by Glen Kenner
-Do you have any Mountain Dew? I could really use a Dew right now. No?
Damnit.
-Anyway, I used the crack in the ceiling to tell not only when it was day and night but also the seasons. The light was dimmer for long periods of time and then brighter. I knew months were passing. Years. I ate whatever I could. Anything crawling on me or in the light of the crack or even flying by. Bats, insects, they were all food. I was in a constant state of starvation. I grabbed whatever was alive and came within reach and smashed it in my hands and shoved it into my mouth and swallowed as quickly as I could. If I didn’t, sometimes whatever I was biting into would bite back. Probably a few times a year, an animal from above fell through the crack. Rabbits mostly. Rats. Moles. Something like a honey badger once. That one almost wasn’t worth the fight. When the first rabbit fell from the crack, I grabbed it and beat it’s head against the stone floor and took a huge bite out of its belly. It tasted so good. I swallowed mouthfuls of fur, but I didn’t care. I ate everything except the rest of the fur and the bones. And I gnawed on those bones for days, cracked them open and sucked the marrow out. I even sharpened the femur bones at one end and made spears. Five or six inch spears.
I haven’t thought about those bone spears in a very long time. And now my gut is telling me to shut up. I’ve said too much.
-Anyway, that’s the cave story. So, about the prophecy?
Zain laughs.
-John, no. No, John. That’s the beginning of the cave story. Please, continue. Every detail you can remember. Nothing is too trivial to spare.
He takes a sip of tea and I can tell he fully expects me to continue. Fuck.
-Bats, rats, rabbits and bugs. And buzzing. That’s what you want to hear about, I know. The buzzing.
I stare back at the point on the wall and start back up.
-I once heard voices above. From the crack. I didn’t know what they were saying. Didn’t know the language. Or they were too high up. I don’t know. But it was several people. Men and women. Children. By this time I was used to the buzzing. It was there, that day. Somewhere ahead of me, in the dark on the other side of the shaft of light from the crack. And then the buzzing faded. But then I heard something else that I realized I had heard before, but never thought much about. It was a noise on the rocks of the cave. On a far wall that I didn’t know was there. It was on the other side of where the floor dropped off. The noise sounded like rock on rock. And it was moving fast up the wall. I moved through the shaft of light and to the edge of the floor. The wall was probably another fifty feet away. I don’t know. But I looked up at the crack. High on the ceiling, where I think it was flat. Horizontal to the cave floor. I could just make out a figure moving toward the crack. It was just then that the light from the crack flickered a bit and I realized that the people above, or at least some of them, were looking down into the crack. I jumped. I literally jumped up in the air. Hey, I screamed, in whatever language that was that I spoke. Down here! Help! I’m down here! They must have heard me, they had to have heard me, and all within a second I saw that they nearly blocked out the light from crowding around the crack. And then that thing, that thing that made the buzzing sound, that ran up the wall and across the ceiling to the crack, plucked one of those people from the sunlight and ran back down the wall. It was a child. He, or she, I don’t know, screamed so loudly it hurt my ears, the screams bouncing off the cave walls. I couldn’t see anything more. Once the thing and the child were on the wall they disappeared into the darkness. But I heard the screams. Right down the wall. Down to the floor. Toward me and then to my side, just a bit softer, and then nothing. The screams kind of ending with a choked sound. Or a wet gurgle. I don’t know. All these years later, maybe my memory, my brain, has made that up. But that’s how I see and hear it in my head and in my dreams.
Everyone’s quiet. And they should be. That was a goddamn nightmare that I lived and still invades my dreams all these thousands of years later.
-That’s the cave story. Nice place to visit but you wouldn’t want to live there.
I’m out of tea and I get up to pour some more. The boy jumps up and comes around me and fills my small glass. No Dew, huh? I ask him. He just laughs. I think about this kid. One day he was probably playing in the alleys like the other kids I saw earlier and the next day he’s told that he’s being sent off to a foreign country to learn English and Western ways and, oh by the way, when you come back you’re going to be the personal slave for these two dudes for the rest of your life. And last but not least, your cousin was shot in the head. Fate? I don’t know. But he didn’t ask for it. None of us ask for whatever situation we’re born into. I didn’t ask to live for thousands of years. And I didn’t ask to live in the dark place.
