Afterland Read online

  AFTERLAND

  MASHA LEYFER

  To the S.B. squad

  CHAPTER 1

  I’m sorry. Those are the words I hear in every wave, every gust of wind, every quiet footstep, every breath. The world whispers those words, over and over, for so long that they have become meaningless. Whether the world is apologizing or wants an apology, I do not know. But either way, it is too late. Far too late. Like a second heartbeat, the words repeat themselves. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I inhale apologies and exhale excuses. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry...

  I sit down at the edge of the beach, letting the water lick the sand in front of my toes. I drop my boots and snowshoes beside me, but I can’t keep them off for long. It is still frigid outside, but I like the feeling of frozen sand under my feet. I flex my toes, happy that they are free from the restraining grip of my shoes. I breathe deeply, tired from a long day of work. Some part of me fills with numb animal satisfaction that I don’t have to work now; I have the morning shift at the bar, so I have evenings off. And where else to go but to listen to the calming murmur of the waves?

  The ocean spreads beyond the horizon, a never-ending expanse of murky blue. I wonder, sometimes, what lies on the other end of the ocean, what happened to the other continents, but since all the communication went down, nobody really knows for sure. Nobody really wants to know for sure.

  What a terrible fate: to wonder. Never knowing, but always hoping. There is always that small spark of hope that will drag you through hell to get an answer. But the problem is, the answer is never what you want it to be. Never.

  Maybe that’s why I find the ocean strangely peaceful. The ocean doesn’t ask unanswerable questions. It doesn’t make false promises. It only whispers empty consolations. It is eternal and reliable. I’ve learned that manmade things are neither eternal nor reliable. Except perhaps manmade suffering. Of all things created by man, that must last the longest.

  I see a large glowing mass moving through the waves toward me. I stand up, take a piece of bread from my pocket, and begin to throw crumbs into the light. They are quickly snatched up. I know that it is the salmon on their yearly migration, but all I see are little flashes of light rising from the depth and small splashes near the surface. The remainder of the scientific community told us that the salmon had fed on the radiation left over from the Blast and became bioluminescent. Genetic mutation, or something of that sort.

  I watch the last specks of luminescence fade away back into the deep. Tomorrow, there will probably be another run and I’ll enjoy another light show. I put my boots back on before my feet turn blue and pick up the nearest skipping stone. It is smooth and worn flat by the water. I throw it into the incoming wave. It skips three times and then sinks to the ocean floor. I pick up another. This one skips five. I continue skipping stones, moving up and down the beach, looking for more stones of the ideal shape. The sun begins to sink lower on the horizon, painting the sky in shades of yellow, orange, and red. The ocean begins to reflect it. It looks like a sea of blood. Or wine. It is beautiful but also frightening. It’s so...big. So vast. Intimidating, in the way only something beautiful can be.

  I breathe in the salty oxygen. It is heavy with the distinctive smell of the ocean. I like that smell. It’s different than anywhere else, full of hope and promise. Wait, it seems to whisper, and I’ll take you far away. I breathe it in again, cherishing the scent.

  The sunset is breathtaking. Sunsets always fill me with a sense of renewed hope, but this one is particularly inspiring. Something pulses within me that I feel very rarely. I let the unrecognizable but familiar emotion fill me with a sense of longing until disappears as quickly as it appeared. What a beautiful sunset, I think.

  But it will end. I wish it wouldn’t, but I can’t believe in eternity. The sunset will end, and what will the end mean? Nothing. Time will pass. Time will forget. In the end, it really doesn’t matter what I ever thought about this day.

  Maybe that isn’t always the case. Some things, I think, exist for the sole purpose of their end. For most of us, our death is the end of our story. But for some people, some things, their death is only the climax. Their death is when their story really begins. I’m not sure yet which one I prefer.

