Finding Peace In The Nightmare

The fawn licked Lucas’ face clean as he meditated in the dew-covered field. Thirst sated, it moved on to the tall grasses flowering around the man, its family spread out for their morning meal. It had been nearly a month since he took up this position. The curious youngster took another lick, emptying wrinkles that had been smoothed out over a millennium ago. They were spreading, getting worse. Lucas knew it was time to move, face the fears that time was etching into his flesh. But not until this family of deer was done with their breakfast. He would not startle these lovely creatures because he had not quelled the past.

As Lucas walked through the woods, a series of little finch-like birds danced in the air and alighted on his shoulders. It had been some time since he walked this path. Had their ancestors passed on stories of him and his like? For all that he looked human, was human, were they to be considered moving trees, a safe harbor? On another day, he might have taken the opportunity to become their home. Wiping away a tear, he continued on to the edge of the forest.

There, the city lay before him, tamed by the wilderness. Vines crushed vinyl and concrete prey alike, slowly breaking those good bones. Metal carapaces dotted the landscape, hollowed-out beetles. Lucas still marveled at the engineering that had gone into these everyday things. Such thought and craft in every line and material, such that they had not already turned to dust under the assault of their creators, the bombs they had also built with such thought and craft. Perhaps, if this place had been atomized as so many were, it would not have such a pull. Yanking him back into the regular flow of human time.

Now they fell to nature and time as things would. Even mountains. Even him, Lucas thought. He was not naive; none of his kind were. Inevitably, they would all come to an end. He held his hand up, the flesh nearly dessicated. This was not a natural end. That time should stretch far into the future. Closer to when the sun lays down its fire.

Most of the landmarks he knew from his escape had melted away, so he closed his eyes and felt for the wellspring of his fear. There. Down the long boulevard of trees ripping up through asphalt, and then to the right. Memorial Hospital. House of healing and horror.

Lucas blamed himself. Everyone who found their way to his home, the village deep in the mountains, left to visit the world every century or so. Some wanted to learn what new inventions humanity had come up with in their absence. Some wanted to check on their descendants, which rarely went well. Some, like Lucas, missed the taste of wild blueberries, apples plucked from trees, and hearing the steaming scream of lattes. Functional immortality had its benefits, but not needing to eat was not the same as not wanting. Lucas sighed and thought, it’s always our wants that get us into trouble.

Others, like Julie and Karos, had left because they were growing too attached. Jealousy and possessiveness were some of humanity’s worst characteristics. They were not traits the village could sustain. The residents were too few, too long-lived, and too knowledgeable. Those drawn to the village and its promise of peace everlasting, its attempt at Utopia, had witnessed their fellow humans fall into those holes time and time again, unable to pull themselves out and unwilling to pull out others. This found-family of immortals could not bear to be a part of that destruction anymore. Nor could they stop it.

Lucas had once wondered how they identified him so soon after stepping into the outside world again. Almost at the edge of the mountain range. He knew his camouflage was minor at best, his worn shoes and flannel jacket. Nothing could distract from his face. Any of their faces. It was not a matter of beauty. Karos thought of himself as a blobfish on two feet, but uglier. No, it was a matter of peace. No one outside the village would ever look as peaceful as Lucas or the other village residents. Not until they were filled with chemicals and laid in their caskets. Standing in front of a small food cart, feasting on the aroma, a pack of jeeps pulled up. Soldiers slid a mask over his face and threw him in the back seat. From their he was passed along from car to car to plane to train to plane to car under cover. No food was offered. No bathroom breaks. They had an understanding of his kind, but they needed more. Lucas sat down in front of his personal hell, closed his eyes, and let the demons free.

Strapped to a gurney, memories in surgical masks skittered down hallways on scalpel fingers under flickering flourescents. Flayed his flesh to be read like Egyptian papyrus. Took out a kidney, blended it up, took out the one that grew in its place, and blended it too for a bloody breakfast smoothie. Livers were weighed and tasted. The sound of teeth grinding in his ears echoed. Hearts, lined up in glass jars, one for each day of the week, glowed yellow in the days waning light. Not all of them his. Julie. Karos. The next shift of monsters comes in, cut out bones and sucked at the delicate marrow.

Lucas’s body broke down under the nightmare. Light seeped through his thinning skin. Muscles screamed at the effort to hold him upright. He spat out a tooth. Then another. Blood ran out of his ears. He opened his yellow eyes. Staring at the hospital’s empty husk, he did the only thing he could. Empathize.

Dipping back into the darkness, he picked out a monster and stared into its black eyes until they turned blue. He saw the fear. Of all the viruses they faced. Of all the bullets and bombs built to tear through their bodies. Focusing on another, he remembered a story, a mantra, they said over and over again: this was for her child, whose cancer was eating her cell by cell. One by one, the monsters became human. The procedures were painful, humiliating, and invasive, but done. And he had survived them all because he could. They were gone, and he remained. He still felt the pain of the blinding light behind his eyes and the force that felt like it would crack the world in two. If only those doctors could have learned the secrets he had tried to whisper. It’s all about the mind, not the body. Something they should have learned when they killed Julie and Karos by cutting into their brains. At least they learned better than to cut into his.

Lucas wiped away a tear with the smooth back of his hand and stood up without any effort. A bird landed on his shoulder, and he listened to it sing of eggs and berries. Peace of mind flowed through him like water, renewing every cell. As he listened to the bird’s song, he imagined becoming its home. Watching its babies break free of their shells and scream for their food. Shelter them from wind and storm. No. It was time to go home. Perhaps he would return in a few centuries. Some spring, when the wild blueberries were ready to burst. When the secrets he had whispered had taken root on the breeze and in the minds of the last few humans. Or, at the very least, once they had advanced enough to make a decent latte.