Goethe
Ripping me out of my reverie, stinging my hands and face the rain felt like a thousand needles.
My left hand was numb and my right slick and sticky, cradling the cold black blade against my chest.
The walls of the alley were covered in an icy dew, hard and uneven against my bony frame.
Wild dogs peppered in surrounding streets and alleys howled and barked, there was no moon.
Although some part of me understood what I had done some deep recess still doubted the very fabric of everything around me. Some of the pills were wet dying the dark cobblestone blue and white around my feet.
With my left hand I closed her accusing eyes for the last time. Her body now a doll, void of life’s dance.
Even with the pelting rain I could sense motion in the parallel alley.
I recovered my satchel and checked its dubious contents, add the knife.
“Make yourself known!”
I ran, the satchel around my shoulder. Behind me laughter and impressed whistles let me know they had found the body. There were many like them in Night.
The alley turned into a small weaving passage lined with jagged bricks, hungry for skin. It emptied into a bustling street, laughter, sirens and the thumping of boots on the gravel pavement echoed all around me.
Through crowds I walked my head downward. I could feel the stares many were too consumed by drink and immediate company to notice me. Many were soldiers, some were common citizens.
My flat feet ached in my boots.
My ears filled with my laborious breathing and the muffled thud of my boots on the wide and weaving cobblestone streets that led to the Groste’s studio.
I would return the favour before I left, that much I would do for her.
A burgundy door. With trepidation I knocked.
“Coming!”
His deep voice escaped the door as a mere whisper. Light footsteps made their way to the door, I counted each stride. He was alone.
“Goethe-“ arching an eyebrow. I brushed past him. I was sure he could smell death on me.
His home smelled sweet, candles littered a low table. The floor was littered with wires, books most badly damaged but still readable.
“You’ve always been one for the finer things, what are you learning?”
He shut and latched the door behind him, thunder roared outside as he did so. Bones of six legged creatures I know nothing about were assembled in various positions on book shelves and tables. One of the shelves held a few volumes, Groste’s training manuals upon closer inspection.
“You forgot grizzly,” he drew a tiny pistol at me and motioned me to sit.
“Sit down,” he exhaled and took a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket with his free hand.
I chose a green couch next to the book shelf. It was that brown that is almost black.
“Care for some tea? You seem bothered and it’s from Malawi.
Hiding my annoyance, “sure.” This was not the first time he had drew a pistol on me.
“When did you get back? The say the forests are receding and most of the animals are either dying or dead.”
“Mhm, which is why I’m back,” he chose a green leather lazy boy.
“As for the tea, only if you have the first sip.”
To this he laughed and holstered the pistol to his left underarm.
Tossing me a crooked smile he poured the camomile from a silver kettle into two maroon mugs.
The tea was the colour of dirty water, of course it was. I just did not remember the last time I had any.
“Did you bring this from above?”
“I told you it’s from above, where else would it be from?”
“Is that why you were gone for so long? You were getting us all tea from Malawi?” He handed me one of the mugs.
“Thanks.”
We took our first sips in unison. His eyes landed on my blood drenched hand.
On my lap the satchel rest.
“She told me everything.”
He stared and crossed his right leg over his left. His suite was a dark grey from pants to jacket and he wore a shirt of bloody red silk. Dark in complexion he had a stoic demeanour that I had always believed remained because of the rules of polite society. He was a savage, a wolf in sheep clothing. He loved being above.
”She’s dead you know,” spreading the sticky hand face up between us. “Once I found out she was sent by you to keep me here, lured her out to one of those alleys in the cannibal district but it was them in the end. Two men and a woman, they got away when I drew…the black blade came to mind and I looked at the satchel.
I could have saved her, “I couldn’t do much as the beat me up bad before I came to.”
Still, no reaction.
Sipping my tea again, I burned my tongue. He lit a cigarette.
The smell of old books and cigarette smoke danced about the room as he put out his lighter. A gold artifact from many eons before. He had shown it to mother and I many years before.
“But you know all about that, don’t you Groste?”
His smile was imperceptible. Unlike him, I did not enjoy they way things were. What we’d all become.
“Twenty-five years you’ve lived in Night. Smoking that shit.”
He snarled and took a drag from his cigarette which rustled like burning leaves. The light of lightning filled the room for a split second. Thunder roared outside.
