It was the doctors I hated the most. There was nothing wrong with me; I wasn’t ill. But my mother kept taking me back to that neat office that smelled of nothing, and let the white coats prod at me. I said, ‘just let me be’, and they would smile tolerantly, spreading my legs on the table for another look. They must have taken a hundred photographs. ‘It isn’t Froehlich’s syndrome,’ I heard a doctor say to my mother, ‘because apart from the genital abnormalities, there are no other physical deformities.’
Her reply: ‘Then what is it? Can you operate?’
‘That is a decision your son will have to make for himself later on. We have counsellors...’
She thought I should have been twins: a boy and a girl. But it wasn’t that.
I got out of the truck on the outskirts of the city, in an area called the Longhills. Once, it would have been a thriving neighbourhood; now a ruin and an ideal place to hide, to think, to do whatever would come next. Tall buildings with broken crowns reached towards the veil of evil cloud that always hangs above the city. I think it is the city’s aura, an expression of its soul, soiled and poisonous. The people who live in that place are barely human, but then I had been taught to think that neither was I. Perhaps this was the place where I belonged. I wanted to cast off the trappings of affluence and live close the edge of survival. Discomfort did not bother me.
I walked as best I could along the sidewalks, avoiding debris, bundles of cloth that may have been corpses and the smouldering remains of fires. What did people burn here? Sometimes, it seemed they burned their own possessions. I saw fragments of books, jewellery and crockery blackened among the embers. The smoke was toxic. Someone had burned a wasps’ nest. A substance like syrup leaked from its collapsed mass. I saw few people. They kept out of the sun during the day. They slept then. Welfare trucks occasionally slid across an intersection ahead of me. They might contain bodies or miscreants or supplies. Perhaps all three at once.
At three o’clock in the afternoon, when the sun was at its most vehement, I stood in the centre of a street and looked up at the sky. Buildings loomed over me, derelict and rotting. I wondered what the point of it all was. Why do we continue to live? What drives us to survive in an environment so hostile to life, an environment we have made for ourselves? Civilisation was a Leviathan whose limbs were too weak to support it. Now it sank to its knees, bones cracking beneath its weight. And all who rode the Leviathan were tumbling down, their screams thin like that of insects. My difference was just one more symptom of this fall. Our purity was mangled and dysfunctional. In those moments, I saw myself as the avatar of the world’s destruction, a cruel joke in the distorted form of the primal human. I could do as I pleased, for it did not matter what would happen to me.
Soon, I began to feel hungry, but willed the pangs away. I could see no way to feed myself. It was cleansing to be able to step aside from human needs. I felt excoriated, but also renewed. For a while, I sat inside a broken building, where the walls were black. I listened for sounds: the faraway throb of rotor blades, the occasional human cry, cut off short, and once the distant bark of a dog. I watched the sun slide down behind the splintered towers, and thought how in the enclave, the day would be drawing to a close. Men would be emerging from the units in the nearby industrial park. They would climb into their sleek transporters, hail a manly good-night to the guards on the wall, and drive the short distance up the tower-studded avenue to the gates of the enclave. Here, wives who sought to enact the rituals of a past Golden Age would be waiting in kitchens that were devoid of stain. The women wore aprons and smiled at their children, keeping back the pain, the fear, the utter chaos that massed on the horizon of their fantasy world. None of it was real, but then I had never really conspired in my parents’ dream. My very existence cracked its fragile shell.
