Circles in the Dust Page 5

  He clenched his fists, screwed his eyes shut, and tried to return to himself. This was not him. This was someone weak, who couldn’t handle life out here, someone who wouldn’t survive. He couldn’t keep going on like this. He had to return things to the way they had been, regain the hardness that had kept him through all the storms this broken world had thrown at him. Weakness had no place out here. Especially now. He sat up and opened his eyes, forcing himself to stare out into the glare of the world. Tears of exasperation slid down his cheeks. He stared until he felt nothing, throwing a voiceless challenge at the world to finish him. He felt angry and violent, hot in his coat, like he was a bomb ready to blow and take this whole forsaken place with him into oblivion. That made him feel better.

  When he returned to camp, he ate his last can of peas cold, stumbled into his cabin, and collapsed from the exhaustion of having hope torn viciously from his grasp.

  The winter was milder than the one previous, following the pattern of recent years. The snow cracked his roof in fewer places, formed smaller piles around his cabin that had to be shoveled, and melted sooner. He split his time between lying on his dingy mattress where he stared listlessly at the splotchy tin ceiling and wandering aimlessly through the woods around his cabin, eyes forever open, always on the lookout for any unwarranted movement in the trees or in the snow. Toward the end of the season, he moved the last of his food into his cabin. It took a single trip.

  CHAPTER 5

  Empty.

  The world is composed of matter; everything having mass that occupies a certain volume. Few, if any, places on Earth exist where there is truly nothing. A human body is packed densely, a river runs deep with water, hydrogen and oxygen. Even the “empty” air we breathe is filled with nitrogen, oxygen, carbon dioxide. It is a rare thing for any place on Earth to be void of everything, void of life, of death.

  David remembered the old man’s feeble attempts to teach him these things. They never did make sense. As he walked numbly alongside the river, he realized just how mad those notions truly were. All around him was emptiness. He was barren, this valley was abandoned, the world was empty. Nothing remained. He was the last one to continue to take up space in this place, and soon enough he would be gone too, forgotten by the land and the last of the plants until something came along that finished them off too. Even then the world would be, could be, no more empty than it was now. Neither did David imagine he could be any more destitute if he were dead as he stumbled along the riverbank, no conscious thoughts, no feelings, just hollow wandering.

  He rubbed his puffy, red eyes and looked down at his feet as he walked, not even wanting to acknowledge the world as it held up all the emptiness on a mocking platter before him. He hadn’t even seen an animal since winter, since he had thrown away his last chance of a fresh meal. His feet slogged across the wet ground, soaked with the rain that had been constant for who knows how long. David looked down at his ankles and knew they were wet but felt nothing. It had been so long since he had felt anything, even something as simple as wet feet through soaked boots. He watched his clumsy feet drag through the underbrush that clung to his boots. His feet refused to even bother lifting themselves clear of the stringy grass and vines. He noticed through his haze that his feet were lazy and raised his eyes to the river, watching it run along, never ceasing, never slowing. It looked faster than it was once. Must be the rain. David imagined walking into the water, being carried away in the brawny arms of the river, taken away from this awful place, his body deposited on some other empty patch of Earth. Then it would really be over. It had been a long time since he had held any beliefs of a greater power. Who wanted one that let the world consume itself and leave its excrement on any chance of starting over anyway? This was the dark age from which the world would not recover. There would be no new nations, no revolutions or enlightenments, no industrial breakthroughs; this was the darkness that would never end, never be chased away by a new dawn.

  If only the darkness would swallow him already.

  David welcomed it, wanted to leap headfirst into the raging torrent of water and embrace the knowledge that death was upon him, welcome the darkness that would envelope him when he ran out of air. He wanted so badly to know that he would join those who had already left this world, even if it was only in death, bound together in the eternal bonds of inexistence. He wanted to see his mother again, feel her hand on his forehead when he thought he was sick. He was bigger now, big enough to give his brothers a beating for a change. He’d never had the chance to do that. The old man… His best friend. David could see him smiling in that way he did when David grasped hopelessly at things he wanted to understand, things the old man would blather on about but could never explain in a way that made sense. He hated that smile, missed hating it. He wanted to sit on the couch next to his father and watch the bombs going off, the bombs that were just the first of many. He wanted to ask him why he stayed behind, why he let them go out in the first place. He never had a chance.

  These thoughts came out of his empty mind, tried to take hold and fill a little space inside him, give him a little warmth, but they could not. He was too far gone. He was a vessel that could not be filled, not by any hope or confidence. He was empty, and he would stay that way. The faces in his head slipped away before they could take root.

  As he traipsed through this valley and as far in the surrounding woods as his faint survival instinct would let him go, he uttered only a handful of words, usually in frustration. It had been so long since there had been anyone around to hear them, the value of voice had long vanished from his mind. Of course there had been a couple of instances when he shouted out for someone, anyone, to reveal themselves to him, to fill a space in the empty world, but it was so crushing to send his words out and receive nothing in return that he quickly abandoned the effort. Just saying the words acknowledged the chance that there was someone out there, and when hope of that left, there was no need to bother anymore.

