by Poss, Bryant
“That’s exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” she said as they made their way inside and carefully put the pots down inside the door to the school. “The best thing to do is kill it.”
He looked at her for a moment. “What if—you know what if it’s something that can be fixed?” Cillian asked her, keeping his eyes on hers. “What if they can be turned back? What if it passes like an illness?”
“Would you want to bet your life on it?”
“What if, that’s all I’m saying. What if it’s like a virus or something, and it can go away. What if in twenty-eight days or something, everyone is all right?”
“Remember when we talked about the conventional understanding of what’s right and what’s wrong?” she asked and he nodded. “That is what we’ve got to really consider. Other than Ben, you are the only person I’ve talked to since this happened. I have no doubt there are others, but we can go so far as to assume that we’re it. I doubt it, but the assumption can be made. Let’s look at what you’re considering. If it is a virus, it would have either died out by now or become dormant. Viruses work by replication. They work fast, but they can’t work forever. They either burn themselves out or become dormant in the nerves and wake up later. Now, I’m thinking conventionally, so I may be entirely wrong, but that’s just what I’m thinking. I’m also not a doctor. Some viruses do last for the life of the host, I guess. I’m thinking hepatitis and HIV, but again, I don’t know nearly enough about it. A parasite could cause the infection, for all I know, or even a bacteria. I forgot to go to medical school, so I’m really just guessing.”
“Even if that’s not the case,” she grabbed his shoulders and squeezed, looking into his eyes. “All these things want to do is kill, Cillian. You’ve seen it,” she held up his hand with the missing fingers. “You’ve seen it more than most. I don’t know what’s right and what’s not. I’m not going to sit here and say that I do, but I know that if we attract too many pokies, they can easily take down that fence. They’re strong, very strong. It seems like they no longer have a functional part of the brain that tells them when to stop straining because something it too heavy. There are reports of people lifting cars in an emergency because of adrenaline and because the mind turns off the safety switch so muscles are torn and bones broken. That’s how strong they are. Enough can probably get through these doors. I don’t know, but what I do know is right now we have an advantage, and we need to do whatever is necessary to live, to survive, to thrive. Do you understand? You tell me right now if you think I’m wrong.”
He looked at her, both of them listening to the poky pushing and pulling against the fence just on the other side of the greenhouse. He looked down, but she tilted his chin up to her, legitimately asking him.
“You’re not a kid. Not anymore. What do you think? Don’t let me sway you. What do you think we should do?”
“I think we should kill her,” he said looking at his mauled hand.
“It,” she corrected sternly. “That’s no longer a she. They are all its, all of them from now on. You’re doing the right thing, Cillian.”
She put her hand on the butt of the revolver then shook her head, snapping it back in place, looking around the lot until she found a push broom. Holding it out to Cillian, she watched him reluctantly reach for it, but she took it back to the door, sliding the handle between the open door and the frame and she leaned into it, breaking the broom handle at the top. She walked away with the piece of wood letting the bristled head fall to the ground. The broken end of the stick was sharp.
“You can go ahead if you want. I’ll be right along,” she turned to walk out.
“No,” he said defiantly. “It’s my decision as much as yours.”
She walked up to the poky, the eyes dull and vacant. These eyes didn’t dart around wildly. They looked at her. They looked directly into her eyes, but there was nothing there, only rage and hate—and hunger, perhaps. Hunger and loathing in those brown eyes. That’s what Lotus kept telling herself even when she reared back with both hands and plunged the sharp end of the broom handle through the left eye. She thrust as hard as she could, the stick coming out the back of the skull. The reality of it hit her harder than the idea, which is usually the case, and they both sat there watching the body spasm, the stick momentarily getting caught in the fence, but not a sound came from them. The dirt and decay smell from the greenhouse traveled across her nose on the wind, and the chill of it brought her back to where they were, what they had to do.
