The Toxic Children

by Tessa Maurer

  A few days pass, my mind in a strange sort of haze. The kill in me is strong, and the more I ignore it, the sicker I feel. The red left a book on my doorstep, some gesture of humanity I cannot process. The sight of it made me sick with glimpses of memories that shouldn’t be left in my head. I am supposed to be past this point. I need to be—I need to stop fighting inside of myself. I need to lose. That would be the best thing. That would end this madness.

  I walk down the street, the sun nearly set. It is silent. Something snaps in the distance and I hear the crunch of leaves. I stand still, waiting, listening. Out from the bushes, I see the glint of red hair reflected in the last of the sun. When she sees me, the fear in her eyes tells me that to kill her would be very…satisfying. Some part of my head, some distant, locked away part, screams. For the first time in a long time, I hear it. It hurts my head.

  The girl grips her gun tightly. This is not on her terms; she did not mean to run into me. I watch her, waiting to see what she does.

  “When you don’t speak, you scare the hell out of me,” she says. I can see she’s shaking in the cold.

  “And when I do?”

  “You make me afraid of myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I realize how insane I really am,” she says, the gun lowering subconsciously. “Sometimes I harm myself to make sure I’m still alive—to feel something. Sometimes I think I’m just as soulless as the Adaptions.”

  The thought of that, of her mutilating her own body, twists me. There is something wrong about it; it’s not something animals do, and even humans are animals—they are the worst animals of them all.

  “Why do you tell me these things?” I ask, trying to understand something that feels so vividly. She doesn’t know what numbness means.

  “I don’t know!” she nearly shouts. “I hate who I am and what I am. I hate what the entire human race did. Do you realize humans are dead? I am of the last of my kind. Any child conceived by a human will be an Adaption. We fucked up so badly that monsters were a better fit to rule the earth.”

  “You may have to live with the guilt of humanity, but I have to live with it dying inside of me,” I say, anger warming my skin. “This game you are playing is a dangerous one. It’s going to kill you and kill the thing in me that talks to you.”

  Her eyes fill with water. “I would trade places with you if I could. None of you deserved the life you got. My brother’s eyes were so alive. He loved, I swear to you. We kept him locked up. I killed him before he killed me. He made it to five. How is that fair?” she says, the water falling.

  “Your kind killed fairness,” I say, walking away. I can’t look at her. I can’t look at what she is and what she has done. I do not care who she has killed. I am angry that she cries about how she is human. I remember wanting to be human so badly that I managed to cry. I remember my mother. My toxic form in her body made her sick. Some die during birth, others years later. The older we get, the more deadly we become, our entire existence an antibody to the world and a virus to the humans. She can feel all the guilt she wants—it will always be too late. I remember wanting and I remember hope. I will never be what I was supposed to be. I will never be human. Guilt doesn’t change shit.

  I walk to the neighborhoods, a sick, twisting pain within me that screams to kill. I long to act out a revenge I will never be able to. I will never kill the men who made us; the men who destroyed the world and murdered the humanity of mankind. I will always seek to punish. I will always mimic the crimes they committed. The truth is: we are them. We are their children, and it makes us what we are. It makes us monsters.

  I have to kill. I walk into a house, and my mind goes black.

  Chapter [8]

  I am in the field again, covered in blood. The sun rises, warm on my cold skin. I do not remember how I got here. For the first time in my life, I blacked out. I remember going into the neighborhoods, wanting badly to kill. I killed several. I know that. I lost control, and I did not feel. I was the monster. I understand that I am losing consciousness. I can feel myself dying.

  I breathe deeply, trying to be nothing. Not human, not Adaption. I want the fight in my head to go quiet. I want to stop fighting. I have been fighting for much too long.

  “Killing will kill the human inside you,” says the worst man I ever killed—at least of the ones who stayed behind in my head. His black eyes watch me. “I would think you would kill every chance you got until it died. I know it hurts.”

