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Monsters and Beasts

The Horrible Happening

By Melanie AnnPublished 3 years ago 8 min read
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When the world crumbled, I did not crack. It fell apart years ago with the rolling of the final stone. The country as we knew it, once a grand white house, was reduced to nothing more than rubble. My father could see it coming as if he had already lived a life in the middle of an empire as it fell. The subtle warning signs were sirens to him, and while no one believed him, I did. His eyes had always been his tell, and when they changed, I knew they were nothing but the truth. It’s a slight difference; eyes filled with fear are not the same as those filled with dread. Fear hinges on some level of uncertainty, the threat of some horrible unknown thing coming to pass. With dread, there is no running. There is no hiding. Dread is the acceptance that it is here, that the horrible is happening. Like seeing the swell of the sea before it crests and knowing that the tidal wave will follow, there is no way to stop it. Somehow at only ten years of age, I knew this difference. That’s why I believed him - his eyes were certain. The wave was coming.

That was seven years ago, now it’s 2040, and my hands look like transplants from the body of someone who has lived for far more than just my mere seventeen years. With fingers like dried chilis, my skin is wrinkled and red. My palms are a patchwork of old callouses and deep lines carved in cinnamon-colored dust. This is what happens to even young hands after years of trying to squeeze water out of the red deserts of what we used to call Arizona; so much time with the land and you begin to look just like her. I work alongside others, the children they made into orphans to work their delusions into reality. If we had no home, no family, no relics of our old lives, we’d be easy to break. But they did not know we are a tapestry of tough skin from the inside out.

Father told me that when worlds collapse, some people turn into monsters. They would not be werewolves, vampires, or zombies. No, they would be far worse than that. People, just like us, but when they felt a loosening of their grip, they’d thrash like monsters and call themselves saviors. I didn’t understand it when he said this, but I knew it when I saw it. It started with natural tides turning first as we were battered by floods and fires. They came slow and steady, but the pace only quickened. And when we couldn’t catch our breath, Mother Nature showing her strength, she then became the thief. She sent markets crashing, imaginary balances stored in digital banks disappeared overnight. People don’t like it when power falls from their hands, and a country with no money leaves democracy hard to buy. So, we are no longer states, and we are certainly not united. We are now nothing more than regions and factions killing one another as we try to survive. We’re living in the midst of the mess that we’ve historically given, but my father always said that the chickens would come home to roost. Each group has its own leaders, some from the Last Country, that’s what we call the former United States, and some who are new. Most of them are brutal; they are the monsters.

My monster is called JaxSon. A man not made for these deserts, his fair skin blisters under the sun. And even though the sun tortures me most days, the few times I’ve seen him burn under its light have left me sending gracious whispers up to the sky. He rarely comes out to the basin to see us. But when he does, I know who I am.

“When they try to break you, because they will, remember who you are,” my father said as he tucked a small wooden figure into my smooth, naive hand. The dread that I had first seen in his eyes had spread across his body, and I could feel it in his fingers as they touched mine. It sent a sadness burning up through my throat, but I’d trapped it there before it could send tears down my face.

“My little bull,” he said, his voice cracking under the same sadness. He called me this when I needed to be tough when I’d fall while playing soccer or get frustrated with my multiplication tables. Childish worries for back when life let me be a child. “No matter what they say. No matter what they do.” He pressed his forehead against mine. His voice reduced to a whisper, and yet it required every bit of his strength. “You are strong, you are resilient, you are wise. You may be small now, but inside you are mighty. You are a bull. Never forget that.”

He wrapped my fingers around the figure, a bull he had carved out of wood and painted black. He kissed my hand twice before they broke through our door. Standing there, I held that tiny bull in my hand, and I saw JaxSon for the first time. He grabbed my father and forced him to his knees. I tightened my grip until the sharp edges of the horns pierced through my hand, hoping the strength of such a powerful animal would somehow become a part of me. I squeezed the bull as JaxSon squeezed the trigger. My father fell to the ground while JaxSon watched for my reaction. Blood dripped from my little fist, but I did not break.

He’s arrived today, blotched and angry and by tomorrow, he’ll leave burning from the inside and out. Not on account of the sun, but that there’s never any good news for him here. There are over one hundred of us orphans working under the watchful eyes of his commanders, but we never find any water, and we never have anything planted. This is no place for life. He never likes to hear these answers, but I’m not sure why he expects something different. I’m convinced he plans to work us until we die, and if we happen to stumble across water while we dig our own graves, so be it. And so, we dig. Shrouded in beige linen, like women veiled in burqas, but we feel more like ghosts. Only our eyes and hands are allowed to peek through. Straw woven into tall hats with wide brims sit on top of our heads. All morning, we’ve been scattered across the basin, cream-colored figures dotting the red Earth. We worked until we heard the hum of rattles growing, echoing through the basin to announce that he was near. Once he was satisfied with the intensity of the sound and the solace in our standstill, he raised his hand. And with that small gesture, the lookouts perched in the shadows of the mountains that circled the basin silenced their rattles.

There was no announcement, no addressing the crowd. After all, we were not a crowd, just the invisible Grubs. He would, as he always did, walk to see the work of a few of us. I was close enough to see his freckles begin to brown and blend into one another even though he stood under the shade held high above him by his attendants. To be this close to him, what unfortunate luck. Walking further into the basin, he stepped toward me. His entourage of high commanders followed. And as he came closer, I could smell the dust and sweat that had created a paste in the creases of his skin. He said not a word to me, but his eyes were just the same as the day he killed my father, and he was still watching for a reaction. I pressed my hand against my side until I could feel two tiny pricks against the skin of my hip. The tiny bull, carved out of wood and painted black, that I had stitched into a hidden pocket in my shroud. I didn’t push any harder. I just needed to feel it there against my skin. Its strength had become my own long ago.

“I am Iza. The daughter of Melo. I remember who I am. I am a bull,” I silently said over and over until it became a chant that I said with my heart. My eyes stayed on JaxSon’s, our stares only interrupted when one of his commanders whispered something into his ear. And while he turned away from me to speak in a huddle of muffled voices, I slowly turned my gaze over my shoulder. Every orphan behind me, their dark hands, just like mine, pressed into the sides of light linen at their hips, just like mine, and in their hidden pockets were tiny red bulls that I had carved out of stone, just like mine. Together we stood heads straight and eyes steady. I could feel them whispering their own reminders. Nothing more than a sea of worn and weathered orphans, but we stood as unswerving creatures of a herd. We were beasts, not monsters, patiently watching for our time to charge.

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