Auryn
The sadness sits in my bones. As I walk away from Pyrrha and Aphram, I notice the rain has faded away.
It’s been a while since I walked a wet street. The smell, the dripping, the changed colours. The house that collapsed isn’t right. Not caused by flooding. I can see the water level—no more than just above the knee. It looks like a truck rammed the front, busted the wall and part of the first floor, then it all tumbled. Cracked open like a nut. A nut with bedrooms.
I keep walking, turn a corner, remember, and then know where I am. This was Miggy’s place. I ran here first when the container had been picked up. After waiting most of the day, I knew I wasn’t going in.
The town was so quiet. The emptiness of a place meant for people, with fresh traces of humans but without any other living beings, without the promise of return, is a nightmare. It was traumatic. I thought I would be part of society, a human among humans. And I was—for a short bit.
I have to accept my being here. I am tired of running, of denying who I am, of hiding. It may be time.
The front door would probably be open, but I won’t go in and up the stairs. Later. Another day.
I keep going.
As I approach the square, the feeling of loneliness is countered. The girls have been multiplying like printed rabbits. There is half a legion out and about in appalling outfits. They’re all pre-soaked, wet-haired, and agitated as hell.
I don’t recognise any of them. This is so alienating. Like I’ve been gone for months and the atmosphere has made a three-sixty turn. I am walking into a surreal, parallel place.
Well, if I don’t know them, is my thought, they might not know me. Fat chance. I stand out. In my climbing gear. Double their age. They more than notice me.
As I walk in and among them, the weirdest thing happens. A rapid polarisation takes place, as if the space of the town square were a field randomly populated with clusters of brightly coloured particles. Half are attracted by me; half of the girls are repelled. Two fluids that will not mix.
I keep walking, and the attracted follow me like ducklings. They have forgotten to speak. I’ve landed in a fucking kindergarten ballet. The other continent of angry dolls keeps repositioning too. A hundred-girl hen-fight this is, with the hens checking out the competition. It would be funny if it weren’t the opposite.
I have taken this meandering path across the square with a school of fish trailing behind me. An increasing sense of absurd disgust belches. I end up surrounded, besieged from two sides, and suddenly I’ve had enough.
I kraaarghhhh at them with a full-circle turn, loud like a stark-raving shaman, showing my teeth, eyes popping-level big.
“You are idle hands!” I throw at them. “All of you!”
And I mean it. I have thought about this a lot. And it has bugged me, robbed me of sleep. These girls showing up have nagged my soul to bits.
“Why don’t you talk?”
I dare them to answer that and be quartered.
“I know why you forget to talk. You think it is enough to know in here.”
I jab my chest.
“To feel it, to sense it, to register, to take it in. That’s what you girls do. And you do it better than me. But you women forget it is not enough.”
I shake my head at each of them, slide my piercing eyes from one to the next. I am genuinely angry. Which they may not deserve—but see if I care. Because I do care. That’s why I say it.
“It is not enough to keep it inside. It must come out.”
My throat tightens, which vexes me. Bad timing for breaking.
“It will eat you if you don’t. It will truly eat you from the inside until there is nothing left. Empty shells with pretty dresses. That’s what happens if you don’t find a way to occupy those hands. Use that voice. Move that body.”
I think I have their attention.
“Because if you don’t, somebody else will. Something will find a job for your limbs. Someone will use your energy—your being—for their end. No matter how sensitive you are, my girls, you need to counter that incoming stream with a flow in the other direction, with an outcome that you own as it appears, as it is expressed. You are here to make a mark. A stain to call your own.”
I’m done.
But as I try to walk away, they won’t let me. The speech wasn’t enough. Speeches never are.
“Khan was here first,” shouts a girl in the back. Someone agrees.
“She’s the one who found this place.”
I don’t see what the point is. Besides that it isn’t true.
Another steps in.
“Doesn’t mean she owns it, or that she’s right about everything. She’s turned us into killers. Uses evil to remove evil.”
They’re getting up to steam. I threw a bucket of water on a forest fire. It didn’t end it.
“And rightly so. He would have done it again. He was already preparing. And now that daughter of his has been infected.”
It’s one of those discussions—drifted so far from the truth, so tangled up and avalanching down the slope, there is no use, no fucking use, in trying to stop it.
