THE DEAD END
The sun hits just right at this time of day.
Not so blazing that it burns a horrible shade of vermilion into your skin, not so weak that its presence in the sky is ineffectual. The perfect medium: a glowing that glazes you in a honey-like warmth, sculpting a bespeckled forest floor with gentle spots of light, nature’s very own dance floor.
It was the kiss of Spring, a much needed mercy after the callousness of Winter. Her kind caress was the tickle of a mellow wind against my ankles, the sporadic sighting of a fawn stumbling through foliage, and the bearing of a new harvest of sweetened produce - one whose core dangled between fingertips as I lay sky-facing, letting the magic of this moment wash over me. But not for long.
The call - a primal ‘whoop!’ that ricochets through the woodland; frenzied, guttural and utterly joyous. A flash of skin and unkempt hair. Humanity at its most animalistic, bounding to the carcass of the car on which I perched - a relic of who we used to be in direct juxtaposition of the three bodies that had appeared before me.
Skeeter, an oak tree of a middle aged man, once rotting behind the desk at his menial corporate wasteland, was now our unspoken guardian. His knowledge of the land was extensive and his mind, previously melting in the fluorescence of a monitor, was keen and cutting. Our very own wizard, complete with fallen tree branch as staff, for everything he produced had a little bit of magic in it. The love that resonated between us was paternal.
Standing behind him, head always angled to the tree tops, was Chip. He possessed the impish impulsiveness of a child, and the curiosity to match. Formerly imprisoned within the four wearisome walls of what they called a classroom, Chip’s technicolour perspective had once been squashed by the authority figures around him; to them, he was “unproductive”, “distracted”, “lazy”. With us, he had all the time in the world to drift away and three pairs of ears ready to listen to whatever he had to say about what he saw. You’d think it’d be frustrating, having someone constantly in the clouds, but there would be times when you’re sorting your pack for the next day and discover a crumpled bouquet of your favourite flowers magically tucked in the side pocket. You think that there’s only one person today who knows your inclination for daisies, despite their reputation for being weeds, and you glance over at his sleeping figure and you just know that that boy sees you better then anybody you knew before.
And then there was Peach. A language has not yet been invented with a vocabulary to describe Peach. Nobody knew who she was before, Skeeter suspected not even she knew. We embraced as they clambered to join me on the rusted hood of the car. I buried my head in the inky tresses that tumbled down to her waist, waiting an extra second to breathe her in. I could tell by the lingering minute passing between us that she was savouring it too. I pulled back only to examine her in full - still as ever the ethereal soul as when I met her.
The first Winter. Bitter, brutal and desolate. The “apocalypse” was what it had been christened with. The collapse of everything we had ever known. It turns out, the ‘fortified’ structures mankind had spent the entirety of recorded history sculpting with the hands of cruelty and sacrifice could be bowled over with a single wave of Mother Nature’s hand; a straw house toppling over in the breeze. It had ended with a bang, just as it had been created. And now there was nothing. I had nothing.
The sun had appeared for the first time in weeks. The woodland was silenced by a fresh blanket of snow, so pure and silvery that it made it almost impossible for me to hate it. Almost.
Fever clutched at my body with a vice-like grip. I could almost smell the rotten, peeling flesh of Death’s bony hand clawing at my shoulder, beckoning me to succumb. Each night, his scythe dragged itself along the protuberant ridges of my spine and each morning I survived was spent cursing his name, yearning for the day he would finally plunge its pointed tip into me.
I was a living corpse, propped against a barren tree trunk, sliding through time like molasses, waiting for that moment of release when my meaningless existence would end. My body convulsed occasionally but it gave me no hope of recovery. It was my time to go, just like the countless who did before me, depressed and diseased.
At least my last memory would be of the sun, its gentle beams alleviating the numbing sting of the Winter air.
Then it was gone. My eyes squinted open– expecting god, the devil, the bony head of Death with his conniving smirk– only to discover three shadowed figures towering above me, and that same chilling fire raging in my head. The girl was the leader; I couldn’t see much of her but even under fever’s duress I could still make out her honeyed, dulcet features. Then she opened her mouth.
“You look like shit.”
She smiled and it was like a chorus of chubby-cheeked cherubs had opened their mouths and sang me a last, glorious hymn. Her hair jostled around me like a safety net as she reached out to feel my face, her hand unexpectedly temperate. If it wasn’t for the boys behind her, I would’ve thought she was a goddess: a vision of my delirium, an Aphrodite rising from sea foam. She was Spring– she was the wind, the fawn, the fruit; she was everything to me.
