Something Better

The sun had begun its descent, casting her final, frostbitten rays of pale light upon the greyness of the earth. What once was the true giver of all life, the one true god we all collectively as a species so divided united under was now nothing but a broken sphere of molten rock, its surface bare and ashen. But what else could man do? We had broken everything else. It was nothing personal against Earth herself, it was just our nature. It was simply only a matter of time.

           Rubbing the ash from the cracked window, I watched the sun’s light go out as it sank into the grey waters of the sea, like the flame of a matchhead being snuffed between finger and thumb. A deep darkness descended immediately as the last light was swallowed by the sea, day submitting effortlessly to night.

           As I watched, my heart began to stir as it usually did around this time of day, the ending of the known, the start of the unseeable. I couldn’t help but wonder what was out there lurking in the darkness. The idea of rediscovering the old world in its new form was invigorating. It could give me some sort of purpose, some lifelong quest in an evolving earth where I could be the pioneer. I could be along the founder of the new-world Silk Road, a new path for humanity to follow, to begin our rebuilding; a trail that if you followed, you would your salvation. I could lead them all, I know I could. I know.

           It was a mystery why someone, even myself, was drawn to the idea of exploring the inhabitable desolation the world had become, but I could not help myself. It was the promise of something new, something other than a life of watching life through cracked glass; something better.

When I was ten, Father had once brought me home a bunch of old maps and atlases from different libraries in the towns he raided. At night, when Father had ushered us all into the basement to wait out the night storm and Anna was breathing shakily in her uneasy sleep, my mother would read them to me. With her long, skeletal fingers, she would point to different places on the map, telling me all these different stories about each place.

           “This is Hawaii,” she told me one night, “It was once part of the country that we live in, not any longer, and it was made up of a bunch of islands with miles and miles of lush green covering the land.” She paused and sighed. “Green land.”

           “What’s an island, Mama?” I asked.

           “It’s a little piece, or a big one, of land surrounded by the ocean,” she said. And do you know what the people that lived in Hawaii used to do?” Again, I shook my head.

           “They would set out on these things called canoes, made of wood, and would sail out along the ocean, going further and further from home.”

           “Why would they want to leave home, Mama?” I asked.

           She smiled and held me close, the bones of her ribcage digging into my skin through her ragged gown. “To find a new one.” And with that, my mother closed her eyes and fell asleep. I followed suit and closed mine, and as I slept, dreams of white-capped waves of blue and rolling hills of green danced in my head. Sailing, sailing far away. To leave and never return.

Mother would never tell me more about Hawaii and its curious people. She would never tell me about anything anywhere ever again for when I woke up nestled in her arms, tightly wound around me, I could hear no heartbeat. I could feel no warmth in her skin nor see any light left in her once blue eyes, now glossy and dark. My mother was dead. She and Anna were the only things in this world I ever dared to love, and she was gone forever. Father picked her up, took her from the basement and walked out the front door. I followed him.

“What are you doing to her?” I cried as he shrouded her in an old, stained bed sheet. He pulled the belt from her pants and tied it around her neck to keep the sheet from slipping off her head.

“I’m burning her,” he said. So cold were his words. He went behind the house and came back not a moment later with a red cannister of gasoline, emptying its contents over the body of my mother.

I began to sob. “Why?” I asked through shaky breaths. “Why are you doing this?”

“She’s sick,” he said matter-of-factly, as if that was a good enough reason to burn the body of his wife, to rob his children from a last goodbye. “If we don’t, her disease will spread and all of us will die. You wanna end up like her, boy?” He threw the cannister to the side and pulled a book of matches from his pocket. He struck one, its green head exploding into a faint orange glow, but I saw only red, and like an angry bull I charged.

“No!” I shouted, running full speed towards this monster of man. I slammed myself into his leg, but I was but an ant to him. Grabbing a fistful of my hair, he lifted me into the air and slammed me to the ground. I tried to get up, but Father was already there to meet me with the back of his hand. I fell back to the ground, mouth bloodied and covered in ash, but I did not stay there for long. But as soon as I stood, Father sent his fist into my stomach. I doubled over, coughing, gasping for any air I could, but I couldn’t stand any longer. I had been beaten. The bad guy had won, a lesson I should’ve treated as more a fact of life than anything else.

Through strained eyes, I looked up and saw Anna watching from the window, holding her doll close.

