Jagged Glass

Tristan’s skin remains dry as the burst of machine-gun fire and explosions approach. The ground shudders. Then a volley of gunfire sounds farther off. Now they’re receding, tapering into the distance, until the sound couldn’t ripple a puddle of rainwater.

He remembers for a moment, at the beginning of this all, when the booming thunder of violence cracking the stillness made his skin sweat. Drops would bead across his forehead, getting diarrhea. But how time had hardened his sweat glands and bowels. What incredible lengths he had gone. What terrible things he had seen and done in the days since. How far off those early days seemed, though it had only been months. How many, he could no longer say. But enough to feel like a hazy, far off place. The memories murky, yet the sounds remained. They sometimes came to him, a specter. The shouting, screaming, tangled barbs in his chest.

Those tangled barbs wound so tight his throat would close and his heart would palpitate. Wrought iron pressure, white hot anger bouncing in the contours of his skull like sonar unable to let out. He used to kill it with helldust. Load the needle, find the vein, stab, inject. Lay back like taking a warm bath. All the pressure inside would alleviate, and all was well. His family intervened. Dragged him into rehab. Tried for a court order. He had tried to stop. Easier said than done. Doctor had him on methadone until the bombs fell, and the grid went down. Every person for themselves after that. Coming off cold turkey was as bad as he imagined, but he pulled through. He was a survivor alright. No withdrawal symptoms were gonna take him to the grave.

Shambling like a ghost, Tristan comes to the old familiar street, where his family sought cover in the old home. He knew they had laid in sleeping bags in the far corner of the basement in case shrapnel shot in through the windows. He finds the house ramshackle, unkempt, front yard overgrown. Windows all smashed in. Nothing unusual in this day and age.

He enters the front door. The house is dead still, silence permeating every inch of space and thought. That silence used to be a friend. Now it's a curse. An effervescent reminder of what no longer was. He walks in, finding the front hallway much smaller than he remembers. The carpet covered in dust, grime, broken leaves and mold. He jumps at the breeze that creeps the front door slightly behind him. He thinks about closing it, but knows it's best to leave it open.

Out on the street, he sees a pair of visibly fattened dogs pass by. Probably fat by a steady diet of corpses, he thinks.

He makes his way through the home, finding most things gone. Bandits had come, emptying anything of value. Floors stripped of linoleum, sinks removed, kitchen cabinets torn apart for their wood. All that is left is the dishwasher, sitting open like a gaping maw, its racks cleared from within.

He stops by the bathroom hoping to take a shit, but the toilet isn’t there, let alone any sign of toilet paper. As he turns, he catches sight of himself in a single shard of glass caught in the frame where the mirror once was. He sees how overgrown his beard has become, the wildness in his eyes. Months in the wilderness will do that to you, bearing closer resemblance to a wild animal than the former son of a lower middle class family.

The only door that remains shut is the basement door. He goes to it, pulls it open, finds the staircase broken, tilted sideways. He clutches railings and beams to lower himself into the depths, where his family had sought refuge.

He finds it empty and cool, full of humidity and stench. His boots crunching over broken glass, concrete shards and plaster dust. He steps to the windowless corner, where his family would have slept, where they no longer were. He stands there for a while, listening. His emotions mixed. Tremulous.

Then he sees the message, written in blue pen upon the plywood sheet built into the wall. He kneels to it, hurriedly, suddenly desperate, so that he can read it by the little bit of luminance from the basement window, partly reflected off the shattered glass on the cement floor.

Tristan,

If you’re reading this, we are probably gone. We stayed for as long as we could, but it is too dangerous to stay.

But before we go, in case there’s a chance in hell you read this, I wanted to say - looking back, maybe you were right. Maybe our trying to help you was selfish. Maybe we were just trying to make ourselves feel better.

Part of me wishes I could’ve put you in my shoes, and have you deal with someone like you were; angry, lashing, like jagged glass. Bad weeks that became bad months. Then there was that time I had to pin you down from attacking mom. We gave you your things and pushed you out. You might think that we enjoyed that. But watching you leave was the worst thing I’ve ever experienced. I’ll never forget your walk as you strode along the bracken road toward the falling sun. That winnowed pride in your step, but I could see the stoop, the crestfallen candor, the heartbreak. At war with yourself, but I couldn’t for the life of me put together why. After a few restless nights wondering where you might be, I wandered along the streets up to the edge of town. Those empty highways carried with them the emptiness I felt. And the smoke rising in the distance, chaos everywhere, just accentuated the big burnt out hole in my chest.

