FirstLineFiction beta

from Contest #6

Almost everyone thought the man and the boy were father and son. I didn’t. I wasn’t making any more assumptions. Assuming was all I had done since the world twisted.

I was the one who found them. It was during one of the foraging rounds. It was my turn and I had left the apartment on all fours, making sure to shut the clothes-padded door behind me as quickly as possible. There was a vague whisp of sound getting through to my eardrums, despite all the cotton plugs I had stuck into my ears and the bandages that went over them, but it was enough to make me feel as sick as I had felt a thousand years before, when I smoked my first cigarette in the schoolyard.

I started to hum a beat, but it was no good. That infectious noise crawled down to my guts and grabbed them in an icy grip, and all I wanted was to go back in and tell them – write it down for them – that I hadn’t found anything, that there was no food left in the whole goddamn building. I’d like to say that what kept me going was thinking of poor little Sasha’s empty belly, but it was my own stomach I was thinking about. I had eaten half a salty cracker and a dried up plum over the last ten hours.

I made my way down the dim hall, the dusty carpet just a few inches below my nose, because some stupid son-of-a-bitch architect had had this notion that it would be great to have a row of low portholes run the length of the corridor parallel to the normal windows at shoulder height. Windows! – our greatest enemy now. How I used to love them, how I hate them now. A single stray glimpse out of one and into the world outside and you’re apt to fry as many braincells as you kill during a whole college semester packed with philosophy classes.

I half-crawled farther until I reached the last door down the hallway. It was the only one on that floor that we hadn’t gone through yet. Soon we would have to expand our foraging area. My stomach clenched as I pushed open the door; it had been ajar to begin with, so no problem there. The problem was the dazzling amount of light that filled the place. With my eyes staring at the floor directly beneath me, I wondered where it all came from, this sudden brightness that made every speck of dust glint sharply. The power had been out for a couple of days then, so that was no artificial light. Then I thought, curiosity won’t kill this cat, it’s the goddamn windows letting the sickness of the outside world pour in. The fact that, according to my day-tracking calculations, it was then 2 A.M. didn’t arouse much of a surprise within me; the world had, after all, changed to a gruesome extent.

I moved like a cowering dog through the apartment, found the kitchen and hit paydirt: the folks who used to live there had stacked dry food like they were preparing for the end of the world – which actually came shortly thereafter, haha bay-beeeee!! I was losing it; it was that eerie light and the faint but abnoxious sound like Mars static. I stuffed as many cans of beef and packs of crackers and potato chips as I could into the ample canvas bag I had brought along for the job, then made for the corridor again.

That’s when I stumbled – hand-bumped – upon them. I recoiled when my paw landed on a shoe that felt like it had a foot in it, and I scampered a few feet away. When the shoe didn’t come after me, I went back to it and slowly, desperately inched my eyes upon the leg to which it was attached. I was afraid that bolder examination would lead to my gaze chancing upon one of those glass-filled wall-holes that let the outside world peek in.

What I discovered was a young boy who sat on the floor, his back propped up against the wall, his head fallen to one side upon his shoulder. His eyes were open and rolled up to reddish whites. His ears were covered by one of those professional-looking headsets. I thought they were a puny protection against the freaky frequency of Radio Mars, yours truly’s all-time favorite station. Next to the boy there was a middle-aged man, sitting with his knees drawn up to his chin, eyes closed, his hands pressed against his ears. None of them stirred, and yet I was sure they were still alive. I knew what the dead looked like. I had seen quite a few of them in the last days.

I must have crawled right past them before, unaware of their presence. It made me shudder to think what else I had missed literally by inches. And yet I had never been so aware of my environment in my whole life.

I let go of the food bag and put my hands over the man’s hands. I shook them lightly, careful not to remove them from their ear-defending position. His eyelids fluttered, then drew away from his eyes, and he was looking at me. I mouthed some words at him, but he didn’t react in any way; he just stared at me as if I were furniture. I turned to the boy. My hands seized his temples and I manoeuvered his head into an upright position. He remained catatonic even after I pinched his cheeks hard enough to leave marks.

It made me angry to see them sit there like dumb monkeys, rendered helpless by the very things that had served them so intimately before: their sight and their hearing. I felt an urge to take them back with me, to protect them against further abuse, and I thought about the rules that we – the dwellers of apartment 12C, some of the probably extremely few survivors of the human race – had agreed upon: don’t bring others along, there are already more mouths to feed than we can manage. A sensible rule. So I took them back with me.

I had to crouch and drag the boy with one hand, while with the other I kept pushing the food bag in front of me. I planned on coming back for the man, but as soon as I had moved the boy away from the wall, the man stood up, his hands still clasped to his ears, and followed me in a slow shuffle of feet, eyes trained on me, maintaining that blank, cold expression.

