“What name?” I asked, and when she turned those blue eyes down, away from mine, I have to admit that a moment of sorrow came over me. I didn’t know this girl, Eve, from anyone. More than once I’ve run into groups of people that think nothing of using a child as bate. Knives were the most common things now. So I kept my back straight and my eyes on the sidelines whenever I met anyone, anyone.
It’d been a long time since I saw anyone, though. I had to leave the cities when things started getting really bad. The WTF officers, more often than not, became roaming death squads for all intents and purposes. My apartment building got raided once and I fled.
I didn’t know where to go. It wasn’t that long ago that I had a job and a life. I went to church on Sundays. I’d been looking for a wife so I got an apartment in town, close to the bars and the action. And then the cities fell, they were the first to go, and I had no place to go. I wandered for a while and at first, it was January when I left, I remember that. But the weather kept changing. Year after year, drought hit the world over and the pollution from the cities painted the sky a sick yellow color. A warming blanket, the world was burning up. I headed east and south for the most part.
A wooded hill reached for the sky on the side of this valley. This valley, the one I called home. The crevice and cave I called home, more precisely. About halfway up the hillside, I made sure the entrance was well covered; you could never be too sure now.
Now, the wooded hill was a barren slope of rock. Sometimes I wondered how I could survive in place where all the damn plants died. But I did, and for the time being, enough game survived to keep me out of starving’s greedy fingers. I survived, and now – some years later – I stood in the place I called home, feeling the most intense emotion I’d felt since Ruthie died; shortly before I moved down here.
By the time Ruthie died, the entire process from moment of death became business of the WTF. No funerals, no viewings, nothing. When you died, you disappeared. No one knew what they did with the dead, the dead just went away, and so did Ruthie. Thinking of her now still brings a tightness to my chest.
I wandered and I landed here. I lived a decent life, by comparison to what I’ve seen. And now this girl, Eve, turned her eyes down, away from mine. The world ended, completely and totally. By comparison to what I’ve seen, those of us that still lived, lived as kings. The dead were treated as gently as a worn out red couch.
“It’s okay,” she said, and it was.
Not even Ruthie had the sway over me. The power that Eve’s blue eyes held. I could see how alone she was. The desperation in her eyes, the time contained in that ocean of blue called to me.
A man once told me that you couldn’t experience life to it’s fullest unless you had the raising of a child. Ruthie and I never had kids. Time hadn’t run out, Ruthie had complications that provided us no children. I didn’t love her any less, and I don’t know, but when I met Eve I understood what that wise, wise man told me once upon a time. Eve needed a protector, the world was cruel before, and now she was all alone. Things weren’t getting any better and now I had a companion. Someone to share this sick landscape with.
She stood before me in all white, her skin so much so that I could see the blue of her veins in her wrists and neck. The white gown she wore held not a speck of dirt. Eve stood before me, immaculate. “What to tell you something,” she said.
Her small white hands reached up towards me and rested lightly on the sides of my temples. Her blue eyes came closer. Blue eyes that held infinity, forever, the whole of everything, the kind you could fall into. And I did, I fell straight into those eyes has her face neared mine.
Her hands around the sides of my head, our noses touched now. The terror that seized me inside that blue made me want to run as far and as fast as I could. But with soft fingers that barely touched my skin and hair, she held me. We knelt together on the hard floor of my home (cave). She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. But I was in those eyes; they closed around me as well.
I wish I had the words to tell you – who ever you are that finds this – exactly what happened. All I can is I’ve never felt anything like what happened in my home that day, kneeling on the hard floor. My body felt rocked and thrown – we never moved, I’m sure of that – and my senses were assaulted: bright flashes, images, pain.
Pain so unbearable I believe I screamed out. Perhaps, I screamed because the blue went away. Blue faded darker and darker. The only light, now, came in flashes and found I could look around. Blue had faded dark, dark like the thunderheads, always in the distance. The only compass now that the skies were sick with yellow all the time. The dark thunderheads lay to the West, always.
The roiling black sky above me let out violent bursts of light and the ground shook – or maybe it was my soul shaking. The dark landscape in front and above me shook more and more. I lost my footing and fell on my back, staring up at the darkness that never stopped moving. Always changing, and I remember seeing things in the darkness.
The shape of a knife formed in the thick clouds above me. I thought maybe I saw the likeness of the face that graced the last dollar bills that floated around in the WTF’s pockets, in the axis of the vertical handle and blade and the horizontal cross member. But, in my fright and pain, I was distracted by the blade, this blade flared out at the bottom, – almost like a spoon - and my terror increased. I tried to close my eyes, my pride is not too big to say that I did try to close my eyes and block all of this out, but I couldn’t.
The odd knife turned into colorless wisps that were taken back into the violent black clouds. And then, a picture of a young girl, dressed in all white. It was Eve, I knew that.
Eve stood all alone next to a sign that pointed somewhere. I couldn’t read the sign, or I can’t remember what it said, but I do remember the way her right hand clutched the post holding the sign up. They were lonely hands. I believe I cried out again, on my knees on the hard floor of my home. I could feel the tears making clean trenches down my cheeks. And then I noticed her left hand, raised in the air, slightly lower than the hand gripping the sign post.
Her empty hand hung there in the empty air, somehow lonelier than the fingers wrapped around the post. And suddenly the picture in front of my eyes, right in front of them, was the palm of Eve’s left hand.
‘ABE’ marked her palm, I saw that clearly – perhaps more clearly than anything else. I knew what needed to be done now.
Since my Ruthie died I never had a purpose. Unless, of course, you count the ‘will to survive’ instinct; but now, in my new, hard, rock home I had a purpose. That purpose was
Eve.
Eve needed me, ‘ABE’, to protect her and get her west. West to the darkness, west to the signpost. And I suppose, I, in turn, needed her. Eve gave me purpose. Eve gave me hope. Without hope we’re just waiting to die.
I raised my head from her gentle embrace and looked back into the depthless blue. Through all the thoughts and questions – and fear, and pain – I looked into those eyes. “So it’s west then,” I said and in spite of myself I chuckled. She smiled back at me.
At that point I knew my future was set. Eve hadn’t said a word, and the darkness in the West hadn’t moved at all. We had a long way to go.
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