I could hear the slow drip of our clothes where they hung, a poignant pluck loud compared to the lapping river outside. Jill’s breathing slowed from shuddered huffs into deeper, slow pulls. My arms were numb, from cold or their weight I don’t know. It was warmer beside them, but my feet… Marc’s chiding voice was there as he cupped my toes and blew heat against them, snow still on the mat by the door. Hushed whispers as the baby slept in a wood crib by an ember fire. The cattle were fed, their munching shuffles heard through the adjoining wall. Precious warm kisses.
I twitched with a start and opened my eyes, swallowing my fatigue as I strained to pull a tingling arm free. Sandip shifted. Fuck. Stay awake. The light was bright outside, the day blessedly free of any ship or drone or tracker. My eyelids drooped. What good would I be against them, anyway?
I woke again when the light was fading, to a sharp jab in my ribs.
“Good job on watch,” Jill whispered. She was sitting up beside me, her legs still beneath the shared blanket.
I squinted at her before I saw that Sandip was still sleeping nearby. I tried to wiggle cold-stiff toes and sat up, sloughing the blanket onto him. “We should move. We can get back by dawn. Get him up, okay?”
“Our jackets and boots are still wet.”
“We’ll make do. We’ll take the blankets.” I stiffly rose, hobbled on cold feet.
“Should I search the building?”
“No!” The words snapped, and she looked down as Sandip sat up into the blanket. “No. We’ll go home. Just let me go pee.”
The canoe was waiting, flipped and ready with our wet packs when I was relieved and dressed. The waters were calm, the skies overcast. Jill was in the bow, wrapped in a blanket, and Sandip had the other in hand for me.
“I haven’t seen any movement – or heard anything unusual. Not that I’ve been awake long,” he said, and handed me my binoculars too.
“Sure you don’t want this?” I waved the blanket.
“I think you need it,” Sandip said, and held the canoe steady. “Here.”
“Did she get you with her icy feet too? Just like when we were little…”
I sat midship and wrapped my lower body in the blanket. He hopped in and pushed us off as I took up a paddle with Jill. The river would guide us home – guide us to the safety of the ring dyke community, and the chickens in the farmyard – and Marc’s waiting arms.
“Let’s see if we can do this right?” Sandip murmured, and directed us out into the current and the waiting night.
LAST MAN STANDING
Frank Westcott
Disaster struck. One man left standing. No woman to speak of. He could see. If there was one. How would he procreate? Could he. If he could. Find a woman. And he had any juice left.
Food would be scarce. And there was no power to speak of. Candles. One windmill. Tilted. No cows. To speak of. He stammered even if no one was listening.
His mouth felt like a broken slot machine after the fire. No handle to open it. Lips sealed. He stammered anyway, inside his head even if there was no one to listen, if he spoke out loud, if he could, and his lips weren’t sealed. In the silence. Around him. Gracefully. Or gracelessly. Whatever the case, if he spoke, if his lips magically opened. But he stammered in his thoughts, as if he spoke them and there was someone listening. Able to. But there wasn’t. He heard. With the last scream of death from the barn.
They called the barn the dying place. Or the other way around. The dying place was the barn. You get things turned around when you are the second-last man standing, or sitting, for that matter. I was the second-last man standing. It was the way the cards were written, dealt, off the dealer, off the bottom of the deck, his deck, after he fell to the floor in the barn, and the cards scattered all over the place. His place. And the air. Around him. Like ice in the water of time that no longer existed. Because this was the future. We were seeing. Toronto. After the storm. The last storm. We would see. Witness. Or be alive for. There had been many. Predicted. All of the them. Except the last one. It came first. Thing. In. The. Monring. Morning.
My fingers slip on the keys now like the last man’s speech inside his head. You see. I can see into the future. This future. His future. Toronto without a bus. Line. Or streetcar named desire, if that’s what you wanted. Time had fallen out o the CN tower, renamed something else I can’t remember. What. And the periods are slipping all over the place too on this machine. I wonder where the comma went. Oh… there it is … ,… Found one. How many commas on a typewriter, anyway. I can’t remember. Memory’s not too good after the storm. The second-last one. That is why I am the second-last man standing. Or sitting. For that matter. I can’t remember if I said that already. All ready. All aboard. But I might have. And the conductor called from the train.