“I’ve been out there, while you were in here.” Spreading his arms added, “chasing women, relying on me, the common wealth..whats left of it.” He took another deep drag.
“Now you come into my home, accusing me of wrong doing?”
He stood up, “her death is on you, boy!”
I no longer wanted the tea, the smell of blood and the stickiness of it annoyed me. Why hadn’t I washed my hands, I noticed then the Groste enjoyed this too although he didn’t say a word about the site in front of him. Was I sober?
“Why did you ask her to be with me, was it to steal my papers?” I stood up, “so I wouldn’t leave the city? Find out what you, Brunta and the others did to all those villages…children too?”
He snorted and ran his cigarette hand over his curly black hair.
“Everything is different above. One wrong breath, one wrong step and you die.” He walked to the kitchen which was part of the living room but the floor differed.
His boots knocked on the tile from heel to toe.
“The naturalists…they choose to live up there but they know what’s coming. They have no food, hardly and shelter and the storms are getting worse.”
He was right about that, ever since the planet got sick the surface had become uninhabitable save for a few areas but even those were receding until we were told there would nowhere people could live except-
“One time we were cutting one down you see, a tree-have you ever seen one?” He chuckled, a bit older than I he had seen more. I had mostly read books.
“Of course not, they were before your time before the nano machines cleaned and processed the very air we breath.” He walked back to the living room and did not sit.
“One of the men brings a young woman and four young men, they are hungry. Ran away from their village or thrown out for whatever reason. No of course we have rations only enough for ourselves and at their end because we are about to head back.”
Taking a deep drag from his cigarette he crushed it in an ashtray next to the silver kettle on a glass table between us.
“We’d been up there six months-anyway, it was dumb on their part to approach us, they must have taken us for naturalists the sheltered brats.” Sighing, “they had their way with the girl but I took no part.”
“It’s different. One of the boys escaped.”
Silence. The roar of thunder.
He stood there, thinking, shuffling, he took out his pack of cigarettes to light another. Furrowing his brow, “what’s in the satchel Goethe?”
My grip on the satchel was like a child of diamond to its coal mothers.
Its wet suede exterior let me feel the edge of the blade kiss my palm even through the material. He had it in his hands a second later.
Blue capsules rolled over the hardwood floor much like the rain that was likely pouring outside. The blade too tumbled to the floor, black and messy with gore. Groste laughed.
“All for downers.” He sneered, and lit another cigarette with his free hand and tossed the satchel back in my face.
“Cather,” her name left my mouth before I even knew what I had said it. She had been after those capsules too.
The struggle with her people, the man named Brunta who had stabbed her. The blade had been his, it was military.
“What about her?” Grouts came over, and his hands were shoving me toward the book shelf. “What,” he shoved me again, “about,” I hit my head, “that whore, huh?” I hit my head, and fell to my knees, partially from withdrawal and partly from gnawing apathy.
The stream of blood ran down the arch of my nose. Aching, my knees were on the hard wood.
“Why did you introduce her to me?”
“To keep an eye on you. Thought shed give you something else to think about.”
We both looked at the capsules.
I believe and more strongly at that point that we humans are fundamentally a mistake. In our lives we search for meaning whether we know it or not. Building patterns where there are none in a largely hostile reality. While our very cells degenerate.
Grouts smashed the capsules under foot. I was upon him like black on soot.
Boney and frail as I was, what I lacked in bodily substance I make up in tenacity.
My fingers dug into his throat, gurgling and coughing my heart thumped in my head.
Everything went dark a second later. I came to with Groste holding the pistol to my forehead.
Then the world reeled.
I got up grabbed the knife. Gun shots rang outside in between the roaring thunder.
Groste lay on the floor. I looked out the window by the book case. The animal bones from earlier were now a mess of white sticks.
The rain pummelled masses of bodies in their finery.
Soldiers stomped their way in the direction of the Citadel.
I was in the chaos moments later, hoping I could still leave the city and whatever or whomever accosted us.
Rain beat hard on granite walkway. I made my way towards the Citadel at first. I am not sure why, part of me wanted to know what would attack Night. No human would for this was the only city with clean air remaining in the catacombs.
The rest of us lived above, if it could be called living.
And then I saw them, tattered clothes hunched over a dog. They tore at it fur and all. I stopped and stared, the spoke like croaking chickens.