“Let’s go,” she said walking past Cillian. “Come show me how to turn a flower pot into a stove.” There was more than a quiver in her voice.
Cillian stood looking at the slumped body of the poky. What used to be a woman was on its knees, head pressed against the fence, the stick coming from its head caught in the metal, keeping the body from falling. He stood and looked for a minute, and she let him. When he turned to pick up the pots, she pulled the doors closed and locked them.
“Good fences make good neighbors,” she said without turning, the tremor in her hands unmistakable.
“What?”
“It’s one of the great lines.” Her voice was monotone now, like a drone. “I need to get you reading some Robert Frost. It’ll help you deal with life. Whether it’s the life we had before or this one now, a poet will answer your questions.”
Inside the room that was slowly becoming home, they set the pots in stacks, and Cillian began cleaning out spots to place them. Lo said little. The time passed easily with the effort, and when he finished placing the pots, lighting cut candle pieces with matches, he looked back to see Lo sitting on her makeshift bed staring at nothing in front of her. Luck had been taken from her pocket and placed on the floor beside her. Lo looked past it now with glossy eyes, and Cillian watched her for several moments. When she didn’t move, he slid over to her on the makeshift pallet. For some time he watched her then, with unsteady hands that pulled back several times, he pushed her hair behind her ear. The movement brought her eyes to his, and he whispered.
“Is it the woman? Is it the thing at the fence?”
She leaned forward in response softly at first, and when she saw he was keeping control of himself, more fiercely. Almost immediately he needed to turn away, to adjust, which worried him, since that made her stop, but not this time. This time she didn’t stop. This went on for several minutes, the void once again enveloping him, whisking his thoughts in the bowl, nothing but feeling. His thoughts were all over the room like sand blowing in the wind, not to be gathered for any coherent response. The room might as well have been a tornado with his synapses the debris it carried. The boy felt so good it hurt. And just like that, she pulled away, eyeing him and turning away, only to hold his gaze as she slid back. Cillian looked at her in disbelief, unsure how to react, her eyes pulling his thoughts in line like magnets to metal shavings.
Cillian advanced while she slid back as if the magnet pulled him with her, nothing but pure response and the selfishness of not wanting to lose what was in front of him. A blur tunneling from the peripherals inward.
“Shhhhh,” she grabbed his hands and held him back. “Shhhhhh.”
Looking at her in pleading, trying to get control of his breath. Her gaze a level of hypnosis to the point that their breathing synchronized.
In a slower tempo than she was accustomed, “Well-Tempered Clavier” played in the background from the Random playlist with the wind pushing and pulling at the garage doors. The music thrummed in his ears, and he concentrated on trying to remember the composer so he wasn’t so light headed. It was Beethoven he wanted to say, but that was wrong, simply the most familiar one. The keys followed along echoing each other with no chords being played. It was spectacularly simple which is what made it so intoxicating, a perfect rhythm on which to concentrate. It moved up and down the keys, never breaking tempo, only flowing back and forth in perfection, like water flowing down the sides of tilted glasses, back and forth. The fluid flows evenly yet chao
tically from one container to another, that which would fall to the ground in uselessness. Caught and transformed, transferred from one to the other, taking out and putting in. The music in sight could only be represented by such an image or perhaps of what he saw in front of him, but what Cillian saw in front of him was more than he could manage to comprehend, as if some physicist were allowed to sit in the middle of the universe and witness a black hole or existence collapse in upon itself in a matter of minutes whereas it took billions of years to expand as far as it had. Or perhaps of some holy man reaching nirvana or getting to sit at the right hand of God. At one time, a boy his age would sneak magazines or videos from his parents’ room, or find sites on the internet with which to try and quench some primal curiosity that plagued him at every turn. There would be thoughts of every woman he knew or had been close to, but never would there be thoughts of such a woman as this. Here he was in front of her with eyes, and ears, and taste; nerves, and smell. There was no acceptance of this any more than there was of accepting the energy released from a stick of dynamite which erupted in a closed fist. It is said that there is enough energy distributed by the sun to the surface of the Earth every day to last us more than our lifetimes if only it could be harnessed. Even still, his experience at this moment without the guilt of what later life would bring, a life of society and religion and stigma, was worth more than the sun could give the Earth in his lifetime. Aside from all this poetry that shot across his mind like the rest of the debris made up by his synapses, he just appreciated the moment of this woman natural in his presence and not only in his presence but in his existence, swallowing him whole from where he lay.
