Norman Reedus and the funky feetus

Higgs Monaghan Journal #26 | Year - UNKNOWN

I didn’t know how to feel after. I spent the night next to him, my mind a blank canvas. In the back of it a nagging voice saying I had to dispose of it. Daddy hadn’t told me much, but he had told me about how bodies’d go necro, pop BTs and all that. Made for a good bedtime story. So I knew what would happen if I let him lie. Death’d come into our home and turn it into a crater.

His stink was starting to fill up the room. I had to deal with him, had to get him out. Get him as far away as possible. So I got my arms under his and dragged him out into a new world with a new sky.

Bigger. Emptier. Bare rock dotted with bushes, all around. Mountains, fucking mountains, off in the distance, chiral clouds hugging their peaks. My knees started getting wobbly, and the world began to spin, but I knew the clock was ticking. Eyes down. Gotta deal with Daddy.

I’d been moving at a steady clip when I saw it. Chiralium coming off Daddy, little motes of shimmering light. I was out of time. I laid him down in the dirt, but before I let go, I had a vision. My hands, still resting on his body, disappeared. Vaporized into fine mist— poof. And then I felt another presence. A BT, coming slow but sure, like it’d been walking since the beginning of time. Daddy’s keeper.

That was the first one I sensed, but it wasn’t the last. For a long while after, I remained awakened to their presence. A sixth sense— Daddy’s parting gift to me. Over time, it’d fade. But I knew how I got it, and I knew how to get it back. All I needed was another body— and I got real good at making them. Death for life. Theirs for mine. A fair exchange.

My Dear Mr. Bridges,

You cannot possibly know how perfect your timing proved to be! At the very moment your pizza arrived, my dear father had all but set out on his final journey to the great beyond! Which is why I was unable to thank you, you understand, but you will surely find comfort in the wonder your delivery wrought.

Higgs’ Journal Entry #3 || Year - UNKNOWN

A delivery outfit out west heard tell of my BT-sensing abilities, and has expressed an interest in bringing me on board. Seems they operate outside Bridges’ sphere of influence, and they want to leverage my experience and know-how to expand their operation. Could be interesting.

It’s funny. I started making runs out of necessity— to stay alive— but that’s all changed. I’m an altruist now. I live to help other people. Preppers round these parts rely on me. Hell, they wouldn’t last five minutes without me. What would my daddy say if he could see me now, hmm?

He taught me man’s his own keeper, but here I am, part of a community. Working with other people, bringing the world together. Daddy always told me that the wide, wide world was dangerous. That we had to stay in our shelter, spend our whole life there, die there. Well, fuck that. Community’s what it’s all about.

Higgs’ Journal Entry #24 || Year - UNKNOWN

My first memory is of looking up at the ceiling of our shelter, as a baby bawling my eyes out. All of a sudden, the hand of god comes into view, blotting out the steel sky. Daddy. Lifts me up, not gentle, but not hard. Shouts some stuff, but it’s all gibberish I can’t make heads or tails of.

He ain’t my real daddy, though. That one died before I was born, and Mama soon after. Of disease or something, I dunno. Her brother took me in, whisked me away from that shelter reeking of piss and death and brought me here. Daddy number two.

He never really took to it. He was an ugly, violent man, full of anger with nowhere to go. Tried to love me, in his own way, but I don’t know if he ever had it in him. Daddy told me our shelter was our world, and I believed him. I grew up thinking no one but us two existed. Then, when I got a little older, I started asking questions. Simple questions about where the food came from, that kind of thing. Got smacked upside the head for my troubles, but try as he might, he couldn’t beat the curiosity out of me.

One day I peeked at his monitor. It was the first glimpse I’d ever caught of the outside world. I pestered Daddy about it, and you bet I caught holy hell for it. But I wore him down, and eventually he came clean and admitted there was a whole world out there, soaked to the bone by timefall and overrun by demons that’d eat me up.

It occurred to me later that his fearmongering probably got my mama killed. Filling her head with his hysterics about the dead walking the earth, and the only safe haven being six feet under…

Higgs’ Monaghan Journal #6 | Year - UNKNOWN

A Bridges waystation out west just got taken out by terrorists. Used a voidout to do it. They dumped a corpse nearby and let it go necro, dropping BTs right in people’s laps. Word is Demens heard that Bridges was sending an expeditionary force out west to “facilitate the reconstruction of America”, or some such. Guess they didn’t take kindly to that.

Terrorists, separatists, isolationists— all these folks claim “America” is coming for their freedom. That the old guard wants to put them in chains, make the individual subservient to the collective. They ask what’s it all for in a post-Stranding world, when today’s triumph is tomorrow’s crater.

Daddy used to spout the same tired lines. Said America never did nothing for nobody. That’s why we took to living in a shelter. “Better down in the hole than out there under their thumb.” Yeah, he was a real saint, my daddy. Tried to run a few times, but he’d just drag me back inside, kicking and screaming, where he’d put those heavy hands of his to work and remind me what’d happen if I disrespected his authority. But that’s love, isn’t it? His way of looking after an orphan child he raised as his own. He was only trying to protect me from the evils of the outside world.

I owe him my life— and my powers, too. First time I ever sensed a BT was when I held him, moments before he went necro. Just like when I dumped that prepper’s body. My daddy showed me that corpses are precious, powerful things. They’re so much more than bombs. Terrorists ought to treat them with proper respect.

Higgs’ Journal Entry #25 || Year - UNKNOWN

My mama entrusted me to her brother, so he had no choice but to raise me best he could. Say what you will about the man, but he had himself a sense of obligation. He might even have harbored a measure of affection for me, but whatever was in his heart he expressed with his hands. His fists.

Any hopes and dreams he might have had for me— for us— fell by the wayside pretty quick. We slipped into a daily routine of warnings to stay the fuck inside, bookended by beatings to drive the point home. I think sometimes he sincerely believed that was the only way to protect me, but I wasn't about to go on living like that. Can't cage a young boy's spirit. If I'd stayed, I'd've died, body and soul. I had to get out. Started hoarding supplies in secret, but he caught on.

That was the beginning of the worst beating yet. He was grabbing anything and everything within reach that could be used as a weapon. Tearing our shelter apart, smashing furniture, all the while wailing like a wounded animal, tears streaming down his face.

He pinned me down, tears and spit flying in my face as he blubbered on about me not understanding his pain. His fucking pain. His hands round my neck, darkness creeping in from the corners. His fucking pain. His fucking pain.

The kitchen knife in my hands. In his neck. His hands, his fucking hands, they grow weak, and he just... deflates. Like a balloon, all over me. I roll him off, and I look into his glassy eyes, filled with his fucking pain and our steel sky.

You're all alone now. You've lost everything. Your mask, her quipu, the BB doll... Gone.

You thought you had the power, that you were the one fated to lead them unto extinction... yet here you are, alone. You thought you were in control. That this was your role, your dream... The verge of victory, of oblivion for one and all... Herald, executor, pawn. God particle? Hah. A stupid name for a stupid goddamn fool.

This was your life, Higgs. Your tale, told by an idiot, full of sound and righteous fury...

See the Sunset