by Wayne Hill
She refuses to kill herself in the final stages of the illness, as many do, the pain of their symptoms driving them insane. She says, “Every moment of life is worth a thousand times this agony, and more. I will miss you, when I finally go, my Tommy boy — my love.”
When the time comes, Tommy carries her to their special weeping willow tree and, in the kindness of a glorious summer’s day, surrounded by loved ones, she dies in his arms. All Tommy can do is cradle her and kiss her. He tells her he will always be hers; he curses the god that dares to silence such a voice; he tells her he will find a way to be with her again.
Tommy will always remember her departing words, “Look after your tears. It’s not fair...it’s prettier in the rain.”
Then the boiling heat of the virus destroys her brain which contains every memory of the love they shared — every kiss, every hidden moment lovers hold dear, every promise made in the dark — the true magic of two souls entwined. His screaming mind fractures as he holds onto her, as he tries to selfishly keep her energy with his, to feel whole and complete. He holds her tighter to him knowing she is already dead — he had felt her electricity pass through him on its way to another place. Tommy holds her body tight to his chest. The body that he had kissed, that he had held — as he holds it now — and warmed and loved. He holds her close and weeps, tears streaking his dirty face, trying to smell her familiar scent. But her scent died with her. All he smells now is a burning sulphurous stench, as the unrelenting virus continues to raise the temperature of her dead body.
Marie-Ann O’Shea is dead. The Emerald of the Island is gone.
Tommy’s mind, soul — every particle of his being — is jagged, frayed. Chasms within him gape, and he aches for her. The loss is too much. Holding onto her hot corpse, his tears evaporating on his cheeks, a furnace deep inside his mind reopens and a fiery face slowly turns to regard him. A familiar gravelly voice — forgotten for so long — speaks to him once more: “Right, you dirty little wasp, I’ll take it from here.”
3
After the O’Sheas die, the pub becomes a communal project. The O’Sheas are part of history now — the last owners of the last public house on Earth.
The pub is now run by Jonesy, but he does not consider it his pub. He maintains the pumps once a week, although nobody knows how he manages the complicated task as he is the heaviest drinker on the island. Jonesy is the greatest cellarman on planet Earth. He is also the only cellarman on Earth. He makes sure the ale flows well, and this commands respect, gratitude, and drunken reverence from the masses, who rely on this peculiar nectar as an invisible crutch. Jonesy is both doctor and priest — he answers prayers and gives out medicine. The Weeping Willow is a place where everyone seems to have a story, and Jonesy, like his bar brethren the universe over, is a good listener.
Jonesy, a man who has never really spoken about his past, a man who commands respect by his very presence — a beast of a man — astonishes the grief-struck pub by sitting by Tommy, patting him on the head and handing him a drink.
Jonesy, not a particularly affectionate nor generous man, drapes a still funeral-suited arm over Tommy, and offers him a cigar.
“Thanks,” says Tommy, necking the drink — his fifth straight brandy.
Jonesy lights Bowden’s cigar first, then Tommy’s, and his own last. The three friends sat in a line at the bar, a cloud of cigar smoke forming around them, mingling with their collective grief.
“She was the greatest amongst us,” says Jonesy, “the Emerald o’ the Isle.”
Jonesy holds his glass high; Bowden and Tommy follow suit. Jonesy draws his six-shooter and fires it in the air. They sink their drinks in toast and Jonesy pours more. The tears flow down Tommy’s face, like he has taps for eyes. He knows this will be his last night in this reality. There is no way he can survive without her. The powerful jawline of Bowden is in his peripheral vision — his cigar clenched between his teeth, gnawing on it like liquorish, making Mmfff-like noises out of his nose. He catches Tommy’s eye in the long bar mirror. They all find themselves lost in the bar mirror from time to time. If you are sitting at the bar it is facing you in your worst moments, when you do not want to meet your own eyes, and it always shows you just how fucked up you really are.
Tommy clasps his head in his hands. The pain of his loss is too raw. He feels like something in his head is going to pop. Then the black gentleman to his left, Bowden, begins to speak. His voice was heavy like the inside of an old barrel, a tar-like thickness to his voice that made others gather around, drawn to his sonorous voice.
