Semblance of
Eden 7 ~ Ghosts
I’m trying something a little different with
the chapter: the first of a dozen or so flashbacks that are going to be popping
up throughout the fic. Have no fear, though, I should have the next chapter up
sometime next week, and I’ll finally get around to introducing Domi’s
mysterious new partner. *holds for applause*
* * *
Listen, I’ll tell
you something while we wait for these two to stop undressing each other with
their eyes:
There are people in
this world like Legato, who come from nowhere in particular, move through your
life and on, going nowhere in particular. Just like a force of nature. Then
there are people like our little friend the Churchman, who come from somewhere,
and that somewhere is the most significant thing in the world to them and everything
they do – their whole damn existence –is focused on that one spot of origin.
And they’re like the root of a cactus.
Then… then there
are people like me, who come from somewhere, but we can’t even remember what
that place looked like. We’re going somewhere, but we aren’t particularly
interested in what that place will look like, either. Like a mote of sand swept
by the wind, we’re defined by where we are at the moment and shaped by the
forces that move us, beyond our control.
Did I have a home
once? Sure I did.
Do I call it
home and get all warm and fuzzy when I think back on it? And do I say things
like, when did I stray so far from that place that I could never find it again?
I doubt it.
First thing’s
first, Babylon was never my home. It was just one place I stayed for a while, a
holdover due to weather while waiting for the Sandsteamer to leave the station.
Do you really think I’d be the same sweet sane well-adjusted person I am today
if I was born somewhere like Babylon?
Don’t answer that.
My real home was
called Little Boulder. I don’t know who decided to name it that, because there
really weren’t any boulders around, not even little ones. Maybe it was wishful
thinking, or maybe it was something else. Those waves and waves of uninterrupted
sand as far as the eye can see have a way of making you a little delusional.
Had to have been
delusional to live in a place like that.
There wasn’t a
plant for a hundred miles, but we were right on a Sandsteamer route. All night
long you could hear them groaning with the effort of endless forward
progression, like ghosts, only too big to be ghosts. Like ghosts of huge and
frightening creatures that roamed this land long before the coming of man.
Good thing they
were ghosts, I would think, because something like that sure as hell wouldn’t
waste anytime in swallowing a town like this in a single bite. Good thing all
ghosts did was run screaming through the night and keep people who didn’t
really want to sleep anyway awake.
Sometimes, when
sleep was just too far out of the question to even consider, I would lay awake
and listen to the freight wail billowing up from the desert. And after I had
lain awake for a long while, I would rise and tug on a coat or something and
slip out my bedroom window. I liked the warmth of the sand beneath my bare
feet, the air so dry it was like all the oxygen had been dehydrated right out
of it.
I was six years
old. What did you expect?
I had a brother
back then, too, and he had said there was a way to see pictures in the stars. I
would look up to the sky and concentrate until my eyes ached, but I could never
see the things he had told me I was supposed to be able to see.
It was frustrating
in that vague kind of way things you don’t really care about but think you
should are frustrating.
So I had no
patience for astronomy. It was probably just as well, spend all your time
gazing up at the stars, and who knows what will pass you by down here on earth.
In any case, I was much better at creeping low over the sand dunes, at sticking
to the shadows as I slipped past the last house and down toward the valley
where the earth was packed flat by the passage of Sandsteamers.
You haven’t really
lived until you’ve seen one of those things bellow by beneath an inky lightless
sky up close and personal. Even though I knew what it was; even though the
smell of coal and engine grease, and the clang of metal was nothing except
intrusively human, there’s still something about that exact combination of
light and deafening noise and darkness and silence that has a way of awakening
an ancient terror in your heart. An adrenaline rich primordial fear.
Of course, I wasn’t
thinking anything like that when I slipped out of bed to watch them pass in the
post-midnight hours. I was just hoping to catch sight of a ghost.
Isn’t that the most
pathetic excuse you’ve ever heard for being alive and talking to you today?
I remember, it was
a clear night when it happened. It must have been spring, because the smell of
cactus blooms bursts in on my memories like an unwelcome houseguest. Have you
ever seen the cacti blossom in spring? It really is a remarkable sight. There’s
really only one night out of the year when you can get the full feel of it,
only one night when previously gray and barren stretches of desert explode with
flowers so white that they seem incandescent in the moonlight. Pollen pours
from them in waves, so thick that if you were to pass a hand over your clothes
or through your hair, your fingers would come away chalky and pale.
This is how life is
created in the desert, with the desperate, urgent, loveless coupling of a
thousand white flowers and the night air. This is how baby cacti are made. You
have to admire the efficiency, at least.
But what’s all
this, you say? You didn’t come here to have the secrets of a desert night
revealed to you. You say: What about tears, Dominique? Did you shed any? What
about blood? Certainly some veins were opened that night all those years ago
with the Sandsteamers rolling by and the cacti spitting pollen like fine
tobacco.
Don’t worry about
all that. Everyone’s going to get their money’s worth.
The thing that
hurts the most when I look back on it, is how unorganized the whole damn raid
really was. I realize that, had I known then what I know now, I could have
stopped the whole thing dead in its tracks, neat, and fast, and slick as piss
without even breaking a sweat. But I didn’t know what I know now, the reason
for that most likely being I was only six years old and cowering in numb horror
on the far side of a dune while a cavalcade of rusty cars swept into Little
Boulder, while the bandits in those cars poured out. While a symphony of
shotgun fire drifted over the sand and I flinched with each report. While the
one with the flamethrower torched every house systematically.
This is a lesson we
all have to learn sooner or later: No phantom, however immense, can possibly be
more dangerous then plain old mortal maliciousness.
All night, I stayed
up on that dune, long after the bandits had left with whatever of value they
had managed to get their hands on. I can’t imagine it was much. We weren’t a
rich town; we lived off the crumbs shook loose from the pockets of rich
Sandsteamer passengers. Oh well, it’s not as though I’m in much of a position
to lecture anyone on the value of human life.
It wasn’t until the
sun was high that I pulled it together enough to investigate the ruins of my
town. The fires had gone out, but the rubble still smoldered. My house was a
pile of blackened stone and ash, and I turned away from it quick, telling
myself firmly that I must have wandered up to the wrong place. And that was
what it was for a long time, a town not my own. These bodies, emptied now of
blood and starting to attract ugly and curious carrion birds, were the shells
people I’d never met before.
You’d think that
would keep me from crying, wouldn’t you? Well, you’d be wrong about that.
I sat down in the
center of town and at last gave in to my hitching breath, the unbearable ache
in my throat and burn behind my eyes. I cried until I had no more tears, until
I was simply too dehydrated to formulate the moisture.
Even now, looking
back on it, there’s a quality of furious surrealism, of desperate detachment.
Since that moment when I realized with a jolt like waking that I needed to
drink or else I’d die, I’ve always been too busy staying alive to feel a lack.
Think I’ll keep it
that way. I’ll have plenty time to grieve after I’m dead, I’m sure.
I must have looked
like a damn zombie stumbling around those ruins in search of water, trying so
hard not to look at anything that when I finally did stop to reorder my sense
of direction, I was on open desert again.
And that’s where my
story begins. You’d think a person with no survival training, lost and alone in
the desert would work better as the ending to a story, wouldn’t you?
Well, this isn’t
that kind of story.
What kind of story is it, you ask? You’re just going to have to wait until I take care of a few things before finding out.