At dusk, a gang of girls stole in through the windows of my sanctuary. They saw me crouching in the rubble, which I quickly realised was their rubble, and began to snarl at me and utter strange ululating cries, their bodies dipping and rising like snakes. Their leader rushed at me a couple of times, brandishing a knife near my body, but I sat as still as I could, looking at her face. Presently, she came to a decision and gestured for her minions to get on with their business. They unfolded loot from tattered sacks, and set about dividing it amongst themselves. The leader flicked glances at me occasionally. I recognised something within her that later I identified as the indomitable human spirit. Society no longer existed for her, yet she continued to thrive, albeit in a debased fashion. The girls ate and laughed together, handing round a plastic bottle of murky liquid. After an hour or so, their leader offered it to me. It was a vile, base alcohol that left a trail of fire in my throat and tasted only of chemicals. The girls asked me nothing about myself, even though they must have made judgements about my cleanliness, my neat clothes. They were separatist females who hated men. They could have killed me, perhaps, but it seemed they recognised something within me with which they felt comfortable and could accept. I ran with them for a week or so, raking over the ruins, pillaging the debris. They seemed to repel rival male gangs by the strength of their voices alone, using a repertoire of chilling screams and cries. Boys would lope away from them like chastened dogs. Often, the leader would climb to the highest, most precarious point around and stand there with arms outflung, uttering a world-filling shriek of anger. They did not know about despair. I envied them.
In the asphalt wilderness of Longhills, there were few adults. Perhaps they had wisely moved away, or else been killed. Sometimes, choppers would drone over the streets and emit a stinging spray, which the girls told me was supposed to kill disease. Why would the city authorities bother? I didn’t believe it. The spray probably just killed fertility.
I felt more at one with the desperadoes of the wilderness than any of the people who hid within the enclave. It was because these outsiders expected nothing and gave little in return. They did not make demands upon one another. Co-existence, and therefore a certain amount of co-operation, were the only remaining aspects of community. Pleasure was without contrivance: a good find among the rubbish; a chance meeting with a group who had something to barter; a basement found untouched, like an unopened tomb full of treasure; an abandoned welfare truck still laden with vitamin-enriched gruel. We were grave-robbers, really, for most of humanity had already died in that place. But I liked the simplicity and honesty of their lives, the fact they did not judge me.
One day, one of the gang was shot by a sniper and the leader told us we would have to move area. A sixth sense told her this was the beginning of something bad. So we gathered up what little we had and left Longhills behind, burrowing off through the darkness, and into another decayed sector called Coldwater Valley. It must have been an industrial complex at one time, and here the survivors were older and hostile to strangers. We prowled carefully between the arching metal structures that were now smothered with tendrils of quick-growing vines. Echoes were strangely muffled by the vegetation. Any human group we came across yelled and threw things to repel us; we were not welcome. Finally, one group, crazier than the rest, directed a fire cannon on us and killed all but five of us. Our leader was among the fallen; a blackened crisp in the road. How quickly life can be expunged. It seemed inconceivable that what was left of our companions had ever housed souls. We, the survivors, went back the way we had come, but it was the end of our group. We split up, and I went alone deeper into the madness of the ruined land that surrounded the desperate core of the shrinking metropolis. Its towers seemed to have huddled together, as if in fear.
There was much activity in the air nearer to the city core. Choppers roared through the skies, and once I saw one crash. People emerged from the jumbled ruins like cockroaches and swarmed all over the wreckage, picking it clean. I did not look like an enclave boy any longer. My head was thatched with lice-infested hair, my clothes were tatters, to which I was forever adding more layers, whatever I could find. I had learned to snarl in the way that me
ant, ‘stay away if you value your health.’ I also learned much about myself. Because the convenient utensils of life were no longer available, I was forced to live on my wits, and in this way discovered that the boundaries of my difference were much further than I had imagined. It began this way. I’d been going through the belongings of a dead man on the street, who had died of a sickness rather than murder. He had many treasures, which I was greedily transferring to my own pockets. Then a group of tearaways came slinking along the spiky walls around me, uttering low, hooting cries. Their message was for me to leave, to abandon my find. I do not think they would have attacked me if I’d simply obeyed this request. But there was too much for me to leave. I growled back. They must have thought I was mad; there were at least seven of them. Their leader dropped down from the wall and sauntered toward me, looking to either side all the time. I remained hunkered down beside the corpse, my hands dangling between my knees. I did not feel afraid at all. It was as if there was someone else inside me, far wiser than I knew; someone fierce and confident. An arrow of indignation flew out of me, and somehow touched the crumbling substance of the wall behind the gang leader. There was an explosion, a gust of dust and rocky debris, and then my would-be attacker was on his hands and knees before me, his head hanging down. He shook his hair and drops of bright blood flew out. At once, I jumped to my feet and snarled. My eyes felt full of sparks that I could shoot like bullets from a gun. The gang just melted away, dragging their fallen leader with them. After this incident, I felt so much stronger, safer.
