The Queen of diamonds was smeared with purple lipstick.
“What do we have?” Frederick asked, a little too loudly into my ear. “Shall I hold them?” he mouthed, but I was already placing the rations into his hand.
Everyone had put on their best clothes, and so it was easy to spot which of the least were first in line for rations, and which were further back. Some even wore multiples of layers, something which would never happen in the sweat-stained heat of the minor tent.
“Ah, we need better luck soon,” Frederick groaned quietly.
I nodded, running my fingers over olives, wrapped tight in clear plastic. I finished the rest of my glass as the booze passed nearby.
“Blondee,” Tie warned. The other women had barely touched theirs.
The tent grew louder and we lost more hands than we won—though I was sure some were trying to help us—and the air warmed.
A man in the corner looked pale, his wife was feeling his forehead. They weren’t noticed until he staggered from the tent, her giving a small, stunted wave goodbye.
We won some hands, and the rations were piling up by our knees. Much of it was chocolate, and I wondered if I could place some on my tongue without looking rude, or ruining the game. I decided I couldn’t. I also wanted the swirls of cheese, but they too were forbidden until the end of the game. I was feeling hungry.
“See, we’ll see if we can win another,” Frederick gasped, his lungs heavy, his breath sour. He held up his glass, but the man opposite held the bottle of booze upside-down, exaggerating his unhappy face.
“I’ll wait,” Frederick said, “I’ll wait until he, Jay, gets back.”
Jay didn’t come back. More and more people looked ill,
a man,
a man,
a man,
one woman,
another man. They left in pairs, concerned wives taking their husbands to bed. The one ill woman staggered out with her husband, the two of them leaning against the weight of the other. As soon as they were out of sight we heard a loud retch from beyond the tent.
Frederick leant his face against mine. It was cold and wet.
More people left, two-by-two, manly stumbles and womanly waves. There were worried looks on faces, and cards were held with trembling fingers, but no-one said anything. Husbands and wives whispered to one another, wives cooing and shushing, with gentle kisses on the cheek or hand.
“Do you need to leave, Frederick?” I whispered. He shook his head.
“We’re winning.”
Soon there were just a half-dozen of us left, the other two wives staring at the ground, their hands clenched to their husbands, each husband growing pale.
The green mat, covered in discarded cards, was splattered in orange, all shades of orange, a loud heaving filling the tent, before being silenced by a shrill scream.
We stepped from the tent as carefully as we could, following each cry, following the violent chatter. Screaming.
I felt fine. I felt fine. Frederick’s hand was slimy.
The screams came from the moderate tent, and we were joined by frightened minor wives and ill-faced minor husbands, all of us stepping as quickly and as gracefully as we could toward them.
Frederick and I entered first. Ketamine was screaming, over and over, endless. In the centre, spread amongst cards, in amongst mouldy bread and bitter chalk-sweets, there was Jay.
There was Jay; his orange-splattered face and sprawled body.
There was Jay; his eyes half-open, half-closed.
There was Jay; the tips of his pubes poking up from his trousers; his skin white as paper.
THE WIND HOWLS HERE LIKE A GHOST. I can hear small leaves sliding over the tarpaulin.
Jay was first.
Jay was only the first.
Life was expelled, forced out from every orifice: a pale husk remained.
The shrieks of frightened wives were everywhere. You couldn’t avoid it. The stone woman watched it all. Her face remained unchanged.
Did I tell you she’s here with me, here in this hole?
She’s in my hand.
Her face never changes, I can tell you that. Whatever happens she looks the same. I don’t envy it.
Wax-paper skin. Frederick too was forcing life from himself.
But I didn’t shriek.
SHE WATCHED OVER US, and sometimes I liked her and sometimes I wanted her away. Either way it was my fault, I had brought her indoors. She never changed expression, and never looked very happy or very sad. She didn’t have eyes, or lips really, perhaps that was why. She was stone. Still, sometimes she seemed nearly real, and I’d offer her a luxury: something rare, a little packet of mustard, or red licorice. She never took it.
“She’s not real, my dear.”
“And you are?”
Frederick grew worse. He’d stopped speaking now, and his eyes stared in blank confusion, unseeing. Once or twice I’d left to get more water, and I’d left her next to him, hoping he wouldn’t be too afraid. It was better to be watched over, even if it was only by the small stone woman. He didn’t seem to notice.
“Do you think he’ll die?”
“Shut up.”
“Sorry,” Tie whimpered. He had been saying that a lot recently. He had been less rude in general.
My arms ached and creaked when I moved them. I had been filling the bucket several times a day, getting more water, back and forth to the courtyard. At first he had been sick, over expensive fabrics and even in his box of clothes. Now he lay naked, curled up, like a fleshy stone. He had even been sick at her stone feet, even on her feet. She didn’t look angry.
At first he’d kept running out of the hut, behind it, and I’d hear the hurried scrape of earth as he frantically dug a hole, and then a groan. He’d left more and more often, until there weren’t any scraping sounds, just another groan. That was when I started going for water. Water would help, I had heard that somewhere. He wanted it—he’d gulp it down, droplets racing down his neck.
