Heaven in a Matchbox

by Lex Baker

  We were silent for twelve heartbeats, Regan announced.

  You know, Regan, said Emmeline, Not everything was good before.

  Before I came upstairs to stand here with you?

  No, I mean before They came and destroyed Earth. It wasn’t all just coffee and aeroplanes and birds atwitter in trees. There were terrible things, too. Sometimes I almost like the world the way it is now. Even if I miss the birds.

  Regan climbed onto the bed to lie down and put her head in Emmeline’s lap. For a long moment they were quiet again. A comfortable, relaxed quiet. Regan enjoyed the feel of Emmeline’s hands in her hair and on her shoulder.

  Next time you’re bored, Regan, why don’t you go out and walk it off or something, Emmeline suggested, a smile reappearing on her face.

  Regan turned her head to look up at her. She screwed up her face theatrically and replied, I hate going out for no reason.

  You’re impossible, Emmeline laughed.

  Regan grinned, But you love me.

  Emmeline bent down to plant a kiss on Regan’s forehead.

  You’re my sun, my moon, and my stars! she breathed against Regan’s skin.

  Not your stars, because stars are evil.

  You’re the kind of stars that are good.

  Regan craned her neck to catch Emmeline’s lips, and for a while they just kissed. Slowly and affectionately. Emmeline eased herself into a more comfortable position until they lay facing each other.

  Regan clasped Emmeline’s body with arms and legs, pressing them together as hard as she could. Until she could feel Emmeline’s heartbeat through their clothes. Until every stray thought was wiped from Regan’s mind and all she saw and felt and thought about was Emmeline. She closed her eyes and gave a content sigh. Right now, Regan didn’t want to think about anything else than Emmeline’s body entangled with her, Emmeline’s breath on her face, Emmeline’s smell all around her. Right now, this was Heaven.

  But then Emmeline destroyed it by saying, Why don’t we leave the city?

  Regan pretended not to hear her. But Emmeline insisted, I hate it here. It is dark and scorched. The houses don’t look right.

  This is where we live, Regan replied. That should have been the end of the discussion, but Emmeline kept going. Somewhere outside of the city was a beautiful place, she insisted, and together they could find it.

  Somewhere not dead. Somewhere by the sea. Maybe there’s still life in the sea.

  Regan shook her head, This is all there is.

  There was nothing else except their flat and their streets. What Emmeline called Oxford but what Regan only knew as City. The place where they lived. She knew the way to the buildings that had tinned food, and she could go there by herself without forgetting how to get back. This was where they could go on Treasure Walks and discover small wonders and shiny things and, sometimes, food. The City was all there was; nothing existed beyond the ancient buildings. It had always been, even before Them, and it would always be, even long after Them.

  There are many other places, Emmeline explained.

  Regan had a feeling that they had had this particular argument before, but she failed to get a hold of the details. Memories floated through her mind. They were too fast and too far away to see them properly, though.

  We have always been here, insisted Regan, And we shall always be here.

  We haven’t always been here, Regan.

  Lie!

  We came here when we ran out of food in the other place. Do you remember? We lived in another part of Oxford, in another flat. But we had to leave.

  A glimpse of a recollection. A different place, a different flat. Maybe Regan did remember. Unless her mind was playing tricks on her. She thought it was long ago. Hundreds of years ago. It was warm then. They went on Treasure Walks barefoot.

  Emmeline nodded eagerly.

  Yes, that’s right! she said, It was summer then. Some nights were so hot that we couldn’t fall asleep.

  Regan laughed. She did remember now. When Emmeline was close, it was easier to recall past things.

  You climbed up a three and you fell down into the ash! grinned Regan.

  That was you, Emmeline grinned back, You climbed and you fell, but the ash caught you.

  Regan saw the tree before her mind’s eye; a vast, black skeleton whose naked branches pointed upwards. Emmeline said trees used to be green, but Regan didn’t always believe her when she said things like that. If trees were green, she’d remember; green was her favorite color when she had been a little girl.

  I want to get away from the cities, they’re like poison, Emmeline mumbled.

  Emmeline absentmindedly started combing Regan’s hair with her fingers. It was a marvellous feeling. Whenever Emmeline touched her, Regan felt alive.

  I bet, began Emmeline with a suddenly dreamy voice, I bet there are places where nature is recovering. It’s been so long. I bet somewhere out there is grass under the ash.

  Grass? asked Regan. She didn’t know what that looked like. Maybe it was food? Not tinned food. The other kind of food. Maybe that was grass.

  Yeah, said Emmeline, I bet we can find it. I bet it’s out there and we can find it. Then we could grow our own food; fresh food!

  Regan knew about finding things. She was usually the one who spotted treasure on their walks. Last time she found a flat, shiny thing that Emmeline had explained was a dee-vee-dee. Regan just liked the way it reflected the light on one side and the pretty picture on the other side. She would pull a string through it so she could wear it around her neck. Perhaps next time, she could keep her eyes peeled for fresh food called grass.

  Like a treasure, she told Emmeline.

  Exactly! Emmeline replied, It will be the best Treasure Walk we’ve ever gone on, because we will find grass!