Perhaps I overestimated my strength.
Some days later, I found a hole for myself deep beneath an old department store. It had been cleaned out thoroughly years before, but some people must have lived there for a while, because I found a few mattresses, some of which had not been burned. Rags had been hung from metal beams in what remained of the ceiling. It was a musty labyrinth full of silent ghosts. I imagined it had once been home to a whole community, who had either been smoked out or died from some contagious infection. There were no bones about as evidence, but the wilderness scavengers are very thorough, so that meant little. In this place, I made myself a nest. I did not think about the future, but took simple pleasure in surviving from moment to moment. The wilderness was the garbage heap of the world, yet I learned to see beauty in it: the different colours of the sky at various times of day and how they conjured sculptures from the rubble; shining through blown out windows; making a cathedral of light of the starkest structure. The passing of civilisation in itself was a wondrous thing. I would walk the cracked streets marvelling at the way stringy vegetation was slowly reclaiming the land. Mother Earth had learned the saying that revenge is a meal best eaten cold. She was implacable, eternal, and the green tidal wave of her reclamation was evidence of humanity’s frailty and insignificance. The people had regressed, but in their barbarity possessed a startling innocence. The complex rituals of life had been pared away, and if the people were dying, at least they would do so with swift dignity, rather than being hooked up to machines in a long coma of slow decay. Those who lived in the cities, the enclaves, were deluding themselves. They should give themselves up to the inevitable. I thought I too would soon die, and these were my last days. Each one dawned fresh and vital. I wanted to experience life through my senses to the full, and because of this, learned how my touch was death.
He was older than me, yet seemed younger. We met when he strayed into my lair, and after a few warning shots of snarls and aggressive gestures, realised we were not enemies at all. He was like me: a runaway from the theatre of luxury. His mother had been a pill-head, who sometimes had not even recognised him, while his father, a scientist, had hardly ever been at home. I tingled with empathy as he described his former sterile environment: the ceaseless hum of domestic appliances, and the automata who kept the place running, while his mother lolled on the couch, living in some better world. He explained to me the phenomena of why people like us ran away. ‘We know it is over. Society is dead, but some of us know we can still exist beyond it. It is like a sinking ship. We have to jump overboard with faith and hope, otherwise we’ll just be dragged down with the wreck and drowned. This is the age of the individual; the age of the hive has passed. We are all floating in the sea, clinging to our bits of wreckage, but eventually we’ll become sea creatures ourselves and learn how to breathe its element.’
How could I not love a person who spoke like that, with such passion and optimism? He did not know about my difference - especially the physical aspect. I did not want to tell him because he was my first real friend. If he knew, it would change things. He might be disgusted or, worse, full of pity.
Some girl he knew gave him a flask of alcohol. We flavoured it with the remains of a bag of sugar substitute we’d found in our basement, and one night sat across from one another and drank it. It felt shamanic, the rhythmic passing of the flask from one to the other. We both knew we wanted to be drunk, for there was business between us that the barriers of a sober mind inhibited. I was acutely aware that before the night was over he would know about me. I felt nauseous with nerves, eager for the intoxication that would free my tongue and allow me to speak the words that must be spoken.
He began to talk about the future again, rambling on about some faraway utopia that could be constructed from hopes and dreams.
Something about his vision made me uncomfortable, and I said, ‘This is the end, not change. We are dying.’