“You little bastard,” he roared, striking another match. “You think she’s worth killing the whole family for?” Without even a glance, he threw the lit match onto my mother, her body suddenly erupting into a great burst of flame.

I laid there staring at the immolation of my mother, the immolation of joy, the immolation of my world. I looked up at my father who stood watching my burning mother with not so much as a frown upon his face. This was just another day to him. He would commit many more heinous crimes before the day was over. This was mild to him.

“I hate you,” I sobbed. He turned to me, walked over, and stood over me, his shadow covering the entirety of my beaten body. He pulled a cigarette from his ear and lit it with another match.

“Good,” he growled, blowing smoke in my face. We didn’t speak more than a word or two at a time to each other for many years, not until it was necessary.

           The shack began to rattle as the wind began to howl. My father rushed into the kitchen where I was sitting at the table. He wore a dusty, black Stetson that hung low on his face. Most times I could barely see his eyes, but I knew he was watching everything from the shadow of that wide black brim.  

           “Hector,” he said, his voice hoarse urgent, “get away from the windows. Go and get your sister and go to the basement.”

           “Where are you going?” I asked, doing as he said. I always listened to my father. Not because I liked him.        I listened to my father not out of love or

respect, two things he had by default through his status as my father but since

lost, but out of fear. Fear that if I didn’t, I would end up in a shallow ashen

grave along the roadside. They say that children don’t have to like their

parents, they just have to love and respect them, but I never liked my father,

and I don’t think I ever loved him either. Why do I have to love anyone at all? 

Love didn’t stop the world from ending,

didn’t stop the riots or the looting. Love didn’t stop the disbanding of all

civil order, nor did it stop the bullets from shredding families apart as they

ran from one disaster to the next. I don’t feel guilty for not loving my father

as he feels no guilt for not loving me as we both understand that love has no

place in this new world. Out there in the desolation of man, only the cruelest

survive, and he has shown me that time and time again to the point where when I

lay awake at night, my mind kept awake by the haunting images of his actions, I

don’t feel angry with him; I feel nothing at all. Love didn’t save my life or

my sister’s. But my father did.

So, I did as I was told and stepped away

from the window. I hurried past him, keeping my head low as to avert his gaze,

but he was not looking at me. He was staring up at the ceiling listening to the

rafters rattle harshly in the building storm. 

            “Quickly, boy,”

he said. I hustled down the hall into the room where my sister lay, turning

back to see him barring the window with a wooden plank, rifle drawn. My pace

quickened down the hall. 

 My sister was sleeping in the corner,

lying in a bed of rotten straw and soot. In her hands was clutched an old doll,

or at least I think it was a doll. It had seen so many years, none of them

kind, and with my sister never going anywhere without it, the doll might as

well have been an oversized piece of coal. 

            I knelt next to

her, softly shaking her shoulders to rouse her from such a deep sleep. I never

could understand how effortlessly she could sink into sleep, how at peace her

mind always seemed to be. I envied her slow, childish mind, more concerned with

the state of her doll than of her own clothes or what she was going to eat that

night. 

            “Anna,” I

whispered with each shake. “Anna it’s time to go now.” But she did not wake,

only stirred, and rolled over facing the charred wall. 

            I shook her again

harder this time. “Anna,” I said, “wake up. Dad’s waiting for us in the

basement.” She awoke and sat up, holding the doll in one hand as she wiped the

sleep from her bloodshot eyes. 

            “Is it morning?”

she asked groggily. Suddenly, Anna broke out in a violent cough, doubling over

as spit and blood splattered across the floor.

            “No,” I said,

patting her back softly. “No, baby, it’s nighttime. We need to get under before

the storm hits.” Anna’s coughing ceased. She wiped the dribble of blood from

her mouth and hugged her doll close.

            “Come on,” I

said, standing up. “Hop on.” A dim smile appeared on Anna’s pale face, and she

climbed up my back giggling as she did. She buried her head in my shoulder as I

escorted her out of the room, down the hall, to the basement’s entrance; a

long, dark staircase that you couldn’t see the end of; and I carried her all

the way. 

            My father joined

us in the basement shortly after. He was busy making sure all the entry points

of the home were secure, impenetrable. Despite the world being nothing more

than a barren wasteland, you could never be too careful. 

