The Penance of Leather (Book 1): Ain't No Grave

by S. A. Softley

  I focused on the sound of the music. Tried to hear Megan humming along. Tried to picture her silhouette against the tent wall as she bathed.

  The knife cut deep into my wrist. I hissed in shock. It was unpleasant; the feeling made my skin crawl, but it was not overly painful. It was as though the nerves in my body panged with echoes of pain, the memory of it, but did not feel it first hand. Cold steel was inserted into my other wrist. I gasped again as I felt warm fluid rising sickeningly up my arm. The pressure in my veins was maddening. I could feel old, half congealed blood being forced out through the incision in my arm. I felt it run down my fingertips and slop into the bucket, a horrible gelatinous sludge, rotten and smelling of copper.

  As the hot fluid reached my heart I gasped, feeling a nauseating popping as valves were forced and the chambers were filled with the poison. I lost myself for a long while, slipping deep into my mind and away from the torture.

  All the while the music played, keeping me tied to the world, keeping me from slipping too far down the dark tunnel that I feared led to them. A tunnel that I knew held no return. The music reminded me that I had much to make up for. That Megan’s blood was on my hands. I would not release myself until I had paid for that.

  I recall feeling my consciousness occasionally bubble to the surface. I saw hazy images of Ellison over me doing his work. I heard him mutter things to me that required me to nod ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ I was barely aware of what he was saying and probably answered incoherently most of the time. I could feel vague discomfort and distant tearing pains in my abdomen, as though the hurt was imagined rather than real and present. Though it felt distant, the ripping and pulling that wracked through my whole body was maddening. My body involuntarily jumped and squirmed as nerves and tissues were cut and dissected. Each slice was like the pull of a marionette string and I danced a grotesque dance while fastened to the workbench. I trembled and twisted and wrung my arms and legs against the thick cords that bound me. Distantly I knew that I was making Ellison’s already unpleasant job that much harder as my torso squirmed up and down and side to side, instinctively away from the scalpels and knives that slid into it. There was nothing I could do to control myself. My mind was barely present. I felt certain that any moment I would fall into permanent insanity. The feeling of organs leaving me, of empty hollowness where once there had been vital flesh, drove me to the brink. It was the most horrible and revolting violation of my body imaginable. I would often slip away, barely clinging to the soft wisps and tendrils of the music.

  I was dimly aware that when my consciousness was absent I became a mindless monster. I knew that when my eyes and nose and ears were not working for my own mind, they saw, smelled and heard the flesh of Ellison and desired it with raw single-minded hunger. I knew that each time I slipped away I became something worse than the most ravenous animal; knew that I became a terrible danger to Ellison. I knew also that each time I slipped away it became harder for my consciousness to claw its way back.

  The music played.

  My willpower was slowly weakening in the face of the torture and the dark tunnel through which my mind slipped promised blissful release. Hunger could take over. Hunger could relieve me of the exhausting need to think. I could allow instinct to take over for my poor broken mind. It would be so simple; so natural to relinquish control. Being had become such a burden. It was too great a price to bear. Simply attempting this torture had been enough penance to pay for the blood on my hands. My body could carry on without me. It wanted to carry on without me. I could let go.

  The music played.

  I didn’t raise no damn quitter.

  The world has ended. There’s nothing left to quit.

  It ends when you let it, you damn coward. No son of mine is going to end it.

  It’s not my choice.

  Like hell.

  Damn you. Let me go.

  I ain’t keeping you here. You go ahead. Prove me right. I always knew you was shit.

  It’s not going to work this time you hateful bastard. You’re gone. You’re just in my head.

  That don’t make it less true. More true if anything.

  You’re a leftover. A shadow of that shit excuse for a father. You’re a scar left in my mind. A scar that never healed.

