The Recluse

Within a thick bank of sea fog, a once imposing figure, bent by age and suffering, scowled at a familiar scene unfolding just a rock's throw away where two National Police Officers were brutally removing an old man from a small tool shed, where he had apparently been hiding. Another man, presumably his neighbor and betrayer, watched on with smug self-satisfaction, clearly pleased with himself. From the age of the beaten man, the watcher assumed that he must be an original separatist. Ever since the rebellion was crushed, the Global Government of Earth had been brainwashing folks on the heroic patriotism of reporting any information regarding the location of surviving separatists, none of whom could be less than seventy years old by now. Some folks will do anything for a pat on the head from the government, as though they're trying to prove how devoted they are. To be fair, the bounty of five thousand per traitor didn’t hurt.

The stiff ocean breeze momentarily abated, and in the stillness, he became aware of the odiferous assault wafting from him. His worn black oilskin overcoat smelled like unwashed man, moist soil and the stagnant, briny, water. Strangely, he remembered, how his little girl used to take comfort in that smell when he'd return from a long week of crabbing. His wife would tell her to take the 'stinking thing' outside to air out but, then his little Alice would look at her mother and scold her saying, 'it doesn't stink! It smells like Daddy!' Of all his children, he missed Alice the most.

Funny what you remember, he thought. Or maybe he said it out loud? After a few decades of living as a recluse, mostly to avoid the fate of the poor bastard having his head bashed in by the National Police, he almost never could recall whether or not he had thought something or said it.

After another look at the egregious fate of the old man, he looked away derisively and spat on the wet sand of the beach.

"Sheep." From his lips, twisted in scorn, the word rumbled like distant thunder. That, he knew, was spoken out loud.

Is it better to be a sheep with a flock, or a sheepdog all alone, Daddy?

Her voice cut through the thunderous booming of the waves, and his eyes burned as tears began to pool. He had been hearing her voice for several months. His little Alice, speaking to him. With a shaky sigh, he turned and began trudging his way across the long sand beach to the rocky cliffs, and hopefully a decent meal.

Hearing his daughter's voice always brought back memories of before the war, and after. He could almost hear his wife's voice flaying him: 'Was it worth it, Marcel?' and his guts twisted in response. ‘Was your war worth the cost?'

He'd asked himself that question for nearly forty years. A younger version of himself might have said that it was worth it. A version of himself who had not seen the horrors of the war and what it left behind. But the Recluse had seen it all.

He'd seen the terrible beauty of weapons that destroyed cities and towns in a few seconds of light and heat. He'd seen men and women, good ones, vaporized or blown to pieces so small that the survivors couldn't tell whose loved one's they were scraping off the walls. He'd seen teachers and fast food workers transform into brutal killers after donning a uniform, handed a rifle, and told, 'Those guys over there are the bad guys.'

Didn't matter that one of them 'bad guys' had cut his grass as a child or baby sat his little girl. The politicians had told them all that their cause was just and that the future of the planet was at stake. The Recluse scoffed, startling a gull who hadn't noticed the big man's rambling approach.

The massacres of soldiers were the easiest nightmares to witness. Far worse were the suffering of those who were left behind after the rail guns stopped firing and the war birds stopped blowing the hell out of everything with a heat signature.

No one wanted to acknowledge the inglorious effects of war. The desperate and violent struggles against starvation, when neighbors who used to grill up lobster tails together murdered one another to feed themselves and their families for another day; the suffering and death caused by diseases that could have been easily remedied with antibiotics that had been around since the nineteen hundreds; the raids and lawless brutality of those with strength and weapons upon the weak who were just trying to survive in this lifeless land; all of these were far worse to bear than sacrificial soldiers.

Christ, even if they had won, he surmised for the thousandth time, he'd lost everything anyway.

Now you're all alone Daddy…

A fierce and wicked pain pierced his chest as he yet again heard her voice. My little Alice...His shoulders spasmed violently as he forced back an unwelcome sob. Wiping his cheek and sniffing back the wasted water trickling from his nose, he tried to turn his thoughts to other, more pressing matters of food and water. He could always count on that to avoid the grief.

When his emotions threatened to drag him to the cold, dark, bottom, just as the sea had done to his little girl, his aching and empty stomach would interrupt and remind him that he would not survive for long without more food and fresh water.

The great irony of folks dying of thirst next to the sea always struck him as oddly humorous. He had always loved the sea, before the war...and before it took his little Alice. Now, like many things that once brought him joy, the Recluse loathed it.