  David’s coat was heavy, the moist air clinging stubbornly to the already saturated fibers only to drip onto his tattered boots. The rain was not cold or wet, at least not in David’s mind; he was hardly sure it was even there. It could have all been in his imagination. Everything he saw and heard could exist within himself for all he really knew. Maybe this was what hell was like, walking alone through the woods, filled with pride in yourself for living so long until one day you realize that you have outlived everyone that ever meant anything to you and now you are doomed to wander aimlessly with no purpose or direction through a barren wasteland. There is very little satisfaction in anything when you are alone. No one to share things with, no one to do things for or have do things for you. No one to love. No one to hate. Even if there were, how could he hate someone if they were the only other person left? He needed people, and he hated them for that. He wished he had figured that out sooner. Everything was falling apart, leaving him behind.

  He had been walking through the night, a fact thrust into his mind by the light of the rising sun shining suddenly and brilliantly into his eyes. He shut them tight and lifted his hands up to his face. This was unreal. There was no light left in the world but the faint glow that trickled through the clouds. He thought about going back to his cabin to sleep through the day but his feet had stopped listening to him. They were autonomous now, pressing onward of their own free will. There was nothing David could do to sway them, no entreaty pleasing enough to make them listen to his commands. He hung his head, shoulders slumped and hands once again limp at his side, and consigned himself to another tour of the valley. He should know this place like the back of his hand. His mind in the state it was, he would never make it home if it weren’t for his tree.

  Even his tree slouched, having been bent and broken by the dense snow of last winter. It leaned precariously to one side, weighed down with lifeless appendages and many years. That tree must have been alive for countless years. It had outlived its brothers and sisters, seen eras come and go, and just now
began to sag. David wondered how it had lasted on its own for so long.

  He continued like this for a while before his head started to spin and his stomach began a chorus of somber growls. He knelt down to the water for a drink and pulled some berries out of his pocket. Whether they were poisonous or not he had no idea; not that he had a preference one way or the other. They were small, purple, and tasteless. At least they went down easy. He chewed each mouthful a few times before swallowing. He nibbled one of his fingers and realized he had dropped half the handful somewhere along the river’s edge. He wouldn’t go back for them.

  The world was empty, of that he could be sure. Now it was shrinking. This bend in the river was familiar. The rock in the center of the stream, water frothing around it, he had seen earlier that morning. Or some other time. But he had certainly seen it before. When he lifted his eyes to the opposite bank all he saw was the same wall of trees that had been further up the river and could be spied further down. It was all the same. The world was a series of patterns. He didn’t want to see any more of it, felt no need to go anywhere else, because he knew it would be all the same as his valley. It had been the same old landscape for as long as his feeble memory could trace back. However strongly he felt this, no matter how hard he focused on the idea of the senseless monotony to which he was enslaving himself, his feet would not stop.

  His hope must have all trickled down to his feet, where it was making its last stand.

  He hated them, wished they would trip and twist and break, shatter into a million pieces, but they only ever stumbled, endlessly shuffling forward. Walking, stumbling, drinking, chewing. He did nothing else anymore, save when a thought wormed its way into his head. It wouldn’t last long though, left on its own in that vacant chamber with no sustenance to speak of. He made it back to his cabin every few days, though there wasn’t much left to go back to. Even his bed was incapable of comforting him, despite the warmth and softness it offered in this hard, rough world. It was artificial and he never slept anyway.

  At length he knelt down for a drink of water and could not stand back up. His legs were too sore and starved to lift his weight off the ground again, so he toppled backward into the wet grass, water kissing the heels of his boots, his face blank and vision blurred. He sat like that for a while until a pinecone fell across the river and disturbed the static picture of the far bank. He watched it fall, watched it collide with branches on its way down, shaking needles loose, freeing them to follow it through the air. It landed with a dull thud on the grass at the base of the tree that had given birth to it. The boughs eventually ceasing their swinging and the needles came to rest on their fallen brethren. The picture returned to its natural, lifeless state.

  Watching the cone’s escapade, this subtle movement that had disrupted the world only to be quieted and forgotten, its effects faded and gone, David snapped. His eyes widened, bulging out of their sockets, he clenched his fists and tilted his head up toward the gray sky. He looked at it, blank as ever, a pale, uniform sheet, staring back at him from its throne on high. He felt a swelling in his abdomen, a pressure building. His skin grew hot and he felt beads of sweat form on his forehead. The world was staring at him, watching him, mocking him. He had had enough of this awful world, enough of living on the leftovers of his selfish forefathers. He let out a vicious roar, laden with notes of frustration and anger, laced with agony and despair, topped with a whimper of loneliness. He yelled until he was out of breath and his throat cracked; then he sucked in as much air as he could hold and resumed his howling. He put all of himself into this one action, all that he had left. He yelled until black spots crowded his vision, until the world swam before him, until darkness finally took him and he collapsed on the cold, wet ground.