“Tommy, I know you’re suffering. I’ve been around this island for as long as this bar has been here. Believe it or not, there was another island one thousand miles west of here. A research facility. It might not be there anymore. I remember being far out at sea with others, others like me. We escaped the island on a makeshift raft made from trees and vines. Many of my friends escaped, too, but they were slowly picked off and eaten by sharks. When I reached the shore of this place, I was alone. There was no one around, not for miles. I made a life for myself. I had no language, for I had only been alive a very small amount of time, at that point. My memories are hazy, but there is no childhood in it. I arrived in this world fully formed. I figured it all out, much later, when I returned to the research island. Turns out it wasn’t even an island.”
“What was it if it wasn’t a fuckin’ island? You said it was an island. You’ve been saying it was an island for fuckin’ years,” interrupted an irritated Jonesy.
“It was a giant half-sunk spacecraft,” Bowden continued calmly. “Not a normal spacecraft, neither. It was a world builder. CryoPods destroyed, all the crew dead. The crash must of triggered the droids to wake. They were mindless automatons built to mix genetic vials, to create new life for a planet probably far from here. They malfunctioned. We — myself and my friends — were all accidents. Accidents spliced together by mad robots. I shouldn't exist, but I do. It was a complete accident. Then I was here, and I was alone. I found fresh water in a spring. I found several abandoned buildings and made them my home. I was living like a king — the king of the jungle — but I had no queen. Below my new kingdom I found several tunnels. They looked deep and I thought there might be someone living down there. I remember how nice it felt to imagine what my Queen would look like. I picked some nice colourful objects as gifts. I decorated myself with shiny things found in the abandoned jungle houses, threaded beads into my hair. This was, of course, before I started regularly shaving my hair. I have hair over most of my body, long hair. When it grows out, I’ve been told I resemble a bear.”
(“You don’t! Who the fuck said that?” spits Jonesy.)
“So, I head down the tunnel. The human skulls lining part of it should have been a giveaway. But, I was young. I didn’t recognise what they were back then. Like all youth, I was very narrow minded. Down into the tunnel, I went. It felt like I was walking for hours. And then, there she was before me — my Queen. She wasn’t friendly, though, I could tell. She just looked at me wrong and grunted funny. I killed her. I tore out her throat before she had chance to scream. Maybe my Queen wanted to attack, she did have long tentacles.”
“Wait! She had — she had fucking tentacles?” interrupts Tommy.
“Testicles?” adds Jonesy impishly.
“Tentacles!” booms Bowden, manipulating his cigar to the other side of his large mouth. “Jonesy! Shut the fuck up! I’m talking here.”
Jonesy put the universal I’ll-be-silent finger over his lips and chuckles.
“If I were to interrupt you, during one of your boring stories, you would probably try to shoot me. So have some damn manners!” Bowden says, pouring himself and Tommy another drink before he slides the brandy bottle along the bar top to a still smiling Jonesy.
“The tunnels are everywhere; they crisscross under this island like a rabbit warren. I did not know whether these creatures follow scent trails, or follow thoughts, but I wanted to search further into t
hese catacombs. I guess I wanted to know whether I was related to these things. Perhaps they were my people. In the end, maybe we are all driven to find out who we truly are.
“I covered myself in the foul-smelling scales I found discarded on the tunnel floors and I cleared my mind, trying to make myself invisible to them. If the others were as strong as the tentacled woman I had just killed, I knew I was as powerful as any one of them, maybe several of them put together. Slowly exploring these dark, dank tunnels I found that the lower down you go, the weirder it gets. There were food storage caches and ... parturition chambers. Pale, hairless women inside these chambers were birthing strange creatures. The babies were ... profoundly wrong. I might not have seen it, but I could sense it. These were not my kith and kin; they were monsters. Unseen or ignored, and without knowing why I did so, I took one of these pale hairless women out from the deep tunnels and to the surface world.
