The Love of Greed

It was so very wrong that three could love such as they and I. My love was selfless. My love was alone. At once a weight I nestled within, feeding with looks and touch. Now it is a hole that has consumed us all. Consuming when it could have given, become a flower that flourishes in beauty and clarity. Yet a flower did not flourish from my love. I did not flourish. Your love did not flourish. Your love burned. It crackled and spit putrid ash, consuming us all.

But that was not then, and I am to tell the tale of then. 

There were many in this world and then there were none. Ten billion complete souls to ten thousand half souls. Each one a consequence to actions not their own. How we raged against them, those in our past, those who could have done something, anything. They heard the warnings. They were in the cities that slipped beneath poisoned waters, in the heat that came too soon, the winter that lay too harsh. They were the cancers that grew from the minority to the majority. They were in the articles read and the experts who spoke. Yet, our past did not listen. 

Worst of all, no one remained for us to blame. We could not turn around and burn those who caused us to burn. They were nestled in the ground, in coffins that only polluted our world further. 

There are many names for the great loss of life. I call it the Incipience, a name reminiscent of the dystopian novels I snuck as a child. The novels I was sure I would write one day. But I don’t wish to write dystopia anymore. I want to write a romance that is not my own. I have a responsibility and it is one I must complete. If only to stop the ache in my hand. The hand that did too much. 

There is no reason to the organization of humanity. I know little beyond my own community of six. Once there was a traveler, but he would not speak, nor eat, and wasted away as the fields had done, body as brittle as bird bones. He was a sign there are more than us six. I chose ten thousand to remain. It is far easier to sleep at night knowing that I could have another love. One that is not Hen. 

Hen is the name of my love. Her hair is the red of a rooster’s wattle, and when she speaks, her jaw clicks. Hence her name of Hen. We are not a creative handful, rather we are a tired handful. We don’t have time for creativity. Except for this time I take now to write this, scratched onto rocks that I must soon displace. 

Hen is my love, and it was she that loved another and another that loved her. His name was Matthew. He grinned as he said it, as if it carried significance that he had a name, true name, not a nickname, not a middle name, but a first name he could recall. I cannot recall my first name, yet I only carry jealousy for Hen. His name means nothing anymore. Not to this time, to this land. 

But they loved. Even as the fires drove us from the mountains, they loved. In the prairies of wildflowers and beasts of shaggy fur, they loved. They held one another in the nights that turned our skin lilac, and spun tales of the stars seen in the blackened night. They shared their tales with me, but never their love. 

 The other four, names I can’t recall as they left us, fed their love with interest and care. None noticed how I avoided the girl that had once filled my days with conversation and joy. How I walked silently to gather kindle and drank from my own bottle.

The prairie was long and vast and travel was slow. Each step was a chance of toxicity and radiation. There is no one left to maintain the factories, coddling them, ensuring no tantrums of fire and poison occur. There was no one to keep my tantrums in check either. 

Hen and Matthew loved with a passion. I loved in abscess. I hungered, a hole I needed to fill with anything, anything to let me feel. People settled away with their own loves, loves inferior to those of us three, until it was only Hen, Matthew, and I. They began to talk, the two in love. They began to whisper together so I could not hear. They began to notice my eyes, watching their kisses and their touches. Always watching. Always wondering why it could not be mine. Until I snapped. I made their story mine. 

Our fires had burned low, their heads were buried beneath cotton sheets, asleep. I gripped my blade in one hand, I let it slip between my fingers and picked it up again. I pressed the edge to my wrist and felt the edge. A warmth so cool it eased the pain beat within me as I approached. I would spill none of my blood.

I stood above their sleeping bodies, watching their limbs, entangled together rise and fall in shared breath. The blade hit bone, wedging between ribs as a scream tore across the silent prairie. With a curse I staggered back and away, hiding behind a boulder soon stained with my bloodied hands. My guilt and my shame. 

I dug their graves the following day. Hungrier. Shameful. Wanting more and more, yet never getting enough. I stole their love just because I could not take from them all I wanted. 

I was no better than those of the past who poisoned the world for not containing sustenance for their desire. I write on the stones now, my story of guilt. There is no judge to condemn me. No lawyer for my defense. I etch my guilt into the stones, tears branding me with remorse. 

 I was no better, and now, now I am alone.