The fatigue and clouded thoughts reminded him that he hadn't had food nor clean water to drink in days. With shame, he recalled how his hunger and thirst had driven him to violence in the early years after the war when his family was starving, but after his wife was put to death for his civil disobedience and then his children murdered by raiders for their meager rations, he had sworn never again to harm others except in defense.

Even before his oath, the Recluse had never harmed a child, not intentionally at least, even to feed his family. He was a man of honor, a soldier of principle, and he had decided that he would continue to live by those principles at least insofar as not harming innocent children. He had trusted others to do the same until he came home to find all of his children murdered. All but his little Alice.

You're so sad Daddy...so tired.

The recluse hunched over and wretched for a time. Then fell to his knees and laid his sweating face against the cool, dank sand. It's funny... he thought ...there's water in the air, there's water in the sand, yet here I am dying of thirst. A dry, cynical chuckle rumbled out between his parched and cracked lips.

After a time, the Recluse slowly rose to his feet and took another step in the wet sand. Then another.

I miss you Daddy.

The Recluse stumbled as a burning, stabbing pain lanced through his chest and he began to pant. My Alice…

With shaking hands, he pulled a worn cloth from his pocket. He unfolded it carefully then lifted a small, silver, heart shaped locket. His quivering fingers fumbled with the catch until it silently opened. Inside was a small picture of her...his little Alice.

Curly blond locks framed her dimpled face. With a rosebud mouth and stunning, china blue eyes, her photograph looked back at him just as she had on picture day in first grade. His eyes burned, but whether from salty air or his body's inability to form tears, it didn't matter. His breathing sped up and he wrapped his arms around himself and began rocking back and forth, moaning out his grief.

Eventually the Recluse stood, and struggled onward as his thoughts continued to drift through the past.

It was the family walks he missed the most. Watching his children walking in front of him filled him with such warmth and pride and...

And hope Daddy?

“Yes, child. And hope,” he replied. He had never engaged with her voice before.

Through the fog, the Recluse's muffled steps continued towards the far end of the beach, and hopefully his dinner. For years, the Recluse subsisted largely on whatever his modified lobster traps could catch. He’d throw them from the high rocks into the deep. It was a dangerous and exhausting process to haul up the large, heavy traps.

His head swam and his blood turned to ice as he remembered the sound of her crying out as she fell from the high rocks, after her ankle had gotten tangled in the trap line. He nearly drowned searching for her; all day and through most of the night he dove and searched for her, until he eventually passed out. He awoke on the beach, holding tightly to her little silver locket.

His wife's accusing tone rose up again to condemn him, 'Was it worth it Marcel? We could have lived our lives in peace, but you were too proud. Was it worth it?

Again, the Recluse fell to the ground, using all of his strength to hold back the storm of grief, demanding why, after so many years, did the pain of her loss return to torment him?

You're so sad, Daddy... Come home…

The compassion in her voice was so sweet and so real that his control over his emotions faltered and his grief would no longer suffer to be denied. Falling to his knees, the Recluse wept bitterly. His shoulders and back shook violently as he released his despair with only the sand, the sea and the fog to bear witness.

Was it worth it Daddy?

He didn't know if it was worth it. He didn’t know if he could have lived with himself had he done nothing. Relentlessly, she repeated the question that had haunted him for forty years.

Was it worth it Daddy?

"I don't know, dammit! I don't know!" He pounded his rage into the sand, blow after blow, while bellowing his fury at the course of his life. The sand flew as his muscles bunched and hurled his large fists into the beach, over and over, as he screamed out his hatred, love and loss to the gulls and the fish. Eventually, his rage abated and his strength abandoned him in woeful misery on the beach.

It was nearly dark when he awoke, miles from either end of the beach. He pulled up his knees and wrapped his arms around them as he stared blankly into the surf for an endless moment. He again sought the comfort of his daughter's face and reached into his pocket. Finding it empty, he began to shake, then to moan.

"Noooooo..." but the word was lost in the sounds of the crashing sea.

You're so sad, Daddy... Come home. Come home with me.

The Recluse’s breath turned to gasping, as out of the fog padded a barefoot, little girl clutching a small heart shaped locket. Her countenance was so delicate and beautiful that the Recluse was stunned. She glowed with vitality as she stepped closer. He recognized the dimples, and the unruly mop of blond hair.

"Daddy..."

Her rosebud lips spoke to him. Her pretty blue sun dress matched her large smiling eyes...

An excruciating pain ripped through his chest leaving him barely able to draw breath but the Recluse braced himself up with one arm, watching her. She reached out with her hand and he could feel her soft, warm hand in his own.

"Daddy, come with me. Come home."

THE END