“She did not look pregnant — her stomach was pale and flat, covered with bruises, claw and lash marks. Perhaps that is why I took her; perhaps I was still looking for my real queen. I carried the woman back to my fort, which I had built near to the ocean. The sea air was much cleaner. The tunnels smelt only of death and corruption. This stench of putrefaction was on her, too, over her and inside of her. Although she did not look it, she was with child; and the baby of the tunnel creatures grew quickly in her belly. The woman was called Alice. She taught me how to speak English, to read it. It was she who named me Bowdon. Alice said the name reminded her of home. I showed her how to survive, how to fight and ... there were more tender moments. But all too soon, a monster bust out from her and I had to kill them both.”
“Oh my God, Bowdon!” Jonesy cries. “That is fuckin’ horrible! Tommy doesn’t need to be hearing all this fuckin’ shit now! For Christsakes, he’s just lost his whole world and the boy’s in a very fragile state and —”
“I’ve been as pleasant to you as I want to be today,” growls Bowden, standing up and glowering at the thin Ulsterman. “Now, one more interruption and you better start shooting, because I’m gonna go wild and I’ll pull this damned pub down on all of us.”
Jonesy walks over to Bowden, hands held up in appeasement, showing the apelike man another cigar. “Okay, okay, big fella! You have my word, Bowdon, no more interruptions. This is a terrible time for this wee fella. I’m just worried about Tommy’s mentality and your story is fuckin’ fierce, fella,” says Jonesy, stuffing the new cigar into Bowden’s large mouth and lighting it.
“We only learn from listening, Jonesy,” says the husky black man, removing the remains of the old cigar from his mouth and puffing life into the new one. “I believe that. If Tommy hears about something worse than what he’s going through, maybe it will ease his pain. To know others have suffered similar things. I’m trying to help him. I know it seems like a harsh tale, but it’s the only life I’ve known. And I want to share it with this gentleman because I believe it’s the right thing to do.”
“Well, I can’t argue with your heart, big lad. I personally don’t think that anyone that loses his first love — his true love — will think anything is worse than that. But — hey! — if you really want to tell this story, you crack on. Tommy will need cheering up afterwards, though.” Jonesy went to his seat, and Bowdon resumed his, puffing on the cigar.
Tommy, eschewing glasses, is now drinking directly from the brandy bottle. “Go on, Bowdon,” he says, grimacing against the fire of the brandy burning its way down his throat. “I’m listening; I am.”
“Eventually, sometime after I buried what was left of Alice (I burned the evil little insect that burst out of her body) I started to miss human contact. Alice had given me more than language; she had given me companionship. I owed it to her, and myself, to rescue others from those troglodytes.
“Once again, I ventured into the deep tunnels and, this time — being able to speak the language of the hairless, the humans — I found rescuing them easier. They were more likely to trust me, despite my hairy and alien exterior. The people I freed helped me, and one another. Together we created a small village, built upon stilts in the ocean, east of here. The tunnel-dwellers don’t like the sea air.
“In time, I found the pale hairless ones — humans — extremely annoying. All of them. Very, very annoying. They had ways that I didn’t agree with. I tried to tell them not to be nasty to one another, to try and work together. ‘You should be fighting the troglodytes, not each other,’ I said to them. But they didn’t listen. They continued to quarrel amongst themselves and so I grew bored with their whining. I walked away. I know that, if I hadn’t, I would have killed them. Perhaps all of them. At the time, I found them that irritating.
“I searched this godforsaken island’s perimeter, walking along the beaches, looking for other communities. I saw many tribes, many fishing communities. People even tried to hunt me. They tried to kill me even when I said I wasn’t a tunnel creature. They were just mean as hell for no good reason. Called me monster, called me bear, called me demon.
“Halfway around the island I came to a marble palace and watched as a flying metal beast dropped pale no-hairs its belly into the grounds of the palace. They were all screaming and yelling. The people in the palace sent them out into the wild, for the tunnel creatures to eat. I could have saved them, but I didn’t. At the time, I was sick of them — the whining, crying no-hairs. I thought them mean and useless. They didn’t know how to pull trees down. They didn’t know how to hunt and eat; how to find water or make shelters. They just knew how to be mean: to gang together and prey on the weak.