-You want something to eat, Mr Smith?
He’s pointing to the different small dishes.
-No. I’ll be alright.
I sit back down and Alvaro and Zain are talking. Again not in the Arabic I would mostly understand. Normally I don’t give a shit when people are speaking a different language around me. Couldn’t possibly care less. But I know the Firsts are talking about me and don’t want me to know what they’re saying.
Sarah is quiet. She’s staring into her small glass of tea, deep in thought, I assume. I don’t think she’s ever been shot before. It gets easier every time. It has for me.
-John. We have some questions. Just a few to clarify your story further.
I raise my eyebrows and then sip from my glass of tea.
-What do you believe the creature was in the cave?
-A Second. Of course.
-Why?
-Because of the buzz.
-Any other reason?
These fuckers know something they aren’t telling me. How do they know the rest of the goddamn story?
-Yes. But it seems you already know that. No need to waste time telling it.
-Ah, but it is very important to hear your story. To hear it from you. Please, what other reason do you have for believing the creature to be a Second?
The boy is back at his laptop, his head pointed at the screen, waiting for me to begin. Sarah still hasn’t made a sound other than a soft sipping noise when she drinks her hot tea.
I focus back on the dirty wall and start back up.
-You know, time didn’t really work in the cave. The days and nights went by, and the seasons. It would sometimes rain on and on and on. Or even snow. But the years seemed to just repeat. There was nothing to tell me how many years went by. But sometime after the child was grabbed, years later I guess, there was a sound like continuous thunder coming from the outside world. I knew that sound somehow. It was running elk. I knew it from before being in the cave. I jumped up and stood under the crack just as they started to pass over, the sunlight far overhead flicking each time an animal would jump over. And then in a split second I realized the buzzing thing was on the ceiling again, hanging upside down on the edge of the crack, just like before. And then it reached up, out of the crack, and the light faded like a full eclipse. I saw all of this from directly below the crack and it took me a full second to realize that it must have grabbed an elk. Only now the animal was hurtling directly at me below. I jumped back just as the elk hit the cave floor. Without any thought, I pounced. The elk was huge. Must have weighed ten times more than me. It’s back was broken and it’s antlers were smashed off at its skull but it was still alive and it was screaming out in an ear-piercing, high-pitched cry that flooded the cave. I had one of my little spears in my hand, the sharpened rabbit femur, and I started stabbing the elk in the chest with one hand while trying to break its neck with the other. That’s when something else fell from the ceiling and landed on me. It was the creature. The Second. It flung me away across the cave floor and sank its teeth into the elk’s neck. Somehow the elk managed to scream even louder but just for a second. The creature wrapped its hands around the elk’s huge muscular neck and snapped it. The elk’s body went limp. I don’t know what came over
me. I should have been scared for my life. Fuck, I’m sure I was. Oh, sorry about the language in front of the kid…
The boy just shakes his head with a smile on his face and continues typing.
-Anyway, I was also starving. And I was angry. And I think I was just tired of living in that cave and not knowing why the fuck, damnit, sorry again kid, why I was there and what was above. I felt a do or die rush come over me and I charged the creature from behind. I jumped on it’s back with one arm around its neck, and just as I had done with the elk, I started stabbing it in the chest. Now it cried out, as loud as the elk but higher pitched. Its cry pierced my ears. It tried grabbing at me over its shoulders with long fingers that ended in dirty broken claws but the claws only grazed my face. It tried bucking me off but I held on. And that’s when it turned its neck around far more than it should have been able. It was a girl. Or, really I guess, a young woman. Only her face was distorted and darkened. We were on top of the dead elk, in the thin column of sunlight, but her face, all of her skin, was out of focus like a shadow you see from the corner of your eye. Her own eyes were oversized and completely black. No pupils. No reflection. Just as black as the far reaches of the cave. She was naked. What I thought were clothes was her hair, several feet long, stringy. She smelled of something dead and rotten. It’s impossible but sometimes when I wake up I think I still have her stench in my nostrils. Her whole body seemed to be vibrating, sort of going in and out of a blur. She locked those black eyes on me, just inches from my face, and opened up her mouth as if her jaw wasn’t attached. She had so many teeth. Dark teeth, black and gray, all different sizes, two or three rows, all sharp and jagged, bloody from her bite into the neck of the elk. Then her body did something that I couldn’t understand. It sort of melted a bit like it was half liquid and then reformed so that I was no longer on her back but instead we were chest to chest. And that’s when she did something that I still don’t understand all of these thousands of years later. She paused. Her eyes never left mine, but her jaw went a bit slack, and she cocked her head just a tiny bit. And then I went crazy with that sharpened rabbit bone. I stabbed her in the face over and over, right in those big eyes. She screamed out and wrapped both hands around my neck like she had the elk. I thought I was dead. I should have been dead. But I kept stabbing. Her face was a mess of dark thick blood and gaping holes. Her eyes were gone. She let go of my neck and held her hands up to protect her face and I continued to stab. Over and over, as fast as I could. Rapid jabs with all of my might. The whole thing last just a few seconds. Jab, jab, jab.
