Barbelith Underground > Creation

>766412

There are a few hundred of us living in a wide plain of dust outside some large city. We don't need shelter or warmth, obviously. We stand around in the dust, and time passes. I think we've been here for a long time. Despite my dragging entrails, I am in decay's early stages, but there are a few elderly ones here who are little more than skeletons with clinging bits of muscle. Somehow, it still extends and contracts, and they keep moving. I have never seen any of us "die" of old age. Maybe we live forever, I don't know. I don't think much about the future anymore. That's something that's very different from before. When I was alive, the future was all I thought about. Obsessed about. Death has relaxed me.

But it makes me sad that we've forgotten our names. Out of everything, this seems to me the most tragic. I don't miss my own, but I mourn for everyone else's, because I want to love them, but I don't know who they are.

Today a group of us are going into town to find some food. How this expedition begins is one of us gets hungry and starts shuffling toward town, and a few others follow him. Focused thought is a rare occurrence with us, and we follow it when we see it. Otherwise we would just be standing around groaning. We do a lot of standing around groaning, and it's frustrating sometimes. Years pass this way. The flesh withers on our bones, and we stand around, waiting for it. I am curious how old I might be.

The city where the people live is not that far. We arrive around noon and start looking for living flesh. The new kind of hunger is a strange feeling. You don't feel it in your stomach - of course not, since some of us don't even have stomachs. You feel it just...everywhere. You start to feel "more dead". I've watched some of my friends go back to being full-dead, when food is scarce. They just slow down, and stop, and become corpses again. I don't really understand it.

I guess the world has mostly ended, because the cities we wander through are decaying as fast as we are. Buildings are collapsed. Dead, rusted cars fill the streets. All glass everywhere is shattered. I don't know if there was a war, or a plague, or if it was just us. Maybe it was all three. I don't know. I don't think about things like that anymore.

In a cluster of broken down apartment buildings we find some people, and we eat them. Some of them have weapons, and as usual we lose some of our number, but we don't care. Why would we care? What's death, now?

Eating is not a pleasant business. I chew off a man's arm, and I hate this, it's disgusting. I hate his screams, because I don't like pain, I don't like to hurt things, but this is the world now, this is what we do. Of course, if I don't eat all of him, if I leave enough, he'll rise up and follow me back to our dusty field outside the city, and that might make me feel better. I'll introduce him to everyone, and maybe we'll stand around and groan for a while. It's hard to say what "friends" are anymore, but maybe that's close. If I don't eat all of him, if I leave enough...

But of course I don't leave enough. I eat his brain, because that's the good part. That's the part that, when I swallow it, makes my head light up with feelings. Clear memories. For about three to ten seconds, depending on the person, I get to feel alive. I get traces of delicious meals, beautiful music, perfume, orgasms, sunsets, life. Then it fades, and I get up and stumble out of the city, still dead, but feeling a little less so. Feeling ok.

I don't know why we have to eat people. I don't understand what chewing off a man's neck accomplishes. We certainly don't digest the meat and absorb the nutrients. My stomach is a rotted bag of dried bile, useless. We don't digest, we just eat until the weight forces it out our ass holes, and then we eat more. It feels so useless, and yet it keeps us walking. I don't know why. None of us really understand why we are the way we are. We don't know if we're the result of some strange global infection, or some ancient curse, or something even more senseless. We don't talk about it much. Existential debate is not a major part of zombie life. We are here, and we do things. We are simple. It's nice sometimes.

Outside the city again, back with the others in the dust field, I start walking in a circle for no reason. I plant one foot in the dirt and pivot on it, around and around, kicking up clouds of dust. Before, when I was alive, I could never have done this. I remember stress. I remember bills and deadlines, Asset Retention Reports. I remember being so occupied, so always everywhere all the time occupied. Now I'm just standing in a wide-open field of dust, walking in a circle. The world has been distilled. Being dead is easy.

After a few days of this, I stop walking, and I stand still, swaying back and forth and groaning a little. I don't know why I groan. I'm not in pain, and I'm not sad. I think it's just air being squeezed in and out of my lungs. When my lungs decompose, it will probably stop. And now, while swaying and groaning, I notice a dead woman standing a few feet away from me, facing the distant mountains. She doesn't sway or groan, her head just lolls from side to side. I like that about her, that she doesn't sway or groan. I walk over and stand beside her. I wheeze some kind of greeting, and she responds with a lurch of her shoulder.

I like her. I reach out and touch her hair. She has not been dead very long. Her skin is grey and her eyes slightly sunken, but she has no exposed bones or organs. Her death outfit is a black skirt and a snug white button-up. I suspect she used to be a waitress.

