The Platform

by Jones, D G

  I reach down and wipe the blood from her face and then I kiss her. There is a wild look of surprise as I taste the metallic blood on her and suddenly desire overwhelms me. I tear open her waterproof, fumbling at her breasts as she chokes and coughs, too weak to stop me. A mad fury takes over and I rip her clothes aside. Her breathing becomes shallow, her body trembling, as I run my hands over her, leaving thick, warm blood trails on her pale skin. My erection pulses hard as I disrobe. She fades out, dead, but I have no care; instead, my fingers probe between her legs as, insane with lust, I stroke my cock. Deliberately I bathe my hands in her blood, feeling it hot on my skin and smear it over my pounding erection, and then, I make love to her, drenched in sweat and hunger, and all the time there is no resistance, yet her body holding onto its warmth. With a grunt, I ejaculate, deep inside; semen and blood mingle in a ballet of intoxicating fluid. It takes several moments to stop shaking as I lie beside her, brushing the hair from her wide open eyes. It was more beautiful than I could have dreamt, and I kiss her once more, deeply. Her tongue is still, her jaws open. As the heat cools and the madness dies, carefully I dress us both again, the drying scarlet on my flesh decorating me in swirls of death and lust. I smoke a cigarette as she stares into oblivion. And then I think about Helst. There is just the two of us left, and I know our moment together has come.

  *

  I told him that Skea was dead, and that the creatures are now up on the fourth deck. He let out a long and sad sigh, and went back to his quarters. I know what is to come.

  *

  I sit waiting in the mess hall, smoking cigarettes and drumming my fingers. Finally, he arrives, as I knew he would. He walks in, a semi-automatic in his hand, and it wavers in his grasp as he sits opposite. He has a bottle of whisky and pours us both a measure in our plastic cups, and for a while, we just sit looking at one another in silence.

  *

  “So,” Helst finally speaks after his second drink.

  “You can put the gun down,” I tell him. “It’s only a threat if someone cares. You can kill me or not, I am unconcerned either way.” He rests the pistol before him, in easy reach, just in case.

  “Were you going to kill all of us?” he asks, straight to the point.

  “No.” It’s the truth. I was going to save the five of us; the rest were irrelevant.

  “What about the Marshall, did you kill him too?”

  “Yes. He was smart. He would have done the same.”

  He pauses, taking another cigarette and lighting it with the first. His eyes bore into mine as if he is trying to see into my soul, but somehow I think he will be disappointed. There is no monster within, just me.

  “You know, before I got conscripted, I wanted to be a lawyer,” he says softly, with plumes of smoke come from his nostrils. “You know why?”

  “Because you believe in the law?” I reply.

  “No, because I believe in justice; the two aren’t always the same thing. Most of the time the laws are just the cages that hold the poor.”

  “And the rich men hold the keys?”

  “Yes,” he nods. “Exactly.”

  “This going anywhere?” I ask. What does he want me to do? Break down in tears and say I’m sorry? Yeah, I saw the situation: we were running low on food, too many people on deck, so I started to get rid of some of them. I think half the people would have come to the same conclusion sooner or later.

  “I was just wondering how you got so fucked up,” he says, his fingertips near the gun, as if I am about to leap over the table and grab him or something, but of course, that isn’t going to happen. I’m not like that.

  “Long story.”

  “Well, we have time.”

  “No. Not for that.” No, I think to myself, I don’t want to talk about that to him. It’s my problem, not his.

  “This is probably your last chance to talk to anyone about it,” he says.

  “Things have got bad enough for you now?” He knows what I mean, there is no need to spell it out.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that.” I light another cigarette. “This was not how I wanted it. I wanted the five of us to make it.”

  “Why? You don’t care. You’re some kind of psycho – no emotions, no attachment. Why the fuck would you care about the rest of us?” He pours himself another drink.

  “I’m not a psycho. I have emotions.” That is true, though most of them are negative yes, and I do keep everyone at a distance, but that doesn’t mean I don’t want them around.

  “So you’re more like some narcissist or a sociopath? It’s all the same.”

  “They’re just bullshit labels, they don’t mean anything.” I look intently at him. Soon, he is going to get up, go back to his room and blow his head off, because he doesn’t want to be alone with me. He remains silent for a moment, pouring us another drink.

  “You are the worst person I have ever met,” he says finally.

  “And the last.” I drink the bitter whisky down.

  “If they were all like you, that would be a blessing,” he says. He can see this is going nowhere. I think he wanted more, some resolution, or an answer, but I have none I want to give. So we two are the last of the world, and have little more to say to one another.

