the garden of eden.

[sister_saviour]

There is no time to think about how many days have passed since we arrived here. In the early days, the advice was to keep running. Just run, don't stop, don't look behind you. Keep your eyes and ears open, but try not to look at all the damage done. The stink of human flesh was everywhere. There are things that one cannot erase. That smell is one of them. If I breathe too deeply, it floods back to me. It's a sweet smell, like the garbage on a fairground a few days after the summer carnival leaves town. It's buttered popcorn and metal. If I close my eyes, the dead swim back to me. They are green and mottled with the delicate zig-zag of veins, some are swollen and decaying. They're all angry, vengeful spirits that claw at my hair and clothes. I wake up and I'm back here. I'm covered in a sheen of sweat and there's no room to scream. That's the problem. You can't escape it unless you're wide awake and with your breath baited. Nothing in, nothing out. But we've all got to live and so you take in that nauseating phantom smell. You dream of monsters that were as much flesh and blood as you. Everyone is a prophet now. This is what it all boils down to. It's only a matter of time until we join them, whether it's in the ground or above it in a mad stagger, blood thirsty and vacant. There's no place to run. We wait for nothing. It's a meager existence, but its better than the alternative.

Clare sits by the wall with her forehead pressed against the splintered wood and pretends its glass. Her eyes are closed, but she feels far away. I can feel her mind wind back to before. It's a Sunday afternoon matinee. Nothing feels real anymore. There is no goodness now. We are reduced to being. We do not talk much. There is no weather or daily routine to create small talk from. The past hurts too much.

It's better to keep quiet; just to be safe. I record this all not because I believe in a history that will read it. I'm not Anne Frank. There is no reconstruction from this, at least none that I can believe in. I write because otherwise, I'll go insane. I write because reading the words makes it real. This isn't a nightmare that I've allowed myself to be apart of for too long.

Our home is the cellar of in the backyard of a house whose owners have died long ago. In some nuclear paranoia, the couple had stocked up all sorts of supplies that we now rely on. Bottled water and tins of vegetables and fruit. A generator supplies our power. If it fails, there is a similar model with a crank. Our bed is narrow with an olive green felt cover. A warmer blanket is folded beneath the bed. There is one pillow. There is one table and four chairs. We use two and keep the other on hand. My tire iron hangs out of Clare's sight. It is crusted with the foul blood of the beasts that live above us. We have a hot plate. We have a can opener. There is a sheet that suspends down the far wall of the cellar. It, by some means that I cannot explain, catches the condensation of the earth when it rains and from our breath. It drips into a long washtub that sits below it. This water, we use to wash ourselves and clean the insides of the tins that we eat from. The scrap metal is stacked in a corner.

I'm afraid. I don't know what to do. I inventory the stock of my life and surroundings daily. I try to strategize, but I'm not built for this. I had a life before the war. I was an English teacher. I taught Shakespeare and T.S. Eliot. I drove to and from work without a care in the world. I had a house with three bedrooms and a porch in the back. It was a good life. Now I wonder. Is this how the world ends?

[sister_saviour]

"She's not a girl who misses much. Do, do, do --" Clare is unreliable in her moods. If she is not silent and unresponsive, she is the girl climbing up the walls. She sings to break up the silence and sways in a fashion that reminds me of the beasts. Her legs are stiff and arms swaying like a primate. She frightens me. "I need a fix cos' I'm going down. Down to the place that I left uptown."

Her voice is sweet and welcomed just the same. It reminds me that life still exists. I'm a stale body now. I smell. A fine beard covers my jaw and creeps down the line of my neck in spare, unruly hairs. It is red where the rest of my hair is dark. I look like my father and that thought alone is enough to make me avoid a mirror.

Later, that night, we are in bed and she is covering me. Her arm is swung heavily over my ribs and a hand pats down my shirt. I pretend to be asleep because it is easier than dealing with the present. I lower my breathing and pucker my lips noisily with each exhale. She touches my belly, thumbing a finger inside my navel. When her hand slips beneath my briefs, I squeeze my eyes shut and imagine all the terror that I know is enough to kill any human drive in me. I want death in these moments and I grow flaccid and pathetic in her palm. She stops and we are both breathless for a moment. Clare flops heavily onto her back and then scrambles over. The sheets tug and my legs are exposed as she wraps herself up in her offense and scratching felt. She shakes and I hear the low thud of tears as they slide off her nose and hit the pillow.

"Give me them back. I want them back," she warbles as her shoulderblades bite into mine. Her arms lift overhead and palms smear into the tired sockets of her eyes. She will cry and mumble nonsense to herself until her body is an exhausted sack and she returns to her nightmares. No, that's not true. I don't know what my wife sees when she sleeps. I hope she dreams of our life before, our house. I hope she's dancing to the White album in the lawn with her feet bare and blonde hair swinging down her back.