In their state, whatever it was they did not notice me and I circled back towards the gate my curiosity satisfied.
Alleys were my route. More croaking and the snapping of bones filled the streets, Night had many cannibals but they were nothing like this invading horde.
Smoke rose all about me.
“Halt”
I could see it. Plumes of smoke rose all over Night. The emergency system wailed over the sound of rain and gunfire.
“Citizen, it is unsafe go in doors.” The voice was stern and forced.
“Homeless, since when do soldiers care about-,” I turned in the direction of the voice and saw a figure in black.
It wore a metallic helm. The slits sparkled in circular motions of ruby. Red streaks followed the eyelets as its head leered the vicinity.
“They come through the gate. Some from beneath..”
“Nothing is under Night.”
“Anything is under night. But look,” it pointed towards the citadel.
“Night burns, soon you will all be dead or with us above. Have you ever been above. Homeless?”
Here I began to follow it, her or him. I was not sure. The ethos of doom roared around us. I searched not for friends, I had no family. The home I was raised in were the alleys. My first conscious thought was of Groste, he offered me a position on his squad. Until I started taking the pills.
Initially they were to forget something I could not even remember. I felt lonely, even among the crowds. I was like a visitor in a foreign land, homesick but unsure for what and for whom.
Maybe it was oblivion I sought. An ever expanding void of everything and nothing.
It gunned down children and men alike. They were not of this city. All were armed but disorganized.
We came to a gate after weaving through the streets in the rain.
A marble rectangle as far as the eye could see rose before us. Mist and smoke from the attacks concealed the gates upper-bound.
And yet we were the only two there, living.
“They must be hiding inside the city if they haven’t already left.”
“Do we just walk through? It seems too easy…”
My stomach quaked the pills came to mind.
“No choice, this is how I got in.”
“You’re from above?”
It nodded as if it were a light matter.
“Have you seen a tree?”
He or it patted me on the shoulder then.
“It’s lost, and if it isn’t it is no longer your home.” It paused, looked around once more and walked into the maw of the gate.
“Why, everyone knows the surface means death and all my books say so. The government told us.”
“Then stay.”
I looked behind us, I feared it may be the last time. I thought of Cather and mother. Mother’s grave would be buried here, although we had never met.
Her grave and all I knew would be buried here along with all the physical emblems that were the world.
We walked on in silence a few meters.
“That suit.”
“Stole it, and I am from above. We’ve been looking for one of these cities for a while. It’s too late now though, everything ends soon.”
“Everything?”
It turned around.
Someone from beyond the gates, trees and what remained of the sun.
“How big do they get?” It was cold in the tunnel. The groan of debris intermingled with the whirling roar of the wind.
“We’ve been told the sun is-“
“Quiet!”
So it was a woman.
Tugging me to a corner we both crouched in the dark tunnel although my eyes had adjusted. We pressed ourselves against the jagged rock walls.
At first it was distant a chugging dissonance followed by a metallic cough that bounced about the tunnel in our direction from up ahead.
Then one yellow light like those houses I had seen in paintings. The houses that were like cyclops over great bodies of water.
They were dressed much like my accomplice. Their builds were bigger, they must have been men of her troupe. She made no move so the latter was likely incorrect.
Walking on the metal beasts back laughter and discussion echoed throughout the cavern just under the engine’s rough cough.
A second later, she was in front of the machine. It stopped, in full view now.
I could see the men stood atop the beast, its body was narrow enough to fit in the tunnel which to my guess was a hundred meters wide.
Its body was a greyish metal modelled after the sleek features of a mole or gopher’s head. The body ended in a plume of what to me seemed exhausts as tufts of smoke rose behind it with each of its grinding coughs.
Skulls and bone adorned the head of the machine, there didn’t seem to be a driver.
“So-soldier,” everyone shuffled at the stutter.
“What are you do-doing here?” His voice was grizzled, it would have been menacing had the stutter been absent.
“I have a prisoner,” she boomed.
The rifle in her hands glistened and clicked with her movements.
“Show us-s the prisoner,” he tilted his head the red eyelets leaving popping streaks in the dark. I cowered now unarmed, the sense of betrayal leaped upon me like a rabid dog, tearing at my limbs and throat.
She pointed right at me.
The top of the vehicle had a flat base which is where the soldiers stood. At first a light whirring noise filled the air and a second later a beam blue and purple shimmered to life illuminating my hiding spot.