“Boarding all. All aboard. If you are boarding. Last man standing. No last man standing. No second man standing.”
I am the second man standing. The last man can’t see me. He is blind now. Temporarily, until he gets his speech back. Stammers. Now. Like a horse with hiccups. Neigh-i-neigh is what he sounds like with every word he thinks, and does not say, but thinks he does because he is stammering inside his head like he would if he could get his words out and his lips weren’t sealed.
Time does that. Is like that. After a disaster. Train wreck. Bus wreck. Plane wreck. Any wreck. And this is a disaster.
“Last man standing,” the conductor calls again. But the last man doesn’t hear. He is listening to himself stammer, and wondering where the stammer came from.
“Must be the train,” he mutters inside his head, stammering like always, now. Like now. Always. He’ll never speak write or type right again. Disasters are like that. Having trouble with my own words now. Stammering inside my fingers that used to no… know… which word I meant and how to spell it direct from my brain. Disasters are like that. Too. The way he speaks. And the way he writes. I write. Mixed that one up too.
It’s cold in here. I am going to turn up the heat. But I can’t find the thermometer thing. I go into the kitchen where the thermostat used to be. But there is nothing there but the train station. Now. The house moved and became a train station that looks like a subway because it is underground now. But the roof, a roof, came with it. Oddly. But this is the future. Toronto is gone. Buffalo slid over from texas where it went first. And there is no more TV reporting disasters. This is the last one even though I am the second-last man standing waiting to the last man standing to stand alone.
He wants to procreate one last time, but doesn’t realize there is no procreation to be had. All the test tubes are gone. “Why do they call test tubes test tubes?” I ask him. But he doesn’t answer. Can’t. His lips are sealed. Frustrated by time and space. Because they no longer exist. Only the future exists. The present is gone. Into the past. And the past never existed. Had to make room for the present going there. Time warp. Life warp. Some kind of warp this is I haven’t got a name for yet. And probably won’t if the last man standing becomes the last man standing, and I am gone.
That’s how it works. You have to wait for it. And not get on the train even if the conductor calls you. All the people on the train are sitting. So there are only two of us standing. I am disintegrating. Slowly. That’s how it works and how they said it would work.
The last man goes into a field looking for a cow to drink from the windmill first. The water. He is thirsty. But doesn’t know if the water is poisoned. Like everything else. That’s how they do it. Did it. Poison. And the waters tilted with the windmills and exploded taking fingers and time and chicken with it. Fingers. And Tim Hortons. And Kentucky Fried. Even if Texas got here. And Buffalo slid over. Without wings. And remorse. Or hockey. And Buffalo Sabres. They’ve got a new team in Phoenix, I hear. Heard. Before the last TtV went out. That was supposed to be TV but the room shook with the shaking of the train leaving. The trembling. Of the afterlife those on the trai n entered. Are entering. Now. In the field of dreams they wish they had played on instea
d of this one. Build it and they will come. Well, somebody built heave n and that is where they are going. The ground is shaking. Trembling. More than ever. Now. And I see the last man drinking from a cup. Sorry about that sign. Don’t know how it got there. These typewriters they left me are sucky. Half the keys don’t work. And the half that do have other symbols on them. Slid over from the shaking. And the melt. In the ice. After the pisen, poison, left. And there was oly only the two of us standing. Like that. I’ll go dslower. To make less mistakes. The trembling plus having to use two typewriters to get all the letters I need is slow enough.
I gotta make this short. Keep it short. Only 800 words left. That’s all they gave me. And I am done. Two thousand-ish, they said. So it is done. The last man is looking for that woman for a final procreation, but he doesn’t know that the future doesn’t know the difference between a man and a woman. The future has no procreation. There are only souls. Wasted. Or not. Used. Or not. Lost or not. Found or not. It doesn’t matter. Everything is the future now so we can go on living. The past is gone. The present is the past. And if the present existed we’d all be dead. So we have to go on in the future. Never getting there.
