The Toxic Children (4 page)

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
create
. 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 fragile, 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.

I know that’s probably a child’s dream, and that my words mean little, but memories are all I have left. Maybe they’re enough.

Ashani

I read for hours; I read even though I can barely process what I am seeing. There are photographs and drawings, illustrating a life so lived. It is not until I reach a photograph and recognize a face that the reality of what has happened to me, to her, to this world, becomes
real
.

There is a photo of her first grade class, normal and smiling, just before people stopped pretending there was hope. Seated in the row before her is a boy with brown hair and bright, bright blue eyes. Every name is listed below…and his name is
Azure
.

I drop the book. I search inside of my head, but I don’t feel them.
I am empty.

“Come back,” I say. “COME BACK!” I fall to the ground, emotions crashing into me. I feel things I have never felt before, and I feel them all at once. I think it nearly kills me. I hold onto my chest, feeling my body, making sure I am still here.

“
I’m sorry
,” I say, and I mean it to everyone I have ever killed, and to Ashani who I didn’t. I mean it to myself. I don’t know what to do. I need them back. I need them to guide me, to help me be as human as I can. Alone, I am
nothing
. Alone, I will not make it, and it
hurts
.

“You aren’t nothing by yourself,” says a voice. I think I must be hearing things, some mad way of coping. I look up. Azure is standing against the wall, his eyes both intact and bright.

“Are you real?” I ask, looking up at him.

“Am I real? Just a bit. Am I alive? No. I will never be alive again.”

“I don’t understand,” I say, my breathing wracking my body. I try to calm my head, but I do not know how to contain what is inside of it.

“I gave you the only answer I know. You took a part of our souls. Maybe a little too much of mine,” he says and laughs. “We’re not whole, but we’re here, and we’re not going anywhere. We almost did. Some of us…some of us didn’t come back.”

“Why would you come back?” I ask. I think I might be crying.

“Because I’m loyal, and because I’ve seen the inside of your head, and I know that you’re a good person when you strip away the toxic lies.”

“I murdered you. I shoved a pickaxe through your eye.”

“Yeah, well, humanity’s done a lot worse. I’ve never held it against you. I forgive you, Inanis.”

My body shakes. “Am I making this up?”

“My name is Azure. That is all you need to know. You are allowed to hope. You are allowed to have the mind of a human in the body of an Adaption. You are allowed to be something new. I can tell you everything you want to hear, but you know it all.”

I search inside of myself for the fragments of their souls. I can feel a few, but far less than before. I know that my mother is gone, a scattered soul that I will never find. I feel the absence like a hole in my chest, and it hurts. No forgiveness; no second chance—nothing. I feel a sadness unlike any I have known, but I welcome it, because it means I can care. That is my apology—that is my forgiveness. It’s more than I ever thought I could give.

“Am I the only one?” I ask. I don’t want to be Ashani—I don’t want to live in a world where I am the only vivid thing.

“I don’t know, Inanis. I guess we’ll have to find out,” he says and smiles. For the first time in what I can remember, I smile back, and I
feel it
. I feel
alive
, alive in the relief and in the sadness—alive like only a human can.

I still have the urge of the monster inside of me, but
I will not kill
. Not now, maybe not ever again. I will give the deaths at my hands a reason—I will give them a purpose, a job. I will try to be human with them as my guides, with them as the fuel of my essence, of my soul. If I do not try, I have given up, and that will not change a thing in this world. Long ago, we went wrong. Earth has been hell far longer than I have been alive. Their hell—humanity’s hell—has run its course. I will try for something better than what I am, better than what this world has been. What else is there for me in this world but to try?

My name is Inanis, and I burn. I have
always
burned, and I will burn up until I am ashes. Only then will I stop trying. And maybe, just maybe, I
hope
that will never happen. Maybe, just maybe, I hope to start a
fire
.