I’m making the jabbing motion but slowly stop. Telling the story has brought back details that I had forgotten, though I think they must still play out in my dreams. It wasn’t the stabbing and the dark blood and her eyeless face screaming just inches from mine that my mind kept coming back to, kept getting stuck on. It was that pause. That slack mouth and the small tilt of her head. Did she not know what I was, just as I didn’t know then what she was? I had woken up one day in her cave. I was the intruder. The outsider. Was I a monster to her? Or maybe she was just curious. Maybe she was trying to figure something out.
-John.
It seems strange for a split second to hear Zain’s voice. Anyone’s voice. Other than my own.
-Your story is incredible. Truly it is. Do you know that you are the only First, that we know of anyway, to fight a Second and live?
-I try not to think about it.
-Ah. Yes. I can understand that. So you fought a Second and yet here you are. What became of the Second?
-She pulled away and ran off into the dark. I heard her buzz quickly fade and then a splash. I suppose there must have been an underground stream or probably even a lake somewhere in the dark, beyond my exploration. I didn’t hear her, her buzz, for days I think. I slept right after the fight. Not willingly, but I fell asleep anyway. I think a few days went by with nothing and I assumed she was dead. I ate what I could of the elk, gorging myself stupidly. If the Second had come back, I wouldn’t have been able to fight, I was so full of meat. But the Second was gone for days. Dead I hoped. And then one day, I heard the buzz. She was on a far side of the cave that I couldn’t get to. Not that I wanted to. She was still alive. Which meant I would soon be dead. As soon as she got her strength, and I was asleep, she would come for me. I had stabbed out her eyes, but I figured her hearing was good enough to find me. I skinned the elk with my rabbit spear and kept the thick hide. It might help protect me a little from her claws. And then I pulled loose two of the elk’s femurs from the muscle. One I kept as is. It was about half my height and heavy and thick. I could do some real damage with it, if I got lucky and got a swing or two at her head. The other femur I started to sharpen just like my little rabbit spears. It would take a lot longer than a few days to sharpen the elk bone into a spear but I had nothing better to do. But she never attacked me. Just like before, the days and months and seasons went by. Years. I held onto the two femurs, one a club and one a spear, but never used them. They were too big for the occasional rabbit that fell from above. Wish I had them when that honey badger fell in, though. But I did see her again. The Second. I was sitting in the thin column of sunlight, letting it warm my skin, when I heard the buzz come close to me. Directly in front of me. Maybe 10 feet away. It was her. She looked the same as she had before our fight. She had those big, black eyes. There were no holes in her face. Nothing to show that we had fought however many years ago. She stood and watched me for several minutes and then just turned around and walked back into the darkness.
I pause for a moment and take a sip of tea. This memory of the Second watching me and then turning away comes to me in my dreams on a regular basis. And every time in my dreams, just as it did in my memory planted deeply in my broken mind, I hear the Second softly singing the lullaby, her lips barely moving, the words from some language I don't understand. And then she turns and walks into the darkness and the soft sounds seem to hang on the air around me like a warm fog that slowly dissipates.
