3.03.2010

So Try Harder

"Re' on white makes fer a lovely bride, don' ya think darlin'?" my voice was thick with malice while hot tears trickled down my pale face. It was something he had said to me when he took me our 'wedding' night, when he was pretending to be a husband.

Murder, death, the very end of existence. Is it some black hole or a white light? Do we go peacefully and know everything is going to be fine, just fine; or is it going to be not fine...not fine at all darling? The end or the beginning...either way, it's not my problem anymore. You're not my problem anymore 'darling'. Not at all.

I mulled these thoughts over his body, my hand smeared pink with the pricks of the herb.

Standing there long enough to have the clouds pass over the sun slowly, several times; each time dimming the shack we used to share and then setting the inside vividly aflame with light, I realized it was time to finally move. Suddenly, an urge came over my insides and I briefly considered soiling his body as further insult to his person, but reconsidered that this might be an act of ownership, like an animal marking territory, and discarded the idea entirely. I wanted no connection to this...person, this waste of life and breath, any longer.

I had been fifteen when my mother arranged it. He was "above" my class, but when you're at the bottom of the caste system there's only one way to move up and that is to marry up. Jeb was up alright, always eyeing me at the pub I worked at to make ends meat. He would come in from the Fields of Discard, he was a warden around there, organized the Rabble and kept out the Riffraff that would steal ( "But who cared if you stole someone elses' garbage?" I would ask "Order!" he barked, foaming at the mouth at my insolence "ORDER. An' if ye can' ge' tha' ye might as well kill ye'self, bettern' dyin' at the hands of anarchy!" )

I used the sleeve of my dirty brown woolen tunic to wipe away the remaining emotion I had left in me and then set to figuring out how to drag his lifeless, mammoth frame out and throw it into the Fields of Discard. A refuse train would be along town any moment...I could throw him on that...it would take him and burn him and I would never look back.

Just then, a thundering noise shook the house and I fell, the huge massive vibration that was familiar and unnatural. "O God!" I gasped and put out the fire to stand in the still heated coals, quivering with fear I had not felt since childhood. They were coming again, again to rape the ground, possibly the villagers and definitely to raid their homes.


The Steel Goliaths with their razor-sharp maws and their steely necks were controlled by the government of our "kind and benevolent" leader to weed out any and all plastics, steels and any other "threat to the kingdom". Our leader...a man in the castle to the north, so far away and barely-but-still-yet-visible in the distance. A god on Mount Olympus that no one could dream of touching or even seeing. One only heard of him, they did not see him, and they only heard tales of his "kindness and benevolence". However what we experienced was far different than the tales told to us by the guards of his, the kings army, steel monsters with plastic casings and sharp needles filled with red, blue and green liquids that we were forced to be injected with ( "Or you will die!" the crooked town apothecary sputtered while ogling my breasts ).

Dust from the rafters above rained down and soot feel warmly on the back of my neck. No matter, I would not be caught and my house would not be razed (or so I kept whispering to myself). Even if it were, I was in the only thing that would remain and would not be killed. Safest place in the house right?

...Right?