  It is oddly silent here. The whole world has the sound of an audience waiting for the punchline of a really funny joke. For the moment that is both the resolution and the climax. But I know that the punchline will never come, and even if it ever does, it won’t be the hilarious joke that everybody was expecting. It will be a taunt more than a joke, one that reveals how dark the world’s sense of humor really is. Perhaps it’s better that the punch line remains a mystery.

  So for me, the flawless evening is bitter-sweet. The air is heavy in my lungs. Every day claims the life of another person. One day, it will have to be me. Days like this are limited, and they are only a countdown to the end. How much can a person really enjoy a countdown?

  I throw another stone.

  I probably would have stayed here forever, skipping stones, trying to get to infinity, not noticing as I withered away and my remains were taken by the wind, but I feel a hand on my shoulder. I turn around and see the kind eyes of my mother.

  “You promised you would be home for dinner, Molly,” she whispers more than says.

  I could have let myself wither away, but my soul would never be able to face the empty seat at a dinner that never started.

  “I know, I’m sorry. Let’s go.”

  The April winds have begun to warm the cold remains of winter, but the night works against warmth. I pull on my snowshoes and put my arm around my mother to provide some sort of filial comfort. She returns it with her maternal arm. We walk like that over the path of trodden dirt and snow connecting our town to the ocean, awkwardly shuffling along. It is only ten minutes away, but by the time we get there, the sun fully disappears below the horizon and drowns the last rays in darkness. When we get back to the town, the lamp on the main gate has already been lit and the windows of the little huts we call our homes are bathed in light. The light seems more of a warning than a welcome beacon to travelers. This is society. Are you sure you want to enter?

  Before the Tragedy, this town was a campground. When we came here, the cheery sign advertising a perfect vacation spot was still at the front. Many of us whose homes were destroyed and who couldn’t find housing in the cities moved outwards to campgrounds where there was an already existing infrastructure. Soon enough, the sorry excuse for society that is our home came to life.

  The painted letters HOPETOWN on the front gate are hidden in shadow. I’ve always found the name ironic. I think it was meant to symbolize the future of our society, and how humanity will bounce back from the Tragedy, but all it became ever became is a sorry tribute to our failure.

  “Every time I’m here,” I whisper to my mother, “I can’t help but think that we live in a futuristic dump.”

  “Don’t say that,” she answers unconvincingly. “I think this is a very nice town.”

  “Oh, come on. Nobody respects the town, nobody respects themselves. Even the rats don’t respect us anymore. This is more their town than ours.”

  My mother sighs and doesn’t answer. She knows I’m right. We lost any right we had to this world thirteen years ago.

  Our house is at the opposite end of Hopetown, so we snowshoe across the entire main street. It can’t really be called a street, really. More of a worn out path of packed snow. Any life in this town is organized around it with the proud addresses of 1 Center Street, or 2 Center Street, all the way up to 57 Centre Street. Nobody knows exactly why the spelling changed halfway through. Getting a business on Center Street is supposed to be a big accomplishment for Hopetown business owners. I’m not sure anybody cares
anymore, but people are still proud of their Center Street addresses, like they were of their Wall Street ones, back when things that large could still hold their ground in the world. Now, everything is small, because everything is hiding. Anything large is an easy target.

  The life, that has concentrated on Centre Street has, of course, taken on the sole appearance of bars. Half of Hopetown is constantly drunk. Even now, as we walk past one of the bars, a drunk stumbles out of 31 Center Street and another is instantly admitted inside in his place. They lie on the streets in piles. Half of them are probably already dead from the cold. The rats run over them in hoards, and I can’t shake the feeling that they have begun to feed on the frozen human flesh.

  All the bodies have given Hopetown a distinctly putrid smell. The drunks who are still alive sing all night, so those of us who remain sober have learned to live with the never-ending noise. It used to scare me, but the world soon taught me that if there is anything I should be afraid of, it certainly isn’t drunks. Besides, I can’t help thinking that they are the happiest, in their alcohol induced trance. They can forget the Tragedy and imagine themselves in a pre-Blast world, where they could have been truly happy.