“Frederick?” I tried, shaking him a little. He turned his head, opened his eyes and stared for a moment, before letting them fall closed again. I thought about climbing in with him, wrapping my arms around him and telling him he’d be fine.
I’d been sleeping in the yellow chair. He wasn’t leaving the bed to shit now, and I cleaned it up as best I could, but the satin sheets were stained. I brought a cup to his lips and tipped water into his mouth, before collapsing back into the chair, my arms stiff at my sides.
My back hurt. I stood to the sound of my bones clicking. I scavenged the kitchen to see what I could make for breakfast. I wouldn’t be able to give him any. I shoved some poppyseed crackers in my mouth and wandered over to the bed. I noticed we were out of water, and went to get more, preparing my arms for the work.
“Are you ready, Blondee?”
“Ready for what, Tie?”
There was a furious buzzing. I let the door slam behind me and tried to cover my ears. It came from everywhere. The air was thick and dirty—rancid and soiled.
“People are sick, darling Blondee, everyone is sick.”
“I know that, Tie.”
I pulled my shirt over my mouth. It smelled of my own sweat. My stomach was exposed but I didn’t care. One or two wives were milling around, their faces twisted in confusion, obviously unsure what to do with themselves. I passed them without a word.
The courtyard was quiet, pristine. Pilsner stood by the water tap.
“Blondee.”
“Pilsner. Could you step aside, I need some water.”
He stepped over slightly, watching me as he did so. “Are you ill?”
“No.”
“Is he ill?”
“He is.”
The water fell in a sickly trickle. It would take ages to fill the bucket. I sighed.
“Some are worse than others,” he stated, flat and matter-of-fact.
“Worse?”
“Go over there,” he motioned to the moderate land, “go
over there and see.”
I hesitated.
“No-one will stop you. You’ve been there before, we both know it. Go on, I’ll watch your bucket.”
Over the embankment I couldn’t see anything different—perhaps there was more vomit on the ground, mushed into the gravel. I wandered, not sure what I was looking for. Near the huts the buzzing was deafening, but there was a silence, a quiet I couldn’t work out. It was as I was running my knuckles over the spine of a dwindled tree that I realised. There were no voices. No cries, no shouting, no whimpering or retching or grunting. There were no frightened wives. I had to leave. I returned to the courtyard.
“It’s—”
“They’re all dead. Pretty much. Most of them are, I haven’t checked everyone.” Pilsner kept his voice still as ever.
“It’s not—” I mumbled, kneeling down to the bucket.
“It was the booze. But you know that, right? It was the booze. I’ve figured it out. The moderates, they drank it raw, without anything to mix it with. It was the booze.”
“Right.”
“But you’re giving him water, that’s good. I think a lot of people will live—but more will leave before it’s done. They won’t get help you know, they believe all they need is each other. But you helped, Blondee, you helped make it that way. Most of them don’t even know to fetch water. It’s probably just as well, there wouldn’t be enough to go around, not all at once.”
“It was that way before.”
“I don’t know how many people will live, Blondee. How could I? The severes didn’t drink anything, no-one gave them any. Perhaps there will be more of them than there are of us, when all’s said and done. We’d be in trouble then, Blondee, I’m telling you.”
“There must be something we can do,” I choked, my voice rough and coarse as wood. Even without enough water, there must be something to do, I knew there must.
Pilsner didn’t say anything.
The book, the book must have something, it must have some answers.
“The book,” I pleaded, “there must be something in the book.”
“There isn’t.”
“Let me see it,” I had to see it, “let me see the book. I can help, I can find help I know I can.”
“You’ve done enough, Blondee.”
“Pilsner—”
“Enough.”
The bucket was overflowing. Pilsner turned the tap off and handed it to me. There were tears, I couldn’t stop them, I just had to keep them from falling into the bucket.
And all the world was gone, but I watched her. Fibre-optic cables over miles and miles.
This was our game: I lost and she won. She said that was companionship—of course I let her win. I was in love with her. We had never met. She was beautiful: long dark hair and big eyes.
My heart wasn’t in the game: I was watching her as she watched other people. It was an excuse, of course, all an excuse. She called me Norna, and that wasn’t even my real name. Why did she call me that? Well, she wouldn’t know better. She had never even seen my real face. I wasn’t Norna, I was Loke, and I wished I was thin, and maybe even a woman, but I was fat and I had a short stubby penis that people laughed at. But I always kept myself smart, I always wore a tie. Even by myself. Even with everyone gone. It pays to be presentable. At least, I thought, it might.
I wondered, perhaps I could show her myself. My real face. It wouldn’t matter anyway, beggars can’t be choosy, and there were so few of us left.
Imagine that, I told myself, romance because of plague.
This was our game—it was all we had. There were no neighbours, not really. It was all pretend. We’d sit, and pretend to watch others, we’d pretend that the kitchen opposite her apartment was full of people having tea, rather than corpses turning colour. We’d sit and pretend to watch others because there was so little else to do. Wait for rescue, they said, wait for rescue. I’d been certain it wasn’t safe to go outside, though she had gone, once or twice. She had found drugs in her neighbour’s apartment, and a diary. We read it together, hundreds of miles apart. I told her how to take the K.
