quieted the world enough (sometimes we found her, still, floating in the pool, her hair a wide halo, her dress clinging to her pale thighs, her eyes so wide and dark and watching) she could listen to the sound of it, if she wished.
That’s how she knew of Luroteo, how his screams had throbbed within the pulse of light, doubled and doubled and doubled, still, and were added to the song. How he would never come back.
One night, she went to the Captain’s bed, where he wept in the red dark, and as he had pulled her from the waters, she pulled him from his dreams. She put her fingers between his, and the feather, and her skin between his and the rough cot, and she shared his breath, and sang with him, of all they had seen, and all that was still to come.
When it was over, she stayed as Luroteo had, and stood with him against the night.
For the first time since the Captain had heard the song, heard the thing crying out from where it had fallen to the stones, he slept without dreams.
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Tagged apocalypse, chapter, fiction, flash fiction, future, love, music, pieces, series, writing
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