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rainbowfic2023-08-15 11:16 pm
wallwalker) wrote in rainbowfic2023-08-15 11:16 pm
Side B Blackstar 12, Vienna Orange 9
Author: Wallwalker
Story: After the End
Colors: Side B: Blackstar 12- "We're nothing, and nothing will help us", Vienna Orange 9. Shouldn't there be screaming, praying, crying, anything at all?
Supplies: Novelty Beads: “But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.” ― Leslie Marmon Silko
Style: Stained Glass, Chiaroscuro, Diptych, Triptych
Word Count: 1618
Rating: Mature for adult themes
Content notes: Post-apocalyptic fiction. Mass death, suicide (of a sort,) pregnancy, stillbirth.
Summary: No one expected the end to be like that. Least of all the survivors.
Notes: Symmetrina with seven parts. Total of five POVs.
---
I
No crying. No screams. Silence itself became the abyss we feared.
II
"It’s very quiet here, Marsha, as you can hear. You see - yes, you see the crowd behind me, but they just stare. It’s... what’s that? Did you say anything? I don’t... I...."
III
No one knows when it started or ended, the whisper that ended the world.
Maybe it never ended. Maybe the few people left are the ones who can’t hear it anymore. It was never a real sound anyway, but a sibilance that resonated in the soul, that made life too difficult to keep living.
The afflicted didn’t scream or fight or magically waste away. They just stopped. Drivers didn’t bother to stop their cars. Families sat motionless at tables laden with food, until they starved. They could not be moved, no matter how the survivors tried.
And they tried.
IV
“We’re running low on food,” Marsha called from the door to their little hideaway. “I’m going to get some canned goods from one of the caches.”
“Be careful,” someone else calls out. Rakeesh doesn’t know his name yet, one of the new arrivals. Heavens only knew how he’d survived long enough to find them. Or maybe he’d had another group of survivors, and had been separated. There’d been little enough time to ask.
He heard Marsha laugh quietly. “I always am,” she said with her customary cheer, before the door closed with a loud squeak. They could oil it, he thought idly as he sat back down by the window, but at least this way they could tell when someone was coming or going. They hadn’t found very many new people recently, but he kept hoping.
Life after the end was quieter than anyone had expected it to be. Rakeesh had been an English professor before the end, and he had distinct memories of lecturing to his students about poetry, Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot, and of asking class after class for their thoughts on how the world would end, their own attempts at poetry....
He couldn’t remember any of their responses being quite like this. Nearly everyone assumed there would be violence of some sort or another, just as the old poets did. The flames of desire, the icy grip of hate. A great explosion to rend the world asunder, or a whimper, the cries of children as they slowly sickened and starved.
Ice or fire, they’d all said. Hate or desire. He could not remember a single poem that suggested that apathy would be their end. That the will to live would simply vanish, as if blown away by a gentle breeze.
He sighed briefly as he reached for his book - this one was nearly full, he noted, though he had others. It had taken the group of them some time to stop caring about looting, much longer than it had taken the people who had once owned and run the stores, but that had been what felt like ages ago. He had as many journals and notebooks as any man could ever want.
Many of them were full of his pencil scratchings, in Tamil and English alike. Only a few were written in ink. There wasn’t that much he’d thought to preserve; who would find it? But a part of him still felt that old optimism that had kept him in the city, even on a professor’s salary.
Behind him he heard Callie snoring lightly, and turned automatically to look at her. His eyes lingered on the curve of her stomach. He wondered, briefly, whose child she carried. He wasn’t particularly concerned; jealousy was a waste of time, with so few of them left. Still, he kept hoping that if they could just find the right combination of genes, the child would...
He clenched his jaw as he turned away. No. He wouldn’t think about it. He wouldn’t think about holding another silent baby in his arms, begging it to cry. He couldn’t.
Abruptly he found himself standing. He wouldn’t sit and dwell on his nightmares, he told himself. He had to prove, if only to himself, that he wasn’t like the rest of the world outside.
He walked to the stairs, headed to the roof. A few people looked up, seeming ready to greet him, but the look on his face must have given them pause, and they quickly turned away. He heard himself muttering apologies as he walked past, barely paying attention to what he was actually saying. Later he could make amends.
The roof was bright, the sun hot that day, and the sky was a brilliant blue. For months after the end had started, the smoke had been thick and unbearable; people who had once had the drive to start fires no longer had the desire or the energy to put them out, and not enough people had been left to fight the resulting wildfires. He had a sudden flash of thought – a line of men and women in their coats and hats, hoses forgotten behind them as the fire grew closer. He still couldn’t help but wonder, had they even thought about running? Or had it been a relief when the fire had swept over them and burnt them to ash?