Clothes slid off with the occasional, necessary shushing, and smells mingled in with the melody, the smell of nakedness, of parts unconfined that spent too much time in confinement. There were smells and there were throbs then sounds. Sounds that didn’t seem natural but must have been because pleasurable sounds followed. It never stopped. It didn’t have to stop until she grew tired. They wrestled over the jumpsuits, but he could never seem to win nor did he want to. He simply let her do as she would. They slipped and slid over each other and into, so that there was nothing else to be done except not upset the rhythm. This went on for some unspecified amount of time because the experience was direct id from one, nothing but the Dionysian and pleasure and lack of all pain and the other was pure experience, new and primal and welcome. The music played; the wind sucked at the door, and flesh was lost among flesh until there was nothing left to share simply because of the laws of nature. The prelude had ended, and only the sound of the doors played in the background of flesh and sweat in the glow of the candled pots. The smells were strong now and glorious. The world was glorious in all its shittyness.
She lay on her side after retrieving the bottle from her bag, the one left by Ben back at the pizzeria. The Johnny Walker that she so coveted now, only a quarter of the bottle left. She turned it up twice before looking at him with extended arm.
“Go ahead,” she said with her head propped on one arm stark naked and god-like in the glow of the candle. “But it’s gonna taste like shit. Like shit soaked in gasoline.”
He pulled the bottle to his lips without hesitation, and her warning did not disappoint as the liquid slid down his throat like mercury fire. After a full minute of coughing and hacking, he held the bottle up, and as she went to take it he pulled it back, taking a lesser swig. Reaching to the first bottle of water he could find, Cillian guzzled, the desperate sucking causing the container to inhale like a well-built woman before giving the fine bourbon back to Lotus. She pulled on the bottle again before replacing the cap. They both listened to the door push and pull before she leaned over and played a different track on the disc. When she skipped ahead, it was “Goldberg Variations” that came next (A Bach fan was this). After turning the volume low, she lay on her back with one arm outstretched, waiting on him to join her. When he finally relaxed enough, he rolled over with his back against her.
“What’s wrong?” She asked the ceiling. Several minutes went by of breathing, but she didn’t ask again, giving him time to consider. The could that was her brain some minutes before now clearing like dew on morning grass.
“It’s not the same now.” His voice timid again.
“That’s okay,” she said caressing his neck with her fingernails…her beautiful, divine fingernails. “The world is better that it’s not.” With that, she turned her nose into him.
“Hey,” he leaned back toward her, stretching as hard as he could with a stupid smile on his face. “I need you to get me some more candles.”
She stretched with him as long as she could in body, like a cat getting up from a nap, and he watched her, feeling the tension in his own skin grow.
“Okay, darlin, but it’ll have to wait ‘till morning. After I get up next, I want to be lazy.”
“We both will,” he gave her a thumbs up, and the door shut behind her with a push of the hand.
Cillian began shifting around in his own new freedom, braver and more open with the new darkness in the room. After a time, he began shifting around until he made the spot as comfortable as he could before kicking Luck across the floor, the ball skittering untouched, the sound masked by his moving, until it hit the wall opposite the door, resting underneath a metal cabinet. And there it sat in darkness.
8
Groaning of metal on concrete, dust on top of dust swirled in the air. Dim light seemed to bludgeon back the dark all around as the cabinet was walked over by the two occupants of the room. Emotion was in the air along with worry, longing. Then excitement overtook everything else, a feeling of relief washing over her.