  Everything’s just a shadow. Everything is in your mind. We’re all made of scars. That don’t make it less real. That’s all you got left now is that weak, idle mind of yours. You gonna give that up? Gonna lay down and die? I always knew you couldn’t hack it. I used to tell your mother you’d come to nothin’. Worthless. And now you really will be nothin’. You best hope that Ellison puts you to flame before you can do more damage. How many have you killed? Worse than killed… how many have you trapped in their own rotting bodies, forced to watch out their own eyes until they get chewed out by maggots? Forced to listen to the screams of their own victims ‘till their eardrums crumble to dust? Forced to taste the raw blood…

  Enough!

  The music played.

  You’re nothin’

  I’ll save who I can.

  You’re a curse. You are death.

  I’ll help them. The ones who are left.

  You’re less than an animal.

  I’ll make good. I’ll pay my penance and then I will let go. I’ll make sure I end in flames.

  You’re too chicken shit to do it. You’ll take the coward’s way out. You’ll just sink back into your dark hole. It’s easier to let the disease take over isn’t it? I bet you was diseased right from the get go. We should’a never had you.

  “Enough!” my voice rang out loud, clear and powerful. My eyes snapped open. I’d returned to myself. The music was playing and I drew strength from it.

  “It’s done,” Ellison said. He sat in the dark corner. He was still, like a carved statue of a man. It looked as though he’d been sitting there for some time. “I thought you might not have made it. Thought I’d broken whatever was keeping you here.”

  “I’m here.”

  “The worst is over. The rest is just soaking and drying.”

  I tilted my head up as far as I could. A long scar ran down my abdomen. Ellison had cut as straight and clean as he could. It was stitched, but not in the way that most wounds were. This wound would not knit, would never heal. He had closed it tightly with a heavy thread of sinew that coiled tightly around the incision. It was stitched like an overlapping seam joining two pieces of fabric.

  “You did good, son,” Ellison said, patting my shoulder. “The rest will be easy.”

  Ellison had been right. The rest was easy. Tedious, uncomfortable and terribly boring, but easy. I bathed for days in solutions that dissolved my hair and burned my skin. I was salted and dehydrated. I soaked in water. I was immersed in tannins. Ellison rubbed my skin raw with fine sandpaper and wooden paddles. I remained cold and naked, drying. My skin shrivelled and tightened, loosened and stretched. Ellison scraped my body with his long, dull knife, ripping the remaining hair follicles from my pores. The chemical solutions coated my mouth and nose so thoroughly that I felt I would never taste or smell anything else again. I choked in the smokehouse for hours on end, my nose and eyes filled with burning soot and ash, dreaming about the burning bodies in the parking lot in Lac d’Hiver. All the while the music played. All the while Megan was with me, pushing me through so that I could atone for her death.

  The days went by and at last it was over. I examined myself in a long, grimy mirror. I was unrecognizable. I looked creased and tough with hide like a dark rhinoceros. My skin was thickened and stained, loose over muscle and bone. Beneath the skin, tendons and sinew knotted and coiled like snakes. All the flesh had hardened and tightened as I’d dehydrated. I was bald from head to toe. My eyes were striking, the iris grey and the whites darkened near black with old blood. My mouth, too, had stained and my teeth gleamed in stark contrast. I looked a fearsome creature, no longer human, no longer vulnerable to decay and cold. Only in the dark of night, covered and shrouded, would
I pass for a man.

  The time had come, I knew, to do as I had promised. It was time to leave Ellison and wander alone. I would walk far and release any of those poor creatures I could. I would save what humanity I came across; protect whoever remained. Hopefully it would be enough for my conscience. One day, perhaps, I could let go in peace knowing that I’d done all I could.

  “It went well,” Ellison’s deep voice sounded from the doorway.

  “Yes. Thank you for everything.”

  “You are leaving.” It was not a question.

  “Yes.”

  “I’ve made things ready for you.”

  “I don’t need anything now.”