  Regan loved it when Emmeline smiled. She looked so beautiful then and so content.

  A Treasure Walk, Regan said sagely, Why didn’t you say so?

  We can start tomorrow, Emmeline suggested, and we will take plenty of water and lots of tinned food, just in case.

  When Regan wanted to know why, Emmeline made a face as if it were a secret. It was fine by Regan. Emmeline was allowed a secret.

  Tomorrow then? Emmeline asked, We will go on our biggest Treasure Walk, yet. All the way to the sea!

  Regan nodded. All the way to the sea.

  I hope They haven’t burnt out the sea as they burnt out the lakes and rivers, mumbled Emmeline sleepily.

  * * * *

  The night was cold. A fresh wind was blowing into the bedroom through the windows that were nothing more but holes in the wall. To Regan, they were windows, but she did not know that windows used to be merely a framework for glass panes. Many a thing was unknown to Regan, yet it had not always been so.

  Before she had been with the Silence and forgotten even her own name, Regan had been a brilliant scientist. Her name had been known to the top leaders of the world, she was author of many a scientific breakthrough essay. Her area of expertise had been DNA—human DNA, plant DNA, animal DNA. They had called her Master of the Genomes.

  The last project she had ever worked on before the destruction of Earth was a project that had shaken her foundations, for what she was confronted with in a secret underground laboratory were the mutilated bodies of alien lifeforms. Her job, she was told, was to find out as much as she could about them. Map the being’s DNA, find out who they were, what they were made of, what gave them life and what would kill them. It was exhilarating work. So much to learn, so many strange, bizarre findings inside these corpses. The aliens looked asymmetrical and strange compared to the shapes and colours she knew as a human being, and yet to her these creatures were magnificent and beautiful. She could not but look at them and hold her breath for the awe that surged through her. Even on a microscopic level it was glorious, beautiful work she did. These beings, she concluded, had no means to attack or defend themselves; all about them was soft and sympathetic. There were no talons, no sharp canine
s, no powerful jaws. They had big, multi-facetted eyes, velveteen skin, and fragile fingers on silken wings. Not even a harsh word could they ever have muttered; they had no larynx and no tongue. Their sole means of communication, she concluded after painstaking study of their brains, was mentally; what one felt, all felt, what one wished to share, all had access to. She thought on more than one occasion how much she would have liked to shake these delicate hands and heard their language.

  The more sympathy and even love she felt towards these magnificent beasts on her slab, the more questions she suddenly had concerning the circumstances of their death. Very little information had been made known to her, yet what she knew clashed with what she found out. The wounds and marks on the alien bodies looked more like they were inflicted rather than gotten during a crash landing. In the blood samples she took she found residues of a manmade tranquiliser, the kind that would be used to knock out a polar bear or a rhinoceros. As she began to understand the strange body functions and metabolism, she realised that her silent friends had been on the point of starvation. None of these findings made sense, until she sat down and really thought about it. She thought about why the incredible news of alien life was being kept secret from everybody else. She thought about why she was bound by a legal document she had signed to not even discuss her findings with other people working on the same project. She thought about why it was so important to the people who had hired her that she came up with a way to kill them. Why find out how to kill a sentient being that was all peace and no malice?

  When the cold, ugly truth hit her, it was too late to cause a fuss, because that’s when They were spotted on radar screens. Thousands of them, perhaps millions of them. A vast armada of alien ships on a course to Earth, and there was nothing humankind could do.

  They came, They destroyed, They never tried to make contact. Life on Earth was there, and in the blink of an eye it wasn’t anymore. All that was left was the Silence that drove all but two remaining humans into madness and death. Two women were saved because they found each other and healed each other. But the Silence had left marks on both of them, more so on Regan, who chose her new name because she liked the way it rolled off her tongue. What Regan didn’t know and would never find out, was that she knew the terrible truth of what had happened.

  Inside her malformed mind lay a dark, twisted knowledge, protected from being found out by a maelstrom of forgotten memories. Regan’s mind itself was protecting her from ever remembering or speaking this truth. It had to do with strange entities on a slab that had died from torture inflicted upon them by humans who didn’t or couldn’t understand that just because something was different it didn’t mean it was a threat.

  What one felt, all felt. Perhaps even across the enormous distance from Earth to their home planet.

  The alien attack on Earth had been retaliation for the torture and slaughter that they all must have felt. And if one scientist had decided to share her last ever findings with her employers, the attack could have been averted by instantly killing each and every single alien on board these ships with a very specific length of microwaves.

  But she had kept quiet out of love for creatures she had never met alive.

  THE END

  ABOUT LEX BAKER

  Lex was born and raised in Europe and uses the personal pronoun ke (ke, ker, kim). Ke has a degree in theatre and mostly write plays. Lex has lived in the US and in Japan, speaking, among other languages, English and Japanese fluently. Lex actively supports women’s rights, children’s rights, and animal rights. Ke lives with ker family on the other side of Conventional.

  ABOUT JMS BOOKS LLC

  JMS Books LLC is a small queer press with competitive royalty rates publishing LGBT romance, erotic romance, and young adult fiction. Visit jms-books.com for our latest releases and submission guidelines!