Fate's Cull

It has been 25 years since my mother died, and only a few less since I decided that fate would not play a part in my own story. I would not end up like my father, a pitiable shell of a person who knowingly walked into a trap and wondered why he got hurt.

Nobody knew why this was happening, but they knew that it was, so there was no true excuse for everyone’s submissiveness. It made me sick.

Almost 60 years ago, an indescribable cull spread like oil across the world. At first, everyone thought it was a good thing. Without ever having met, a person could come across a stranger and know, without any doubt, that this person was their soulmate. Partners who had been together for years on blind faith were suddenly sure that they had met the love of their lives. And then they started dying.

You were allowed one year with your soulmate before one of you, with no rhyme or reason as to which one, would turn to dust. No fanfare, no warning, just an intake of breath and every molecule of your being crumbles like it never was. The world was turning to powder, and there was no way to stop it. Half the population gone in a second.

He knew this, and yet he stayed with her. Even when she got pregnant 3 months into their relationship, they decided to take the risk that she might live, that she wouldn’t disappear before I was even born. When I heard this story for the first time I smiled, knowing that it was meant to be a message of courage and love. Inside, I was disgusted at the risk. Only hours after I was born, with sweat still beaded on her forehead, my mother lost the gamble and my father returned from the bathroom to find me wriggling in a nest of my mother’s ashes.

Ever since, I have grown into a world of grief and pain. I would not be like them.

*

After many years of hearing only the cushioned footfall of boot on dust, I looked down at the alien grind of metal on stone. I had been lost in thought, going through the motions of my daily search, scavenging like a dog to ensure we could eat for another few days. It was still early, but I’d been watching this house burn for hours from the darkness of my room, unable or unwilling to sleep. I’m unsure which. As soon as the ferocity of the blaze had died to a smoulder I had crept down the street, eager to salvage what I could before anyone else turned up.

This was happening less and less as the neighbourhood dwindled; I couldn’t miss my chance. They were an older couple, one unable to live without the other at year’s end, choosing instead to become ash together. Although I couldn’t understand their decisions, I had to respect their disregard for Fate.

I lifted the toe of my boot and was squinting at the print it had left, when a gentle breeze cut through the heat within the still-crackling charcoal skeleton, shifting the ash to reveal a glint of silver. I bent down and brushed through the dust until I could see what I was looking for. Curious, I lifted a tacky, silver locket from the ruins of this couple’s life. My heartbeat stuttered a little, a rare emotion coursing through my body as I read the engraving on the front.

“Me and you.”

Digging my thumbnail into the latch, I prised it open. There was no photo (those had become hard to find as the world slowly dissolved), but a crude, hand-etched message had been scratched into the back.

“No matter what.”

Slowly clicking the locket closed, I clenched my fist around the warm metal of the heart, my nails digging into my palm. I thought of my father. Of his uncontrollable grief and self-pity. I thought of this couple who had chosen to love and die together rather than suffer the world alone. I thought of Fate. Bitter, cold-hearted Fate who had transformed this blue planet into a hollow, dust-filled husk. I knew right then that I would not surrender to her. My destiny was my own, and I was done waiting around for her to write my story for me.

*

One year later.

I opened the yellow pages with a whomp of aging paper onto the hood of an abandoned car. A cloud of the accustomed dust billowed into my face, but the standard issue gas mask shielded my eyes and nose. It had been years since anyone stepped outside for any period of time without a gas mask. The dust in the air was light and imperceptible, but it didn’t take the world’s population long to make the connection between that and the increase in respiratory problems, coughs, eye infections and so on.

I wiped the plastic of the eye piece with a sigh, running my finger down the list of names and addresses until I got to the right one. I pulled a marker out of my pocket and drew a neat line through the details. I placed my hands on the bonnet and braced my arms, leaning in that slumped position for a minute, my fingertips tracing grooves into the dust on the rusting metal.

I’d been on this wild goose chase for eleven months, going from door to door, asking to look every member of the household in the face and making chase to those who resisted. When this was done, I would cross their names from the list and move on. I don’t know why I thought I could do this. Despite Fate’s cull there were still millions of people on this planet, and I thought I was going to find my soulmate down the road? Fate was not that kind. But she was calculated. Surely she wouldn’t bother with this personal genocide if she didn’t think there was a chance it could be carried out? If Samantha in Edinburgh was never going to travel across the world to meet her soulmate in India, what was the point?

I closed the book and stuffed it back into my rucksack. After every page was scoured with thick black ink, I would tear it out and add it to my fire in the evening. I was almost halfway through, the weight much more manageable now. They had to be in there somewhere. They just had to.

I shouldered the bag and stomped away, adding my footprints to the delicate tracks left by the deer and stray dogs to whom the town belonged now. I was aware of the difference between the cities I had passed through, cold and empty, unnaturally overtaken by the wildlife it had once been built over, and the rural village I was now passing through. Besides an unkempt air to the gardens that had been left to nature, they didn’t look much different to pre-dust days. Not that this brought me any comfort. I wasn’t around in those days.

I could see the next house just down the cobbled street on my left. It was a sturdy, squat cottage with a thatched roof, built to weather hard times. I couldn’t imagine my soulmate living in such a quaint little place, but I had to try every house. Even if it took the rest of my life.

I knelt beside the door and slipped a thin piece of metal into the simple and old-fashioned lock, using another to jimmy the mechanism inside. Something told me that these houses didn’t expect thieves, just friendly neighbourhood busybodies looking for their dose of gossip. Nobody would answer a door these days however; to open up to a stranger could trigger a countdown to the end of their life. So I simply slip in unnoticed. Sometimes I could get through the whole house without being seen.

This time, however, I had barely stepped over the “beware the husband” doormat before being nearly knocked off my feet. My heart seemed to stop for several beats before pounding quickly, as if making up for lost seconds. My stomach dropped into my boots, knees trembling as if the bones were melting inside my skin. Every possible cliché you could imagine was pulsing through my body as I looked into the face of the man in front of me. I felt sick. I felt weak. And judging by the pallor of this stranger’s skin, he was feeling everything I was.

I dragged my mask off of my head and it dropped to the floor, my usually steady hands trembling. I couldn’t take it in, my vision was coming and going, leaving only a vague impression of dark hair, shadowed eyes, a shorter, stocky stature. He was not my usual type (from what I knew of types, anyway…) and yet he was everything I knew I wanted. I understood now. I understood the grief, and for the first time in years, I pitied my father.

“I can’t believe I found you,” I gasped, breathless with shock.

He put his head in his hands, the frustration and fear clear in the tightness of his shoulders. “Why were you looking?” he cried desperately. His voice was cracked with longing, but he was fighting it, knowing what the cost of that longing would be. “You’ve put both of our lives into Fate’s hands!”

“No,” I said quietly, taking a step forward, one hand reaching out towards him involuntarily. I dropped it and clenched my fist. “Just yours.”

In one swift movement I pulled the gun from its holster, put the barrel to his forehead, and pulled the trigger.

“My fate is in my own hands,” I said.