Work Text:
I’ve adjusted to this life easier than most would, I know. Most wouldn’t adjust, I guess. I think it’s probably weakness rather than strength that has allowed me to accept it rather than burn up. I never thought of it as a choice.
There are a dozen men in our home, then myself and Lily. I think sometimes we might be the only two women left in the world. There must be more than a dozen men, because sometimes they die out there, then others come, or they fight among themselves and die that way. I’ve never paid any attention to what they do to each other, and I ignore what they do to us. I don’t know their names. Maybe some of them don’t even have names. I doubt I could pick out their faces from a lineup.
Lily and I are always safe in the house. The men use us for their own needs, but it’s not all the time. It’s not even every day necessarily. And we always get enough to eat, we are allowed to sleep together, stay in the same room; we even wash every day, though that’s probably for their benefit more than ours.
I don’t think about it all, really. My life may seem very small, but it seems its always been this way. Me and Lily, Lily and I, whispering into the night, huddled under the same blanket, tucked away into a tiny girlish room in a crumbling house. Our blanket has flowers embroidered onto it, and when we duck our heads under I forget where we are. It was just the two of us, giggling about nothing and everything. A beautiful world we can stay in.
I know it isn’t like that for Lily. She gets upset, she breaks down, and she tells me she can’t stand this life of ours. I don’t understand, but I never tell her that. We are never hurt, we are comfortable, and we are together, here, where there are flowers. She tells me of our suffering and what the men do to us, and she shows me how they have hurt her. She says they have hurt me, but I can’t remember any of it. I can’t feel it on my body either.
I just see her eyes, dark brown, her curly hair, her glowing skin, the way she smiles at me and I know I am the entirety of the good in her world, just as she is the entirety of mine. She is my sun and I am hers, but I can’t fill her universe. I don’t understand why; she fills mine.
She gets frustrated with me, from time to time, but I can barely remember it happening. It’s like I dance over those moments, the same way my mind skitters past when the men enter the room, the same way I twirl away from my body. I just float through all those things. I never touch the ground. I only see the flowers, and I love flowers so much. Almost as much as I love Lily.
I know I sound vapid. There is something within me aware of the things I am missing. But I am happy to miss them, and that awareness slips from me quickly every time it surfaces, like petals in a breeze, and I don’t mind watching them flutter, delicate and precious, away away away away away from me.
Lily and I are allowed out of our room into the main dining room to eat each day, and today she stands at the top of the stairs, looking out at the front door. I very rarely look outside. It is barely a concept to me because its all greenery inside my head, so it hardly matters what the world looks like now, but the front door is wide open today, and through it I can see past the safe zone.
Past the safe zone is where the sickness lies, and all the infected dart about. It’s a small gate, a regular chain link fence, but it serves as a marker more than a barrier. We are safe here, on the edge of it, all the land behind us clear as well, harbouring survivors. It is still hostile though, and the men navigate the safe zone each day, some coming back, some not, just to get the things we need to survive. I don’t know why or how they die. I don’t care.
Past the gate it is different. This is why they’ve left the door open- there is nowhere to run.
Lilly leans over to me, a smile on her face, conspiratorial. She raises an eyebrow at me, and her eyes gleam. They are so alive, shining, and I can see her soul and mine together, reflected in those eyes. I love her so. I doubt anybody has been more awake then she has been for all of her life.
She darts down the stairs and out the door before I can breathe. Several men follow, lackadaisical at first, then with increasing urgency as they notice she is headed towards the gate, and she looks back at me, either regret or hesitation, I can’t tell which, then surges through.
It looks like she bursts into flame. It is the effect of the safe zone. The safe zone was made with artificial air barriers in place that separate us from the diseased air, though the only visible difference is the slightest dark haze. On the other side, anyone who isn’t diseased lights up, a tongue of fire in the night, an illusion, a beacon to all the diseased on the other side that this is someone or something they can still infect. Lily buckles for a moment, then stands up. The fire has no heat, but my heart has still stopped.
Beyond her it looks exactly the same as our own land. Dilapidated homes, spread out and disapperaing into the haze, trees growing jagged between them, stunted by the heavy air she now stands in. Figures dart like minnows, like birds between structures, obstructed by the gloomy sky and upcoming night. The men are gathered outside the gate, and Lily looks back at them and waves. They won’t follow her in.
When she turns back, she is like a sun, incandescent. My heart beats with her, then rises in my throat as she notices what I’ve just seen. A man approaches in a jolting crawl. He is obviously sick, almost entirely made of darkness now, moving haltingly towards her, movements as abrupt and swift as a jumping spider. She has time to scream and try to turn back to the gate, then he is on her, clawing down her ankle, and I can see the blood from here.
He wrestles her down, and she fights as best she can, but the fire dims as he forces her knees apart and mounts her. It doesn’t take long, and then he is skittering away back into the darkness, and she crawls back to the gate, using the post to rise to her feet and slowly limp back to us, past the circle of men who had watched, and now trail her back to the house.
I wait at the door for her, and when she gets close enough, she smiles at me.
“Better than any lover I’ve had yet,” she says. “He tried to care for my pleasure.” Blood seeps down her ankle, and the claw marks are already blackening. The men don’t try to touch her. They know she is sick. They won’t even look at her.
She cups her belly. The disease grows fast, and I see a small bump already growing. She has hours left to live and then a new thing, a new man, will claw it’s way out of her, and she will die. I see it already in the corners of her eyes, a reddening, a yellowing tinge which will slowly crawl into her irises. I doubt she will be alive when that thing crawls out of her.
“Lily.” I say, and my throat closes. My words stop. I think about our quilt, I think about our flowers, I think about the way our hearts beat together. “Lily,” I say, and this time it’s pleading.
She cups my face, leans her forehead against mine, and presses her lips to one cheek, then to my lips. Chaste, sharing air, sharing closeness. Then she pulls away. She will go to the sick zone to die, so this thing she will birth will stay there. With her. Where even her bones will not grow flowers, because nothing will grow there ever again, nothing will happen ever again, for the rest of time there will be nothing and no one and no light or sun or joy or life because Lily is leaving now Lily is leaving and she will never come back.
I do what I always do, and my mind floats away and I stand there rooted to the ground, eyes leaking, until Lily is out the door, through the gate and gone into the darkness, faster than I can imagine.
I fall to the ground, felled and despondent and I sob because my heart is broken. I can’t see her. She might be alive now still, she might be dead. She will be dead. She’s probably dead now.
I have never felt this heaviness in my life. Not when my body was taken, not when my mind withered, not when the world ended. But now chest is full of stone, and I am stuck to the ground, crying so hard I think I might suffocate. The lack of oxygen doesn’t stop me from expelling my grief in great heaves and shudders, and still my body lives on. And on, and on. My Lily is dead, and I didn’t go with her. I am here, and she is gone, and there can be nothing good. There will never be anything good again.
I am thankful the men don’t try to touch me while I sob.