When I entered our shelter, they were all sleeping or fallen into that reality-denying stupor meant to preserve the thin shreds of sanity left in us. Sasha was in her mother’s arms, curled up in a corner of the living room. The newly-weds, Amber and David, were sprawled across the extended couch. Mr. Carlton, the retired mechanic, was in the chair by the desk, his chin pressed to his chest, his head shaking lightly from side to side as if some nightmare rattled around in it. He was supposed to stand watch by the door, but I didn’t feel like scolding him for neglecting his duty. Mrs. Sharn and her two teenage daughters were nowhere in sight; they had probably chosen to rest in one of the bedrooms.

As I took it all in I couldn’t help wondering whether this was how wartime refugees shacked. The place was made up like a bomb shelter; the windows were covered with bedspreads in order to block the dangerous view into the outside world; every crack and nook around them and the door had been insulated with cotton pads and clothing items, which, together with our individual ear-covers, ensured efficient soundproofing – the nauseating thread of noise that had slid inside me died away as soon as I locked the door behind us.

I left the food bag by the door and carried the boy to the desk. I laid him upon it and stuck a bundled up shirt under his head. He was like a broken puppet. I rummaged in the top desk drawer and came up with some cotton pads. I reached for the headphones the kid wore, but my arm wouldn’t go all the way; the man had grabbed me by the elbow. I turned to face him and almost noticed a spark of emotion warm his gaze. I gestured with my fingers drawn together around the pads and pointed toward my ears, and he released my arm.

After reinforcing the boy’s noiseproofing I offered to do the same for the man. He only had some rubber ear-plugs and his palms to go over them, but he shook his head.

I was horribly hungry and grabbed a pack of crackers out of the bag. I stuffed a fistful into my mouth and held the pack out to the man, but he refused again. I finished the crackers and slumped down beside the desk. None of the others had awaken, but I was too exhausted to care. I closed my eyes and smelled something. As I drifted to sleep, I wondered if someone had broken the rule of going to the toilet in the adjoining apartment. We had introduced this rule a couple of days before, when the water stopped running. Mrs. Sharn’s face swam through the void, reproachful eyes shooting out daggers – „Chaos ensues from the failure of observing the rules!”

***

I’m dreaming, and I know it. Only, this is more like remembering, because it happened.

I’m sitting in my kitchen (this was back when „we” meant my wife and I, not this bunch of strangers and I), drinking my coffee. She’s looking out the window at the streets below, where the morning sun has just begun to warm up the asphalt. She’s angry with me because I won’t agree to a week-end in the mountains. I’m tired out, and Peters at the office has really been stretching me out lately all over the new housing project, and all I wish for is to get some goddamn sleep that lasts longer than five hours and –

And that’s when the noise hits. This incredible, wrong noise, like a sharp blade drawn hard across a polished metal surface, only worse, a thousand times worse, and so loud. I cover my ears with my hands, but it’s still so bad that I double over and fall onto the floor at the same time she does, a couple of feet from me. She doesn’t cover her ears because the noise doesn’t bother her. There’s blood streaming down from her eyes, gathering in a tiny pool next to her cheek.

Later, when I know that I’m a widower and have stuffed a ton of napkins into my ears, I venture to glimpse out the window. As soon as I do, my brain takes a freight train blow, and it’s a wonder that it doesn’t kill me on the spot. I collapse onto the floor again, and when I come to, I know better than to take another look outside.

***

They didn’t object much to my bringing guests back with me. They pitied the boy. He would show no sign of gaining consciousness, and there was no way to feed him.

Earlier today we gathered around the desk for an emergency meeting. There were some sheets of paper and a couple of pens on the desk.

Mr. Carlton wrote: „The boy is dying. We have to put him on an IV or something.”

We passed the sheet around, and when everyone had read it, David took it and wrote: „IV’s you can get in a hospital. This is no hospital, as you may have noticed.” I was right beside him and saw the words as he wrote them.

I snatched the sheet out of his hand when he stuck it out toward Mr. Carlton. I wrote only this: „I’ll go”, then slammed the paper sheet down onto the desktop and walked over to the window. I stared at the bedspread that covered it and tried not to think about what sights lurked beyond it.

Something touched my hand. It was Sasha’s mother. She handed me a message: „Can’t his father go?” There was the faintest trace of tears in her eyes.

I glanced over at the man they assumed was the boy’s father. He hadn’t said – written – a single word to us since he had joined our group. He was sitting by himself in a corner, looking at nothing and no one.

I shook my head and winked at Sasha’s mother. She returned a crooked little smile and adjusted her ear-plugs. I could tell she had a hard time coping with those things.

I felt absurdly like a hero. I know I’m not one. My insides shrivel away at the mere recollection of the things I saw through the window after witnessing my wife’s instant death from massive sensory shock.

***

Now I’m about to step outside. I can’t go on living like a terrified rat. I’m stepping outside into this world that has gone askew, where all things that have not been made by man – the sky, the beasts that roam across it, every single leaf and branch that holds it – are no longer the tame subject of man’s casual or inquiring gaze and have turned into a lopsided offense to his senses, screaming out a devastating noise to drown out all reason.

back to Contest #6