  “My devil,” I say. “That would make you happy, wouldn’t it?”

  “The thing is, Inanis, you will never be happy. The closest you will get to happiness is to feel nothing, and the only way you will feel nothing is to kill the humanity. It’s up to you. Hang on, or let go,” he says, disappearing.

  Hang on or let go. That is all there is. That is all I have. He’s right. It isn’t win or lose; it isn’t fight or give up. I can hang on to what I could never be, or let go and become what I am supposed to.

  The Woman shows up then. They rarely come so close to each other.

  “I know why you’re here,” I say. “You think that, because you’re my mother, you can save me from the hell your kind created. You think you can say something that will change me, wake me up.”

  “If you choose to let your essence die, we will be gone. We cannot exist in a mind that cannot imagine. You will have to let us go.”

  “I know that!” I snap. The outburst makes my head spin.

  “I will not tell you what to do. I am not going to stop you. I have no right to, Inanis. I’m sorry,” she says, fading away before I can say another word.

  These visions in my head are my ties. They keep me here—they keep the human alive. When I fall into the depths, they pull me up, talk me down, but they are not real. None of them are. The only things left keeping me human are made of my insanity. The truth is…there is nothing left for the human in me. I need to adapt. The red girl is the only real thing I know, and she longs for death. I will outlive her, and when she is gone and I am alone with myself, the monster inside will tear me apart. The human in me, the essence, will not stand a chance. It is not a matter of whether or not; it is only a matter of when. That is the truth.

  I can feel my funeral coming. I think I have begun to accept what will be inside the grave.

  Chapter [9]

  The days blur together, a mass of pain and sickness. I read once of drug addiction, and I think this must be akin to withdrawal. I have not killed anything more than a rabbit in days, and I forced myself to not relish in the kill. I do not know if I am trying to fight the monster still or if I am trying to starve myself before the final kill that lets me go. The inside of my head is not a place I understand.

  Several days pass before I see the red again. Anytime I don’t, she starts fading in my head. I would think I made her up, but my imagination isn’t that good. The people in my head are curses; she would be a fantasy. Maybe a curse, too—maybe the worst curse of them all.

  I walk near her house, trying to distract myself from the shaking in my bones, in my nerves. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but then I notice her standing on the roof of her two-story house, looking down at the ground.

  “What are you doing?” I ask. The days without speaking make the words rough in my throat.

  Her eyes widen when she sees me, like fear but not quite—startled, maybe. “I’ve been thinking if I kill myself, it will make me a terrible person, and being a terrible person hurts me more than anyone, so doesn’t that make it the best punishment?”

  “What are you talking about?” I ask. Her body sways precariously, dangerously.

  “I don’t deserve to be remembered. I don’t deserve to live on. I’ve hurt people and I’ve killed people. I’m broken. Shouldn’t I kill myself? Wouldn’t that make things better? Nothing will ever be fair.”

  I can feel rage inside of me, my mind bursting with reaction and words. “Make what better? You are of the last things that can feel and crea
te. Your entire world was made by people, not Adaptions. I’m useless and I’ve killed more people than you can count, but am I standing on top of a building? No, because people weren’t built with self-destruct buttons for a reason. You’re not supposed to leave until your job is done. The Adaptions stay forever because we have no job. All we can do is survive,” I say, realizing thoughts locked away in the back of my mind.

  “I don’t know what my job is,” she says, crying.

  My mind says let her die. Saying anything to her right now is physically painful. I am supposed to let the humans die out. This goes against what nature has designed. Nature must have made me wrong.

  “Then maybe you don’t have one. Maybe you were built to die. Maybe you all were. That’s what happens, isn’t it? No matter what, death is your end. Maybe you’re just cheating to reach the goal.”

  “Death scares me,” she says, her red hair blowing in the wind, skin glowing in the twilight. “Maybe it is the goal. People used to say it was reproduction, you know, furthering the species, but we can’t do that anymore. Maybe this is it.”