  “Won’t you reconsider? Things may change.” It is not me begging, just an honest question.

  “No, no point now. Perhaps you should have killed me earlier,” he shrugs.

  “I wanted to. But not now.”

  “Why? Because you don’t want to be alone?” He raises an eyebrow.

  “No, because now you are no danger to me. There is no one to tell anymore. You knew it was me, and I didn’t want you to tell the others. Now they are gone, it doesn’t matter.”

  “You really are fucked in the head.” He looks away for a moment.

  “We all are, really,” I reply.

  “Not like you,” he says. He stubs out his cigarette and climbs to his feet, taking the pistol in his hand, and for a second I wonder if he is going to do it here. No, he doesn’t want an audience, just wants to go his own way. “I may not be the last man standing, but I am the last good man.”

  “You are. I always admired that. A man of principle.”

  “Yes,” he smiles. “And staying with someone as corrupt and polluted as you is more than I can bear.” He pushes his way from his chair. “So I wish you goodbye, and wish it had been anyone other than you here with me now.”

  “Okay,” I shrug. They’re his feelings, not mine. He walks away, leaving me to the silence of the mess hall and the constant rolling of the ship. Twenty minutes later, I hear a muffled gunshot and know that I am now completely alone.

  *

  Standing on the deck, watching the ocean as it boils and churns, I look up to the black ash skies and still long to see that aurora one more time. I keep thinking of them all. Helst didn’t understand that I wanted us to be together. I don’t think he believed me, not that it matters anyway. I am alone, as I have been for so long – a horrible dark place to stay locked and barred within the shadows of my head. I so wanted to reach out but couldn’t. I can say it wasn’t my fault, but I know deep down that is a lie, as everything always has been. I so long to be ordinary, and now as the last man, I guess I am – both ordinary and unique, leader and follower. For this brief span remaining I am all things and nothing. But I always wanted to be like the other people, and now the only way I can is by death, but I am not that kind I have decided. Not like Helst.

  I stumble back inside, climb the stairs to the bridge and sit up there for a while hiding from the wind, watching the gauges and the dials, not that I understand much about them, but at least they move. And as I sit I find my mind wandering back to City Block Gamma, right back where I started.

  I was only eleven at the time. We lived in the City Block with thousands of others, in a small cramped apartment on the fourth floor – me, my parents and of course Dresha, my older sister. I saw little of my parents growing up as
they were always working, Dresha was the one who raised me. She was a goddess to me: a friend, a second mother, a sister – everything. But when she was seventeen, she started to change, I didn’t understand it much back then, but she was now a woman, with a tight circle of friends and a lover, Klune. I didn’t like him – he was a ghost who haunted our little world, and when he came over, she was always different, suddenly grown up and without time for a bratty little brother. I really began to hate him – just jealousy, I suppose. It is the way of things, I see that now – people are transient, just shadows in your life and only there at the edges. She got into all kinds of drugs thanks to him, and I watched her become someone else, so remote and cold at times and angry and frustrated at others. And just when he had done about as much damage as he could to her, he dumped her for another girl. I still hate him now, and even though he is now dead, for me he will never be dead enough.

  Time passed through a long hot summer and Dresha seemed to fall apart, hiding in her room, spiralling deeper into despair. As a kid, I didn’t understand most of it, I just saw the pain she was in. And by the time I started back at the Ed block after the holiday, she was no longer the sister I knew.

  And then that day came round.

  I was walking home, my backpack on my shoulder, cursing at the time spent in mindless classrooms, kicking stones and plotting some imagined escape, then I noticed up ahead a crowd of people of all ages, male and female, jostling for position as the Security held them back. Being curious I went to see what the commotion was, and following there gazes, as I arrived, I saw a lonely looking figure on one of the balconies. It was Dresha. I recognised the clothes and the way she stood. I couldn’t make out her face at that distance, but it sent a cold wash of panic through me. I grabbed one of the Security, yelling at him that it was my sister that I had to speak to her. Tears fell down my dusty face, and my little voice was lost among the crowd. They were shouting: “Jump!” at her and I was screaming at them to stop. Some changed position to gain a better view, while others were filming the whole thing on their mini-coms. I was shrieking and kicking, begging for them to stop, for the Security to let me go to her, and all the time, this band of hateful cretins were jeering her. These were people we knew, suddenly turned to monsters, and as I lashed out and struggled, the Security dragging me from the crowd. I ranted and cursed, fought and yelled, and yet this crowd wanted her to do it just to entertain their little lives. That day, everything in me died with her or at least, the good boy I had once been. I couldn’t believe how cruel ordinary people could be. I hated them and wanted to rip them limb from limb, but some of them thought it funny and filmed my distress too. It was the worst of moments, watching these adults, calling on my beloved sister to jump just for their pleasure.

