by Sabina Green
Would you really be here, I wanted to say, if you didn’t believe it at least a little?
“It wasn’t a coincidence, was it? That you were driving behind me and stayed close after the accident?”
I poured boiling water into two cups. “No.”
“According to what you were saying, you’ve made the decision to save Dad and Ruby a long time ago. So why were you following me?”
“Because we’re supposed to watch the chosen ones and their close family until the end. What if something in their life changed and they would no longer match the criteria The Collective so carefully selected?”
“You’d replace them?”
“Probably.”
She took the drink I handed her without taking her eyes off me. “Let’s say that’s true. There are still some things that don’t make sense to me.”
“Ask away.”
“Don’t you think it’s a bit hypocritical for The Collective to point their finger at all the bad aspects of humanity, especially all the violence, and then commit world-wide genocide?”
“That’s not how The Collective feels about it.”
“How does it feel about it?”
“Well, you’ve seen the video… People cause too much suffering and don’t bring anything good to the table. They are pests and those need to be destroyed.”
“The end justifies the means, that’s what you’re talking about?”
I shrugged. That’s exactly how it was, but everyone looked at it differently.
“How about all those innocent people you’ll kill? They will suffer and die because of your alleged plague.”
“They won’t suffer for long…” That had come out harsher than I intended. I didn’t like the idea of helpless children and frail old ladies fighting the plague, of course, I wasn’t made of stone. But how else could we ensure that humanity only leaves behind a small community? Until now nothing else has worked, no experiments in bringing about order or controlling population growth. The final attempt had to be drastic.
We walked over to the sofa. The only thing visible behind Andrew’s screen was the top half of his face and his eyes, following us around the room.
“Aren’t you sick of it, Connie? Don’t you want it all to be over?” I asked after a while, when we were sitting down. She looked at me questioningly, and even though I knew she understood, I explained: “The daily wave of animal abuse, murders, rapes, thefts. Drug and alcohol addiction. Famine, child slaves. For a long time I’ve felt like there’s more evil than good in people. I can’t take it anymore.” And to make it absolutely clear… “I don’t want to live anymore… but I don’t want to die knowing that all these horrors just go on.”
“I also don’t want these horrors to go on, and I also don’t want to die. What gives the people in The Collective the right to end it all for us?”
“What gives other people the right to enslave animals or keep them in the prisons they so generously call the zoo? What right do people have to treat others like dirt under their shoes, to torture them or let them starve on purpose? What right do they have to take other creatures’ lives? To pay a ridiculous fee for the opportunity to shoot and kill an endangered animal and bring home a part of its body as a trophy? Or to rape someone and walk away unharmed because the victim is too scared to talk?”
“I’m not saying there aren’t bad people in the world! But what about the innocent ones, dammit?”
“As long as there are good people, there will be bad ones too. You can’t separate one from the other and as long as there are people around, there will also be violence and suffering. At least until The Collective steps in.”
I was beginning to feel like an old gramophone, stuck playing the same tune over and over.
Connie hid her head in her hands, and for a while the only sound in the room was Andrew occasionally typing something. When she finally looked up, her eyes were full of tears and her nose was stuffed up. I moved a box of paper tissues towards her across the coffee table.
“So why do you want to do it, anyway?” she asked after loudly blowing her nose. “Why don’t you want to leave the world as it is?”
I leaned deeper into the sofa and sighed. I didn’t like remembering… but sometimes it was good to relive the past, to have enough strength to do my part for The Collective. To be able to properly justify it to myself. As I said before, there were many cruel, perverse people in the world. And I had the damn bad luck to be related to some of them.
“I was born into a family of junkies,” I started and realised that I’ve put on the hard, condemning tone again. You’d think that after all those years of therapy I’d be able to keep some distance from it, that it wouldn’t hurt so much, that maybe I’d finally understand the actions of others, and move on. But that wasn’t the case. “My mother was taking hard drugs all throughout her pregnancy and I was born addicted. Obviously I don’t remember my first months and years, although I can guess what they were like, based on my later memories. I mainly remember being alone a lot, whether my mother and father were in the house or not. They’d either go somewhere and leave me alone, even when I was little, or they’d shoot up at home. They were out of it for hours, sometimes even days at a time, they weren’t aware of anything around them, including their son.”
Connie was watching me silently, her face slowly turning into an expression of pity.
“They were functional junkies and alcoholics. Would you believe they managed to go to work and get by? They were always quiet, trying not to attract attention, so nobody noticed them for a long time.”
“They were…?”
“Are,” I corrected myself. I didn’t want anything to do with them and often used past tense when talking about them. “They just about managed to pay rent and buy a little bit of food, but most of their money was spent on drugs. When they were behind on rent, the landlord kicked them out. They pulled themselves together for a while and behaved, found a new place to stay, went to work… before they fell right back into it. We used to move a lot. When they didn’t have a job, they made money however they could. Most of what they were doing wasn’t legal, but somehow they were able to get away with it. It didn’t take long for my mother to realise that a very effective way to make money was to sell her body.”