"Fuck you, Alex," she mumbles in her sleep. "Damn you all."

There is no winning here. I let her curse me because there's no room for blessings in this world. Nights like these, I can't sleep. The air feels too sticky. I swear I hear scratching on the ground above us. This is it for us. Unless we move by some chance, any invasion would be a death sentence. There is no escape from a hole in the ground. Clare does not know it, but I keep a gun buried in the soft part of the wall. It has two bullets left. If they get us, I know what I must do. I will kill her and them myself. Heaven and hell can sort us out later.

[sister_saviour]

So, here's how it happened. In 1982, a farmer in Alansville, Kansas was struck by lightning. Or that's the official report. The truth is that he was visited by a black-winged Angel who told him that the world would be ending fifteen years from now and that he must prepare. He opened up the sky and showed the old hick all the shit that would go down. He saw the beasts, the carnage, the whole bit. When it was all over, he was black as sin and his hair was singed. He stumbled into his rundown farmhouse and wrote a letter to his cousin's boy in Cleveland who was the production manager for the local news. He told him all about what he saw and then calmly walked back into the yard and to his toolshed. He was happy for the first time in seven years that his wife had passed quick and pumped full of morphine from cancer. He then loaded his shotgun into his mouth and pulled the trigger with his big toe. Out like a light, just like that. His scalp was found ten feet outside the shed on the lawn. By the time that the Sheriff had arrived, a couple of hounddogs had already chewed through the better part of it.

Across the country in Ohio, his cousin's boy gets the letter and can't believe what he's reading. He soon gets a call from so-and-so from the family and the letter is dismissed as the ramblings of a brain-damaged, grief-stricken widow. Everyone attends his funeral and shakes their head. They've got no clue what's happening.

Flash forward those fifteen years and the cousin is now working up in Chicago. He's hit the big time and is really comfortable in his new place. He's got a pretty wife and two preteens. His wife wants another kid, but something makes him shrug off the idea. Maybe it's because his two are so close to being out of the house. He wants a boat. He wants weekends and vacations. When he least expects it, everything happens all at once. He remembers his crazy cousin's note and tries to find it, but its long gone. Maybe he even threw it away. No one would believe his story anyway. Even if it was plausible, no one would soon be around to hear it. He dies two weeks later in an alleyway with his throat ripped open. I don't even want to talk about what happened to his wife and kids.

These are the myths that we make up.
Clare has not spoken to me in three days.

<font color="#000000" size="1">[ May 19, 2007 11:12 AM: Message edited by: sister saviour ]</font>

[sister_saviour]

Before.

The house was a study in controlled chaos. The formal dining table was used twice a year and spent the rest of the three hundred and sixty-three days buried beneath abandoned art projects and graded schoolwork. The fine carved chairs were home to shoes and backpacks. The kitchen was the center of the home with its airy windows and view into the lawn. Jonah did his homework studiously at the island and chewed on the pink nub of his pencil eraser. "Dad, what's five plus nine?"

Alex sat down next to the little boy and peered over his homework. The paper was blanched with pencil eraser erosion. He tore a clean sheet of paper out of the notebook in front of him and tapped at it. "Draw five circles," he instructed.

Jonah looked like Clare. He was fair with freckles that crept along the bridge of his upturned nose and over cheeks. He wrote studiously, his cheeks pink with concentration. He drew five, wavering circles before Alex pointed below them. "Draw nine more."

In the next room, Clare was chasing after Lilybet with the open cape of a damp terrycloth towel. The naked toddler cackled madly and flung herself onto the couch before her mother caught up and peeled her off into the cocoon of the towel. The howl that came from her was indignant and surprised. Alex watched them wander back down the hall to the nursery. Lilybet grunted against her mother's shoulder and waved a chubby hand at him.

"Fourteen!" Jonah cried as he shoved the scratch paper into Alex's face. Fourteen oddball circles with studious pencil tallies in the middle. Fourteen total. The boy was beaming and scribbling the number onto the calculation. "Thanks Dad."

He patted the boy's shoulder and lifted up from the stool to wander over to the refrigerator. It was a shrine to their family. Old gold-star emblazoned homework, pictures of the children and family friends. A scatter of crooked alphabet letters danced on the bottom of the refrigerator door. He opened up and pulled a carton of orange juice from the chilled shelf. "What do you say about us taking a trip on Saturday? Think we can convince Mom to visit the cliffs?"