The man at the light yelled, “useless, he’s no soldier and nothin’ but bones and rags!”
He spoke to their leader now, “he’s not even worth a single Yuan.”
I looked at the woman, whom simply turned to face the soldiers again.
“What unit are you with? The savages were to attack first we all agreed no one would split up.”
He added, “the attack begun an hour ago-“ A crack and the sound of a water drop filled the cavern. Where the speakers head was a bloody crater, the body undulated and hit the deck of the metallic beast in the silence that followed.
She was calm, too calm. She was used to this life. She fired the rifle again and again. I realized that it was my chance to run. I turned as I ran by, the men were still stunned as their comrades were crumpled like empty coke cans. The rifle seemed to crush the very atoms of reality wherever it fired.
I ran along the left wall of the tunnel, the teeth of the cavern tore at my left sleeve and arm every now and then, the pain was piercing but not as bad as the pain in the pit of my stomach.
The confusion and shouts behind me soon stopped but I was well clear of the machine. It seemed to me she was suicidal.
The ambient light about me grew brighter, I felt I was close to the exit.
“Stop,” she caught up running. “The suit helps?”
“Aye,” she removed the helm.
A young woman in her late twenties, Kari had raven hair and a teardrop face. She had oriental features and a tan only those of the surface could gain. Some of the wealthy of Night had bought creams to mimic this effect but hear I was seeing it for the first time. Her voice was like a wild cat. She was more woman than Cather, although, I’m sure men compare all women. I had never been successful with the opposite sex beyond physical satisfaction.
“Are they following?”
“All dead, you saw me shoot them.”
Walking shoulder to shoulder the ground seemed to rise up at an angle as the tunnel grew brighter.
“Who were they?” I asked. “I..have never seen anything like that. The beast, the-“ I looked at her rifle which she held closer.
“I’m not gonna take it, it’s just all so new to me.”
She sighed, “there are many things you’ve probably never seen. You’re not surprised I’m a woman? Most men-“
“There are many things about yourself you do not know.” I smiled, Kari did not. It grew warm so I removed my jacket now tattered and threw it away.
“I knew since we- I’ve had my suspicion, how you walk and your speech patterns. If you are gonna do that again you might want to pay attention to how men walk and talk.”
She ignored my advice. It was quiet save for some crickets and then the groan of thunder.
I wondered, did it rain in Night when it rained on the surface?
The soil was a dark brown, wet and drained all the energy from my legs with each step. Kari put her arm out barring the path in front of me.
Below, a valley of high grass shimmered in waves of green and yellow blades. Tusked boulder-like beasts roared and lashed out the green and yellow waves, stuffing them into their large mouths.
The light of the surface was a reddish yellow.
An orb. Red, grey and purple floated in the sky, or should I say seemed to dive into the atmosphere.
“The surface is beautiful.”
Kari ignored me and started walking away from the view and toward a slippery path.
In the distance a streams of grey slithered into the bloody sky. Beneath them tiny roofs stood, blurry because of the heat.
“Chimani,” she pointed at the grey snakes in the sky.
————————————————-
Old men, women as well as the young littered the streets.
The roads were of dirt, flattened by donkeys and carts as well as human traffic.
Smoke danced in the air. Every breath comparatively raspy compared to humidity of Night.
Kari walked ahead of me, impatient like a jaded mother and her child.
Thatched roof huts with walls of mud filled Chimani. Between them were broken droids, garbage and other unidentifiable materials.
Children, barefoot played with one another chased by creaking droids the size of cats.
I turned away from the children who nearly bumped into me running by and I was face to face with a rust coloured man. Initially thinking him human I apologized but his eyes looked past me. A man next to it whom I assumed knew my rust coloured admirer.
“Hello, I’m-“ the rust coloured man raised an arm which in one fluid mass became a rifle.
My hands were above my head before I realized what had happened.
The man laughed and spoke to me and the droid as if we were drunk friends caught up in a fray.
Whatever language he spoke was like tumbling boulders and howling gusts. He was missing his two front teeth. He slapped me on the shoulder and walked away with the rust coloured man.
Kari was nowhere to be found. I walked on deflecting the crowds’ stares to the centre of the whatever Chimani was considered.
A fire roared and gave light even with the reddish light of the day.
She was there, her black hair covered her face which she did not bother part. Her figure seemed small against the flame, a deadly silhouette.