Toronto laughs at us. The last man stammers. Collapses. And becomes the last man kneeling. I think he is praying. Or catholic. Or something. But he is only dying.
I am disnintegrsting more. And the shaking is getting on me now. To me. The bus left before the train. And I wish I had taken it and not seen my future where I had to be the second-last man standning. I walk over to the last man and check to see how many words I have left. I take both typewriters so I can get all the words in without with as few mistakes as possible. It is hard writing this way.
“Get up,” I say to the last man standing, who is now kneeling, still, and blabbering about something he heard yesterday, but he doesn’t know yesterday is gone and only the present now, and this is the future and he better get up because he has to be the last man standing.
I walk to the foyer where texas used to be for awhile and see Floriada inching closer. You’ll have to translate. The typoes. One typwerwriter quit and now only one-winging it on one… and the last man stands so I can sit and follow my destiny into the future, which is now.
I have no regrets. Only a tilted windmill and father time complex. I wonder what the futre holds but I am not there yet.
The train rumbles out of the station and I follow it as best I can. With my heart. Because that is all I have left. My heart. It is undone. The last man standing gives up on procreating. His lips are sealed. And he still stammers in his head thinking he is speaking out loud, and he is embarrassed. Just like he used to be before his lips were sealed by the fire. It doesn’t matter. He’ll be dead soon, too. Death is like that. So are disasters. You are dead before you know it. And if the future wasn’t all there was. Is. I couldn’t write about it before it got here. But that’s what futures are about. Isn’t it. Aren’t they. They the getting here.
The train follows me out of the station.
I wave goodbye to the last man.
He is looking for a semen cup to leave soeting something behind. But he already has ’cause the future is now, like I said. I board the plane, train.
“Ah… second man,” the conductor says.
I see he is written in italics and wonder at the font. I didn’t know this typerwriter was a selectrix and had a ball font you could turn and get different script. My fingers have stopped moving. The future is written. Anyway.
Two hundred an d five words left. Not many to go. And the end is near. In sight. But it hasn’t happened yet. Because it never will. It is the future. The end. That is the secret of living in the future. It never gets here. Ands if you want to live for eternity you just have to stay in the future. Forget the past. Even the present. Just remember the future. As you see it. Read it.
The last man standing is stammering inside his head to a cow he can’t see and isn’t there but he wishes it was so he could see it drink from the waters of the tilted windmill flowing in the stream of life and consiousness where cows drink from streams o f futre tenses and remedies for all that ails you as long as it isn’t beer ale. That would be a laguer without a key. Lost my spell check with the typewriter reincarnation. Four words to go before there are only a few left and I wish this typewriter had a ribbon so I could see what it writes… but it does in the future… else how do you think you see it…
I reread the beginning in the future like you reading it for the first time. Are you sitting? Or standing? Or neither. What is YOUR future?
I read,
Disaster struck. One man left standing. No woman to speak of. He could see. If there was one. How would he procreate? Could he. If he could. Find a woman. And he had any juice left.
Food would be scarce. And there was no power to speak of. Candles. One windmill. Tilted. No cows. To speak of. He stammered even if no one was listening.
DOG FOR DINNER
dvsduncan
The dinner special was dog. Why should that night have been any different? The meat was popular, amongst those who were permitted to eat it, and was relatively plentiful, though not as plentiful as it had been a few years ago. The city packs had been heavily hunted and trapped. The surviving animals were wary and clever, more like ghosts than prey. Most of the meat came from the country now. That was fine with Joyce Collingwood because the country dogs tasted better.
