He Shuffled Across the Sand and Ash Listless, Lost, and Confused. He Thought He Was Sweating
D A M A G E
A N D
D E V O T I O N
B Y
A L E X
A T C H L E Y
He shuffled across the sand and ash listless, lost, and confused. He thought he was sweating, so he wiped his hand across his head. He heard the sound of metal scraping. Scattered distant mountains faded in and out around him while the wind nearly knocked him down every dozen steps. His knees rocked and sputtered, he could barely move his neck. He called out for help, but all he heard was a stuttered, scrambled muttering lost in the wind. He thought someone called his name. Maybe I have brain damage, he thought.
He fell to his knees, and without much hesitation, began to crawl. Grains of sand passed through his finger tips as he continued to drag himself across the wasteland.
Dead cars ran parallel to him. The memories of those who drove them along the highway were long gone, and even if they had paid to store those memories, bit-rot would have taken them too, and ultimately, would be lost. He considered that for a moment. He thought about the wasted credit and continued on his hands and knees. Blackened spires jutting into the bloody sky grew slowly in his vision. Buildings he was intimately familiar with were mapped out in perfectly laid-out grids, forever etched in the back of his mind to guide him. Even if he were to wake up in an unknown alien land, he could always find his way back.
Images flickered in his vision. A warm breeze blows through the hair of carefree spirits. Kids call each other names, using sticks in place of ray-guns and daggers. Laughter bounces off the walls of a bar, cigarette smoke and the clinking of glasses. Hands shaking, men laughing, women sneering and pointing behind their backs. Faces crying into a loved one's shirt as they hold them. The sound of a doors slamming then the ignition coming to life. Tires skid and the music grows louder and louder until ears are stricken with tinnitus.
What are you even doing?
He wanted to reply with “I thought I told you to leave me alone,” or “make me, motherfucker,” but all that came out was a vocalized assortment of random tones.
You're wasting your time.
“Who are you, my mom?”
You're too sensitive.
“Just stop it, okay? I'll make it there just fine.”
I told you, she's not there any more.
He kept crawling, ignoring her, shaking his head, feeling the joints in the neck stiffen.
You still don't believe me, do you?
Still, he ignored her.
She's dead, Phil. They're all dead.
“I'll see it for myself. Just leave me alone. You don't know.”
Okay. I'll leave you alone for now.
“Good,” he said. After a while, when she was gone, he said “what the hell does she know?” The wind is a good listener but it says the same thing over and over again.
He was able to pull himself back on his feet. “Good lord, I'm thirsty,” he said to himself but he wasn't thirsty. He tried to taste the air like a police dog would looking for a bust, but he couldn't remember how to use his mouth. He limped along.
The buildings grew taller and began to angle over him, until he pushed beyond the gates and followed the map in the back of his mind. Highway 1888 ran east and west and divided the city nearly evenly. He took it westbound.
Bodies hung out of shop windows, their skin charred like the meat of a public school burger. A hand dangled the flat door handle of a coffee shop. He seemed to remember coming here. Flashing memories of smiles and laughter and confusion about cup-size nomenclature danced around him. The signage, now, was faded and covered in ash and sand. Every piece of glass that could be shattered and scattered were. He stepped carelessly in the fragments, crushing them further between his toes. He pushed the debris in the display case around, gathered a handful of ashen ceramic and metal and tossed it into the sand.
He approached a small pawn shop that, in it's time, offered an apocalyptic look into the desperate lives of others as strangers pawed at things that used to be theirs. He remembered pleading and begging. He picked up an acoustic guitar off the ground, only to find the neck completely broken. The strings were still attached from the headstock to the saddle. He plucked a solid, dead, tuneless note and sat it back down on the ground. The guns were looted long before he arrived—nothing left to defend himself from the empty world around him. A rack of CDs stood, somehow, though many proclaimed it a dead format. Now, they stood tall, sand-beaten, but unbroken. He found a great many disposable radio stars he didn't want to remember, some Christian rock, and other stuff he couldn't be paid to give a shit about. He found a case of Gene Autry's greatest hits and wiped the dust off with his pant leg. He opened the case, and carefully flipped the disc over. The immaculate back side reflected the brutal sunlight into his eyes.
“You,” he said to the disc, “are very lucky to be unscathed in this world. And I am lucky to have found you.” He looked around for a boombox and D-cell batteries, but everything was covered in dust and sand and ash. He thought for a moment to leave the CD behind, but he couldn't bear to. He put it in his back pocket as he walked out of the pawn shop. The nearest building was something, but he couldn't tell. Maybe it was a convenience store or another pawn shop. He moved on. The location of an apartment blinking in his head guiding him.
Winds howled and beat against his face. He pulled his ragged hood over his head. Actual fucking tumbleweeds drifted past him. At that moment, he realized he was the only living thing on this planet.