I want you to know that I understand things different now, and I only wish to see you again. Maybe you did what you always said you would, and disappeared into the mountains. Maybe since you’ve been out there all this time, as hard headed as we know you are, you’re better off than we are.

In any case, I want you to know that I'm sorry, and that you are the strongest person I’ve ever known. With all that turmoil going on in your mind, I don’t know if I could have held on for so long. Not like you did. Not like I hope you continue to do.

I love you so much it hurts Tristan. We all do. I know that’s probably hard for you to believe, but it's the damn truth.

Not sure if we will make it, but we are trying to get to the old family farm out east. Come there if you can.

I left Mom’s locket for you. It’s in the secret hiding spot we used as kids.

Love Blithe

Tristan remains frozen for a long time. Then he moves as a man possessed, reaching to pull himself back up the remains of the staircase, pushing his way through the house to where their secret childhood hiding place had been.

His skin flushes, beading with sweat for the first time in a while.

What if the thieves found the locket too?

They better not have.

Suddenly he is filled with murderous rage. He storms out the patio door, across the broken wood planks of the patio, down across the wild grass toward the backyard tree. At its base, the garden sits riddled with weeds and stone. He kneels and reaches to where the roots disrupt the earth, arching to create a distinct alcove. He tears into the soil so hard he feels it sting under his fingernails.

He digs and digs until he hits the hard surface of a small wooden box. With tears brimming in his eyes, he gnashes, lips sputtering, until he has the box in his hand, ripping it open and finding, with immense relief, his mother's precious heart shaped locket inside.

The dam bursts, and he begins to cry. He pulls out the locket, dangling from its delicate gold chain and opens it, hands trembling, revealing the old childhood picture of himself, Blithe and their mother.

Their faces are so young. So innocent. He's overcome by a time before all this. Days before he could even fathom the tangled barbs and the helldust.

He can’t stop the wails that came out of him right then.

It was sure to attract bandits, but in this moment he didn’t care. He couldn't possibly. The pain is sharper than the fear. He let himself have it, filling every corner of his body, ringing in his fingertips, and his feet.

At last, he wipes the mucous accumulating in his beard with his sleeve, and then hears footfalls and hushed voices from the leaf strewn alleys. He thinks about letting them take him this time. Let it be done.

But then he feels the weight of the locket in his hand, speaking to him. Beckoning him east, to where he might find Blithe and the others.

Coming off the methadone cold turkey had been awful; fever dreams, delirium. At times so painful he forgot his name. He should be dead. But he wasn’t. He had fought through every square inch to wind up here, with his mother’s locket in his hand.

He’d come this far.

Why give up now?

He moves with learned stealth against the fence, removing the pistol from his beltline, and waits for them to reveal themselves. He was sure to never look at their faces. Especially the eyes. He wouldn’t fire upon them unless he had to. The gunfire would attract more, but if he lived, he’d be gone by then.

He watches them enter the yard, passing near, but never turning his direction. One of them was a girl, probably no more than fifteen years old. They’re in their layers of threads, towels around their feet to keep quiet. In their hands, melee weapons. One has a sawed off two by four with nails protruding, the other a twisted score of metal. A part of him wishes he could say hi. Just enjoy some company.

Why must we treat each other this way?

He waits while they enter the house, creeping along. And then he slips off, climbing through the kicked out fence posts, roving through backyards and alleyways, slinking into the trees along the highway out of town.

He directs himself eastward, climbing a fence into a sequence of abandoned fields. He finds an overgrown crop of tomatoes and helps himself. The journey before him will be treacherous and long. Longer than any he’d ever made before. But the calluses have grown tough on his feet, traversing untold miles of weather-beaten, war-torn earth. And now his mother's heart shaped locket hangs from his neck, close to his chest. He comes to the summit of a rise, and turns back to his hometown, flanked by the mountains and distant gunfire. He witnesses smoke rising where other survivors are sure to carry out their restless lives, melding with the cumulous sky above.

In that moment he wishes them well.