  CHAPTER 6

  David regained consciousness after what felt like an eternity of darkness, broken only by shadowy dreams and nameless emotions. He cracked his eyes, peeked out at the world, and slammed them shut again. It was still morning and the sun still shone bright. He rolled onto his side and instantly regretted it as the world spun and nausea grabbed hold of him. A painful beat pounded incessantly against the walls of his skull and he was so cold it hurt. Chills racked his feeble body despite his thick wool coat; though hanging open and soaked through, it was bound to disappoint. He focused on the darkness behind his eyes and lay there, willing the cold and the pain and the nausea to leave him alone. He was going to die. This was how it would end, lying crumpled and broken on the damp bank of a small river in the middle of an empty forest at the center of a vacant world.

  “Hello?” came a voice drifting through the trees.

  Even my mind has snapped and abandoned me, David thought. He heard the word, but how? There was no one to speak beside himself. Perhaps his words had circled the world to return to him, as there were no other words to crowd the Earthly airwaves. Travel had distorted his words on their journey it would seem, raised them to a higher pitch, softened them, stripped the desperation from their tone. Made them… feminine?

  “Is anyone there?” his echo questioned. He thought for a moment about responding, wishing to have one last conversation. Even if it was with himself. He was forming a response when it struck him just what he would be doing, and he realized the last thing he wanted was to spend his final moments of life without the company of his own sanity, even if it meant he would never utter another word. As the last human being, he felt a sense of duty to uphold the honor of his race, to go out with pride. As much as could be expected. He also wanted to be fully aware of his condition as it all ended; he would not lie his way to death’s door.

  “Hellooo…?”

  His subconscious was beginning to get on his nerves. He couldn’t remember being so calm when calling out for someone the first time; his voice must have found peace on its quest, somewhere in the Orient perhaps. He heard a rustling from the forest in front of his face. He imagined a deer walking through the brush, antlers tall, pointed, proud; he wished he could have one last taste of meat before it all ended; he imagined he would never taste anything again. He was retreating from the world, returning to the safety of his mind, though his thoughts would eventually flicker, dim, and be snuffed out.

  “Hello?” his voice resounded more forcefully, sounding closer and louder than it had before. David finally re-opened his eyes, frustrated at having his benediction soiled for the last time. He was forming the words he would hurl at himself, some phrase that would get him to shut up and leave himself alone. The sun singed his eyes and forced him to squint while he prepared his offensive, when something happened that stopped the words dead in his throat. His narrow vision had fallen on a group of trees huddled together, their trunks bathed in each other’s shadows. As his gaze rested on that spot, the saplings clustered around the stand of trees began to tremble and then were thrust aside, and out stepped a girl.

  His subconscious really was feminine. She was tall and thin, though her long gray coat, which seemed to be held together by a menagerie of patches and generous amounts of dirt, tried its hardest to hide her frame. Dirty blonde hair spilled down to her hips, clinging to her in the damp morning, framing her pale face. Her face carried a concerned look as she pushed through the trees, deepening further as her eyes came to rest on him. David watched, frozen, as she advanced toward him, suddenly unable to hear her voice, unable to move, to breathe. He felt like he was underwater, his vision blurring and this girl’s words coming to him muted and alien.

  She stopped a few feet from him, crouching down and looking at him as though he were some kind of interesting specimen she had been searching for. David was in utter shock, wondering if perhaps he had been wrong, if there were a heaven after all, where the landscape was the same but one was granted a lovely girl for company. He would have chopped off his dearest limb for this to happen. Maybe he already had and had bled to death.

  He had to be dead. This was simply impossible. He had scoured the land for days at a time without pausing to eat or sleep, spent o
ver a year in a focused hunt for any other warm body to reassure him he was not the only one left in the world. He had even said a few prayers despite his unbelief in a god who would let his children annihilate each other without intervention. Nothing. Now, on his deathbed and glad to be there, someone shows up and finds him? He opened his eyes wider, raising his head to see her better. He blinked several times, his mouth hanging open, wanting to say something but unable to even fully comprehend the reality of this. She inched closer, her words suddenly becoming decipherable, breaking through his confusion.

  “Are you okay…?” she asked, one hand reaching out to him, the other held back by her hip. Maybe she was real; he was sure he had never said that, at least not recently. He tried to convert his thoughts to words but achieved only a raspy grumble, causing her to retreat and pull a pistol from its holster.

  David pushed himself up on his elbows, which took all of his strength, and reached his hand out to her. She eyed it warily.

  “Are you all right?” Her voice sounded tight and worried, her eyes continuing to dart away from him back into the trees.

  David wanted to reach out and touch her, to know that she was real, but she backed away as he tried to crawl closer and closer. He sat up and managed to fall into a sitting position, arms spread out behind him for support. His head spun but he refused to lose consciousness. She watched while he struggled. He locked his eyes on hers and concentrated on forming words.