He crawled over to me then and put an arm around me. ‘No, no, you are wrong. This is not death at all. You are living in the past. Look forward, not back. Don’t let the past become your future.’
I wanted to believe, and partly did, unaware of how he spoke the most ultimate of truths. He put his head against my hair and said, ‘I have to ask you something. Don’t answer if you don’t want to but... are you really a girl?’
I laughed a little, more out of embarrassment than amusement. What could I say? The answer was neither yes nor no. ‘What makes you think that?’ I asked.
I could tell he wished he’d never spoken. ‘I don’t know. The way you walk and talk. Just body language, I guess. I’m sorry. You must think this is just an excuse to...’
I touched his arm to silence him. ‘I am what you say.’
He grinned in relief. ‘I knew it. You want people to think you’re a boy because people will leave you alone then.’ He paused. ‘I’m sorry. That sounded patronising.’
I shook my head. ‘No, don’t apologise. The thing is, I’m male too.’
He frowned. ‘In your heart, your head?’
‘No. In some ways, that would be simpler.’
‘Then what do you mean?’ The puzzlement had swept back; the tide of delight and anticipation had receded.
‘It would be easier to show you,’ I said and stood up.
The only light came in from outside, but then we of the wilderness rarely craved artificial light at night, other than a fire for protection. I peeled away all the layers of my tattered clothes, feeling as if each discarded item represented a year of my life. It was all being sloughed away. When finally I stood naked before him, he sat with his chin in his hands and said, ‘You look male to me.’
I squatted before him and took one of his hands in mine, guiding him to the truth of the matter. He didn’t say anything then, but kissed me. I felt his fingers digging into my shoulders like spikes. I could feel his heart racing. He’d wanted to do this for some time, and now felt he had been given sanction. I welcomed it too, but some part of me became annoyed that he looked upon me as a female and took it for granted that I must be dominated. Did women ever feel this way? It might sound like justification, but I feel that he was partly to blame for what happened to him. We should have come together as equals, but then I didn’t know he was not equal to me. I was stronger than he was, and forced him into submission. It was only a game, I swear. I just wanted him to realise what we were, or could be.
It took him a day to die. I wa
s helpless. I tried everything, but whatever mutant substance lived in me was poison to him. Not all the water in the world could wash away what I had done to him. My essence ate into him like acid, devoured his being. The only blessing was that he did not realise what was happening to him. With my hands, I was able to stroke away most of the pain. With my thoughts I willed his mind to a far place, that idyll he had spoken of, and there he died.
I set fire to our home and emerged from it into the night against a backdrop of flames. I had been right and he wrong. Humanity was dying and I was one of nature’s weapons. I could never love, for to love me was to die. Could anything be crueller than that?
If only I had known the truth then. He could still be here now. The one who discovered that truth with me was but a pale spark to his radiant sun, but perhaps that was all part of it, the great lesson I had to learn.
For days, perhaps weeks, I roamed the wilderness, feeling more drunk than I had on that hideous night. I truly wanted to die, and even climbed the high, broken towers to think about throwing myself over, but even in my grief I was too afraid of being broken, dying slowly. I kept seeing his face, hearing his laughter, and then an image of his death would come to me, the terrible writhing, the whimpers. I was more of a monster than even my mother had imagined.
I came to an area that had been inexpertly flattened; a plain of rubble, from which rusting spikes rose like the bones of dinosaurs. Here, I collapsed and stared up at the sky, watching the colours change and the stars reveal themselves. I could move no further. Here, it would end. I felt strangely at peace, and numb. I could not feel my body.
When I saw the stooped shadow gliding towards me over the stones, I barely raised my head. Death had come for me. It loomed over me, breathing heavily, and dark greasy hair brushed my face. I saw a glint of metal and heard muttered words. ‘Be still, my pretty. Do not fear. I shall come to you without pain.’
Paragenesis: Stories of the Dawn of Wraeththu Page 2