Connie’s eyes widened in shock. Could she predict what was coming?
“I have no idea how long it took before her body was so destroyed that only the really desperate were still interested. The ones who didn’t have much choice. And yet the clientele was so extensive, and the requests so numerous.”
She shook her head and I knew she didn’t want me to say it out loud. I did it anyway.
“I was seven when someone crept into my bedroom for the first time.”
No! I don’t want to! My baby voice had been haunting my nightmares for almost thirty years.
Then the other one, the rough, male one. If you make a noise I’ll slit your throat. Be a good boy now and lie down here.
I didn’t even have to go into details. Connie had heard enough.
“At the age of twelve, I finally realised I didn’t have to put up with these regular client visits.” My face twisted at those words. “Any life was better than what was happening at home. I packed up my stuff and ran away. I lived on the street and…”
She raised her eyebrows. “And?”
My voice was shaking when I told her about the years of barely getting by, and about a kind lady who took me in, who I started to call Grandma. How I finally, for the first time in my life, felt content and whole. And that, not long after, someone heartless and selfish tore that feeling apart. By the end of my monologue my voice was husky and we were both teary.
“I went to therapy when I was older, and then decided to become a therapist myself, to help others like me. But it’s hopeless, Connie. You can’t help people like me, because these
memories cannot be erased, and those who say they can get over it are lying to themselves!” I cleared my throat. “You wouldn’t believe how many people ask for help. And that’s just a fragment of those who were raped and abused. Most people just bear it, because they think they don’t have any other choice, or they don’t know what to do to stop it.”
There was another moment of quiet. I already felt like I was giving her too much information at once. I wanted to give her some space to absorb it all.
“What happened to the other ones?” she spoke, her voice unnaturally high.
“Who?”
“The others from The Collective. Why do they want to end it all?”
I was silent for a moment and Connie waited patiently for my answer. She’d heard my confession and still wanted to know other stories of destroyed lives and broken hearts.
“Andrew… lost his wife and a three-year old daughter. Someone hit them with their car when they were crossing the street, drove away, left them lying there.”
She covered her mouth with her hand again.
“It was an accident, and those happen, right?” I sighed ironically. “You know, if somebody had helped them they could have survived. All they had to do was tilt the woman’s head so she could breathe. And his daughter… she wouldn’t have bled to death if someone’d put a bandage on her injury or… I dunno, just a stupid t-shirt. But what were the passers-by doing?”
“They took out their phones,” added Andrew, who’d walked over to us, “and started filming them lying there. It took almost ten minutes before someone called an ambulance, but of course by then it was too late.”
Connie closed her eyes and dried her cheeks. I couldn’t have been far from the truth imagining that she’s thinking about how she would feel in that situation. If her own daughter had been caught in an accident and died only because nobody managed to get a grip and provide basic first aid.
Even my chest felt tight listening to this story, and I didn’t have any children.
“So you can imagine that Andrew sees the human population as spoilt and selfish at best. I don’t blame him.”
She opened her mouth to say something, but stopped. Was she going to agree with me?
Andrew turned directly to her. “You wouldn’t believe how many people agree with our plan. All over the world there are more volunteers than we can use. They want to end the suffering and this miserable existence just like us.”
She wasn’t arguing and didn’t try to persuade me that she knew a lot of people who led a happy, fulfilling life without problems and pain. Working for the police, she’d been exposed to the evil of this world for too long to believe that fairytale.
“Connie?”
She turned to me and answered with an unsteady voice: “Yeah?”
“I don’t think you came here to be persuaded and shown evidence,” I said. “I think you already believe it all and you’re here to make sure that Ruby and Frank get out of this alive. Am I right?”
Then she finally let go of the last bits of restraint and started openly crying. In between her sobs, she nodded.
Frank
Connie came home when Ruby was taking a bath. She put away her bag and quickly changed out of her uniform, then went to the bathroom and took over the evening routine. She chased me out, saying I could finally read today’s papers. I didn’t protest, even though I’d read the papers, because I knew she wanted some space. She was pale and absent-minded, and clearly avoiding eye contact, which wasn’t really any different from the last couple of days. But she did seem to be more troubled, almost in shock.
I let her be and walked over to the living room to watch the news, muting the volume so I could hear Connie and Ruby chattering in the other room. Connie’s good mood was obviously forced, but Ruby didn’t notice, judging by her excited little voice echoing through the whole house as she answered Mummy’s questions. I could hear wild splashing, they were probably playing their favourite water games. They stayed in the bathroom for so long that the water must have turned cold.
“Alright, out of the bath and straight to bed with you. Which story would you like?”
“All of them!”