As Skeeter scooped me into his arms, I passed out, the last thing I saw being the pitying grimace of a girl constructed only of my dreams.
What we came to realise was that our apocalypse was what had come before: the nine to fives, the patriotism, the money troubles, the wars, the poverty, the systems that we obeyed with diligent ignorance. Then it was over. It was not the destruction that our minds conventionally conjured; there were no cannibals or extreme climates or chasing the undead through crumbling infrastructure. Everything had simply... ended. The dead end. And then the world kept moving; nature’s cyclical psyche continued on without us. And we who were left asked: what happens now? What was beyond the dead end? That’s what we liked to call the period we had entered. The Beyond. And beyond that blind alley, beyond the bills, beyond the desk, was salvation. We no longer existed, we lived.
Amazon. Nike. Netflix. These words were now meaningless, gibberish, spoken by some foreign tongue long ago. Faces once fixed on a screen were a tapestry of time in the sun, constellations of freckles and weathered wrinkles speaking a story of survival. Our bodies and minds connected with the land like the channels of the river.
Unchained. Unbound. Limitless.
Tomorrow was no longer guaranteed. A truth that had always been prevalent, but was now one we swore by. There was only today, which we clawed onto with dirt studded fingernails, sinking our teeth into its skin and letting its juices coat our mouths with sugary goodness.
Today, we should hike to the river by the Eastern border and pick water lilies.
Today, we could lie out in the fields and make daisy chains.
How about tomorrow we carve creatures out of the rotten branches of the oak trees? Oh, never mind, let’s do it today!
We couldn’t predict how long we would have each other, we just knew that we were lucky to have any time at all.
Because for the deliverance we received, there would be so many who weren’t around to see it. The privilege of survival was a burden, and that burden was heavy, impenetrable, embedded in us like the brand of a burning iron. It was in Peach’s perpetual silence on her past, in Skeeter’s smile that couldn’t always reach his eyes, in the muffled sobbing that came from Chip’s corner throughout most nights. And it came to me when I least expected it, when I turned my back and dropped my guard, and its whispers would twist in me like the blade of a corroded knife.
do you remember the night in december
the hunger gnawing inside of you like a parasite
mauling its way out of you
do you remember the face of your mother
her sunken eyes widened with horror
how can you forget the blood on your hands and the ribs of your baby brother
do you remember his unblinking eyes and his cries that would last all night
silence his cries, SILENCE, for sleep is the only relief
but how, how to make him quiet?
look at him, look at him, his neck dyed a shade of violet
dyed
dead.
doyourememberthenightindecember
thehungergnawinginsideofyoulikeaparasite
maulingitswayoutofyou doyouremeberthefaceofyourmother
hersunkeneyeswidenedwithhorror
howcouldyouforgetthebloodonyourhandsandtheribsofyourbabybrother
doyourememberhisunblinkingeyesandhiscriesthatwouldlastallnight
silencehiscriesSILENCEforsleepistheonlyrelief
buthowhowtomakwhimquiet
lookathimlookathimhisneckdyedashadeofviolet
dyed
dead.
DOYOUREMEMBERTHENIGHTINDECEMBERTHEHUNGERGNAWINGINSIDEOF–
Skeeter’s low whistle fills the Spring air. I realise I’m pinching the scars on my leg again.
Chip turns to Peach and begins to whisper about how the leaves twist themselves into a tango from the branches to the ground.
And Peach rests her head in my lap, a dark wave of curls enveloping my knees. Still intently listening to Chip’s musings, her eyes rise to meet mine - as green as seaglass, so translucent that I could practically see into her soul. Pure.
And no, I don’t mean perfect. She wasn’t perfect, I discovered that the moment I had awoken from my fever, to find her screaming bloody curses at Chip. But there was a spirit in the way she wailed, her hands wildly gesticulating like some sort of danse macabre and her stare almost burning through Chip with blind rage. It was the same way in which we laughed - with our bellies, our shoulders tremoring and the lines on our face protruding - and which we cried - the folds crumbling in on themselves like primordial cities falling, a track of red streaked across our cheeks. An unfiltered, unrefined mortality. Pure.
Skeeter says something about migrating North to catch fish from the river. We begin to move slowly in a Spring-induced haze. I stop for a moment, and turn to cast a lingering gaze at the corroded car.
doyourememberthenightindecemberthehungergnawinginside-
Peach turns around, having instantaneously noticed my absence, and extends her hand. I take it, and its warmth is better then anything the sun could provide me. We continue on our journey.
It was the end of the world. For me, it was just the beginning.
Isobel Pares, 19, Scotland ✯ izzypares31@gmail.com
“A writer, one terrified of calling herself so.”