Purgatory

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. She had not a clue how long she had been here, her crumpled body propped in the corner like a puppet. She hardly cared. Her entire existence came in the form of the sun and moon that danced across the cracked glass of the window. That window. She stared at it almost constantly. At least when he wasn’t in the room. Which, to her displeasure, seemed less and less the case. He fed her. Dripped water onto her parched tongue. Even sometimes changed the sweaty rags that hung from her cachectic frame. But his eyes were, in every sense of the word, unpleasant. His voice, grating on her mind. His touch, slimy against her skin.

He always said he had saved her. From what, she did not know. He never said. She had no memory of what was before him. No memory of the world that stretched out below that window. Only the vaguest notion that maybe, in a different life, she had been part of it. And it, part of her.

When he came, he always stood over her, his belly pooling over the tight squeeze of his jeans, a ball cap casting a shadow over his eyes. He spoke to her, but she never did to him. She didn’t even know if she could. Her throat felt cracked and useless. He said it was the poison in the air that muted her, but she had a feeling it was the poison in her mind.

He injected her with it every morning. A needle (the same needle). A transparent gold liquid into her deltoid. It burned, and her shoulder had grown yellow and squishy from its daily assault. Then with another needle, a winged one, he would take a small vile of blood. Her body ached from this routine. Yet, she had no way to protest. He said it kept her alive. Kept her from “fading into dust” like everyone else had, whatever that meant. Even so, she had never seen him inject himself, nor did he appear to be “fading into dust.”

All this aside, she did, in some part of her, think that he believed all he said to be true. And she had no choice but to live in his delusion, make it her own. Days fogged together, each an identical bead on a string that seemed to stretch indefinitely into her past and, likely, indefinitely into her future.

The only thing that offered any variety was the way in which the sand swirled and fell past the gray glass of her window. And the slight change in weather, a moment sometimes cloudier than the next. Once it even rained, a pleasant aroma permeating the room like a spell. If she had remembered how, she might have even have smiled in that moment.

The morning light cast a dusty glow across the twisted heap of her legs, sprawled across the floor in front of her. The creak of the stairs. He was coming. A sigh, the closest thing to disappointment she could express. It must be time for the injection. Her eyes lifted to the window. Her window. Something like a prayer formulated in her mind. Please, my goddess, please…anything. Anything but this. Death even. Anything…

The window glowed back at her, red with the rising sun. The door groaned, something different in the way it scraped across the wooden floor. Something softer. Her head lulled to the side, her eyes ready to see the same thing they’d seen every day. Instead she saw a boy, thin, eyes a soft gray.

Gray: like glass.

His head cocked to the side, pitying. She parted her lips; did she have something to say?

Save me. I am in hell…but the words did not come, only a throaty croak. A sound, nonetheless, and in this, she felt she had expressed something that had needed expressing for some time now, and in a way, it brought her peace.

His tongue nervously licked across his lip as he examined her, this pale, dilapidated shadow of a girl, something like a shriveled pork rind against the wall. His hand dropped to a thing slung around his back. She never would’ve recognized the gun, and her eyes curiously followed its barrel as he raised it to her head. It was a favor, an honest waste of a bullet. But, even in this new world, despite all he’d done, he felt he owed humanity this final act of service.

He pulled the trigger.

She made no sound this time. Her head whipped to the side, a bloody hole appearing against her temple. She seethed for a moment, falling forward. In a final effort, the girl rolled, in a heaving moment, to her back, her dark brown eyes drifting to the dirty window. The light from it illuminated the hollow valleys of her cheeks.

Thank you…

The boy watched as her blood pooled, captivated, as the light from the dingy window seemed to not land on her but to go into her. Her dull gray skin glowed, her hair, nearly rubbed into nonexistence, shining as the light came to rest in a soft crown round her head. Her skeletal form was suddenly beautiful to him, appearing for an instant plump and healthy as she settled against the hardwood floor in her final breath.

Red tendrils of light unfurled from the window. They wrapped the walls, crawling across the floor to her, cradling the girl’s body, merging with her blood. Comforting her? Absorbing her? The entire room pulsated. He knew this was not about him, but he suddenly saw himself: a disciple, a Moses, a Prometheus, a bringer of justice. A bringer of freedom. The feeling rose in his gut, seizing him all at once. It scared him, though he did not feel in danger. Only vulnerable to becoming something entirely new. As if a goddess lay before him. Calling to him. Thanking him. And if anything could make a holy man out of him, this would be it. He closed his eyes, drawing a sharp breath.