  I put my sleeve in front of my nose. The smell doesn’t bother me as much as it used to, but the old habit still remains.

  My mother tightens her grip on my shoulder as we pass Thirty One Centre Street. That’s the bar where I waste away during the daylight hours. My mother knows how much I hate it, even though I try to pretend that I don’t mind. But our family needs the money and I don’t have any utilizable skills. My entire life has been only survival. And it’ll have to continue like that for the rest of it.

  Our house is located farther away from Center Street, where the air is clearer and the nights quieter. Our windows glow with a calmer light than the harsh blues of Centre Streets. My mother opens the door. It squeaks less for her than for anybody else but makes an unpleasant noise nevertheless. The lightbulb hanging from the ceiling shakes gently as the door is closed. The house is warm and smells of smoke. My father is kneeling by the fireplace, adding logs to the fire. He raises his eyes at the sound.

  “Ah, there you are, we were starting to worry,” he says.

  “I know. I’m sorry.”

  Every evening we say the same words. Every evening my parents worry, every evening I apologize. Every evening for several years, it has been exactly the same, except every time, I feel that both sides mean what they say less and less, and I suspect that one day, somebody will break the unspoken bargain we have made, and there will no longer be any evening rituals.

  But for now, every evening is exactly the same.

  The table is already set with lukewarm stew, a cup of tea, and a piece of bread for everyone. Since the only dishes that we could find after the Eruption were metal, dinner always has an oddly metallic taste. We sit down. After a moment of a silence that should have been filled, everyone begins to eat. The only noise is the clinking of metal on metal and the soft crackling of burning wood. We have nothing left to say to each other. We can only believe in some obscure family tie that holds us together.

  I drain my cup of tea, careful not to burn my fingers on the hot metal.

  “Good stew,” I say after I finish. I run the dish under the faucet, which probably only makes it dirtier with the quality of running water these days, and retire to my room. My room is a small addition to the house which has enough space for a bed, a drawer, and a lot of mess, but I’m grateful for the intimacy it offers. Every surface in the room is covered with paint and paper. All the space on the walls is plastered with haphazardly hung completed paintings that have nowhere else to go. My bed holds several works in progresses and paint brushes are stowed away anywhere they fit. Keeping them company is a small stuffed purple bunny that I remember having since the beginning of time. Like most other things in my possession, he is stained with paint. Painting had become the only passion I have, so I cling to it dearly. If I lose it, I’m not sure what else I’ll have left. The only part of my evening that is different is the painting. I can imagine a different world when I paint, so the late hours are a welcome reprieve in whatever magical world I choose.

  I light the candelabra that illuminates my room, sit down on the bed, and pull a paintbrush out of the pillow. During the day, I brood. But now it is dark, and the darkness covers any feelings in its cloak. It is time to paint something. Something more promising. Like today’s sunset. In several minutes it transformed the sky from a bleak gray to a spectacular explosion of colors. If only humans could undo what we had done as easily.

  I uncap the orange paint and paint the sky. The multi-dimensional nuances of yellow and red follow next. Then the purple clouds. I have always been a slow painter, and my strokes are long and deliberate. The water I use has long ago turned brown. How strange is it that no matter how bright, beautiful, and unique the colors are, if they are brought together, they will eventually turn into the same unrelenting brown?

  I paint the ocean next, reflective of the sky, but still dark blue at the edges. Of course, the sun deserves a place in this painting. And so do the bioluminescent salmon. I paint them in, too.

  One painting takes me several hours. Several hours pardon from the harshness of the present. The alcoholics have their beer. I have my colors.