  I can feel the rage growing. I cannot stand the pity. “You disgust me. Do you expect me to talk you down? If you want to jump, jump. I do not care. I have wanted to be vivid. I have wanted to be alive. I do. But I never got that, and I never will. I never had the option. I am a creature in a cage with only one option, to wither away, to kill myself away, until I am the very thing I know most I would hate.

  “And you? You stand on a rooftop, crying because you’re alive, because you had to kill things that would kill you if you didn’t. If you didn’t want to survive so badly, you shouldn’t have tried to. You should’ve let others instead.”

  “I’m sorry. I’m trying to fight myself. I’m trying to figure out if I can make sense of living, and I haven’t,” she says. Her words shake.

  Something in me clicks. I don’t think I want to be human. Any species that does this to themselves, ruins their own lives and entire planets… What good can come from feeling? What good can come from the traits of humanity? There is a reason they died out. There is a reason we are here now.

  “I don’t care,” I say and turn, walking off into the night. I let the kill in me out of the cage, and I am so hungry for it. I am so hungry to stop feeling and thinking. I am ready to let go. I am ready.

  Azure appears beside me as I walk. I want him to leave the second he appears. I want him gone.

  “I know you don’t want to see me, but you will, Inanis,” he says, his voice strong.

  I walk past him, but he grabs my shoulder, and some part of me feels it. I turn to him. “What the hell do you want now—to tell me your last words?”

  I can see his valor wane. When he speaks, it’s quiet, but it remains strong, “I think I’m real, you know, just a bit. You had room in your head for us. You lost some of yourself—just enough. I think you take a bit of us every time, and I think it’s the best thing you’ve ever done. Part of us lives on in you. I know that makes you feel sick. You dictate us, tell us what you need to hear, and we say it, but I don’t think we’re just imagined. You’re not capable of that much creativity anymore.

  “Some of us survive. Some of us are here for a lot more than that girl. We don’t pity ourselves; we stay because we believe in something better. I am here because neither one of us is dead. I know who I am. I remember. Take our humanity; become what we failed to be. Give us purpose. Become human.”

  I laugh something mad and vicious. “How insane am I to invent you? You aren’t real. Your name isn’t Azure, and you cannot make me human, because I am not, and I never will be, and you know what? That’s my job. I am an Adaption. I kill, I survive, and I do not imagine.”

  The boy looks at me, his eye so vivid with emotion that I cannot stand the sight of it, but I stare—I stare until I drive him away and he disappears. When he does, I feel it. I feel the emptiness of my head. I feel them gone.

  I go to the neighborhoods, and I murder Adaption and human alike until I am drenched with blood; until I cannot think or see anything but red—until I am dead.

  Chapter [10]

  I wake up in the field. Sunlight is hot on my skin. The air is cool with approaching storm. I open my eyes to a world that means nothing. I have nothing left. I survive.

  I go to my house, and to the working water to clean off the blood like I always do, not because it bothers me, but because it sticks. I look in the dirty mirror, cracked and foggy. My dark eyes stare back at me, blood staining my skin and matting my dark hair. I see the monster.

  Almost. I want to see the monster. I feel at home inside of him, but I feel one thing, and I cannot ignore it. There is one thing left still alive in my head. The red is still alive in my head. I have to kill her, if she is not already dead. I feel it in every facet of me. I feel rage. She started all of this, and to end it I have to end her. I am so close.

  I do not clean the blood off before I leave in search of her. When I find her house, I do not find her corpse rotting on the ground. She must have chosen to live. She should have chosen death; it would have been far more pleasant than what I will do to her.

  I climb the rooftop across from her house, and I wait.

  I wait until darkness falls and rain begins to come down from the sky, washing away the remaining blood on my skin. I watch the water turn rust colored. I know that I will never be clean, and it does not matter to me. I was not made to be clean.

  And then, like a signal, the light inside the house turns on.

