Despair

The man sits on the front porch of the collapsed old house. His beard and hair match the rags of clothing that do little to protect him from the bitter wind that is constantly whipping dust into his tear- and blood-streaked old eyes. The wood of the house, the pale earth, the pallor of his skin, all are the same dull grey, only contrasted by the black and charcoal that are the shadows of this desolate place. A dark shape moves, and the man starts in terror, but it is only a bit of trash moved about by the wind. The man returns his stare to the decaying floorboards between his feet.

A stray wisp of hair blows across his eyes, obscuring his vision, but he doesn’t seem to notice. With a sigh, he rises, and enters the pile of timbers that was once his home.

The wind whispers and moans outside, and somewhere a door slams of its own accord. The leaves are yammering on the sidewalk in front of my house, and I feel old. I remember a time, long, long ago, when the sky was still blue, and children were more than starving, hunted animals ranging the streets for garbage to eat. Fat, dirty, happy children with mud between their toes, sugar on their faces, smiling like the sun itself. The sun was a comfort back then, not the harbinger of another endless day in the harsh, grey world that now exists. It brought warmth, and chased away the evils of the night that now roam freely under its baleful eye. Now it just makes me colder, an easier target for the foul, evil creatures that hunt me. I don’t even know if they’re humans, now.

Days like today, when I take my memories out and dust them off, are the days when it hurts the most. The loss. Trees. Grass. Bugs going about their lives in the miniature jungle of my front lawn while I watched from my superiority. Fish, living under the rippling crystal of the stream that flowed through the woods behind my house. This same house. The banisters used to be polished every Sunday by Mother until they turned red in the bright, spiritual sunlight, and we had to change out of our church clothes to play tag and kick-the-can outside. The smell of clean clothes. The much-protested Sunday bath, trying to squirm out from under Mother’s grip. I did love the smell of the lavender soap, though. Oh, and the food. A roast ham on Sundays that was once part of a real pig. Sometimes I can remember the smell, but it keeps turning back to dust.

I never expected tumbleweeds to blow down the main street of our town. It’s all changed. It’s all gone. I miss that life so much.

Now I just sit here and stare at all the grey things. It’s all grey, now. I just sit here, remembering. I am conscious of my breathing these days. I can feel my breath slowly dying. If I am not killed for food, I shall slowly rot away like all those who’ve gone before me.

Monica.

Oh, Monica had hair the color of autumn leaves, and her skin shone with a light of its own. I remember, one moonlit night by the pond, I swear that I could have read by it, had I been able to see anything but her eyes. Oh, Monica. It’s you I miss above all else.

When I think of the last time I saw you…

Enough of that. I will think of you alive, no red worms devouring your flesh, no rabid dogs tearing at your spring dress. I will remember you whole, with freesias in your hair. I will remember how you smelled the day you first said, “I love you.”

God, it’s not fair!

I say that a lot, lately: God, it’s not fair! When my food is stolen by scavengers, God, it’s not fair! When I wake up so sick I can barely breath, God it’s not fair! When I remember the music…

God has become cruel and mad, or I have. I miss you, Monica, so much, and daily have I prayed for your return. Oh, the wild hope that sprang to my chest that day, in the middle of the great storm! There was an earthquake, and when I looked out the door I could just make out the shape of some pale form lying in the middle of the field.

With a pang in my heart and your name in my throat, I ran, skidding and slipping on the bucking, madly thrusting turf . But when I reached you, oh, the sight I saw! If it would exorcise that vision from my feverish brain, I would rip my eyes from my head!

The ground had split open in a great crack like the gaping maw of some sick carnivore, and your body lay there, an indigested bone spit out on the ground. I had prayed for your return every day since I’d lost you to the plague, Monica, but you were still dead. I could only stare, powerless, as the worms and the dogs vied for your attentions. I could only stand there and vomit.

God was mad, or I was.

Then the storm worsened and drove the dogs away, but still I stood there, until I fell, senseless, in a crash of thunder. When I awoke, you were gone again. Whether the dogs had come back and carried you off or the ground had swallowed you up again I do not know, but you haven’t come back since then, and I never again prayed to the God that now watches over us.

I think my mind began to crumble on that day, and I’ve long since ceased fighting for my life, but God won’t let me die. Won’t let me join you. It’s strange, but every time I see the gore-crows picking at a corpse, I feel the urge to run and chase them off. And make sure that the body isn’t mine.

Someday I’ll die and not notice, and continue wandering the plains for the rest of eternity. The existence wouldn’t be all that different from the one I lead now, at that.

But once I wore a candy-striped jacket and a smart straw hat and drank ice-cream sodas with my love, and you were beautiful, and not just a memory, and more colors existed than the colors of dried blood, and dust, and night.

The brown sores of the plague, after leaving me alone for so long, have finally come, and my hair has begun to fall out in patches.

I weep blood at night, Monica, when I remember you in my dreams. Endlessly shaded streets full of bright children rolling by on skates and bikes are consumed in endless fire and dust and wind and blood, and endlessly I scream in sheer horror at the loss and the unfairness of Death.

When I wake I feel relief that it was only a dream, but then I open my blood-streaked eyes and see that there is still no shelter under the heartless skies for soft things. There are no more love songs for us to sing together, beloved, and the radio only sings Death now.

My broken arm will never heal, I think. The pain is not so bad, though, Monica. I love you still, and that hurts so much more. I feel like half my guts are missing, and I don’t know if that’s because of the disease, or because of my heartache. Oh, all the dreams, all the poetry, all the flowers: more than people were killed, Monica.

Such a shame … Such a shame.

I’d cry if I could spare the tears. But we should have known. We could have pieced it together, but we were all snug and happy in our disarmament clothes, and the death staring at us from the desert was less than a myth. Oh, there were some who predicted it, but we called them old ladies.

I miss the whiskey, Monica. Before that last quake broke all the bottles, I used to go to the dead little liquor store to get a few peaceful hours of forgetfulness. I’d rant and sing and pass out in the street, half hoping to be eaten before dawn, but I’d always wake up again. Now I can’t do anything at all to forget.

Some days I wish I had the courage to kill myself, Monica, so I could be with you again. But death is all around me, dear, and it’s ugly, and I always lose my nerve. Only one glimpse of your eyes, love, and the whole world would be a more beautiful place. If only you looked upon it, the earth would soften and sprout crocuses and the eternal winter would end.

I’m so lonely, Monica, it feels like my heart is made of razor blades; my sight grows dark when I look for signs of hope in the world. I am all alone in a hell I helped to build through complacency and ignorance. In the happy sunshine of the past none of us could picture a world so cruel and empty as this. I should just let myself be swallowed by the Void behind my eyes and leave my flesh for the children that tried to kill me. It’s by fortune alone that they only succeeded in breaking my arm.

I shouldn’t have fought.

I don’t know why I did. If I knew I would see you again, I’d kill myself in an instant. Why, Monica? Why? Why did you die to let me live? It’s been so long.

Oh, God, oh, cruel and pestilential God, I have the energy for one prayer only. I don’t know how … to … God, let me die. Let it end.

Let it end. Amen.

Is that you knocking on the door? Who or whatever knocks, I welcome you. I welcome you into my home. Come to me. Let it end. Oh, God, please let it end!

 

Neither the wild dogs nor the hungry children recognized the crocus that had sprung up next to the man’s body for what it was, nor the significance of the traditional harbinger of spring. They only knew that the man’s flesh was sweet and tender.

 

 

 

[Note: I wrote this one afternoon while listening to Harry Chapin’s “Shortest Story” on loop.]