EXCERPT: Chapter 1
1
You can hear the sound of death above the dust-covered floors I call a ceiling. You can hear it whisper in the wind, reminding us of what we have done. The shifting of a billion souls scattered in the air… It’s the lullaby of my childhood.
Funny how you can be put to blame for the destruction of a world you never knew. We are the Adaptions, and in this wasteland we can survive. Maybe that’s why they say it’s our fault. It took ten years for enough of us to be born for the fathers to die out, standing and screaming and guarding the graves of their dead wives. Born into a world of chemicals and poison, us little babies had to adapt to survive. We became toxic, inside and out. Maybe it makes us mental, yeah, but we survived. That’s more than I can say for humankind. They made themselves a casualty.
“Do not forget we made things beautiful,” says the Woman. Her hair is red as fire, skin as pale as the passing glimpse of the moon. I’d call her poetry, but she’s more like hell.
“Dead people don’t know shit,” I say, fingers pointed at her in the shape of a gun. Click, click, bang. What a beautiful sound. Too bad the bullets can’t pierce the fabric of my mind, of which she is so poorly made.
“Inanis, you disconnect us. We are not so dis—”
“I disconnect,” I seethe. I smash the side of my head with my fist until it throbs, until it bleeds, until she fades.
I get up from my half-broken chair. I sleep there most nights. Beds make me feel vulnerable—I can’t attack fast. You have to attack fast. If you don’t, you die, and you don’t get a second chance. If you got a body, you got that life and nothing more. These bodies burn souls. You start out with this energy, this burning light in your essence, and this flesh eats it until all that’s left is some shriveled, pathetic shred of humanity. And then when you die, you’ll be another agony-ridden soul polluting the sky with the rest of the humans. That’s it. You’re done. No more lives. No heaven or hell. Done.
So you don’t die. We don’t know how long we can live yet. It hasn’t been long enough for anyone to know, but we think we can survive until the sun explodes. By then, we will be like walking corpses. I look forward to it. Then they will leave me be.
You can hear the sound of death above the dust-covered floors I call a ceiling. You can hear it whisper in the wind, reminding us of what we have done. The shifting of a billion souls scattered in the air… It’s the lullaby of my childhood.
Funny how you can be put to blame for the destruction of a world you never knew. We are the Adaptions, and in this wasteland we can survive. Maybe that’s why they say it’s our fault. It took ten years for enough of us to be born for the fathers to die out, standing and screaming and guarding the graves of their dead wives. Born into a world of chemicals and poison, us little babies had to adapt to survive. We became toxic, inside and out. Maybe it makes us mental, yeah, but we survived. That’s more than I can say for humankind. They made themselves a casualty.
“Do not forget we made things beautiful,” says the Woman. Her hair is red as fire, skin as pale as the passing glimpse of the moon. I’d call her poetry, but she’s more like hell.
“Dead people don’t know shit,” I say, fingers pointed at her in the shape of a gun. Click, click, bang. What a beautiful sound. Too bad the bullets can’t pierce the fabric of my mind, of which she is so poorly made.
“Inanis, you disconnect us. We are not so dis—”
“I disconnect,” I seethe. I smash the side of my head with my fist until it throbs, until it bleeds, until she fades.
I get up from my half-broken chair. I sleep there most nights. Beds make me feel vulnerable—I can’t attack fast. You have to attack fast. If you don’t, you die, and you don’t get a second chance. If you got a body, you got that life and nothing more. These bodies burn souls. You start out with this energy, this burning light in your essence, and this flesh eats it until all that’s left is some shriveled, pathetic shred of humanity. And then when you die, you’ll be another agony-ridden soul polluting the sky with the rest of the humans. That’s it. You’re done. No more lives. No heaven or hell. Done.
So you don’t die. We don’t know how long we can live yet. It hasn’t been long enough for anyone to know, but we think we can survive until the sun explodes. By then, we will be like walking corpses. I look forward to it. Then they will leave me be.
© 2015-2021 by Tessa Maurer. All rights reserved.