I laughed quietly. Ruby was impossible when it came to stories. If it was up to her, she would listen to every single one of her children’s books before falling asleep. I usually read her two or three, like Connie told me. You have to set some limits or you’ll never make it out of her room, Dad. But today Connie breached the rules herself. Based on their bickering, she must have read at least six stories. I was almost dozing off when she finally emerged into the hallway.
She mindlessly pottered around the kitchen for a while before she put a few bramboráky on a plate and joined me in the living room. She sat into an armchair but instead of eating, just stared at the plate.
“I swear I didn’t poison them,” I said lightly and hoped it might make her smile.
She sighed. “Actually, I’m not really that hungry.”
“Are you feeling sick again?”
“No, it’s not that,” she answered, but I noticed a slight moment of hesitation there. “It’s just been a hard day at work today and I don’t really have an appetite. I’ll eat it later, sorry.”
She was sitting there completely frozen, except for her fingers fidgeting in her lap.
“You seem a bit off,” I dared to voice my concerns.
She shrugged and waved her hand. “Like I said, a tough day at work. Nothing to worry about.”
“I didn’t mean just today,” I replied. “I meant more like these days… Would you like to talk to someone maybe?”
“I’m talking to you, aren’t I?”
“Sure, to me,” I agreed. “Or maybe a professional.”
She made a face. “I don’t need a psychologist…”
“That’s what I said, too.”
She sighed again and her eyes were clouded by a wave of memories. I didn’t need to be able to read minds to know that we’re both thinking about the day I broke down after my colleague’s tragic work accident. The timing was very unfortunate. I had scared Constance to death.
I’d been feeling especially anxious that day, and since it was Sunday, I needed to somehow fill all those empty hours I’d normally be spending at the sawmill. Wyatt had already made plans with his wife and children, he did invite me to join in but I didn’t want to intrude on a family day out. Then I called Connie and hoped she’d have some time for me. I could have gone fishing, but that would give me too much time to think, and that seemed dangerous.
I could feel my heart beating wildly in my chest. I listened to the phone ringing and tried to stop the unpleasant memories which were trying to suffocate me.
“Hey Dad!” she said cheerfully. “I was just thinking about you!”
I couldn’t get a single word out and realised with horror that there was something stuck in my throat, and my eyes were stinging. I was going to suggest we spend the day together, I so desperately needed to not be alone. But all it took was hearing Connie’s voice and the constant need to protect others from my own suffering finally broke down. The dam was tearing apart and I couldn’t stop my sobs any longer. Never in my life had I been less in control of myself.
Connie became instantly attentive and her cheerful tone disappeared. “What’s going on? Dad? Dad!”
“Can you come?” I choked out and hated how whiny it sounded. What sort of a man was I, crying like a baby?
“I’ll be right there! Shall I call an ambulance?”
I imagined her shaking and covering her other ear so as not to miss a single syllable.
“No, no! I don’t need doctors, just you…”
“Ruby,” I heard Connie call out before the line went dead, “we’re going to see Grampa!”
In ten minutes there were brakes screeching in front of my house. Connie didn’t e
ven need to admit that she’d been speeding, the drive between our houses normally took a quarter of an hour. She banged on the door with such strength I was worried she’d hurt herself. I opened and she rushed inside with Ruby in her arms, just about managing not to fall over.
“Oh my God, you’re living and breathing. You scared me to death!”
“I didn’t mean to,” I said and broke down crying again. Why was I being so pathetic? Why couldn’t I at least stop these outbursts in the presence of others?
As it turned out, I did in fact need a doctor. I’d thought that the anxiety and nightmares connected to my colleague’s death would just gradually go away, but weeks went past and all my issues were only becoming more frequent and more intense. I even started having panic attacks whenever I heard someone turn on the saw. When I was the one who had to do it, my hand was hanging above the machine lever impossibly long, as if I was about to put it into a crocodile’s mouth. The horrific whistling noise of the saw wheel starting to turn couldn’t be blocked by even the best earplugs.
The worst part was that whether I could hear the saw or not, the image of Lewis’s fateful stumble–didn’t the boss always say that his clumsiness will be the death of him?–played over and over in my head in torturous slow motion, his body falling forward and his hands sprawled out. And how his head fell onto the spinning blade with the safety cover up. The spatter of blood which splashed not only the machine, but me too, because I was standing so close. His body, which fell onto the ground, twitching in death throes.
How was I supposed to ever get rid of this image?
I admitted to my daughter that I hadn’t sought medical help because I was afraid to talk about it. I had to relive it again while telling the story to the police, and then again to the boss and the insurance guy.
Connie had never heard the details. She’d been through a lot at the police station and I didn’t want to give her any more things to worry about.
“I’m afraid to go back there,” I confessed in a frail voice.
Ruby was colouring on a coffee table. I didn’t give a damn that her crayons were straying outside the paper and decorating my furniture, and Connie didn’t care that her daughter was stuffing herself with gummy bears. We needed to keep her busy so we could do what I didn’t feel like doing at all, talk.