“Oh my god, it’s Luck!” Lo yelled despite herself and picked up the ball that lay defenseless against the wall. Immediately she began cleaning it, looking at Cillian with a smile on her face, all teeth. “Oh, man, sorry about all the stuff I said to you.”
“You mean how you could beat me for losing your ball?” He said with a smirk, his hair in his eyes now, but it was clean.
“Yeah, that. No hard feelings, but don’t call it a ball. This is Luck, got it?”
“Okay, okay. Let’s get this thing over by the door so we can use it for dry goods. I’m sick of trucking back and forth to that cafeteria all the time.”
“All right,” she said still smiling, kissing Luck with plump lips and securing it in her pocket. “Speaking of food, what are we going to do when we run out?”
“Well, it’s been quite a while, and that’s not close to a problem yet.”
“You know what I mean. It’s eventually going to happen.”
“I think we can cultivate.”
“You sure do know how to talk to a girl.”
“Are you saying I can’t do it?”
“Talk to a girl? I’d say you’ve learned a lot.”
He blushed at that. “You know what I’m talking about.”
“I’ve got to admit, I was skeptical about the flower pot idea, but these things heat the room about as well as any fireplace, and I think this is about as cold as it’s gonna get. Who knew propping a clay pot over a candle would make an oven? Using kitchen pots to boil water for baths and drinking worked too. Then there’s the rain barrels we use for washing. Again, excellent idea.”
"Simple conduction, I guess.” His voice was more confident now.
“And who says education has lost its value?”
“Let me keep my mouth shut. I don’t want to have to start going to class again.”
“Hold on, darlin, be sure how you really feel about it. I bet it’s the routine, the discipline, and the disruptions you got sick of, not the lessons themselves. I’ve seen you going through the books around here, especially the biology texts. Learning is awesome. I hate to sound like a commercial from the eighties, but it is. If there’s one thing I’ve always craved more of, it’s understanding. I know you’re the same way.”
“What are you saying? You want to start teaching class?”<
br />
“It wouldn’t be teaching as much as consulting. We’d be in it together.” She propped herself up on her elbow and looked into his eyes. Leaning forward she kissed him and bit his bottom lip. “Of course, if you want me to play teacher, we could do that too.”
“You know what I miss?” he asked, pulling away from her playfully.
“Are you changing the subject?”
“Milk.”
“And what made you think of milk?” She laughed at his face then frowned. “Thanks for bringing that up. Now I miss it.”
“Ice cream, yogurt. Mmmmmm, chocolate milk. All the stuff that required refrigeration, that’s the stuff I miss the most.”
“Will you stop talking about it! Now I’d cut somebody’s throat for some Nestle Quick.”
“Eggs, I mean real eggs, popsicles, orange juice, cream cheese—"
“Okay, kid, enough already. The only thing you left out was beer, and I don’t even want to think about that. I’ll have to try to find some import, stuff that’s supposed to be room temperature.”
“Wish I could agree with you on that, but beer tastes disgusting.”
“Of course it does, but it’s something of an acquired taste. Trust me, the older you get, the more you like it.”
He shook his head and laughed, looking at her around the edge of the cabinet then bending his legs to lift his side again. Moving to step around it, his foot caught on something that had previously been beneath the cabinet. A grated drain was there where the concrete slightly sank. For no reason, Cillian leaned down and removed the grate over the drain and peered down into it, trying to see where it led. The hole was no bigger than one found on a putt-putt course.
“I guess all working rooms like this have to have drains,” he said absently. “I wonder where it comes out though.”
“What was that?” she whispered, holding up a hand to still him. He paused in that position, holding his breath to listen and forgetting about the hole in the floor. They stood there for some time, listening intently. Eventually the low rumbling noise found its way more steadily through the walls.