"I don't know," he mumbled down into his homework. "Mom will think it's too cold to swim."

"It's supposed to be warmer." Orange juice sloshed into a skinny glass and he lifted it for a long swallow. Clare slid up behind him and pressed her hands against his stomach. Her nose buried into the top of his shoulder. "Plotting against me?" She asked with laughter in her voice. She smelled like pink baby lotion and maternity. In the next room, Lilybet sang from the crib that she had been placed in. It was a protest song, one that acknowledged that she was awake and not ready for bed. "Your presence is requested."

Alex lowered his glass to the counter and untangled from Clare. A hand skimmed over her hip as he passed from the kitchen to the hall and down to where a lamp kept the nursery in a dim glow. Lilybet sat inside her crib with legs poking out from the curve of her toddler belly. Her arms were high at the sight of him, waiting to be scooped up. She was a pretty baby. All dark curling hair and red mouth. He lifted her out of the crib and folded her across his chest. A kiss buried into her slightly damp ringlets as he folded them back into her rocking chair. "Let's go to sleep, hm?"

[sister_saviour]

By day five, I break. Clare is sitting in her chair by the wall and I fold in front of her. I bury my face into her thighs and wrap my arms around her waist. She's grown thin. She feels like vapor. A chill lifts off her body and makes me shiver. My cheek scratches against the bare skin of her thigh. "I'm sorry," I mumble. "I'm sorry, darling."

"I want what's mine," she says in a husky tone. Her voice cracks as it opens for the first time in several days. She clears her throat out of necessity rather than continuance. She's silent and insistent. Her hands fold calmly into my hair. It is long now. It curls over the nape of my neck and is unruly. Her finger itches as it rolls a strand around her finger.

I drop my arms to the floor and cup my hands against the strong tendons of her ankles. Her calves are solid and muscled still from the months we spent running. Somewhere we lost the main road. I don't know where we are now. When we went underground, the city was still around us. I imagine the world to look like how London looked after the firebombing. Charred buildings and bombed out churches. There is nothing to live for, but. But, I've got a woman who's living and breathing beneath me. She wants what's her's to have. It's not much, but I've got to count for something. I'm a part of her personal inventory. Olive felt blanket, check. A wall of canned fruits and vegetables, check. Condensation tarp, check. Generator, check. Man, check.

She lifts up from the chair and pushes it back with her bare heels as she folds over me. The legs of the chair make a terrible squeal that rattles the concrete slab beneath me. Her hair falls over her shoulders. It smells stale and tickles like hay when it drops like a curtain around me. Clare eclipses me with her hands pressed to the concrete above my head and knees digging into my thighs. We kiss clumsily, like teenagers in a dim rec room. Her lips and tongue are slippery. I kiss her and kiss her. I kiss her ear and her neck. My hands stretch the cotton of her t-shirt over firm breasts. They slide beneath her shirt and roll up the material to her collar. I bury my face into her chest. She smells the same. I can almost detect the faint wisp of her old perfume. Rose and bergamot. We move quickly in a face-paced game of chicken to see who will crumble first. I know it's wrong, but that hint of the forbidden is enough to make me want her almost like I used to. I enter her with a silent thrust of my hips. She sucks in a breath and rolls against my hips. She sets the pace. Her hair still twitching in my face, her hands above my head. We have not had sex in months, not since we first arrived. It is still frightening, quick and full of sadness. There is no relief, only the subtle scraping off of the tense edge that divides us. I slip out of her and feel a wetness spread over my thighs soon after. We even fuck like teenagers and she grinds on until she falls over me in a shuddering breath. All the while silent.

We lay there for a moment. Our heartbeats feel like a tiny earthquake. When the tremors slow and our breath is again measured, Clare rolls off me and wriggles underwear back up her hips. Her hands gather back her long hair and feed it into the elastic of a rubber band. The pale strands make a messy knot and I reach out to touch one of the curling pieces that hangs out of the main feed. She allows it before padding on palms and knees to the discreet pile of our sour clothes. They are waiting for there to be enough water to be heated. Then we will scrub all our dirty things with salt and rinse away the stale smell of our bodies. The clothes will hang and be completely dry in a day's time. Clare returns with one of my old undershirts. With all the care of a mother, she wipes off my thighs. I feel embarrassed and in love with her. A sudden choke sends me upright. I smear a hand over my face and pat blindly at her head. There's no room to escape to some unseen room and so I crawl into bed and pull the sheets over my head. I sob silently, but hard into our pillow.

I can hear Clare return to her chair. The sound is familiar -- a scrape and creak of wood, her content sigh. She begins to sing again. "I'll go, I'll go, out on the road."