When he opened them, the feeling was gone, as was the light, as was the goddess, as was his fear. She lay in a heap, the window casting nothing more than a soft pale square, framing her face. Still, he stumbled back out of the room, shoving his hands nervously in his pockets. This world was full of illusions, much more than it had ever been before. And with it, his mind had grown eager to see things. Faces in the shadows. Eyes in the dark. Goddesses in the body of dead girls. Hallucinations. That was all it was.

He stepped into the living room. His companion, Vern, stood over the purulent man, leaning on a foot that was casually resting against the man’s crotch. The man’s hands were duct-taped behind his back, and his eyes were bulging, black and blue, no doubt from Vern’s fist. Vern pressed his gun, the one with the peace sign sticker on the barrel, against the man’s head. He sneered, that cruel smile that fit his rat face too well. “One more chance, cutie. Where’s the medicine?”

The boy made his presence known, clearing his throat. “I found his leech upstairs, he definitely has the stuff.”

Vern looked to him, his smile sinking. “His leech? Is that what the shot was all about? Don’t tell me you killed it.”

The boy smiled. “This one was all used up.”

Vern signed with overt exasperation. “They aint used up ‘til they dead.”

The flabby man was sobbing. “Fine…fine. It's there, in the fridge. Bottom drawer. In the cans. Please just don’t kill me,” he blubbered.

Vern pressed the gun harder against his skull. “And the Leech blood? I’m sure you got plenty of that lying around.”

“No! No!” the man said just a little too desperately. “I used it all already. There’s none!”

Vern brought the gun down in a half-hearted swing against the man’s head. “You’re so full of shit. Where?”

The man gasped and wriggled. “Ok! Ok…it’s under the loose floorboard. In front of the fridge. In a cooler…please..please just don—

His sentence was cut off as Vern shot him in the head. “Thanks, buddy,” he whispered, patting the man on the back as his body rolled forward.

The boy stepped forward. “Well, what did you do that for? We aint even secured our shit yet.”

Vern sneered. “I couldn’t listen to that pathetic go around another second. Just check for the shit, and let’s get out of here. Also, don’t even talk. I can’t believe you killed that leech. Would have been really fucking useful.”

The boy shrugged, moving to the fridge. He began to rummage through it. Sure enough, in the empty cans, half-heartedly covered with a cardboard flap, was vial after vial. Gold bubbling liquid. He began shuffling them into his coat pockets.

Vern stepped up behind him. “I’m serious, boy. We aint got the resources for you to mess around, burying bullets into whatever you see fit.”

The boy scoffed, making an obvious show of looking at the fat slug of a man slumped in the chair. He pushed past Vern, feeling along the floor planks. His fingers hooked a loose one. He peeled it up. Bingo: several vials of dark red blood, flowing with the slight gold tint. Perfect in every way. He tenderly lifted them one by one, tucking them in his inner coat pocket, next to the medicine.

Vern put his hands on his hips. “Yeah well, it’s different. We need a leech. How we gonna get leech blood if we aint got a leech?”

The boy shrugged. “Guess we’ll have to make our own leech.”

Vern sighed dramatically. “Yeah, whatever. Let’s go.”

The boy nodded in agreement, and the pair moved to the front door, stepping outside. The wasteland stretched indefinitely before them. The boy sighed, for an instant missing the tender arms of something. His mother perhaps?

“Hey, watch this.” Vern was holding a large rock in his hand. “Bet you I can break that window on the first try.” He cranked his arm back, aiming at the small second-story window.

The boy felt an almost panic rise in his throat, an image of the girl, her body swaddled in light, flashing over in his mind. “Wait!” He caught Vern’s hand. “Don’t. Just don’t”

Vern scowled down at him, shaking the boy away as he dropped the rock. “Lord. what’s gotten into you. Weirdo.” He scuffled the boy’s hair, before turning back to the desert. The two shuffled away over the sand. The boy clung just a little too tight to the jacket hanging over his shoulders, relishing the weight of vials cradled against his chest.