The basement was a dark, unwelcoming place,

but we spent more time in there than anywhere else. The days were too short,

and the nights dragged on, the only safe place according to father was the

basement. Its door was locked from the inside, fortified by an old padlock my

father had once used for his gun safe many years ago. So, the basement, as

nasty and dank as it was, was our second home. Anna had a place in the corner

with a few more broken toys and old picture books she would read to her doll.

She sat there most of the time, lost in her own world she had created in her

mind where everything was perfect with a sun that worked and grass that was green.

I’m sure neither me nor father was there, but I hoped I was. 

            Father and I sat

across the way at a stainless-steel table, me facing Anna, him the door.

Despite being so far underground, we could still hear the brutal winds beating

upon our home. There will be repairs to do tomorrow. Something to do, I

suppose. Anna began coughing.

            “Are you

alright?” I asked, bringing her a glass of water from our reserve tank. She

drank but a sip of the murky stuff.

            “Yes, Hector,”

she said, her eyes fixed on her toys. I went back to the table and sat down.

            “She’s getting

worse, Father,” I said.

            “I can hear,” my

father said, his eyes glued to the door. “There’s nothing we can do. Not yet.”

            “What do you mean

there’s nothing we can do? She’s sick, Dad. She won’t make it much longer if we

don’t do something about it.”

            “There’s nothing

to do.” His voice was so cold, so distant, like the light of a star a million

light years away that’s already died. 

            “That’s always

your excuse,” I retorted. “You’re just a coward who’s afraid of stepping five

feet from his front door.”

            He turned to me

then, the brim of his Stetson just high enough to see his eyes aglow with rage.

“What did you say, boy?” 

            I turned to face

him. “I said you’re a goddamn coward, and I’m tired of it.”

            “You think I’m a

coward, boy? Me, the only one whose been watching over you all these last

eighteen goddamn years? Well, I’ll be. You must be my son if you have balls big

enough to call me a coward, you fucking ingrate.” We sat there in

silence for a while. Father pulled out his rifle and began to clean it

methodically, lovingly, holding the parts of carbon steel as a man would his

wife. It made me sick.

           Anna began a fit of violent coughing that lasted a minute or so, yet the cruel man didn’t even bother to look.

           “She needs medicine,” I said.

           “What medicine?” he scoffed. “There ain’t no medicine to be found.”

           “That’s what you said about Mother. You said there was nothing we could do, so you’re alternative was to just let her die.”

           “Yes, that was the fucking plan. She was sick. There was no medicine. What else did you want me to do? Jesus, you just don’t get it, do you.”

           It was in this moment the long dormant dream of mine was awoken. That flame my mother had lit within me all those years ago had yet to be snuffed out. I would venture forth and find the medicine Anna needed. I would go out and save her, and when I got back, I would heal her, and we would escape together. Anna and I, we would explore the world together without Father. I would watch over her and make sure she’s taken care of just like Mother would want.

           I will do this, I thought. I’m leaving. I stood up from the table, grabbed my backpack from my bedside and went around the basement gathering everything I would need.

           “What’re you doing, boy? Father asked as he snapped the clip back into his now-clean rifle.

           “I’m leaving.” I stuffed my backpack with two days’ worth of food, water, and an extra filter for my mask. “If you’re too much a coward to find Anna’s medicine, then I guess I will.” With what space I had left in my pack I filled with the maps my mother taught me to read. I knew each one like the back of my hand; I was sure I could find my way around with them. I didn’t need Father. I didn’t need anyone. I was an explorer.

           “You think you’ll make it out there on your own?” Father laughed. “You think a little boy like you who ain’t never done a day’s hard work in his short life can make it out there?”

           “I don’t know if I can,” I said, slamming my shoulder into his as I walked by him on my way up the stairs, “But I know I need to try.” I took one more look at Anna, lost and untroubled in her deep childish sleep, and felt the same joy I felt when my mother read to me long ago, though I didn’t know it then, that would be the last time I ever saw Anna.  

           I hustled up the stairs, trying my hardest to ignore the remarks of my father as I went.

           “You’re gonna die, boy! You hear me! Who’s gonna watch your sister while you’re gone, huh? She’s gonna die! Your fucking mission is a failure from the get! You won’t last five seconds out there by yourself. You need me!” I slammed the door shut behind me. I never heard my father’s voice again.

           He was right. Anna died in my absence, and I never got the chance to come back home. I was gunned down by bandits three miles from the house. But I did not die like a dog in the street. I died in pursuit of something better. I died an explorer.