Those Who Lived

by Poss, Bryant

  It was then, my second year at university that I tried to find religion. My mother really would have had a conniption at that thought. The history is simple enough, she used to say every time it was brought up, all religions stem from the same basic metaphorical stories, the same allegories. There’s really no way to argue against it. My father would smile, and he’d throw up his usual argument of how much good it did the world, and how so many needed it for reassurance. This was playful banter. She would never actually argue the point with him, accepting his Buddhist practices, but he would also not dangle it in her face. He really had the most agreeable religion to live with now that I think about it. He didn’t so much believe in a higher power as he did the idea of the transference of energy. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to jump in the same boat as my father so quickly. Keeping an objective perspective, I decided to try my hand at every popular belief system. At the very least, I could say I tried.

  That entire year I spent reading texts, studying histories. Had I not been in my undergraduate years, I would not have had the time to accomplish these things, but as it turns out the first two years of college are a joke, a test to weed out those who don’t belong. From the Abrahamic faiths to the hokeyness of Wicca and Scientology, I covered them all. It was in my search that I came across Melanie, a person who helped me find out enough about myself to beat my own devil.

  My search had taken me all over the city, but it wasn’t until I left the traditional that I found what I was looking for, but it had nothing to do with the building itself. Oddly enough, the interior of the Unitarian Universalist Church resembled most other churches I had visited over the months leading up to that day. There were pews, an alter, the same formal stuffiness associated with conservative worship, but it was different too in some ways. For one, the recitation of monotonous script and arbitrary gestures was avoided, which was a blessing—no pun intended—but the fact that the people inside were all devoted to different ideas, or so most were at any rate, made a profound impact. I sat alone, nearly dozing from a rare late night of studying vocabulary for Abnormal Psychology when a tap at my thigh roused me from my dormancy and actually gave me quite a start as I was not used to having people in public approach me. I always maintained a disagreeable expression.

  Melanie Cartwright was quite a petite creature, a small frame that was firm and well taken care of despite her proclamations of sloth and laziness. She weighed no more than a hundred pounds with small, perky breasts and similar features, but her eyes were big, nearly like those of a cartoon character, and brilliantly blue, the color of shallow water in the Gulf. Her dark hair, always kept in a pixie cut, suited her like some living Tinker Bell, and it seemed the smell of coconuts ruminated from her very pores, whether she just stepped from the shower or a gym. For one of the few times in my life, upon meeting her I was slightly taken aback by her presence. It was always my privilege to have such an effect on people, but here, as would later be with Ben, I was smitten. There was really no other word for it.

  “I’ve never seen you in here before,” Melanie’s voice was soft and seemed permanently hoarse, a marvel just like the rest of her.

  “That’s because I’ve never been here,” don’t smile at her yet. She sat down next to me and leaned into my face, no more than inches from me, and the smell of her hit me instantly.

  “You’re an amazingly exotic woman,” she said it as if she were asking me where I acquired my shoes, as if she’d like to have a pair just like them. The blush came to my face before I had time to turn away. I asked her to come back to my apartment within the first five minutes of the conversation.

  For the weeks we were together, I experienced no anxiety in her presence. Melanie was an SSRI for me, my own personal drug, but an aphrodisiac as well. She presented a cure with no side effects. I left my apartment only to go to the classes I felt I couldn’t skip, while she left for brief intervals, one or two hours at a time then she would come back with different clothes on. She never told me where she went, and I didn’t ask. It wasn’t until the last time, when she didn’t return that I wished I’d known.

  It was that Wednesday, a steady rain filling the window with the curtains drawn back, no other light in the room. Mazzy Star played low from the speakers in the corner, and we passed a joint back and forth, not a stitch on either of us, the sheet at our feet. There wasn’t a position she could lay or sit that didn’t show the ripples in her tight stomach, not a touch of ink anywhere on her milky skin, a flawless creature that. She’d sit there for hours scouring every inch of my body, asking me to explain every tattoo, every outline, every quote. I never considered the fact that she’d get close enough to see any scars, but she stopped after giggling at the butterfly on my inner thigh, the joint held before her lips with smoke curling in her eyes. Handing it back to me she leaned down and reached over to click the harsh light of the lamp on. I winced a little and turned away, opening my mouth to ask what she was doing, but she wouldn’t let me. Getting to her feet on the mattress, she stood above me looking down, her nipples hard in the chill of the room, then stepped across me and walked through the bedroom door. There was some noise in the kitchen, and she came back half a minute later with her hand behind her back. She got back on the mattress beside me and sat cross-legged, bringing the peeling knife out from behind her back and putting it to the top of her forearm.

  “Do you like this?” she asked, and before I could respond she pulled the tip of the blade across her beautiful skin, blood juxtaposing harshly with the white and running down her arm toward the elbow as she held it up.

  “Jesus, no!” I sat up to reach for the knife, but she backed away, holding it in the opposite hand. Then she did something I never expected. She held it to her other arm and raised her eyebrows. “Holy shit, Mel, what are you doing!”

  “Do you still do it?” she asked without moving.

