by Hodge, Brian
“I found another pair of pants you’d already shit in,” she said, dropping the song and giving him a rueful look. “Must be having a lot of those fits, lately. I gave that and the one from the market to a man downstairs, says he cleans your clothes. Also spent a little of your stash on real food.” She put the packages on the table by the window wall, shrugged out of her jacket and began taking out containers. Her long skirt continued to swing back and forth for a few moments. “Do you eat from vendors everyday?”
She picked up a black pot from the floor by the stove and removed the lid.
“Where did you get that?” he asked, sitting up. His body was still sore, but not tired.
“Borrowed it from your neighbor. Along with some plates, cups and cutlery. I’ll have something up in no time.”
Marican got out of bed slowly, washed his face, put on a patched pair of pants and a fresh shirt. He looked out the window at the empty street. A chanting prayer rose to a crescendo, quickly faded. He was almost never home at this hour, and the city felt more desolate than he remembered. In the Ministry, it was easy to imagine the outside world filled with at least the echoes and shadows of life.
The picture of the woman and two young girls on the dresser looked familiar, but he couldn’t remember their names. “You talked to the neighbor?” he asked, fighting off an instant of lightheadedness.
“Not really. He knocked again last night. Doesn’t talk, just stands there. He’s not so bad, if you keep the candle away from him. I think I scared him the first time I answered a couple of nights ago. This time I asked if he had a pot. And extra plates. Found it all by the door this morning.”
“Anything else?”
“Nothing you don’t already know about.”
She’d placed the ingredients into the pot with a measure of greenish liquid while talking. He watched her put the lid on and fire up the stove.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. The breeze from the window chilled the back of his neck.
“Adapting.”
The word frightened him. He glanced over his shoulder at the cloud cover. “We’re all becoming monsters, aren’t we?” He pursed his lips, surprised. He wished he hadn’t given form to a vague thought by speaking it.
“No, Marican. Nothing like that, at all.”
He sat back down on the bed, conceding the chair to her. The picture on the dresser haunted him, so he stopped looking at it.
Naja. The name was cold blade through his heart. He didn’t want to hear any more names.
His job. The missing man. Oria, his lead. These were things that were real, that he could deal with.
He remembered the last time he’d felt in control, fulfilled, a part of the world. “You never answered my question,” he said, picking up loose threads from the interview in her office.
“Which one.” She carefully poked the iron into the fire, re-arranging briquettes.
“Why didn’t you leave the orphanage sooner?”
She looked over her shoulder at him, eyes wide. Then she turned to the stove, faced the fire. “Because I was afraid. And I was helping bring humanity back, having babies. And, I had friends. The other…breeders. And the scavengers.”
“Why did you finally run away?”
“Because everybody I knew was dead. Or gone. And I figured out I was stronger than I thought I was.”
“Is that all?” He believed her, but he’d learned it never hurt to prod.
She closed the stove door, put down the poker, moved the chair beside the bed back to the table. She began gathering and folding the packaging for their next use. “Because I wanted to know if they were lying.”
“They?”
“The Orphanage.”
“About what.”
“The monsters. They said we had to stay together to keep the monsters away.”
“No. You have to be apart.”
“That’s what you do.”
“It works.”
“Really?” She looked around the bedroom, as if searching for proof that he was wrong. “You eat that horrible stuff and use those pellets for money for the same reason. Clearly, just avoiding each other doesn’t work that well.”
“You wear sacks over your heads.”
She took a deep breath, crossed her arms and leaned forward over her legs, bowing her head. Through the curtain of her hair, she said, “Maybe each way worked for certain kinds of monsters, after the Turning. But, now, most of them are dead. They couldn’t live here. This place, it’s not ready for them. They can’t survive.”
“How do you know they’re dead?”
“You eat them. For breakfast.”
Marican couldn’t push out an answer through the blood pounding in his ears. He waited for the tremors, thinking of the Ministry basement, the mold, and all the folders of the missing.
“Some orphans grow up never believing in monsters, at all,” she continued. “They run away to do more than start a new life. They dare the monsters to come. I think your missing man was that kind of runaway.”
“So he’s dead.”
“No. He proved something.” Oria looked up, face flushed, eyes bright. “Not what he intended. But he spent years in these ruins, in that market, challenging the way things were. Look at what he did. More than your provisional government, I think. Those people in the market are still talking about him. And he never let the monsters take him.”
She looked a bit the way she did when they’d made love. “He was still wrong,” he said.
“He found out monsters don’t matter. We do.”
“So what happened to him?”
“He’s gone.”
“Where?”
“The market people say he walked into the Wilderness with a few others to look for more survivors. Like he left the Orphanage looking for monsters. Only this time, I think he wants to prove what he’s looking for is out there.”
“Why didn’t everyone in the Market go?”
“They’ve gone as far as they could.”
“How come you’re not going out after him? You sound like you admire him.”
“I’m still looking for monsters.”
“Because they aren’t all dead.”