And then one tries to involve me. Pointing a gun-finger at my unchosen faction.
“They have taken Khan!” she shouts in my face. I think she would like to rip the flesh off my cheeks. Fire bullets from her index finger.
“Also not nice!” she adds hysterically.
Approval passes like wind over a fire. Righteous flames flare up. Arms fold. Argument won.
I look at my party. Their silence affirms.
“Where is Khan now?” I ask. Then realise that might feel to them like switching sides.
An unrest travels the entire group. Until one steps forward.
I know her. She’s one of the early birds. So tiring, inconvenient, their nameless existence. How can they function without? But this particular specimen has short hair. Cut by herself. Without a mirror. Easy to remember.
Both groups seem to hold their breath about what she might say. And she takes her time. Checks in with a few of her supporters. Throws a glance at the shouter, ready to bite. Traces a cobblestone with her toe. Why is she barefoot? Why are many of them missing their shoes?
Then the fringe disaster looks at me. Eyes bright. Very present.
“We’ve lost her,” she says.
Gasps. On both sides. What she says is ambiguous. Could be water, could be fuel. Only a few of them knew this. A splinter group? A coup?
“What do you mean?” I ask. “Be more precise. Tell us what happened.”
“I believed her,” she says to me. “Khan said beautiful things. But she went too far when she asked us to kill the man. To stab Eldon to death.”
I feel stabbed. I feel the world shrinking.
What the fuck does she mean? Did they—? Are they planning to? Why am I here having a debate? Why do I have to deal with these people who aren’t even people?
My response frightens me. I am not in a good place. I can’t deal with this.
“We did what we thought best,” the girl says. “It wasn’t pretty, but we tied her up and brought Khan to the office beneath the table-room, and then—”
We’re all dying for her to finish. I want to slap her. Why is she so slow? Did they break Khan’s neck? Hang her? Put her head on a stick?
“We don’t understand,” she says.
No—fucking cradle of hell—nobody here does!
“We had locked her in, and after we agreed on what to do, that it was better to untie her, she had disappeared. Gone. Vanished. That cellar was sealed. There is no way out. No other door than the one we locked. And we never left the corridor.”
“Khan has escaped!” a voice in the back translates.
A half-arsed cheer drowns in everyone talking to everyone, each with their version of events. I don’t know what happened. I only know it isn’t good. Not good at all.
I feel deflated. Can only let the voices of a hundred genans struggling to find the truth wash over me.
Then the crowd splits. Makes way for new arrivals.
Ruffle leads. My team of three. Bouncing curls. Determined look.
“I can feel her,” she says, arms planted on her modest hips.
“I can feel them both. Man and woman.”
She stomps a foot. Points down. Angry face to the left, angry face to the right.
“You are so busy bickering that you forgot to listen. Why behave like chickens when you are starlings and jays and robins? I think you forgot your name, your species, your way.”
Wow. Go, Ruffle.
Pear steps in. A bit timid.
“I saw where they are,” she says. “In here.” Flat hand on her chest. “They are deep underground, and the entrance looks like… like a—”
She’s either looking for a word to describe the image or reluctant to say it out loud.
“Looks like what?” somebody asks, eager.
“Like a woman’s,” Pear says quickly.
Apples sighs. Steps next to her friend and nods proudly.
“A cunt,” she says. “A vulva the size of a cave, with clit and all.”
Now there’s a clear image.
“I know that place,” says another. Several giggles ensue. “Who doesn’t,” someone mumbles. But everyone turns to the knower, wanting to put that landmark on their bucket list.
“That’s where Khan hid Eldon,” she explains, shoulder shrug. “The stabbed one was a dummy. I helped make it—thought everybody knew. It was symbolic. Don’t get why you’re all so bleedin’ serious about this?”
Ruffle cries out in frustration, now stomps both her feet at the same time—which is called jumping.
“You are not listening! They need help! Whoever the frong is right or wrong!”
She laughs because it rhymed, then transitions to crying, pulls her curly hair, and calls to the heavens—throwing the heavens a one-word vowel prayer—which are busy clearing up anyway.
“There still is time to turn this around, girls. We can find them, help them get out, listen to what has been a screaming whisper all this time.”