Masked men appeared around her. Shrill cries shook the air and gave rhythm to the men’s leaps and gyrations.
Some of them were fair some were ebony. Their teeth if not covered by their masks were of the whitest ivory, their deep hums filled the void of silence beneath the shrill cries.
Around me, droids, children of all ages and adults looked on smiling at first.
Then Kari looked at me. Her eyes rolled into hear head until their bottom whites were all I saw.
“Don’t fight it,” I shook my head. Looking about me I was amongst old women and children. Some of them looked familiar but I did not recognize them. They all looked at the sky, their mouths agape, open and humming. The heavens wept into their open mouths and so did they.
I coughed and discovered my trembling hand covered in blood.
A heaving sensation in my stomach purged me of all water and the food I had eaten last. The meal with her. The reason I had killed her, the table and the screaming child in a cage came to mind. I felt no guilt, a monster like that did not deserve to live, yet, who was I to decide.
Her ragged body in that alley appeared in grotesque flashes my mind’s eye.
“Clean.”
It stood in front of me. In place of its face was a metal mask with feline features. Its attire was of a wet looking wool.
The entire body glistened next to the fire like diamond dust on coal. It had the body of a man, behind it a long tail twitched from side to side as if it were a stuttering metronome.
It held a cane before it, his hands covered in rings and signets of black and gold rubs. Its boots were black. A burgundy suede trench coat hung on its lean shape.
“Clean.”
The sky was above me now, or should I say I was looking up into the sky.
Sometime later I heard voices, three initially then a forth.
“Out two days now, fever getting better though mama!”
Trying to open my eyes and get the same voice added, “he’s up mama!”
“I’ll go fetch Kari,” a mature voice replied. “Don’t let him get out of the bed. The restraints should hold him.”
Groaning, I wished to rub my eyes and scratch my nose. My hands were not free.
It is then I realized I was tied down to the bed. I was not in Night, I was above ground with no drugs. For the first time the gravity of my situation weighed heavily on me. Positive the effects of the pills were over.
A laugh, “you’re not going anywhere. Right now anyway.” He spoke with a deep voice and the calm of a desolate ice-cavern.
Young girls giggled, one of which was the voice I heard before I awoke. I must have been blinded-folded and tied to a small bed. All I could manage was to raise my head and see the dim streaks of a candle light.
“Who’s there?” I asked half expecting an answer.
“Jos.” He coughed and spat, “when Kari gets here we will untie you.” He paused, figuring out what he would say next.
“What did you see?” Asked Jos. I knew what he meant and I think he was even a bit scared. What had I done? I guessed they didn’t have many cases like me up here. The Craze was all too common back in Night.
So I told him.
“It’s that bad if you don’t keep up with the dosage huh?” he whistled.
“There’s none up here, that’s why you’re tied up. It’ll only get worse. We had heard about the crazy underground people but now I know they were just addicts.”
“Initially it was to keep us happy, the lack of natural sun. The government told us the pills would be the best route. Some of us refused and in exchange had to become soldiers like Grost-“ I stopped short of saying his whole name.
“Who’s Grost?”
“Doesn’t matter, he’s probably dead.”
Cather’s face came to mind.
“Untie him.”
“Did I do something, I’m sorry back in Night we-“
“Shut up, I don’t care.” The fire illuminated part of her face. Jos stood behind her, a dark youth both in complextion and aura. He must have been one of the man child soldiers Groste and his men had feared. I wondered about Night, if it still stood. If it was worth going back to.
“What happened in Night, why was it attacked?” Dos scratched his nose, half hiding what I saw as a smile with a robotic hand.
“Was it your people? Are you naturalists?”
Kari and Jos looked at each other, “what’s a naturalist?”
“People from above that want to destroy the remnants of humanity.” I felt unsure with the response that had been drilled into us since youth.
Both laughed, Kari said, “maybe Chaos, as we call them but there are no naturalists up here. Just survivors. The hunters and the hunted. Not that any of that will matter soon. You saw the sun right?”
Jos chimed in, “you, we will all die soon you know?”
Kari got up and said, “those pills, they don’t exist up here.” Her chest heaved and I could tell she was serious. I wasn’t quite sure why she would care for someone she’d known for less than twenty-four hours.
“You won’t last long. Do you realize what will happen after forty-eight hours of withdrawal?”