  I know that I’ll practically forget the sunset soon, and all that will be left will be a memory of a memory, no matter how much I don’t want to forget. There are simply too many occasions that need to be remembered, too many memories to be stored, too many things that I need to hold on to before I lose myself in the cascade of a life I never intended to live, and one sunset will soon fade into the background. But I don’t want to forget. So I put my memories to paper. Someday, my paper memories will be all that’s left of me. So I choose carefully what I leave behind. It doesn’t scare me anymore that someday my face will be forgotten, my name no longer relevant, my story never told. As long as somebody will someday look at my painting and think, The sunset was beautiful that day, and this girl had something to live for then, I will be satisfied. In this broken world, living a broken life as if it has a meaning is the hardest thing a person can do, so if I can trick the people of the future into thinking that my life was more than just a succession of days, just miniscule numbers on a celestial clock, than the meaningless numbers will string into a handprint on the face of time.

  I look out of the window. One undeniable benefit of the Tragedy are the stars. I don’t remember them much pre-Blast, both because I was only four and because light pollution and smog cancelled them out. Since all the big cities and major factories were destroyed after the Tragedy, the sky gradually regained its past spectacular self. I look outside the window now. It really is breathtaking. Stars cover the entire sky, and I can actually see the milky way. Some people say that all stars are white, but that’s not true. Every star shines with its own color. People also say that white is a mixture of all colors, but I think only angels can stir the rainbow and end up with white clouds. The rest of us end up disappointed and with brown.

  I’ve never mastered the art of drawing starlight. It has a certain magical ambience that’s very hard to portray with paint alone. But it can’t hurt to try. I paint the sky blue, almost black. I take a small brush and paint the milky way in small white dots, adding accents of color later. It doesn’t shine like the sky. I can’t figure out what it’s missing. For more hours, I work, escaping into a magical world beyond our planet, our galaxy, our universe. For those hours of the night, I look at the sky and see it spread out at my fingertips. Right then, I can touch it and hold it, and that’s the most beautiful aspect of art: making the unreachable reachable.

  In the time I was painting, the sky has rotated. Judging by the positions of the stars, it is around one past midnight. I am tired. I should fall asleep.

  But I don’t.

  I watch the wax stream down the candles, accumulating in small drops at the bottom. My eyes beg to close,
but I deny them their request. I’m not sure exactly why I don’t allow myself sleep, but some part of me whispers that it is wrong to sleep in this situation. And besides, nowadays, I feel like I live for the hours when I become too tired to care anymore, too drunk on the night, and too hopeful that it will be different someday, and I can’t be sad at that moment. For those rare moments, I evade into a night half-life that shields me from the day half-life that is much more painful to live.

  There’s something wrong with it, of course, that I deny my body’s most basic need to prove to myself that I can. There’s something wrong with the fact that the need to prove to myself that I can survive is stronger than the need to actually do so. Besides, I haven’t been able to sleep properly since the Tragedy. I keep hearing the blast, seeing the flashes… I wake up many times a night to find my hands over my head, protecting myself from the ash that that clogged my lungs thirteen years ago. So I resist the temptation to sleep for as long as I can; I don’t want to relive it again. But eventually, sleep takes me.

  I dream of the Tragedy.

  The first sign was the earthquake. It was the only quake I had ever experienced and I was sure that it was the apocalypse. I wasn’t exactly wrong. I remember hiding in the bathtub with my parents, too afraid to even cry, keeping my eyes shut, praying that it wasn’t the end. I remember feeling the ground collapsing below my feet as we listened to the sound of the dishes my father left unwashed in the sink shattering and felt the raw power of the waves beating against our walls. The quake continued for what seemed like an eternity. When it was over, I still didn’t open my eyes. At some point, one of my parents turned on the news. The connection was failing, but I could hear a frightened voice announcing “Evacuate… Eruption… Danger… Immediately…” Then the power went down.

  After that, we were running. All I took was the little stuffed bunny that I had already been holding. My mother held me in her arms, whispering comforting words I didn’t understand as we ran out. Our house was by the bank of the river and the waves had flooded our lawn in water. My parents footsteps squished in the mud and sent up little splashes of water.