-Anyway, that was the last time I saw her that close. I heard her every day, her buzz, or most days. Sometimes I guess I didn’t hear her. And I still sometimes saw her up on the cave ceiling, hanging upside down at the edge of the crack, snatching animals from above. But never again did I see her face. Time went on. Years, I know. But I don’t know how many years. It’s crazy, but I think I was in that cave for a few hundred years. Maybe five hundred. I don’t know. I think of it as being five hundred years and have it in the back of my mind that it makes me between five and six thousand years old. A bit past my expiration date, I suppose. But I’ll never know.
-Would you like to know?
Zain says that. I’m staring at the wall and not expecting anyone to say anything. And then he simply asks if I would like to know. I look at him and he has his head tilted now toward Alvaro who is whispering rapidly into his ear.
-Of course I’d like to know. But that’s the end of the cave story. You already know how I got out. I’ve got nothing more to share. Nothing more to trade.
Zain pulls away from Alvaro after both men nod to each other.
-John, tell us about getting out. The earthquake and so on, and where you went from there. There are some discrepancies in our history that mentions you and we’d like to confirm a few things. In return, we will, in addition to the prophecy, tell you our best estimate for how long you were in the cave. Yes?
Discrepancies in my history? The fuck? These guys know more about me than I do. And now they’re uploading it into the cloud.
I look at Zain and then the boy and back to Zain.
-Why are the histories going to be stored online? You’ve kept an oral history for thousands of years. And who’s going to have access to this in the cloud? Everyone? Hackers? I mean-
Zain nods and says it’s a fair question.
-The simple answer to going online is that we are not confident that another First will take the position of History Keeper when the time comes. Alvaro is
nearly 4,000 years old and statistically will face Second Death within a thousand years. But of course, it could be sooner. Far sooner. None of us knows when our day will come. But also the world is becoming a dangerous place for Firsts. We are concerned that new ideologies might be the end of us. The end of us personally but also the end of the History Keepers. So we are working with our apprentice to get all of our histories online for the generations to come in the coming millennia.
Joram looks up at me and Sarah.
-I’m creating a sort of Wikipedia of the history of the Firsts. But it will be available only to members of a forum for Firsts that already exist on the darknet.
Sarah’s impressed.
-That’s so cool, Joram.
-I know, right?
I just shake my head like the old man on the lawn yelling at the neighborhood kids.
-Kingsley.
The name inadvertently leaves my lips with disgust.
-Ah, yes. Kingsley. He’s your oldest friend, isn’t he John? Or that’s how he describes you. Yes, we’ve worked with his people to bring our histories to the 21st century. He’s funding the whole endeavor. Of course, Alvaro and I aren’t planning on going anywhere anytime soon. We will continue to learn the histories and, once the war has calmed down and the military goes back to leaving us in peace, we will resume our occasional travels. And Alvaro will continue to learn English. It’s all a bit uncomfortable but you know the American saying, stepping outside of your comfort zone? That’s us. Stepping outside of our comfort zone and embracing new technology.
All I manage to say is huh. I don’t like it, but I can’t find a reason why.
-So, John, please continue. Start with the earthquake. Every detail you can remember. Please.
-The earthquake. Fine. The earthquake. Long after the fight with the Second, there was an earthquake. I thought it was more elk but it was an earthquake. The entire cave shook. I fell over and was knocked around. Then, in the middle of all of that noise and shaking, the cave ceiling fell in. It collapsed and fell to the cave floor in huge chucks. So much light poured in that I was blinded. When everything finally stopped moving and the dust cleared and I could see, half the cave ceiling was now a pile of rock that rose right out into the sunlit world. I thought about the Second for a moment. Where was she? I had dropped the elk and rabbit bones and hated being without them but I climbed up the rocks and made my way up and out. There was an aftershock once I was at the top and I ran from the giant hole as fast as I could. There was a river not far away across a plain of tall grass. I ran right to the river, down the bank and waded in. It felt amazing. The banks were much taller than me and muddy but the water was only a few feet deep. The earthquake must have disrupted the flow somewhere upstream. I sat down in the water and drank as much as I could until I threw up. It was like being reborn.