I looked at her then Jos. “Psychosis, mental and physical degradation. Spurts of violence. That assumes my heart doesn’t give in to the extreme stress caused by the high-blood pressure. Like Cather..”
“So it was Chaos whom attack Night?”
The young girls from earlier spoke up now. Probably trying to lighten up the mood.
“They are bad men, they do anything to anyone.”
A cold breeze slithered into the hut now, lifting the military green sheet that was the entrance. It was dark out.
It is here I faded once again.
When I came to one of the men in the masks was putting something around my head. It was cold and metallic, the sound of clicking metal and searing flesh filled my ears.
The man had a gap tooth.
“Why did she help me?”
“She came to help you all she did. But only you followed.” He had the voice of buzzing wings.
“This is going to hurt boy, it’s the only way if you want to live..a while longer.” He hesitated once more and turned a dial on a machine I next to my head.
“Live forever..”
The masked face rattled like a bag of bones.
————————————————————
The sky was bright marmalade. Clouds groaned and rolled above our scattered party. We were getting close.
Kari lurked ahead, I only knew because the high grass rustled and fell in a zig zag pattern.
It had been a year since Magna had done the operation.
A year since Night fell.
The world above had proved as fickle as Groste had told me in times past.
We approached their camp, hidden by grass and unfortunate weather.
Jos whistled, a distinct sound much like the death rattle of a pigeon.
Stillness, only the grass whispered. A vulture landed in a nearby tree and looked on at us.
The grey clouds rolled above and occasionally clear spots would come about revealing the stars that remain in early morning.
“They will come hear,” Jos was now next to me showing me a small iron device.
On its face triangles and squares blinked. The chases was scratched and smooth.
“Did you make this?”
“Found it, a while ago.” The boy grinned, scratching his nose again.
On it were a squares and triangles. The latter represented to the south of the screen was still, much like us.
The squares, however, moved at a steady pace. There were feint squares next to it.
A loud crack split the silence, followed by the flapping wings of the vulture.
Jos nodded towards the forest marking the boundary of the high grassed whispering valley.
We were looking for Chaos. Although we didn’t know if more underground cities existed we thought they would show them to us and we would stop them.
Something roared into the whispering grass. I walked towards it.
Eleven were riding or should I say standing on the armoured beast. The beast groaned, trampling the grass and causing me to bend at the need to avoid falling.
They saw me and stopped.
All were masked initially and revealed their faces looking down at the silver fool.
On a loud speaker, “what are you?” one asked.
“Probably some new kind of droid, lost its master I bet.” The latter had a rather familiar accent.
“Run it over.” Followed by static.
Three cracks split the silence and whispering, a body fell off the platform and the beast reared its legs.
The riders spilled amongst the grass with ten thuds.
Most were dead on impact, some were crushed by the beast, bones jutted from the chest of one soldier.
“Natural scum,” he held my leg with a trembling hand. I pulled away.
I asked, “where are you from?” He laughed and cursed.
“Night but it’s gone now.” I kneeled down to him and removed his mask.
“Joined these… after the fall about a year ago.” He coughed again and some of the blood was absorbed by the black beard. We both looked up at the sky for a second, then back at another.
“Groste,” he laughed and his death rattle followed after.
“A friend?” Kari purred.
“Yes, yet I know not to whom.”
We were not common brigands for you see parties of men roamed the surface.
When the moon was red or absent from its perch they attacked villages and other towns, violating anything anyone they could find.
The surface was utter Chaos, where men, women and children knew and completely understood their mortality everyday. Simply looking at the sky, the sun was a reminder of impending doom. No one knew how long. Some like these men needed control, no matter the outcome.
Back at Chimani, smaller than ever now I sat in my hut. I looked through the cracks in my door at passersby. The doctor said this was party of my test. I simply felt like their dog.
“She’s gone and hasn’t returned for two hours. I wasn’t listening although I heard all he said.
I or should I say, Goethe what remained of him wanted those pills and to see Night.
Jos now a year older free his rifle on me.
“I’m guessing you made that too, just like you arm and that iron device?” He nodded, “we know you’re mad all the doctor did was add a leash.”
“You’re our dog now.”
“That’s why you stay here and Kari is always gone, the only person she saved and you are nothing but a murdering addict.”
