Pocket Change

Jill ian awoke to sounds of clicking canes on the street above. The stealth walks of evening rounds. She'd been dozing, basking in the sensations of wind and waves meeting land. The warmth of sun upon her supine, breathing body.

Jillian awoke in this body, still supine. A machine at her side breathed her breaths, lifted and drew her lungs. In this body her rhythm was not her own. Her body was not her own as it gave tepid expression to the machine's set purpose. The bed she lay in did not belong to her; nor did the room or anything else in it. Jillian owned nothing. This body was just something.

The pack of canes clicked and struck the slick corrugated streets as they vedetted by. Their language and presence lay in their striking patterns. As did their brutality. If it was not the street they struck, then it was tender and fleshful bodies. The caneless bodies were caned on sight.

Jillian was a body below the caneless. She couldn’t move or breathe on her own, only dream and think. The caneless spent their breath in running to escape, holding to avoid discovery, constriction to live another day.

These caneless moving bodies were mutants, caught between the Coughing Rift that split the world, irreparably. Canes ruled, machines were their children and bodies were either caneless or machines. Jillian was considered a machine.

Canes tended to the machine, never to her. She had theories as to how exactly she fit into the procreation of cane children. She had wonderings around the machine that kept her alive and what was being excised from her and turned into a resource for canes.

She used to wonder whether the canes were aware of her awareness which caused many mental froths of paranoia and strain. For her sanity she decided that her awareness was not perceived by them. This decision provided her with the only sense of safety, a memory, that she could hope for.

Space abused her and time had abandoned her. She had been out of time for so long that it likely didn’t matter. She had nothing. So, no time made no difference.

***

In their dream they walked. Always walking and if they were not walking then they were resting, eating, shitting, maybe talking. They were also always listening and watching. Their direction was set, but the route was unknown.

They discovered, as they travelled, that wherever they were walking to was below where they had come from. It was subtle, but they knew by how their body ached each night. Their DOMS sang mostly in the muscles asked to eccentrically contract all day. Mini brakes acting against the decline forces of gravity.

They slept in forests, or villages during bad weather and the luck of one nearby. They kept to themselves, quiet, polite when spoken to or engaged, but did not initiate anything with anyone, ever.

When they slept they awoke, forgotten. They were still walking, but their body was different. Their body was a silent writhing shrivel of a raisin inside a deafening steel sepulchre that walked them. The terror never let up and neither did their awareness of it, or themselves. It took a long time to realize their circumstances here. To realize they were a cane led them to surmise that all canes had someone like them inside. That this is what happened to everyone who did not become caneless after the Great Cough.

Every time they woke up here it was like being born again and the first breath moment remained. When they awoke in nature, it was like waking up from sleep.

***

“Hoo-who,”

“Whose who’s?” replied Jillian sleepily. She sat, leaning back against a livock tree, listening, and talking with the night.

“who-hoo.” came again.

“I do hear it, but what is it?” asked Jillian.

She heard what sounded like thunder echoing quietly over the past few days. Yet, no rain had come or even whispered. As she listened, it was a bit different each day. She decided it was thunder with a beat she hadn’t heard before. A wave rolled in on the water and rushed out a reply.

“I need to what?” Jillian asked, sitting up straighter.

She had ventured on her own into the land’s hair many times. She wandered the forests and valleys, climbed up high cliffs. She felt just as safe and at home away from the shore, but nothing had ever been suggested to her like this and this suggestion was of such specificity she felt herself tense, unsure.

“I have never needed to sleep indoors. I’ve never seen any dwelling. What are you telling me?” she asked.

In the sky clouds drifted across the moon faces and the dimmed reflection on the water replied. Jillian sat still, trying to figure out why she was being told to do this.

“Ouch!” she yelped, as a fire ant hustled out from between two toes.

She stood up now, feeling petulant and sore about being reminded of her petulance and obstinance.

“Fine!” she screeched “Fine, if you’re going to be a drama shore about it. I’ll go, but I’d appreciate next time a little more explanation, considering.”

A branch of the livock touched upon her head as the wind blew. She relaxed a bit.

“Thank you.” She replied.

She sat back down, agreeing with everything that she would set out tomorrow.

***

The rain thrashed in sloppy dollops. The earth was drenched, yet they could still see the dim coppery light in the distance. Beyond the mist and cold they still saw their direction. It didn’t seem any closer than it was months ago, but their foot travels let them know they were getting close.