Pinned to her chest is a silver nametag.

I can read her name. She has a name.

Her name is Emily.

I point to her chest. Slowly, with great effort, I say, "Em..ily." The word rolls off what's left of my tongue like honey. What a good name. I feel warm saying it.

Emily's cloudy eyes widen at the sound, and she smiles. I also smile, and then maybe I'm a little nervous, because my tibia snaps, and I fall backwards into the dust. Emily just laughs, and it's a choked, raw, lovely sound. She reaches down and helps me to my feet.

Emily and I have fallen in love.

I'm not sure how this happens. I remember what love was like before, and this is different. This is simpler. Before, there were complex emotional and biological factors at work. We had long checklists and elaborate tests to be passed. We looked at hairstyles and careers and breast sizes. And sex was there, in everything, confusing everyone, like hunger. It created longing, it created ambition, competition, it drove people to leave their houses and invent automobiles, space craft, and atom bombs when they could instead just sit on the couch until they died. Animal cravings. Subconscious urges. Sex made the world go ‘round.

This is all gone now. Sex, once a force as universal as gravity, is now irrelevant. Ambition and longing have left the equation. My penis fell off two weeks ago.

So the equation is deleted, the blackboard erased, and things are different now. Our actions have no ulterior motives. We shuffle around in the dust and occasionally have lumbering, grunted exchanges with our peers. No one argues. There are no fights, ever.

And Emily is not a complicated process. I just see her, and walk over to her, and for no reason, really, I decide I want to be with her for a long time. So now we shuffle around in the dust together instead of alone. For whatever reason, we enjoy each other's company. When we have to go into town to eat people, we do it at separate times, because it's unpleasant, and we don't want to share that. But we share everything else, and it's nice.

We decide to walk to the mountains. It takes us three days, but now we are standing on a cliff looking up at a fat white moon. At our backs, the night sky is red from distant cities burning, but we don't care about that. I clumsily grab Emily's hand, and we stare at the moon.

There's no real reason for any of this, but like I said, the world has been distilled. Love has been distilled. Everything is easy now. Yesterday my leg broke off, and I don't even mind.

My Mom Thinks I'm Cool

14:36 / 17.05.08

I'd had the old watch for a while now, but it was only recently that it'd been starting to bug me. It was mechanical, no battery, but no windup either - somehow the motion of your arm when you walked around was supposed to keep the internal springs wound. Very clever what they can build, these days. You keep seeing new things all over the place.

During the day, I wore it like you wear a watch. At night I kept it on the table next to my bed. Without it I was worthless - I'd never be on time to anything. I'd gone for at least a year without letting it get out of arm's reach. The idea of forgetting it somewhere was pretty scary.

But lately...lately it seemed to be getting louder. Sometimes it even seemed to be getting slower, didn't it? The ticks sounded farther apart. But it kept perfect time, I never had to adjust it. I kept checking it, shaking it, trying to figure out what had changed. I brought it to a clockwork repair shop, but the guys couldn't find anything wrong with it. They said it didn't sound all that loud.

It's loud, though. Sometimes I'll be doing something, in a meeting at work, writing something, reading a book, and I'll realize I've been sitting there for like five minutes - well, who knows how long, really? - listening to it. Tick. Tick. Tick. It's embarrassing. I'm always looking around, apologizing to everyone else for how loud it is. They always say it's nothing, they can't hear it, but I'm afraid they're just being polite. Last week I realized my girlfriend was waiting for me to answer some question - I had no idea what she'd been talking about. All I could hear was Tick, Tick, Tick.

The last two nights, it woke me up out of a sound sleep. I tried moving it farther away from the bed but somehow it still seemed too loud. You know how that happens, you get up and fix something that's noisy, a leaky faucet or whatever, and just when you think you're going to fall asleep, you hear it again? Your ears keep adjusting. I put it in the other room and closed the door but then just tossed and turned, terrified that I wouldn't wake up on time, and finally went and got it again. It seemed like I could still hear it anyway, almost like an echo - like I've been listening to it for so long, my mind kept making the noise.

Today I went to the store to get a new watch. Something quiet and digital. Obvious answer, right? People kept asking me if I was okay. I guess it's clear I haven't been sleeping well - I'm pretty pale and sweaty, bloodshot eyes. I sat in front of the display case for a long time - I don't know how long. I just couldn't make up my mind. Every time I tried to figure out what features I want or how much money I wanted to spend, I'd realize I'd just been sitting there, staring at nothing, listening to the watch. I swear I can hear it bouncing around inside my head. The clerk was trying to ask me something but I just couldn't concentrate - I could barely hear what he was saying. The watch was so damned loud...I'm sure he was asking me what's wrong with it. God, if only I could sleep right...somehow I found myself back home without a new watch.