  “You need most of what you needed before,” Ellison said patiently. “Weapons, shelter, heat. You will need to keep yourself preserved. You will need moisture. You should keep your skin hydrated so it doesn’t toughen and crack. You must care for the leather you wear. You will need preservative. You should replenish the antifreeze and formalin in your veins when you can. Still your body will not last forever. Take care of it while it lasts.”

  I nodded. “I’ll do my best. Thank you again. There is no way to repay you.”

  “Repay my Maggie. Repay your Megan.”

  “I will.” I knew I had been preserved but not purified. “I never told you… about Megan… what really happened…”

  “I know.”

  “You know?”

  “I told you, you spoke in your sleep when I found you. I’m a private man. You were entitled to your privacy.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I won’t tell you not to feel guilty. That guilt will drive you. Not a day has gone by that I don’t feel guilt over the neglect of my wife. Let it make you strong, not weak.” His words were more comfort than if Megan herself had returned and begged me not to feel responsible. He knew. He knew what it was like, what I needed to hear. What I needed to do. He knew that there was no sense trying to deny my guilt; he knew how to embrace it.

  “Thank you,” I muttered one last time.

  “If you find people; good people; people in need, send them to me. I will do my part. I will help them. I have more here than I can manage alone and grow far more than I can eat myself.”

  I nodded. Ellison had left clothes for me. Tough clothes that would protect me from the elements. Overtop, I threw on the dark leather duster I’d found so long ago in the sporting goods shop. Thick hide gloves covered my hands like a second skin. I wore a dark leather hat with a wide brim to conceal my newly bald head and skeletal face, which I’d swathed in a black scarf wrapped to help insulate me from the wind and cold and human eyes.

  “You’ll want to cover your eyes,” he said, handing me my pair of sunglasses. I was glad I had chosen, all those long days ago, a pair that protected against the glare of sunlight while also brightening the darkness. I would need to wear them always; day and night.

  I looked a dark spectre; a man made of leather. I was a figure out of a nightmare; a shadow that had stepped out of old tales and legends. I was a darkness that had walked out of the pages of a book.

  I nodded to Ellison, acknowledging him once more in our old wordless way. We walked out the cabin door together into the dusk of the newly set sun. Clea, the bay horse, she too the colour of dark leather, stood patiently, her hindquarters laden with bags. Her saddle was strapped to her midsection; three long guns had been bound near the saddle horn. The shotgun had been left easily accessible. A dark rider on a dark horse. It was nearly biblical, I thought.

  I nodded my respect toward Maggie’s weeping willow tree, touching the brim of my hat out of reverence, and then turned my back to the tree and the house and climbed into the saddle. Clea, who had once been so uncertain of me, now accepted me without concern. She took my burden without fright or hesitation. We would be partners for a time, she and I. We would ride upon darkness.

  I nodded to Ellison one last time. No more words needed to be said. He nodded back and for a brief moment grasped my leather-clad hand in his. He stepped away into the dusk and was gone. I urged Clea forward and did not look back. We turned south together moving through the deepening night that welcomed us as its own. We left behind the ring of pines that kept the cabin like some ancient circle of protection. I never saw Lawrence Ellison or those pines again.

  The north was empty. There were few of those creatures up here and those that remained would be buried and frozen for the winter. Most of the few living people that had survived here would be like Ellison. They did not need me. They would go on surviving. The ones that couldn’t survive had likely already been lost. There was nothing for me; nothing to be done here. The north was as safe as it could be.

  “South,” I whispered in Clea’s ear. “We go south.”

  Epilogue

  The settlementwas small. A handful of squat, tin roofed buildings scattered along a single track. They were built for function, not beauty; made to be economical shelters and nothing more; cheap and easily replaceable.

  Great white dunes sifted among the hamlet’s buildings. In the dim light of morning it looked like I’d wandered into a desert and found some ancient, long-covered ruins. Nothing moved but the snow, which had piled in sloping banks on the western walls that reached to the roofs. The town was a ghost town. I wondered if anything other than ghost towns were left anywhere in the world.