“That’s right.” She glanced at the pot that was beginning to bubble. “They took my family. They still matter to me. And they live with you.”
“No, they don’t. It’s safer in the city.”
She snorted, shook her head. “You’re wrong. Cities are scabs on wounds. They get picked on. It’s safer out there.” She pointed out the window, then stood and walked slowly into the light, her gaze drifting to the clouds. Though grey, the sky still lit Oria’s face and made her seem very young, again. “That’s another reason your man left. He didn’t want to rebuild on poisoned ground. He’s searching for a clean place to start over.”
Marican couldn’t argue with her. He could already see the report he’d write for Security, describing the heretical beliefs emerging from the Orphanages and the sub-culture growing alongside the provisional government’s attempt at reconstructing civilization. He wasn’t sure his diligence would be rewarded, even if Security already knew what he’d found out. “So you found your monsters. And now you want to adapt to them. To us. Because they matter to you.”
“Yes. Like they’re important to you. Just like you, I’m used to living with the idea that they’re real, here, now. It makes things simpler.”
She’d calmed down, grown pale. The light had gone out of her eyes, though it bathed her face.
Marican asked, “Can you still have children?”
She stiffened, put a hand out to lean against the window frame. “Yes. Your Bureau of Clinical Services cleared me.”
He hadn’t thought about that yesterday. “Do they know about everything you’ve been exposed to that might be dangerous?”
She turned, her expression closed, blank, like the clouds. “Isn’t the investigation over?”
Only two days ago, there’d been a case folder on
his desk, a reason to seek her out, and the feeling that he was walking into a trap. A ceiling had groaned, dust had fallen. “No.”
“But now, I’m the one under investigation?”
“What do you think is happening?”
Oria walked slowly back to the stove and pulled the pot off, then her boots, and finally her skirt and top. She kneeled on the bed, straddled his thighs, and said, “It’s not that complicated.” Then she ran her fingers through his beard and kissed him.
He didn’t think about getting hard, it just happened. He did wonder if his seed was any good, and if he really wanted to make a baby with her. It was possible he’d had a wife and kids, once. Even under government care, their baby might still grow up needing a sack cloth. He was older and might not live long enough to help her raise their child.
Soon enough, only what was real mattered.
They ate later in the day. Drank tea. Watched people returning home from their work. At dusk, Oria exchanged a few rounds of song with the local operatic voice. Rich, layered arias bantered with clear, simple folk melodies, and though they had nothing in common, the two voices played with each other in the closing gloom, merging at last into one seamless expression of all that had survived. In that moment, their pairing was more powerful than anything Marican could have achieved with Oria. Their song seemed to make the ruins vanish, the stars reappear. In the pristine seconds of silence following the performance, Marican felt he could be human, again, some day.
After he closed the shutters, Oria climbed on top of him. Before he finally fell asleep, as she lay next to him still breathing heavily, she asked:
“That little girl? Your clerk, when you started working for the government. The one with the parents?”
“Yes.”
“Whatever happened to her?”
“What?”
She waited until he’d found the answer. “She was transferred.”
“Where to?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’ve never seen her since she left?”
“No.”
Oria shook her head, candle light flickering over a small sad smile.
“You said you never saw your children after you had them,” he said.
“No. I never had the choice.”
In the night, he woke to a subtle touch, something hard and sharp playing lightly across his skin. He kept his eyes shut against the vision of the antenna’s sharp end finally discovering him. He tried going back to sleep, eager for dreams to paint their reality over his. When he couldn’t, he opened his eyes and found the woman of his dream tracing letters on his chest with her fingernail.
He thought she was casting a spell, or marking him for something that would come later.
“What is that?” he asked.
She laughed. “A word. Can’t you tell what it is?”
“No.”
“Here’s a clue for your investigation—it’s a feeling.”
He didn’t answer, suddenly wary of being questioned.
The next morning, he awakened to the smell of something frying in a pan on top of the stove. A pot of tea was already waiting on the table. The smell of khli hung in the air, though it was not as strong as he remembered.
He’d missed his night visitors again.
“Who investigates the Head Investigator when he doesn’t show up for work?” Oria asked, giving him a teasing laugh. She only wore her top, which came down to her hips.
“The neighbor,” he said, pointing to the pan. “I didn’t hear him knock.”
Her smile faded, replaced by an expression that flittered from caution to hope.
“You don’t call her name, anymore,” she said.
When he didn’t answer, she started toward him, stepping slowly, hips and shoulders swaying from side to side as if she was dancing to a line of drumming in her mind. “It’s not the knocking you have to worry about. It’s not the sky, either, opening up, or the earth shaking, or even the monsters. Those things pass. You survive them, or you don’t. Either way, you don’t have to live with that terror.
“It’s what comes afterwards, the little things you hardly notice until the dust settles, that you need to pay attention to. What’s really different, inside, because of what happened. Those are the things that really scare us. The things that changed. If you don’t catch them, understand and accept them as a part of what’s become of everything, they’re going to take bites out of you, so small you’ll hardly feel them, over a long time, until there’s nothing left. And then you might as well have gone out when the big knock came.”
