These Lifeless Things

Who knows, I said.

And why? Why not just leave, run?

I don’t know, I said. You can’t abandon everything.

Outside the barricades, things paced and snarled, suspicious; you could hear the noise over the rain. I’ve always wondered: can they smell? I know they can see; if you freeze, sometimes they’ll lose interest and move on. But what other senses have they got? What do you get, if you’re made of brass and magic, or the grab-bag of assorted junk that even the abyssal creatures cannot use?

And why do we bother, anyway, I sometimes think; but V.’s enthusiasm drags me along behind it, as if I am a young girl walking a very big dog, instead of a fortyish woman who might be (oh, for God’s sake, just say it) falling in love with a twenty-five year-old, a bloody fool of a puppy with curly hair.

There was no time to discuss it as we left. Daylight, at least. But we stepped outside and I nearly swallowed my tongue: surrounded by sentinels, appearing silently in the rain.

Get them away from the museum! V. said, and I said WHAT?

Anyway. We ran, slipping in the mud, harried at our very heels. Some of the things can’t move very well, and when they phase in and out of existence they end up wedged in walls and curbs. I panted in the cold rain, choked on it, coughed. They were watching us, of course. Listening to the things going on in there. But you never know whether they’ll attack or just wander off. Bloody things.

We climbed to a rooftop at last, and with high ground were able to stun and perhaps kill (not sure) the two things that made it up there, and then it took forever to catch our breath. Even in the old days I couldn’t have run like that.

You’ve got a death wish, I said to him.

No, he said. I just wanted to… I mean, after all the work we did.

You do, you do too. And so do I. What will become of us?

I thought he was going to argue, but he stopped, and put a hand on my shoulder, on my new coat, and he said, I’ve got a life wish. I want to live. And from now on, I’m not going to do anything but save my own life.

Then I’ve got one too, I said. And I’ll make the same oath.

Good, he said.

His burning eyes under the wet lashes. Was he crying? Handy to have it happen in the rain.

When we got back to the flat he said, Were you a teacher or something? A professor at the university?

I didn’t want to talk about it, but I couldn’t think of anything to say, either. I stared steadily past his shoulder, at the window, and did not answer.

At any rate, it seems that we are both cursed to live.

June 2

Do you remember, V. said, as we chopped wood, and stopped and gasped, and chopped, and gasped again, the revolution?

I’m not that old, you little shit, I said.

Not that one. Or the other one. I mean the one after… after They came. Did you see?

Oh, yes, I said, straightening, putting a hand in my back. Chopping wood: so horrible.

Hands still blistered, hurts to write. I’ll switch hands.

He waited for me to keep talking, but I shrugged: Yes, I remember.

I didn’t see all of it; it was over so quickly, and it mostly happened downtown, where I often avoided going, since you couldn’t run in the rubble.

It was a few months after the invasion, a few months before the city army assembled itself, that odd, twilight time, a soft and falsely liminal hour in which we were equally certain either that we would survive and rebuild, and that humankind was extinct and we just didn’t know it yet. And just in that twilight, a group of people, young people, as so often happens, marched downtown, and armed themselves, and because you never know where They are, because bodies (They seem to think) are things that happen to other, lesser beings, the rebels merely built a mountain of shards and stones, and climbed it, and yelled, and waved flags, and announced their demands.

I can’t believe it happened, I said.

What do you mean? said V.

I mean, how utterly stupid and naïve must you be to make demands of something that doesn’t give a shit whether you live or die… I don’t know, Valentin, what do revolutionaries do? They had no leverage, none at all. How else did they think that was going to end?

He jutted his jaw out; I had hurt him. I wondered, fleetingly, whether he, little draft-dodger, had been part of that group, the survivors who had fled and so lived; it must be hard to be a handsome revolutionary, I thought, you know, you’re always wondering what version of you they’ll use for the stamp, what for the statue; will they sculpt you when you are old and fat and you take a bullet meant for someone else in some little skirmish? Was he out there waving a flag, scared of being martyred? I wouldn’t have been.

We didn’t know about Them then, he said. We didn’t know what They were, what They wanted.

We still don’t know that.

What do They want, do you think? he said. I’ve thought about it. Why us, why here, why now? Why Earth?

Maybe They’ll tell us one day, I said. He seemed satisfied with that, and we got a good, big pile of wood to take back. Wonderful dry stuff from normal trees, thank God. Of course it’ll need to season.

But I don’t think They ever will tell us. I get the sense… sometimes, in my dreams, nothing I’d ever tell him… that They’re so old that we’re not even like insects to Them, which are a long and noble lineage to us, much longer than our own, silly apes as we are. We’re barely noticeable. We’re so far below Their notice that we’re more like… bacteria or something, I don’t know. Germs growing more or less invisibly in their canned jam, in the house into which they’ve moved with its nicely-stocked pantry, and they will only take action against a can if it starts to bulge or froth.

This is a terrible analogy. M. would have laughed at me.

Can you tell I’m craving sugar? So badly. I’m on the verge of sneaking out of the city to go eat a raw sugar beet. I even wish sometimes for a stray beehive, or colony I mean, I would risk the stings for a few bites of honeycomb, like a chimpanzee. But I haven’t seen bees for a long time. I wonder if they pose too much of a threat to Them. You kill your enemies at once when they are most like you, of course. History shows us that.

A hive, a hive mind. I wonder.

Chocolate. Jam. Cream pastry. Nougat. Baklava.

Maybe we will find a jar of honey somewhere in this godforsaken city that someone hasn’t looted.

Now just a minute though: Have we been forsaken by the gods?

Maybe They’re the ones who showed up, calling ‘New gods for old!’ like in the fairytales. Well then, I wish They’d forsake us. Or tell us what They want. But at the same time, maybe we don’t want to know. Maybe that’s not something for our minds, the minds of the undivine.

Absolute compliance still results in death. It’s not obedience They want. It’s not (I think) food. They kill you, maul your corpse, but They don’t eat you. Half the time They lose interest halfway through and flicker out of existence, leering with Their tangled teeth. Genocide is happening; is that Their goal? Or is it something else?

And where is everybody?