  “Do what, goddammit!”

  “Cut!” her face questioning, her tone harsh. “Do you still cut yourself?”

  “No!” I said in a pleading voice. “I haven’t cut in years.”

  She looked at me now, her eyes covering me, painting my entire body with her gaze. After a minute she pursed her lips and nodded.

  “You get the tats now,” she said, taking the knife away from her arm, but keeping it under her knee out of my reach. “The tattoos were another way, weren’t they?” She squinted at me like some sort of damn prophet or psychic, someone seeing right through me at the pages on the other side.

  “You want to quit that now though, don’t you? But you don’t know how.” A few more minutes went by. She took the joint from me and put it between her lips for a long drag then handed it back. “That’s why you were at that church. I bet you’ve been to lots of churches lately, haven’t you, Lotus?”

  I just sat looking at her, nothing could answer her question without being totally transparent. That much was obvious to me. She smiled at my silence then pulled the knife out again.

  “How does it make you feel to see me cut?”

  “I don’t like it,” I finally managed to say, carefully prying the cherry off the joint into the brass ashtray on the bedside table.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I get no pleasure from other people’s pain or from pain itself really. It doesn’t work that way.”

  “Don’t you dare try to explain to me about how it works,” there was anger in her eyes now, in her voice. “I know how it works. My mother cut. It’s the control more than anything, the being in control of something directly in front of you, something to take your mind off the real pain.”

  There was a long silence, the low strum of an acoustic guitar coming through the speaker, an organ. I looked at her for some time and she at me. The blood on her arm had already stopped, solidifying in a line to her elbow, like a trickle of candle wax across a taut bed sheet. She leaned forward and brushed my cheek with the backs of her fingers.

  “It hurts me for you to hurt yourself,” her coconut hand
continued the gesture then she leaned, placed her palms on the marks of my thighs. “It hurts me just like it hurts you. Do you want to hurt me?”

  “No,” I shook my head, the heat rushing to my face. I felt the tears well up and slide down my cheeks into the corners of my mouth. I couldn’t stop sniffing, but I didn’t turn away. I didn’t care, and I sure as hell didn’t try to stop.

  “It is that simple,” her voice was soft again, so inviting. “I know what you’re thinking, but it is. It is just that simple. There is someone in the world now who feels the pain you inflict on yourself. It will hurt me if you hurt yourself. I want you to know that every time it crosses your mind.”

  I nodded my head then I stopped and shook it lightly.

  “I want it to be that simple,” my voice was quivering and my chin with it, crying like a lost child at this point. She nodded and waited for me to look her in the eyes.

  “I’ll tell you what,” she leaned over and put the knife on the bedside table and grabbed both of my thighs lightly. “I’ll help you. How would that be? Do you want me to help you? What if I told you there was a way to share it and take the burden off yourself? Because you’re not going to find any answers, Lotus, in a book or a building. Nothing like that will take it away, but someone can.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked, blowing my nose on the tissue she got for me. “How can you do anything like that for me—”

  Luck rolled from Ben’s grasp tapping gently across the floor, making that unmistakable sound of a golf ball on concrete. Stopping at one of the heater pots, it rested, the eye rightside up on the room. Devon slept in the corner now, rolled up in so many jumpers he looked like a giant burrito surrounded by empty Rice Krispies boxes. Alice and Cillian sat cross-legged looking at each other and talking in whispers into the morning, his eyes heavy and tired, but excited at the same time, but she noticed how often he looked at Ben and Lo. Ben slumped over with Lo’s head in his lap, his breathing heavy and long. Lotus herself opened her eyes slowly and smiled a broad smile. She reached her hand up to his cheek and brushed it lightly, only to lower it down and wince at the pain. He awoke at the touch and smiled back, wiping the tears from her cheek before stretching the pain out of his neck and back and lying beside her. Cillian and Alice watched them then lay down themselves as the candles in the pots burned low, filling the room with quickly dissipating warmth. The rest of the morning unraveled peacefully, giving them much needed rest that would be essential for the struggles that lay in the near future.

  17

  A profound silence blanketed the room of the occupants. It might have been a scene from the Bronte household, the children and parents all in the living room by the fire, candles for lighting, the popping fireplace to beat back the typical chill of an English evening. All reading, filling their heads with the method and imagination they would use themselves in their short lives. Then it was a typical pastime, the entertainment of the evening to witness the mastery of an art form. Whether from poetry or prose, they would unfold each one, paying attention to every detail of form, meter, development, vocabulary, every rhetorical method its own treat. Now the room was filled with the same albeit less attentive. In time and with the right instruction, nearly everyone in this room could appreciate it the same. Perhaps it would give fulfillment as it had for so many centuries before only to be lost to the immediacy of pleasure. Now was a time to think and consider, eventually to create as it had been for so long. Perhaps this time the art would not be lost to the now, but it was doubtful. The immediacy had brought the staggering population, and with that ever-mutating disease. Somewhere in the mind-boggling acceleration of existence either the disease itself won on its own or the attempt to control it led to the mutation. Whether or not there was anyone left to explain made little difference. It was here now, and there was only surviving, only living, only hoping that there was some way to come back and do things a little better if existence allowed. If each could immerse herself into the growing, into the productivity of the self, the art form without trying to control external devices, other people included, perhaps this world could come away a better place for the next cycle, but who was to say humans would allow such. They are such selfish creatures as a whole with just enough specks of the extraordinary spaced out to prohibit their extinction, but now the odds could be better or worse. There was no way to know yet.

