Gods of Anthem (5 page)

It’ll kill me. That’s my hope.

Mimi whispers to the others, asking if I’ll be a zombie. They tell her “no,” but she hides her head under the covers at night anyway. I’m the monster under her bed; the bloodshot eyes and moans giving her nightmares are mine this time.

I
really must look terrible.

It’s apparent, because when they come to take me to the sick bay, they head toward the side where the dead people go.

This will be my resting place, where I’ll find freedom.

Finally.

I’m there for what feels like years, while everyone waits for me to pass. They’re pleasant enough … for strangers.

No one should have to feel lonely when they die, but we feel so much more than that. We feel left behind, too.

There will be no funeral, but if the death is quick, then I’m settled.

Doctors visit, but they don’t really check my chart. One glance at my face, and they move on to the next poor dying prisoner. We’re beyond help, as if we’ve already become ghosts.

After three whole days of deep sleep, Nurse May tells me it’s a miracle that I’m still alive. I’m unable to croak out a reply.

Refusing water does no good. She only returns and inserts an IV, guiltily avoiding my glare. It’s obvious May feels sorry for trying keep me alive, even if it is her job.

My bones poke through my skin at all angles in a grotesque fashion. The sharp pieces of me, they tell a story of what’s left: Nothing.

Mimi visits, but scurries back from my shooing and leaves me to rest.

What is there left to do, but die?

God, just let
me die.

They’ve placed me
in a new part of the island. The birds are loud by my large, unbarred window, and dull sunrays shine through clean panes.

The smell here is fresh, missing the stench of fear, death, and despair.

New nurses I’ve never seen before, dressed in regular surgical smocks, look me over with vacant, professional eyes. They are quiet, unsmiling. Another doctor comes in, this one finely dressed, and though I’m certain that I’ve never seen him before,
deja vu
enters through the numbness.

The nurse and doctor give me shots, both holding me down like I’d do anything but lie limp on the crisp white sheets.

He watches me, and compassion fills his eyes, yet there’s something missing. Almost like a copy—a rendering from a very good artist.

An urge to run from this man with missing puzzle pieces, a kind of Pretend Man, strikes me even in my feeble state. He turns away when that thought arises, as if he can sense the empty I’ve found in him and doesn’t want to frighten me.

If I could, I’d laugh at the very thought.

I find him at my bed each time I awake. His eyes are blue, sort of like mine, only brighter, and his are pressed into a face as masculine as a hammer. He seems unhappy with my regard now, and somehow that’s apparent, too.

To remain stoic in the appraisal of this stranger is too hard. Even breathing has become a chore as my body’s long since given up.

My message can only be sent with my eyes:
I’ll be judged in my own good time, Pretend
Man. I don’t need your approval, not anymore.

His face relaxes into what one can only assume is his most lavish smile. But that mouth hasn’t seen a sincere grin—a real parting of the mouth, showing teeth and gums; one like my father’s, whose smile was like the heavens opening up through the clouds. No, this reveals some force that chills me; a twist of fate that reaches into my fuzzy, almost-dead brain cells like a flurry of snow.

Skin and bones, and dressed like a doctor. But inside? A void.

He watches me for a while before he nods to the nurse, like he’s decided something.

They poke me so many times each session; I sleep during the process.

I’m feverish again
today. It reminds me of summertime and the fire hydrants that used to keep us cool when the sun began to melt us all for our incompetence. When each day was a record high, and we lost power due to melted electronics, some people lost their minds, clawed at our door, wondering if we’d somehow found a way to stay cool. We soaked our sheets with a hose like everyone else.

We Randuskys cried ourselves to sleep, just like they did.

And then, after shunning us for so long, when they asked for our help, I dreamt of their horrible deaths.

Maybe it was a sin. Maybe I’ll pay for that now.

My dreams are the last remnants of my short and pathetic existence.

Some are of when we first arrived at Bodega as paper children ready to blow away. But tonight, they’ve come as ballerinas poised in a studio.

And
she
leads the class.

My mother.

Certain places had once regarded my mother as one of the best dancers in the world, back when people were still inspired by such things. My pensive and stoic parent, a stuffy citizen of the British Empire, held such a tenuous grasp on the idea of parenthood. But when she stepped onto the stage, her body would become water—pliable, flowing over anything in her way. Like a reed in the deepest canal bent almost to breaking, dancing for my mother was like breathing for anyone else.

Then, I’m in my old room. The one facing the westward sun that perfectly lit my desk in the afternoon, and upon it is my old music box. Fragile and never to be wound again, it had been a gift from my father, the composer of modern times. When wound, the beautiful shell-carved box plays the most haunting ballad ever written. And a tiny ballerina spins across from her oval mirror.

I’d once asked my father what he thought of the shuffling creatures replacing our neighbors, and he’d said they had no rhythm, no predictability. He, the maestro—his enemy was chaos, and he’d mumble into his teacup, head shaking, as we learned more about the tide rising around us threatening to drown everyone with dead people who just wouldn’t stay dead.

“Chaos disrupts the compilation,” he’d often say, as if we were an orchestra and not nations and a populace. “It disrupts the melody!” he’d cry, then shut himself away to mourn.

I’d wait in my room wondering at the fate of us Randuskys. Famous or not, we, too, would be lost in this limping world.

And eventually we were …