She stood over him, still and smiling again. He licked his lips, as if getting ready to speak, but she put a finger over his mouth. He’d had nothing to say, and already knew what she tasted like.
“I was afraid of you, the guards, the job, that building, everything, when you walked into the office. But I didn’t hide. I jumped right in. Dared the monsters to catch and kill me. And look at us now. Maybe I’m that thing you’ve been running away from for all these years. You could have gone to work. Had Security pick me up. But you made a choice to stay. With me. I think you’re paying attention to what really scares you.”
“What’s that?” he asked, brushing her hand away.
“What we’ve become by being together. Something different. Something new.”
“What are we?”
“The future.”
“But the Turning…,” he began, because they came from the same world the Turning had taken away. But they’d traveled too far on separate roads, and the words he needed her to understand died and turned to ash when he looked into her eyes, into her alien joy.
He was old and missed the memory of Naja’s voice and taste. Oria was close to either of his daughters’ ages if they’d lived, if he’d even had them. She was an orphan, he belonged to the Ministry. He was an empty carapace from another era, she was a ghost of the women in which he’d wanted to believe, in the body of a monster.
She sat at the top of the bed, cradled his head in her lap, rocked gently, caressing his head, curling hair around a finger. Fragments of thoughts and images crashed against the comfort she offered. He saw sackcloths over the children they might have together, missed the pictures that would never be taken of them, heard songs they’d sing in languages he didn’t understand. The future she’d shown him was too big for him to face, too remote to contain and argue against in the simple words left to him.
Oria smiled at his confusion and said, “It’s not so bad when you turn with it.”
“Yes,” he said, not to her, but to the vision her voice and touch inspired. He gasped for breath in the clear, bright burst of clarity that swept away confusion and brought back the purpose he’d been missing from his life for so long.
Oria giggled, and kissed him lightly on the lips.
There it was. So simple, really. At last, he had her. She’d sprung her trap. He understood her intention.
He’d never voted for Change, always for Security. The provisional government had only ever endorsed Security. And he couldn’t cope with more change. He did as much as he could ever do waking up every morning in the nightmare ruins of the old world.
She would only have come to him in a dream. Never in a reality that made sense to him. Whatever happened between them, to them, was part of that dream. The future she saw was only a nightmare.
He missed work for the third day, and still no one from the Ministry, not even Security, came to investigate. That was all the confirmation he needed to be certain he was still on assignment, and what his real mission had been all along.
That night, he refused to fall asleep, losing himself in the candle’s cleansing light. The building’s other tenant knocked twice. Marican wanted to open the door, say goodbye, thank his neighbor for helping expose Oria. But she answered the door first, and whispered back and forth with the shadow in the hall. She counted off pellets, dropping each one into a bandaged hand extended to receive them, and thanked the neighbor for
the kitchen ware, and the other chair he was supposed to drop off later.
When the antenna visited, Oria again left the bed. She danced lightly around the tapping point while singing, faintly, a song he was content not to hear clearly. The antenna stopped, relaxed. The shutters groaned. She held the sagging limb in her hands and sang to it. The thing withdrew, slipping through her fingers, gaining strength as if fed by her.
The rumble of thunder split the night. A tremor made him kick the covers. Oria glanced in his direction.
He stood. She smiled, stopped singing, let the antenna go.
Another peal of thunder rolled from the sky above the ruins, shaking the floor. Someone screamed, from far away. Marican convulsed, leapt once into the air as if pulled by the sound. His arm flailed, and he struck his chest hard over the heart.
She closed her eyes, held her hands out to him.
The antenna continued to slip away.
He stumbled into her embrace, jerked from side to side in a helter-skelter dance, his head snapping back. She laughed, held on, flew with him as the roaring sky opened him up. He whirled across the floor, young and vital again, the energy he’d expended surviving for all the years since the Turning returned like a lost tide coursing through his body.
He grabbed Oria by the waist, held her high. She squealed, kicked her legs, at last opened her eyes and looked down at him with an expression he didn’t recognize. His arms buckled, jerked, caught in seizure, but he held on to her as he shouted above the thunder, “The missing man, he was one of your children, wasn’t he?”
She blinked. Shook her head. Hair flew off in every direction.
Laughter bubbled in his chest, then burst from him in a high-pitched screech.
Her lips moved, but he couldn’t hear what she said. He almost tripped over the antenna, still pulling itself back through the shutter slats. Oria squirmed in his grasp, her expression settling into something between rage and terror. Those feelings, he recognized.
Thunder exploded overhead, shaking the beams and walls. Dust flew, the candle fell, flames caught on bedding. A spasm drove him to his knees, but still he held on to the woman of his dreams, refusing to let go.
“I don’t know,” he heard her say, and he shook his head, refusing to believe, but she kept on, crying as she answered, “I can’t know, but I hope he was, I can only dream he was.”