  Cillian, Alice, and Devon sat together in the corner. The latter two had enjoyed their brief reunion with their fellow armory captive, but he wouldn’t move, not willing to let any of them bother with tending his own wounds. So, with little fuss they went about their own business. Dirty plates with remnants of powdered eggs, grits, and oatmeal lay stacked near the younger ones, and each sat with a book open. Devon sat cross-legged leaning over his, and every now and again he’d ask in a very soft voice what a word meant without looking up, and either of the other two would answer, Cillian lying on his back holding the book above him with one hand, thumb and index finger on either page holding it open, and Alice on her stomach next to him with her legs bent at the knees, ankles crossed like some teenage girl on her bed talking to a boy on the telephone. They all read the book they’d been assigned by Lo, each feeling the need to be able to talk to her about it when she was better, but mostly wanting to take their minds off the fact that she still seemed ill, and they spoke little other than to ask each other questions.

  Ben sat beside Lotus as he had since giving her the first dose of antibiotics. After giving her the third pill a few minutes ago, he had managed a few spoonfuls of chicken soup from a can that sat beside him, a bottle of water next to that. He had a book open himself and read to her now, looking down after each poem to reflect on the work and say something about it half to himself and half to her then he’d run his fingers through her hair that he’d washed and brushed out. He kept petroleum jelly on her lips and wiped her eyes, forehead, and neck with a cool, wet rag every quarter hour or so, and waited, knowing the medicine would eventually take away the infection. Hoping. It had to, but he knew it took time as well. Twice now the bandage on her shoulder had been changed, the wound cleaned with alcohol and peroxide. He thought it looked better the second time. Hadn’t the redness dissipated somewhat? He didn’t know for sure. Perhaps it was just wishful thinking, but he knew the medicine would work. It had to. She had become the center of his world again, and there was no way he’d allow her to leave, to take away his purpose.

  On his mind too with every verse, every stanza he read, he saw the faces of the children in the basement at the armory, Slayton’s anger burning an image over everything else. They were there, and they would be there. Getting them out was a priority to him second only to helping Lo recover, but he knew it was too soon to go back. Marshal’s pride had taken a considerable hit, and the bastard was probably out right now, well his men anyway, looking for the place he’d be. It was only a matter of time before the school was searched. Ben marveled at the ingenuity of Lo and Cillian luring pokies into the building to make it look infested. That should be followed up with even more pokies, more camouflage, but it was dangerous, a fact that was so evident as he looked down at her again.

  Nothing on either side was said.

  They knew they had but to stay their stay

  And all their logic would fill my head:

  As that I had no right to play

  With what was another man’s work for gain.

  My right might be love but theirs was need.

  And where the two exist in twain

  Theirs was the better—agreed.

  Letting the Frost book drop pages down, Ben sat and watched for the follow up to the groan he heard from Lo. It was slight, little different from the noises he’d heard from her over the past day, but this one was accompanied by movement. He watched as she shifted and craned her neck back, the sounds of stretching bringing to him more comfort than they seemed to bring her. Sitting up and leaning over her, he grabbed the water bottle and held it in front of her eyes.
When she gave him the nod, he held the bottle to her lips and watched her take the best swallows she’d taken yet then pulled it away and waited for her to ask for it again. The others were looking up from their books now, smiles all around, and Ben waited until her eyes finally opened, the green irises accenting her deep gold skin, epicanthic folds there though slight. She was a magnificent blend of human. The eyes were sluggish at first then inquisitive as she focused on him, really seeing him for the first time. There was pain there, a longing to understand, but also skepticism. Was he here? Was she alive? Giving her a soft smile he leaned even closer to her, pressing his nose to her cheek, his lips to her ear. “It’s me.” He said it so softly only she heard, and he felt her shudder a little.

  “Ho—” she coughed lightly then breathed in through her nose, and he rose up to look her in the eyes.

  “Don’t talk right now, okay,” he said, and she nodded. “Are you enjoying the Frost?” She smiled at him and glanced at the book that lay in front of him and affirmed again. Reaching back, he grabbed the water bottle and she drank, but when he offered the soup she shook her head.

  “How about I just talk to you for a while?” he asked and again she smiled, nodding.

  The spazzo that he’d run from in the street got through the door at the rear of the pizzeria despite his attempts to put it down with nearly a full clip. Without much thought or time to think, Ben had grabbed the spazzo as it entered, finding immediately to his relief that this creature, while insanely fast was not close to as strong as the pokies he’d experienced. While the spazzo’s strength did not make it overwhelming, its sheer ferocity gave it a significant advantage.