He paused, like an adult although he was not beyond fifteen now. Letting his words sink in like poisoned jagged daggers. Only the crickets and owls filled the void of silence. I could hear his heart beat.
Jos and I were on horses later that night riding through the whispering grass when his tripped on something.
A bag as big as body.
In it we found two children, likely from the village. Some couldn’t stand meeting the end with their children. I thought them cowards.
The night had a conspiring silence I now wish as I write this in my final moments I could erase from memory.
We found their camp in a clearing.
Twenty men and a woman tied to a tree. They were drinking and wrestling around a great fire, some wore masks.
Grouts was among them.
The man in the whispering grass had been part of this gang.
We humans need symbols or we have nothing to compare or relate to. The man in the grass was mine. A harbinger for Groste.
I was among them and they staring before I realized what I was doing.
“Who may you be?” A masked man tilted his head and what I thought were eyes zigzagged. Although I felt he watched Jos was nowhere near me.
“Goethe,” they circled around. One remained by the fire, his arm holding up his head and the rest of his body sprawled on flat grass and animal hides. He hummed to himself.
The masked man looked at the former, laughed that smokers laugh and almost fell over coughing.
“Mine’s Xirix, what be your want man? Whatsa’ on your head. An’ where you get a tail? You droid?”
His questions reminded me of my place, who I was and who I was no longer. Skinny and long limbed he carefully examined me looking at the others for assurance of his safety.
Another, larger with grey skin and a round flat nose walked up from the group. His eyes had no pupils, he seemed blind but it was impossible to tell with the confidence he walked, like a living boulder. He wore a leather cape that flapped in the evening wind. His pants were black and so were his boots. The uniform of Chaos.
I turned to look at Kari, whom I was unsure was even alive or and I am embarrassed to say this was worth saving. If what Jos said had been true, leaving her here would have been justice for all I cared. For some reason I can’t explain her situation didn’t bother me, it was whom I would leave her with that did. My hatred for Groste and these men was greater than my apathy towards her, towards Cather who turned on me in that alley because she was weak. Overcome by her greed.
Every man, ever woman has a dark side they wish to hide, although they will make use of it if desperation permits or society is unawares.
The blade came from his hip. as small as a lighter. Flung like debris from a finger nail.
The men all laughed.
“Quick freak, you’re no man. No longer now.” The large man smoke with surprising articulation.
Xirix crowed, “No, it’s the stims, they operated on him like Groste.”
The man by the fire was up now, dusting himself off.
“How long now? A year?” He was bigger, my vision flashed back to his apartment.
“More or less, thought you were dead. I’m here for the woman. I don’t care about the past I just owe her.” He looked me over, and then squinted at Kari who was now held up by Jos to my surprise. The others almost rushed the couple but Groste put up a clawed hand.
He sucked his teeth. “Why should I giver her up?” Smiling, “you killed the last one I gave you. Cather,” he was in my face now but I sensed no ill intent, “remember?”
“You aren’t giving her to me you are returning her to her people, they need her.” I lied, they would live well without her risky behaviour. At least until the end.
Grouts spat at my feet, “Chimani will fall.” He smiled.
It is then I noticed his bloody red cuirass.
“This world, no, the world.” He spread his arms looking up at the grey rolling maw of clouds.
“Resources are limited, there is no room for the weak. You should know better, even Night is gone.”
“And in its place there is day, up here.” I replied.
We all laughed, even Jos who rarely did cackled behind me. The madness of doom.
The sky grumbled and the moment of joy was gone as quickly as it begun.
“Goethe, I’m sure you know but the day ends soon.”
Speaking with a distanced passion Groste walked up to me.
“Which is why Night was destroyed, so we could all experience it.”
“It is not death I hear, it is not being who I want be leading to it. You”, I pointed to all of them.
“You aren’t human, you died with the old world, which is why you are weak and prey on those who are physically weaker but much stronger.”
Their swears were palpable, Groste chuckled under his breath.
“I thought you were dead, is it that mask keeping you alive? What is your face?”
“The same,” I responded. turned and walked towards Jos, half hoping nothing more would occur.
“Take the bitch, the end is nigh boy.” They all laughed in unison.
“And big brother,” he added.
“If we meet again. I will kill you!”
He turned and looked at the rolling sky, the vulture circled over head.
The days are now short and the air is hot and sticky. The elders in the village say it won’t be long.
--End