“I walked once more, moving away from the palace of humans, from the no-hairs being massacred by the troglodytes. I walked until my hairy feet bled, keen to put distance between myself and the petty, useless humans. When I got tired, I built a small raft and tethered it to whatever I could, sleeping out on the waves. It reminded me of my drifting days, at sea, when I escaped from the research ship and the drones that made me. One day I awoke and saw a shark. A strange shark with arms. The shark with arms was shouting at me. Angry shark-man was yelling at me to get out of his kingdom. So, I punched him on his great big shark nose.”
“Thankwell?” says Tommy, wide-eyed with recognition. Bowdon either ignored this or did not hear Tommy, lost in his drunken recollections.
“After I hit him, he looked confused and then swam off without another word. I shouted after him ‘If you come back, you’ll get another, you smelly fishman!’ I stayed on the ocean as much as I could because half of this island is made of high cliffs with no shoreline.
“Soon I saw the Forever Stairs and made my way to the Lanes. Here I discovered alcohol and cigars, and a feeling of belonging, of camaraderie. And I have never left. I’m as happy here as I’ve ever been. Beer, whiskey, cigars, women — just the best. Everything is better with a beer in your hand, a cigar in your mouth, and a woman in your bed. I get to listen to stories here. When it rains, I have a roof; when I’m hungry, I can have a chicken or three. I even eat vegetables now — potatoes, carrots, all of them. I started shaving all the hair off my body so that I no longer resemble a wild animal, so that I don’t scare people.
“Sometimes — when there are too many men here, too much violence — I dress up as a troglodyte, go to the tunnels and rescue a few damsels in distress. If the damsels are pregnant with monstrous offspring, the demons are taken out of their bellies, safely. They get nice lives. The only issue is the virus. I would rescue more, but this virus is just as unreasonable as the tunnel dwellers, just as cruel. Tommy, I’m sorry for your loss. I’m sorry that there is this horrible virus. I hope you find a peace that I have discovered in the simple pleasures of this life. I think that, in order to appreciate these things, first you must taste real starvation, real thirst. I have no doubt that you have now experienced real pain. If you survive this sea of pain, there will be an equal amount of pleasure on the other side — an island of hope, a place where you will fight your demons and win. Or die.
I wish you all the luck. Should you ever need my strength, here!” Bowdon places his hand down on the bar near Tommy. Tommy places his hand on top of Bowdon’s, and it looks like a baby’s in comparison.
“Fuck’s sake, Bowdon! I think you pulled it back, there, though, at the end,” says Jonesy, walking over and placing his hand on top the other two’s. The three musketeers. “I’m with you, too, lad. I’m old and drunk, but I’m as mean as I am toothless. I’m wilder than any man in here — including this big bastard!” Jonesy winks at Bowden and the hulking man tips him an acknowledging nod. “Tommy, I’m here for ya, pal. We both are ...Tommy? ...Tommy? Fucker’s passed out! Passed out just when we were being sentimental and supportive. Shandy-drinking wee shite, that he is!”
Bowden rumbles what might have been agreement.
“Here, big lad,” Jonesy says to Bowden. “Help me get this pussy to bed. All right, listen up, everyone! We’re taking Tommy boy, here, to bed, and, if I notice any beer or booze missing when I get back down — you bunch of fuckin’ bums! — I’ll let me gun do all the talking!”
AFTER MARIE-ANN O’SHEA passes away, Tommy makes a huge metal sign which he places above the bar. The sign simply says, O’SHEA’S. He designs it to light up at night. It shines with a fluorescent emerald green — Marie-Ann’s favourite colour. He renovates the bar during the long, hard winter months, when many of the pub’s patrons are dying. He buries many friends in a makeshift graveyard, at the back of the O’Shea pub, and carves out a sign that reads: PALS, ETERNAL HAPPY HOUR AWAITS.
Tommy develops rituals, as many grieving people do. These rituals aid him in coming to terms with his loss. One of these rituals involves carving out yet another a sign: his love’s name on a piece of bronze. The bronze sign is simple in its design — certainly not as elaborate as Thankwell’s needlepoint masterpieces. Tommy spends several nights drafting the lettering, which reads: