Eden Green

by Fiona van Dahl

  When I step out of the bathroom and shut off the light, my apartment is pitch black. I expect a thrill of fear — could there be a thorny monster waiting for me in the shadow of the bookshelf? But my heart continues beating normally; for once, my mind stops creating shapes in the dark.

  My phone is lying on my computer desk, face down. I contemplate calling my mom, but really, what could she do to help? Why should I worry her? And in the end, isn’t this all my own fault?

  I lie down in bed facing the door and, through it, the living room. I have my shotgun, loaded, safety on. The barrel is very cold in my freezing hands. Warm summer air flows over my back from the window. I hear crickets outside.

  Somewhere in the distance, a helicopter passes over.

  I come awake with a start, and it’s morning. For a moment I assume my leg twitched and woke me up, but then I hear three sharp knocks at the door and realize I’ve been hearing it for a while.

  Keenly aware that I’m dressed only in sweatpants and a tank-top, I walk as stealthily as I can to the door, shotgun in hands. I clear my throat, deepen my voice, and demand loudly, “Who is it?”

  “National Guard, ma’am. Please open up.”

  My heart starts pounding, and I taste bile. “Why? What’s going on?”

  “Martial law has been declared, ma’am. We’re going door-to-door distributing information.”

  Which is exactly what they’d say if they were here to capture me for CIA experiments. I crane my neck to look out the living room window and see men in uniforms going door-to-door at the building across the street. If it’s a con, they’re being really thorough.

  I unlock and pull open the door a little, though I don’t take off the chain. There’s a man in camo on the porch; he’s wearing a sidearm but isn’t carrying around an assault weapon like I’d pictured. He notices my shotgun but doesn’t seem to mind.

  He hands me a sheaf of pamphlets through the door and reads aloud from a card, something about either staying in my home or going now to a shelter. 8 PM sunset curfew, patrols in the streets, a number to which I can report ‘danger’ sightings—

  I’m standing there watching him, and I wonder what would happen if I told him about Tedrin, about the thorns. He’d probably pull out a walkie-talkie and call up his commanding officer to come talk to me. Then that guy would call his commanding officer, and I’d tell my story about fourteen times before I finally got to someone who understood the importance of what I was saying. Maybe the Commander of the National Guard. Maybe the President.

  Or he’d figure I’m a goddamn loon and tell me to have a nice day. Either way, I’m not confessing anything I don’t have to. I stretch my lips into a smile, thank him, and close the door.

  I check my phone and find a massively long text from Ron. I delete it without reading.

  I check my email and find she’s copied it there, too. I delete it without reading.

  Oh, God, Facebook. I sigh and log in. Yep, massively long message. I close the message window, hesitate for about four seconds, and then unfriend her. She’ll take that pretty hard. Good thing she has her psycho boyfriend to comfort her.

  I check my phone again, thinking I might call my mom after all, and find a string of texts from a strange number:

  “I never meant things to turn out this way.”

  Sent a few minutes later, “Veronica is inconsolable. If I leave you both alone, would you please forgive her? She loves you, and you need each other.”

  (Tedrin. Ron must have given him my number.)

  And then later, in the wee hours of the morning, “Please call Veronica. Things have changed.”

  And finally, “Quit being a bitch to Veronica; she doesn’t deserve it. This is between you and me, and I’m going for away. Have a nice life.”

  I burn with curiosity. ‘Things have changed’. ‘I’m going for away’, which I assume is a typo. My finger is already reaching for the calling app.

  No. No, I can’t let them pull me back into their bullshit. I delete his texts, take a few deep breaths, and then go through the motions of microwaving some breakfast. Tedrin’s leaving town, at least. I allow myself to relax a little. But no matter what, I can’t contact them. This has been a long time coming. There needs to be a clean break.

  Usually, I could at least assure myself that I’d come out of the situation no worse for wear and richer with experience. But this time, I’ve been implanted with a thorn symbiote that’s going to take over my entire body and overwrite my memories like so many deleted messages. I think about waking up and not knowing my own name, living out my own version of Memento.

  What if I forget to fear Tedrin? What if I forget about Ron, how much I love her and how much I need her out of my life? What if I forget where I live, or how to drive, or how to load my shotgun, or how to type, or—

  Well.

  Well, what if?

  What then?

  There are two reasons Tedrin lost his marbles: He didn’t know he was going to, and even if he had, he wouldn’t have prepared. He’d have wasted time hoping it didn’t happen to him, same as he wasted time hoping it wouldn’t happen to us.

  But I know it’s going to happen. I can make peace with it . . . and I can make preparations.

  I sit down at the computer with my heated breakfast, open up a blank, cloud-synced document, and start typing. I’m writing a letter to myself, and it’s going to be long. I have to include a lot. Of course, reading these things from a screen and even internalizing them won’t be as effective as remembering that they happened. But it’s better than nothing.

  Breakfast slowly disappears from my plate, when I can pause my flying hands. I scroll up and revise constantly, adding details, fleshing out the timeline. I include every detail that pops into my head: my parents’ full names; descriptions of every home I’ve ever lived in; random memories from grade school; word-portraits of people I’ve known; the bank I have a checking account with, along with account numbers and balances, and the location of my spare debit card; all the names and numbers in my phone; a list of all twenty of my Facebook friends and their significance (parents, relatives, coworkers); a list of places in the world I’d like to visit and why; books I’ve enjoyed and mean to read again someday; the logins and passwords to all my important online accounts; the amount of money Ron was trying to sock away from her convenience store paycheck and the surgeon she planned to use; the entire rotten story of these last few days of my life—

  I look at the computer clock and it’s 11:57 AM. I’ve spent the entire morning writing. This document is almost sixty pages long. I’ve gifted my future self with a short novel about my life, and I’m still missing so much.

  But it’s not enough to have the document. I need a way to find it in case I forget that it exists.

  So I pick up my shotgun, check outside for roving monsters and National Guard patrols, and walk down the street. To my shock and pleasure, my block’s tattoo parlor is open.

  I come out an hour later and ten bucks lighter — the sweet old man with the ink needle gave me a discount because he assumed I wanted this so my body could be identified. To be honest, I’m surprised he was able to leave a mark in my skin without needles healing it over, but apparently they can tell the difference between injury and body modification.

  Near the crook of my left elbow, in letters small enough to be covered with two fingers, I’ve had him tattoo:

  EDEN GREEN

  and the document’s URL.

  It is also a way for my body to be identified. I picture myself lying in a huge morgue-tent as a National Guardswoman searches me for any kind of ID, and finds the tattoo. Maybe they’ll check the URL, too, and then once they wade through childhood stories and my favorite soup recipe and a bunch of seriously unnecessary mini-rants about popular culture, they’re going to be in for a hell of a shock.

  I head home, sit down in front of the document, and decide to add a bit at the beginning.

  If you found this document on my person,
I am either in custody or appear to be dead.

  Contain me as you would any mid-level biohazard, but please remember that I am a thinking, feeling human being and a native-born citizen of the United States of America.

  I promise that I am rational, no matter what frightening form my condition may take. Once I am in my right mind, I will cooperate with reasonable commands. I will participate in any humane experimental procedures you think will improve our understanding of what has happened to me.

  If you are the bearer of this document, and you’ve been feeling a little confused lately, and your head is made of needles, and you appear to be immortal — keep reading; I’ve detailed as much as I can. Hope it helps. Also, your name is Eden Green.

  I sit back, somewhat satisfied. The terror of losing my identity has been placed on a back burner. I have defeated amnesia, or at least my fear of it.

  A car alarm goes off somewhere in the distance and is silenced seconds later. I lean back and stare straight up.

  Tedrin knew about this great big curse that the needles bring with them. He was terrified that Ron and I would find out about his memory issues. He had no plan to mitigate or cope with his own loss, and he didn’t see fit to warn us in advance of our own. His downfall has been denial.

  Meanwhile, I now have a basic roadmap for my own amnesia. In one morning of quiet preparation, I’ve conquered something that has weighed on him since his transformation.

  As I sit, I stretch the fingers of my right hand toward the ceiling.

  What other problems can I fix?

  Sunset.

  I leave my apartment quietly and stand for a moment at the edge of the parking lot, just listening. Most of my neighbors’ cars are gone; they’ve fled to the highways. The rest are either in the closest shelter or hunkering down. For blocks, I’m the only person on the street.

  I have a plan for each monster I see: exes, get up high where they can’t roll up to me; start shooting. Spiders, get into a wide open space in which I can see them coming; start shooting. Giraffes, get to a narrow space into which it can’t follow me; start shooting. Herbivores, hang back and observe. More than one type at once, I’ll improvise. New species, I’ll figure something out.

  I’m not sure what I’ll say if a National Guard patrol stops me. I could say I’m headed home or to a shelter, and maybe they would just give me a ride. Do people get arrested for being out after curfew when martial law is in effect?

  Headlights appear a few blocks down. I duck into an alley and watch; it’s a sedan packed with people, going slow. As they pass out of sight, I silently wish them well.

  My central hubris stems from the fact that I am closer to the situation. Unlike the National Guardsmen who patrol the city and are presumably battling monsters only a few miles away, I am a part of this. I’ve sacrificed the sanctity of my body, the longevity of my memory — that has to mean something, doesn’t it?

  There’s this desperate voice inside me whispering that since I’m so involved, the perfect solution should become apparent to me the moment I see it. There has to be a way to neutralize monsters more easily than blowing them up. Every movie alien — and mustache-twirling villain — has a weakness.

  But are they aliens? They behave in semi-predictable ways. To them, these abandoned sections of city must seem like perfect hunting grounds, full of shelter and plenty of squishy prey, with no natural predators besides each other. However, I can’t imagine this needle biology originating on Earth. Where do these things come from?

  Tedrin is the closest thing we have to an expert, yet I can’t remember him being too concerned with their origin. I can think of a few likely explanations: He’s honestly too stupid to care; he doesn’t know and didn’t want to reveal his ignorance; or he knows but didn’t see fit to tell us — either to hold back and appear sage, or because he finds the truth so frightening that he’s removed it from his mental worktable. Either way, I’m going to have to ask these questions on my own and then adopt an emotional coping mechanism in order to deal with the answers in a way that doesn’t turn me into a pinprick-eyed psychopath. Hooray.

  I surf around a bit on my phone, while I still have cell service — who knows when they’re going to block that. Unfortunately, the internet hasn’t yet come out to do my work for me and plot all monster sightings on a map, though they’ve gathered as much information about the critters as I have. I see scattered details on creatures that don’t sound familiar, but they could theoretically be false alarms or misinterpreted details of known species.

  No more running and shooting; I need to observe. These things are coming from somewhere, not sprouting from the cracked earth.

  Of course, when you go looking for a fight, that’s when nobody’s around. At least, that’s what Ron always said. Me, I’m still new to the art of fight-looking, which might be why it takes three hours of wandering before I spot a small herd of the ‘herbivores’, similar to the first thorn-monster I ever saw. They’re grazing quietly in the overgrown backyard of a condemned apartment building.

  They’re in a dead-end and I don’t want to spook them into stampeding out into the street, so I find a drain pipe on the side of the building and shimmy my way up to a second-floor balcony. A few on the nearest edge of the herd look up at me nervously, but in their world, something that doesn’t instantly and ferociously attack is no danger.