  I am a poor wayfaring stranger

  Travelling through this world alone…

  I pulled the headphones out of my ears. I had been listening to Megan’s music, my eyes closed as Clea led the way. As always, as though selected by Megan’s spirit, the music seemed to fit perfectly. I looked around, wondering if there might be a car that would start so that I could charge up the phone. The battery was getting low. I didn’t want to lose the music. I whistled softly to Clea and she slowed, her black hooves deep in the snow. She snorted quietly.

  “Wait,” I said to her, hopping out of the saddle into knee-deep snow. She stood obediently as I moved a few paces away. Something had caught my eye.

  Something grey, dark against the white covered ground, fluttered across a dune. I trudged through the snow, nearly up to my knees before I caught it up and snatched it in my gloved hand.

  It was paper. Newsprint. I opened it carefully. It had been out here a long time. I was surprised to see it unburied. The date read January 18th, the day before my ill-fated flight. The page contained the same article I’d read all those weeks ago… the nonsense about the universe being a simulation or a hologram. Below the first part of the article was the heading ‘Anthropic Theory.’ The idea that the universe only existed so long as we could perceive it. The first part was still bullshit. If the universe was a hologram or simulation, the programmers were as sick and twisted as we were. Worse. What was the point of all this suffering? This terrible disease that trapped a person in a rotting corpse to feast upon others? I didn’t want to think about that, about people who could sit back and watch while all this happened, though deep down, I realized that humanity had been no different; fascinated by violence and gore and sex; an obsession with flesh.

  The other part… anthropic theory… That had seemed foolish before humanity had become an endangered species. Now, though I knew that nothing had changed on a universal scale, it seemed somehow more appropriate that humanity be given that consolation; the luxury at least to believe that they mattered… that they would be missed by the universe if they were gone, conceited though the idea might be.

  I’d very recently had a close brush with oblivion. Had nearly allowed myself to sink into a black pit and relinquish what I now recognized as a rare treasure: the ability to observe, to experience; to live, even if I did so in a loose sense of the word.

  And what a gift it was. One I would never again squander. I gently placed the newspaper back on the ground. Some other wanderer might like to read it, or perhaps it would make good nesting material for some cold rodent. I felt strangely magnanimous.

  I trudged back to Clea.
She’d stayed where I’d left her, her ears swivelling like radar. She’d quickly lost interest in me once it had become clear that my attention had not been attracted by a food source I might share. I smiled. She was good company on the lonely prairie. It was far lonelier now than it had ever been. Funny the things you forget to value until they are lost. All those people…

  I saw her ears twitch before I heard the sound. It was a high-pitched scream. A scream of unparalleled terror. Not a man… a woman perhaps, or a child. I whipped round, searching the dim landscape for the source of the scream. It was time.

  Acknowledgments

  I would like to thank my wife, Aleksandra, who not only patiently tolerated, but also encouraged a husband whose head is often far from the present space and time. Aleks is inspirational to me and to all who have the pleasure of knowing her. She, along with my very supportive mother and father were the first readers and initial editors of this novel. Without them, it would not be what it has become. I would like to thank my Mom and Dad for fostering in me a love of reading and a passion for stories. I would also like to thank Jarred Albright, a great friend and thorough editor, who not only caught the remaining mistakes in the second draft but also helped to improve many passages and clarify the things that I’d had in my head but had failed to put down on the pages. It was always helpful to bounce ideas off of a like-minded fan of the post-apocalyptic. The help and support that each of these people provide is invaluable, irreplaceable and much appreciated. I would like to thank all the writers and storytellers that have inspired me. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, my writing should flatter a great many. Finally, I would like to thank the reader. A story only lives within the interplay between the words on the page and impressions they form in the reader’s imagination. Without you to experience this book, it would not exist.

  Any mistakes, errors or inaccuracies that remain are my own and no fault of the diligent peoplewho read, edited and reviewed this novel.