We’d sit and wait for rescue, she and I, pretending to watch the world. We couldn’t even admit to one another that the world was dead. I laughed about it, late at night, when I’d gone offline. I laughed so hard.
How long had it been? It didn’t do to count the days. The messages they sent told us not to. I had shut myself away from day one—I saw a body on the street, skin black and face twisted: it was one of the kids I dealt to. I decided the street wasn’t for me. I told her about it, but she doesn’t like to think about the pain of the world. She talks about her neighbours like they’re real. She must believe they are.
Day by day I’d stopped hearing any noises from my own neighbours—they had run away and died or they had stayed and they had died. The ceiling in the kitchen started leaking—the bathtub upstairs had been left on. I tried to call the superintendent but there was no phone signal. There wasn’t any phone signal anywhere. But the internet worked, so I emailed him: there was nothing else I could do.
At first people hurried by the street outside—frantic cars racing to safety; bicycles; even carts. Everyone rushing somewhere and I stayed at home. I mostly avoided listening to the official announcements on the radio, though they had some way of sending them to every email address in the land.
Websites stopped being updated. Blogs went silent. There were fewer and fewer videos being uploaded, but I didn’t care, the videos were depressing. People filming their dying moments. Hundreds of thousands of them, like they were original. So many videos and so few people viewing them. Maybe they watched each other—maybe it was like dying together. That would make sense.
All I’d worried about was her—every day we met online at ten in the morning, and every day I was relieved to hear her voice. I’d ask her if she was sick, and she said no. She asked me if I was sick, and I said not yet.
Neither of us got sick.
I didn’t care what we talked about, I didn’t care if she won these games. She told me the man opposite her apartment was crying at the post-woman—she was triumphant. I was glad she was still alive.
Eventually the ceiling in the kitchen collapsed, but I’d stopped using the kitchen anyway—I’d gone through the rest of the building to find food, there was no shortage of that. I was no longer so scared of leaving the apartment, if I was going to get sick I would have by now. It’s in the air, they’d said. Pray. The news channels had actually told us to pray.
I laughed so hard.
I had to ask.
“Was that you, Tie?”
“A world dead of plague? Probably not, Blondie. But how would I know?”
There wasn’t time for these stories, stories that didn’t even fit together. Who cared what happened before? My world was dying.
It was after taking the water home and wiping the last drops from my eyes that I decided to find Tanned. I had to find Tanned. We hadn’t spoken for so long—this way there was a chance I could help him. We had been friends once, we could be again.
Tanned was a minor: maybe he’d downed less of the fatal drink, perhaps he’d drunk just enough to leave his insides intact—discomforted but intact. I stumbled through the cries of anguished wives, terrible sirens surrounding me.
In front was a woman, her husband doubled over, his cheek on the floor, his arse in the air.
“Crisp. Crisp. Crisp,” she cried, her husband’s name pounding through her, her body rigid. What else could she do? Where else could she move? She may as well scream his name.
Her voice faded.
I reached Tanned’s hut. He wasn’t inside: his patch of foam was untouched, his rations were properly stored away. I had to find him.
I called his name, over and over. “Tanned. Tanned. Tanned.”
I walked without direction. What else could I do?
There was a buzzing at the minors’ fire tap. The buzzing of a thousand flies. The air was thick; putr
id and sodden. I covered my mouth with my fraying pullover. Beneath the flies were bodies.
Pale skin and open mouths. Eyes unfocused.
Had they gone there together, to the cooking corner, trying to find solace there? They were piled five high, near-all men, the gentle arm of a woman poking through the mass of clothing.
I gagged.
“The wives brought them here, Blondee. This is their place. They didn’t know what else to do. You’ve deserted them.”
“Tie, you need to shut your fucking face right now.”
“Do you see my face, my dear? Do you see his?”
I looked. I pulled at shoulders, rolling them over, to the ground with a soft heavy thump. I wasn’t careful—I didn’t need to be careful. They wouldn’t know, not now. I was rough, not gentle. The eyes of these husbands didn’t see me.
I saw old neighbours: faces wrenched in agonies, mouths lined with red-orange sick. One was clutching his bare hairy belly, swelling with gas.
There was Green—his beard crusted in vomit, his skin smooth, the texture of wax. There was Gut, his old lover, the one who had cried for him. But where was Green’s new wife, why wasn’t she with him? How could she be alone?
I pulled Green by the arm, pulling him free from the pile. Beneath was Jay, the first. But his wife—where was Ketamine? She couldn’t desert him now, could she? Do your duty Ketamine, keep watch, wipe away his cares.
I pulled and pushed. Arms, legs and bellies.
And there he was. Tanned.
The same as the rest of them. I don’t need to explain.
I stepped back. Panting. The effort hit me like a gust of wind. I gagged again.A woman was watching me. She was stood over to the side. I hadn’t heard her arrive, she had been stood there the whole time. I knew her face, her sturdy, manly figure. I didn’t know her name.
Forget Yourself Page 18