He just knew.
Pan-Am airliners would fly over head, low to the ground coming in like a bird of prey over the houses and shops. When he was a child, he would stretch his hands and fingers out into the air in hopes that he would touch their underbellies.
Now, a plane was stuck in the ground, nose first, and it looked like a broken beer bottle—an impromptu weapon in a bar-room tussle. A dead body dangled from the backside of a passenger seat, a messenger bag hung from its shoulder. Dead bodies always dangle. He walked towards her apartment. It wasn't too far from here. He remembered perfectly where it was.
Images: curling up with her and her cats, putting on a movie that was supposed to be scary, but was really violent and poorly lit. Laughing. Her smile. Her bright red hair. Screaming and crying and threats to leave. So much goddamn crying. I can't take it. Please let me go. He makes a promise to her, that she is his favorite gal, and no matter what, he loves her. Always. You don't choose who you love or why you love them. Still, he walks away.
The apartment building's condition was not surprising. He walked up the series of steps leading up to her apartment. The door opened easily.
You shouldn't be here.
“What am I going to find.”
Look.
“You're not making any sense. You're contradicting yourself. You always have two minds about everything.”
Look.
So he looked. The living-room-kitchen combination was set up in a familiar way: wine glasses, half drunk, the liquid now aged into a black bile, the pictures were broken on the floor, the television flipped on its screen. The books were scattered everywhere. He could see the refrigerator door partially open, the food rotting inside but he didn't detect any particularly bad odor.
You're better off not going into the bed room.
“Just shut up. I'm already here.”
He pushed the door open, two bodies huddled on the bed, both blackened and covered in a blanket of ash, dust and sand. A single strand the body on the left's hair was the same bright red he remembered. The two skeletons held each other tight, even with the decayed muscles. The expressionless figures radiated affection, love and devotion.
He remembered again the crying and holding on tight, because, goddamn it, it has to be worth something, everything we went through. All the pain we caused each other, all the things people said about us behind our backs. I don't take anything we did back, do you? No. And she still cried. And through the tears, the warmth was still there, and through the agonizing torture of her melancholy and the pain that she projected to him, he still felt the intense warmth of her body when he held her. Even though things would end between them, even though it was all for nothing, even though they would have to move on, he still felt butterflies in his stomach every time he saw her. Every fucking time. He promised that he would always, always, always be there for her when she needed him. And when he woke, after the flames consumed all of creation, he pulled the nodes off of his body, put his tattered rags back on, and walked to find her. Even though she could not love him the way he loved her, he still walked the endless miles of the dust and ash and sand to find her again, on the off chance that she was till alive. But only a ghost remained of her and another who she held when everything ended.
“I travelled for what, hundreds of miles on foot, for months to come here? And she died in someone else's arms.”
You don't remember, do you, Phil?
“Remember what?”
After you left, you had your memories backed up that night.
“I don't understand.” He walked through the bedroom into the bathroom and finally saw himself, but he did not see him. He saw a man made of metal wearing soiled clothes and a messenger bag containing only a Gene Autry disc.
You were here, Phil, in the end. Your memories ended the night you had everything saved, so you don't remember anything beyond that night. This is you. You were with her in the final moment.
“Then why don't I remember going to the Memory Bureau?”
Bit-rot.
“I see.” He thought about this a while.
“Then, slowly, the rest of the memories will fade?”
Yes. It will.
“What a waste of fucking money. I can't even remember this.”
I'm Sorry.
“How the hell do you know everything?”
I'm just a part of the program.
“That's not an answer.”
She did not respond.
“Hey, motherfucker! Come back here! Answer my question! How do you know everything? How can I hear you?” Again, no answer. She never spoke to him again. Somewhere, out in the ether of his mind and his memories and the program that held his consciousness was her secret.
She had lots of secrets.
He walked back into the bedroom. He struggled to look away at the blackened bodies. “I miss you, sweetheart.”
Rummaging through the closet, he found a dingy boom-box, some batteries and a small can of spray paint. He sprayed a bit on his hand to test it. It was the exact color of her hair. He walked back in the bathroom and sprayed his face.
Maybe the color will trigger the memory.
He put the CD in and pressed the play button. Gene's voice echoed through the destruction. He sang to America, all the cowboys and cowgirls, he sang to myth of the old west and the spirit of innocence that ignored all sociopolitical and historical contexts. He sang to ghosts of the lost souls still floating out in the rubble. He sang for water, cool water, and finally, as the final notes of Phil's favorite song came to a conclusion, his voice sloping in and out of pitch as the boom-box lost power, the sounds of the deafening silence turned back in, and not even the wind stirred through the shattered panes of the detonated apartment building.
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