  And then she did.

  I saw her launch herself forward as I struggled with a male and female Security, watching her tumble with a slow, sickening feeling. Everything was so clear: the warmth of the sun, the smell of the dry, patchy grass, her almost graceful descent with her clothes billowing before she hit the ground with a bone-snapping crunch that haunts me even now. Then her blood spraying up the walls as, headfirst, her skull smashed and opened up.

  And some of the fuckers actually cheered.

  I have never felt so much hurt; in a second of time stretched out forever like a black wire stitch through the soul.

  I heard one of the Security swear, and they loosened their grip enough for me to squirm free and run to her but they snatched me away before I could. The thing on the concrete could not be my beloved sister, not Dresha. But it was. And still the fuckers were filming, already uploading it to the network, laughing. Thinking it was funny.

  It destroyed me, my parents – everything. They put me in a hospital in the end, for over a year, but how was I to deal with it? I couldn’t. Instead, I pushed it all down and separated myself from the world. Always I kept up that barrier between me and the rest, the only feelings surfacing were of fear and hatred and betrayal, that ordinary people, people I knew, could do such a thing.

  Disturbed, they said. Indeed.

  At thirteen, I was am I am now – the man I have become already set – and of course, I managed to kill two of the fuckers. One I threw down the lift shaft when it was being repaired, the other I dissected with slow deliberation in the Block basement. I would have killed every one of them but I couldn’t recognise the rest because of my time in the hospital. In fact, even now, I would kill them and their families and friends – every relationship their corrosive touch had come upon.

  My parents lost themselves in drugs, and I fell further from all others, suppressing and holding onto the barrier like a shield. I could never get close to anyone after that, so lonely and cold was I, my hatred burning deep below the surface like a central core of molten flame, and keeping it down, choking on the fire just so I wouldn’t dissolve completely.

  That is Gruz. And perhaps it is ironic that I am the last.

  I light another cigarette, watching the dials and readouts, thinking of City Block Gamma. Of Dresha. Of nothing. I can’t pretend it is my excuse, because it’s deeper than that: it’s all I am since Dresha jumped for all those cretins to watch and laugh and film. I never got to be the man I was supposed to be. I am the man I am now. The last one.

  *

  So now it’s just a question of waiting. Unlike Helst I won’t end it myself. Instead, we shall just have to see. It’s funny how it all turns in a circle, the outside world now mimicking the inside, that I did my best to save someone and ended up alone again. Thinking of those who called for Dresha’s death, at least I have outlived them and they will be forgotten in their ash-strewn sky while I remain and sit and watch. I already know what I want my last words and thoughts to be, and they didn’t get that chance as they were turned to vapour along with all the others. And somehow, that makes it all worthwhile in the end. I have nothing and I want nothing, no stray radio transmission or lights of a rescue ship on the horizon. For once, being truly alone is to be free, for now there is no one else to compare with, no one to sit in judgement, and no one to despise. It is perhaps fitting that I am the last one, and it almost raises a chuckle in my throat, or at least in my heart. The ship drifts on, the tide still rolls, and the hideous creatures beneath the waves will soon be all there is left to speak of life once here. I know they will never fuck things up as badly as we have, and at least in life they themselves are blameless.

  It doesn’t matter now, and it never will again. But in a way, just by breathing, I am taking my revenge over all those fools who laughed and jeered and enjoyed their sunny afternoon. I light a cigarette, watching the acid sea boil, and just once I yell her name to the shrieking wind so that she might not be forgotten, for while I am here, she won’t be. And as for all the others, I did my best, but it wasn’t me who took their lives away – not really. It was sealed and finished long before I arrived, long ago at the City Block Gamma, which now, I guess, is ashes too. The reason we don’t make it is because we don’t deserve to in the end. It is almost a crime that I should be last, but somewhere you can hear that deep chuckle of the universe as it plays its little games with us, with her, with me. And my last breath will be the telling one, where we finish as we began, in darkness and in ashes, and it does not weigh heavily upon my shoulders, because I just don’t care and never did. And in a way, I find that is kind of funny, and smile into the wind, watching the black waves rolls as they will forever, with or without us, without end.

  So I will wait until it’s done. And if I have my way, my last word will be my sister’s name, the only one who mattered. It will be the last one called aloud, and if it goes that way I will be happy. And nothing will have been in vain.

 

 

 
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