I kind of broke down, then, a little. All I'd had to do was buy a new one, but now I was stuck with this fucking watch for another night! Damn it, how'd I screw that up? Sure, I'm tired as hell, but all I had to do was buy a damn watch. This whole pain in the ass would have been over with.

Okay, it doesn't seem like this is a big deal. It shouldn't be, right? It's just a noisy watch. But for some reason I was totally freaked out. Something about the way it kept getting louder, the way it was slowing down. It was definitely slowing down. Like the ticks were getting heavier, like it was pushing a pendulum through syrup or rust. It made me feel sick. No, hell, I was terrified. It must have been the lack of sleep, right? When you're running on the edge of exhaustion, you get scared and jumpy. I can't explain it. I felt like something terrible was about to happen, like someone I knew was going to die, but if I tried to think who, I couldn't remember. There was no reason. It was just a watch. But it was hard to think. I kept losing time, waking up out of that empty trance, hearing Tick Tick Tick.

Just now it happened again. It's fucking dark outside. This wasn't five minutes, more like five hours I just lost. I just come to myself and I'm sitting on my bed, watch in my hands, staring at it. It was like 3 PM when I sat down. There's a bowl of soup I was about to eat, cold and thick now, on the little table over there. I just lost my whole evening listening to Tick, ...Tick...

I freak out, now. Totally lose it. I almost throw up. Somehow the missing time is the scariest thing that's ever happened to me. This fucking thing has to go. It'll be worth missing work tomorrow, if I do. I've got to sleep. I've got to get some peace from this Tick, Tick.

I turn the watch upside down in my hand, cool smooth metal in my palm, and smash the glass against the bedside table, I beat it down again and again until the thing is dead, the arms are bent, the soft metal's fucked, the brass gears and springs and bits of glass are all over the place like parade confetti.

I close my eyes. I hear nothing. I take a breath. Silence, total silence. I'm at peace.

Then I feel it, terrible pressure inside my chest, like a heart attack might feel. Heavy, slow. Like a gear grinding, like a heavy weight falling. More like a clunk than a tick.

I tear open my shirt to uncover my heart, trying to press my hands against my skin. Am I that stressed out, I'm having a heart attack? I'm not old enough. My chest feels wrong.

When I look down, I see something pushing my skin out, like a rib, like something that shouldn't be there, like when my stupid cousin ended up with a B-B stuck under the skin on his forehead, only bigger. It hurts terribly, like something's broken. My arms weigh a million pounds, sweat's stinging my eyes, I feel freezing cold. I can't feel my fingers, they're clumsy and numb. For some reason I decide that I have to push this thing back into place, like setting a broken bone. I fumble around for a while, my skin is slick with sweat, my hands are useless. Finally I get enough purchase, I suck wind into aching pinched lungs, I push with all my feeble power. Chonk!

The pain is horrible, worse than anything. The world is red. Then the world is black. I can't feel or see anything. I seem to keep thinking I'm cold, though. I drift for a while, occasionally thinking I'm cold, not really understanding what that means or caring.

After a while...who knows how long? I hear crazy whispers in my ears. There's a little whirring sound, like a motor pulling an elevator far away, like a wheel spinning.

Things happen out of sequence. Or I remember them wrong. I'm sitting up. I can see my room again, but there's no color at all. I'm blind, but I can feel again - my chest, mostly. I feel something sliding around under my skin, someone pushing something into me. I try to scream but I can't make a sound. There're mechanical noises again, clicks, winding noises. I feel a strange pressure building between my ears.

There are two men in the room with me. They're doctors. Somehow I know this. Maybe it's because they're wearing white coats? I feel like I knew before I thought about it.

There's another big click, and more things sliding around inside my head. The world has color again. I still can't move. There's more winding noises.

"Very clever what they can build these days," says a doctor man. He reaches behind my head and I feel something long sliding out of my brain. Very, very long. I should be dead. I try to imagine how far into my head it was, and I gag, only I don't because I can't move. It keeps sliding out. I can't feel where it was inside, only where it moves through the skull.

Finally he pulls his hand back. There's a big brass key in his fingers, covered in blood and a little hair.

"I hear they've got new ones that keep themselves wound up somehow, just by walking around."

"Man, I'd like to see that."

"Okay, hit the reset and let's get out of here."

***

Today I got a watch in the mail from a relative, one of the old kind that has moving parts but no battery. You have to keep winding it up though. I like it. It makes a nice, quiet ticking noise, very quick and regular. For some reason, the sound is really soothing, like everything's right in the world.

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