Her cleaver came down with a solid thud. Good dog meat meant good stew. She looked around the market tent and then back at the ragged, red parts on her block. There were few potential customers at the moment but it was still early. Most of her trade was done after sunset, when the wind died and the fog rose. Then a blaze would be built in the centre of the tent to keep the damp out and a minstrel would fill the air with music. She hoped it would be the hurdy-gurdy man with the honey voice. He sang about the world before the Great Fire.
A burst of laughter attracted her attention. Guardsmen were pushing their way through the flap in the far wall, holding it open for their fellows and letting rough gusts through. Joyce quickly threw a cloth over the raw meat. No one wanted gritty stew. When the last guardsman was in, they stood as a mob to consider the stalls. One of the merchants quickly rearranged the flaps to keep the wind out.
“Hey, Joyce,” one of the guardsmen called, as he separated from the group. His name was Otis, though whether that was his first or last name Joyce neither knew nor cared. He considered himself handsome. His uniform had been freshly laundered but it was already mottled with dust. “What’s for dinner?”
“Dog,” she said, without turning around.
“Again?”
“My customers like dog.”
“I could be your customer too, if you’d only cooked something a Gaian could eat.”
He was smiling. Broadly. She could feel it. There was no need to look up from her work. She asked, “Why not try the dog?”
“You trying to convert me?” he asked in return.
Joyce sighed and wiped at her cheek, spreading a broad smear of blood across it in the process. Then she looked up to meet his eyes. Two of his fellows had joined him, both large and well muscled. They all wore the same smug grin. She knew what they saw: a skinny teenager with a wild mop of red hair dressed in a stained apron and the coat of a Penitent.
“The trouble is that, by order of the Caretakers, it’s illegal to prepare or eat meat,” Otis said.
“Unless I have a dispensation,” she told him. He knew that her paperwork was all in order but the coat and nails alone should have been enough for him.
“And why would you have a dispensation?” Otis asked, feigning ignorance. His backup chuckled.
Joyce shot a poisonous look at the pair behind Otis and then returned her full attention to the oaf directly in front of her. She glared and said nothing.
“Oh look,” Otis continued, pointing at the three nails pinned through the left breast of her coat. His eyes grew wide as he asked, “Are you a Wrather?�
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“A sister of the Convocation Penitent.”
“Yes,” Otis nodded sagely to the continued entertainment of his fellows. “A Penitent. Of course. But even with a dispensation you are only allowed to serve animals that died of natural causes. How did this dog die?”
“Blood loss.” Joyce had had enough. She folded her arms across her chest and narrowed her eyes. The cleaver was still clenched in her left fist.
Otis looked at the bloody steel in mock horror and backed away, his hands held up as though he were pleading for his life. He crooned, “I am so sorry, Sister. My friends and I meant no offense. We’ll be on our way. Gaia be with you.”
With that said, the trio moved on, finding it difficult to walk in a straight line as they gave full vent to their amusement. Joyce watched them go before turning back to her butchery. She pulled the cloth off the meat and brought the cleaver down with a solid blow that severed a canine spine. Under her breath, she muttered, “Gaia go with you. I don’t want the bitch around here.”
She was not speaking entirely of the goddess. Joyce chanced a glance across the tent. The dowager had been watching the exchange. That was bad luck. Joyce went back to work. There was a lecture coming but let the old woman scold. The guardsmen were arrogant bastards. Someone had to stand up to them. Their job was to keep the peace in the name of the Caretakers, not to harass women trying to make a living by selling dog stew. Joyce finished hacking the corpse into manageable parts and exchanged her cleaver for a carving knife. The bones she threw into a stock pot while setting the meat aside for cubing. To the guardsmen, she was little more than that bleeding pile. Just meat. But her flesh was her own and would never be theirs. Let them eat dog if they dared. They would never taste her, despite the wishes of that crooked tyrant. Joyce looked again, a flicker of eyes to mark the old woman’s progress.
The dowager could see how pretty Joyce might be with combed hair and a clean face, dressed in a clinging gown or not dressed at all. Youth and beauty brought a good price and there was a place for young and beautiful women in the dowager’s pleasure house. Joyce wanted no part of that. This the dowager took as a betrayal.
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