Today they suffered a niggling thought. Like an insect had managed to get inside their head. They even checked and flushed their ears and nostrils to ensure it wasn’t something living that had gotten in there and couldn’t get out. As their body signalled that they had walked long enough for today they saw a sign for the next village being an hour away.

“Luck is luck I guess.” They sighed and continued to walk.

Something isn’t right, they thought. My head. This isn’t a headache, but it’s something. They almost blinked in that moment when a clicking jerked their eyes wide just as a white bulb rolled out through undergrowth, followed by a palomino mink. They groaned as if their head were splitting and dropped down, ass first, as the mink caught up to its target. An egg.

They could feel themselves screaming, feel their face contorting in agony, yet they also saw some strange animal, small and slender. They felt like their wasted body was melting. In their vision was something new, a place entirely alien to theirs. Nature was present. Where had it gone! they cried silently.

As they held both their body and vision in sight together, they felt their body trap shift patterns. The cane pack was splitting up to enter homes for the tending dance with children. Groups of four entered each hutch, then split again into the four hatches, each containing one child.

As they sunk down through the floor and into the room their vision showed someone laying on real ground. Earth. This someone was looking at them. They were yelling, but they could not hear them. There was no sound, save for the terror buzz of their cane body.

The stranger looked around frantically, then stopped at the animal who was sitting, holding something between its front paws. The stranger gestured towards it, patting the ground, their face desperate. The animal gazed back at the stranger, then to its egg, then to them. It did this several times, then began to walk towards their sight, but the stranger became hysterical. The animal stopped, looked around again, then ran away suddenly, leaving the egg between them and the stranger.

They were crying, sobbing, as the rain poured down. They flung themselves onto their belly and dragged their body towards the egg. Nothing was heard except their heartbeat, ragged breath and that agonizing buzz, but they understood.

Scooping the egg up, they looked directly at the remnant of their real body, the pain and fear condensed down into one endless action potential of suffering. They hurled the egg at themselves.

***

Jillian stared at the little hut. It had been hidden behind a tremendously overgrown privet. She worked for hours to clear the space around it, but now, having cleared it, she was unsure she wanted to go inside. Nothing had spoken to her while she worked, but she heard that strange beat, it had changed and no longer had much rhythm. It oscillated, humbucked, then just mainly hummed and became a drone.

Jillian felt the weight of her work fall upon her and stumbled toward the hut. She made it to the stairs and set down on them, her arms cradling her head on the porch.

She woke up and stared at the dark ceiling. She made a habit of staring only at the ceiling when first waking. It helped to calm her out of her paranoias that if the canes saw her waking something bad might happen to her.

There was a cane in the room with her. It was not tending to the machine, but staring at her. Fear exploded within her mind. A backlog of suppressed imaginings of this very moment. The towering, bulbous figure peered down at her with bright light eyes, and she thought she would die twice. Once for letting her eyes turn from the ceiling to gaze back and again when the cane destroyed her.

There was something wrong with this cane, she thought. Where was its cane? The 6-foot ferrous rod usually carried was not held by any of the cane’s appendages. This cane also buzzed strangely. She could not move, but the cane did. It backed up, slamming against a wall, rolled forward, and crashed down to the floor.

They began to convulse once they had thrown the egg at themselves, between the worlds. They weren't sure if it smashed or if it smashed them, but they could now affect the movements of their prison.

They saw a woman laying on a bed. They had only ever seen machines. Their nature self told them what to do, but the cane itself still had agency and the two bodies struggled for dominance. The cane caught hold of its rod while they reached another extensor appendage up onto the bed.

Jillian screamed inside herself and passed out. She woke up on the hut porch. It was pouring rain and she felt a nauseating buzzing so strong it rattled her teeth. She struggled to stand and get inside the hut. Inside the buzz was gone, the sound of rain was softened. She slumped into a chair, her breathing hoarse, as if she had just fought off a beast.

As the cane struggled to right itself to stand, they focused everything into this one appendage. This focus allowed them to reach into the woman’s night dress and pull something from a front pocket. The cane was standing up now and they used their last shred of strength to open a heart-shaped locket.

The cane saw, they saw and Jillian jerked and pulled her neck sharply, seeing too, from the hut. A photo of Jillian and their faces each filled up a side.

The cane struck Jillian’s prone body, knocking her out of her chair. She spat blood onto the end-grain floor. They roared through the rain and mud as the cane began to strike itself. A suicide, but also a call to other canes.

They stumbled through the hut door, drenched, foul and heaving. They looked down at the chair for Jillian, but she was standing by the sink. An arm wrapped around her stomach as she wiped her mouth with the other.

“It’s you,” She stated.

They both said Hai.