  I sit and rest for about half an hour, sipping from my water bottle and making mental notes. The creatures really do resemble giant, black, shiny-coated bear-hedgehog-horses. In the yellow light of the alley lamps, they’re weirdly beautiful, like a herd of wild and freakish mustangs. Their herd formation is what you would imagine; the slow and limping near the outside to distract predators, then the biggest, then nursing (?) mares, and then a few adorable mini-versions that must be their young. They graze and play and run back and forth between friends and their mothers. I could watch them for hours. I record some footage and make a note to post it online sometime.

  Considering the only other people studying these things are a psycho-murderer and a very pissed-off military, I suddenly feel like Jane Goodall for the poor things. They’re monstrous and don’t belong in our world, but I find myself hoping these needle creatures don’t have to suffer much longer. Except exes and spiders, they can go straight to Hell.

  Right as I’m trying to decide whether to head home or explore some more, something catches my eye beside the dumpster at the end of the alley. I didn’t notice it at first because the babies were so much more interesting.

  As I stare at the spot on the brick wall beside the dumpster, I realize what I’m looking at: There’s a faint shimmer in the air around that spot, visible only if I stare hard for seconds at a time. And it looks so familiar—

  The warehouse district where Ron and Tedrin first took me hunting. I saw a similar effect in the air at the beginning of the festivities, but then got distracted. There was an herbivore present then, too; maybe it has something to do with them? Either way, I have to investigate.

  I find a ladder on the balcony and lower it, and climb back down into the knee-high grass and start edging around the herd. My presence makes them nervous, and one huge specimen with an extra high ridge of spikes behind its head — a bull? — stops grazing to watch me. I keep my eyes down in case they interpret eye contact as aggression.

  When I’m twenty feet from the shimmer, the bull decides I’m worth a closer look. I freeze when it starts toward me, keenly aware that firing my shotgun will spook the entire herd, and that there’s nothing for me to climb. The bull comes right up to me and pushes its snout against my side to sniff. Small, black horns press into my hip, though not hard enough to break the skin.

  “Just passing through, buddy,” I whisper. “Not interested in your babies, or your women, or your succulent needle-flesh. Not really that appetizing, no offense.”

  At last, he recognizes that I am neither competition nor a threat. He snorts at me, turns, and wanders back to the grass. I let out
a breath I didn’t realize I was holding and continue toward the shimmer.

  I come around the dumpster and the hairs on my neck begin to stand up. Everything appears physically normal, but at the same time, there’s something very other in the air. Also, ‘shimmer’ turns out to be the wrong word; it’s very hard to describe, but the space in front of me seems to accordion in and out, folding inside itself, all without changing anything around it. It pops out of the air at me like one of those puzzles you can only solve by crossing your—

  There’s an ex towering in front of me, legs fully extended toward the night sky.

  “Jesusgod,” I whisper, and start to back away.

  Behind me, a cow bellows—

  The herd explodes into chaos—

  In my panic to stay away from the stampede, I wing my shoulder on the edge of the dumpster. At the same moment, the ex’ top ‘legs’ segment, and it starts to roll—

  “Nyeh!” I shout, and reach for my shotgun.

  —LEFT SHOULDER—

  I wrench sideways, shrieking, and land on my back with the ex on top of me. It’s vibrating horribly, making a soft, buzzing whirr that sends my animal brain scurrying into a panic.

  I can’t move my left arm, and it takes all my willpower not to reach out and grab the thing with my right hand. I remember Tedrin’s bloodied palms, the fingers nearly severed.

  It’s so close to my heart. Another minute or two of violent mutilation, and it’ll tear down through my ribcage.

  I taste blood and bile.

  My legs kick helplessly, spasming.

  Somehow, my right hand finds the butt of my shotgun. I’m lying on top of it, and no amount of frenzied wrenching will pull it around to my front. My mouth is shrieking.

  The herd is gone, having trampled the grass flat in their justified panic. I’m losing a lot of blood. My breaths come short, swallowed between screams.