  Before I can jump down, someone enters in after her—another Adaption. I hear a scream, and without thinking, I run inside.

  I stand in the doorway, my mind too far gone to think. I see the red pinned to the floor, a female Adaption above her. She takes a knife and stabs straight down into the chest of the redness, blood spilling from her body, matching the color of her hair. She gasps in pain, eyes full of tears that flicker in the candlelight.

  For reasons I cannot fathom, I lunge forward and take down the Adaption. I pull the knife from her hands. She screams a guttural, wild sound. I slit her throat, and the shriek becomes a wheeze that fades to silence. She falls to the floor, dead.

  I turn. On the floor, the redness lays, body shaking with every last breath. She looks at me. I do not feel.

  “I was g—gonna live. For a bit,” she says, her voice quiet and broken. I do not remember how to respond, and I do not remember how to want to. “You killed the human, di—didn’t you?”

  I allow myself to nod. Something…something stirs. I don’t know why, but I get down on my knees beside her.

  She coughs, blood spilling out of her mouth. “You’d be a—a better human than me. You want—want it.”

  “Not…anymore,” I say through the blackness in my head.

  “Don’t say that,” and she coughs, more blood dripping down her cheeks. Her bright eyes look too dim. “You’re not—not killing me. You want it. You always—always will…because you d—dream. You—you are human. Just dif—different.”

  “You are…delirious,” I manage to say. I cannot access that part of myself.

  “No. Honest. R—right,” she says and takes a shuddering breath that wracks her entire body. She will not recover from the wound. She has minutes, seconds. “You don’t—don’t have to be a victim of—of human—humanity. We di—did enough. You sti—still have a choice. I—” she takes another, painful, bloody breath, —“don’t. You got m—mad at me for tak—taking that for—for granted. Don’t—don’t die on me.”

  “I am not the one…who is dying,” I say, my mind still shut off. I feel something wet run down my face, but it has to be the rain water.

  “Yes, you a—are. I’m not the la—last hope. You are. You still ha—have a choice,” she says, crying. “It hurts, Inanis…”

  “Stop talking. I am not your concern anymore. You can die,” I say, the words coming out despite the blackness.

  “Okay,” she whispers. She reaches out, her hand so fragil
e, and takes my hand. I have not felt human touch since my mother, and it wreaks havoc inside of me. Her touch is so light, so soft. My poison skin means nothing to her now. “I missed touch,” she whispers, closing her eyes. “You feel…human…to…me…” she says, and with one final wheeze of a breath, one final grip against my skin, her hand falls from mine and her body stills. She is gone.

  I can feel something in me, like a dam waiting to burst, but it doesn’t. I leave the house, walking in the rain. Someone is supposed to come to me now to tell me what I need to hear, but no one comes. There is no one inside of my head. I am…alone.

  Chapter [11]

  I am in my room, seated on the chair. I feel numb. I feel lost inside of the animal, inside of the Adaption, inside of the monster. The essence is so small. I can feel it dying. I sit, staring at nothing, barely thinking. I see her face. I see her blood. I can still feel her touch. I did not kill her. I start shaking. I feel pain that I do not understand. I feel empty. I feel alone. I feel numb.

  A crack of thunder pulls me alert, and I notice, on the crate I call a table, the book she left me. Its pages are yellowed and warped with water, and it has no title. I feel nothing as I look at it. I pick it up and open it. I expect printed text, but it is all handwriting. It is all hers…

  My name is Ashani Dolan. I am nineteen years old. I have killed people, and I have survived. It was nothing special; there was no secret. It was just instinct and luck, and something inside of me that kept me here.

  If you can read this, you can know, and if you can know, you can remember. People always used to say that remembering history prevents it from happening again. So, I want to tell you everything. I want to tell you my life; I want to tell you all I remember of the world and the people in it. I want you, whoever you are, to have a chance to turn this world around. We ruined it. I hope, somehow, you can fix it.