He took a breath and forced himself to look up at the clear sky. No thoughts of smoke today, he told himself. Not when there was still work to be done.
The sun shone on trough after trough, boxes filled with potting soil. Most of them were filled with green sprouts, tentatively poking from the soil. At least whatever had been done to humanity hadn’t stopped the plants from growing. The garden of sorts hadn’t been Rakeesh’s idea, though he found himself the one who took care of it more often than not. Jeong had come up with the idea, as he recalled, had laid most of the groundwork.
No one had seen Jeong for the past two weeks. A few of them had gone out looking for him, but with little success. Rakeesh hoped it had been an accident, that he’d simply gone too far afield to get back. He hoped that if he had died out there, he’d died still trying to find something new for them to grow. He’d been an old man, and he had known that he wouldn’t last not longer, not without the treatments that had kept his heart healthy after the end. They’d lost any chance of finding more of the medication after the power, and by extension the refrigeration, had finally failed.
Before he’d disappeared, he’d filled eleven of their notebooks with what he remembered from being a farmer. Not just memories of his life, though he’d left a few that they all still treasured, but practical information too, notes about what to do once the seeds sprouted, how to thin out the sprouts and move some of them to other containers to grow more freely. What plants could be grown together, what should be rotated to add nutrients to the soil so that they wouldn’t have to rely on fertilizer, and other bits and pieces about gardening. It was a wealth of knowledge that Rakeesh was grateful for now; it was almost worth the awkwardness of pushing him to write more whenever he saw him.
Rakeesh had insisted that everyone keep a journal. Sometimes he regretted it; he’d watched Callie hold it to her chest as she wept, not long after she’d lost her first child. He could not comprehend the cruelty that the Heavens were capable of, to have a woman who wanted to be a mother so badly born in such an age. But for the most part he believed that he’d done the right thing. If there was anyone after them, at least they would know that someone had still cared.
So many people had stopped caring that day. He had been walking through the building, seeing entire rooms of students and their professors, sitting in eerie silence. He’d passed a television in one of the lounges, saw Marsha - she’d been an anchor then, he remembered - vainly asking someone to answer her, please.
The phones had still worked then. He’d found the number for the station and called until she’d picked up. Knowing that someone else out there was still alive had been enough for them to keep searching-
The door slammed open behind him, and he jumped as Marsha ran back in, eyes wide. “Rakeesh!” she said breathlessly. “You’ll never believe it! Come down, now!”
“You got the food?” he asked, baffled, as he followed her down.
“What? No, not yet, you have to see it, you have to-”
He was barely listening as he saw the others gathered around a table, even Callie. He’d started to speak, but then... he heard.
A baby’s loud, strident cries.
V
No one could explain what strange force had driven so many to hopelessness, and to a despair so deep that they could not break free, even to end their own pain. Most of the great minds who may have been able to answer those questions had been the first to fall prey. So few of them were left to carry on in a broken world, finding homes in the houses of the dead. But as a great man once said, there will always be survivors.
At least he might’ve been great. In all honesty, they could no longer remember.
VI
”Al? We’ve lost you, Al. Are you there? Al? Mikail? Anyone?
”Is anyone listening? Can’t you hear me? Oh, God... please, if anyone can hear me, call in. The station extension is -”
VII
But we go on, we few, to bear the weighty torch.
Story: After the End
Colors: Side B: Blackstar 12- "We're nothing, and nothing will help us", Vienna Orange 9. Shouldn't there be screaming, praying, crying, anything at all?
Supplies: Novelty Beads: “But as long as you remember what you have seen, then nothing is gone. As long as you remember, it is part of this story we have together.” ― Leslie Marmon Silko
Style: Stained Glass, Chiaroscuro, Diptych, Triptych
Word Count: 1618
Rating: Mature for adult themes
Content notes: Post-apocalyptic fiction. Mass death, suicide (of a sort,) pregnancy, stillbirth.
Summary: No one expected the end to be like that. Least of all the survivors.
Notes: Symmetrina with seven parts. Total of five POVs.
---
I
No crying. No screams. Silence itself became the abyss we feared.
II
"It’s very quiet here, Marsha, as you can hear. You see - yes, you see the crowd behind me, but they just stare. It’s... what’s that? Did you say anything? I don’t... I...."
III
No one knows when it started or ended, the whisper that ended the world.
Maybe it never ended. Maybe the few people left are the ones who can’t hear it anymore. It was never a real sound anyway, but a sibilance that resonated in the soul, that made life too difficult to keep living.
The afflicted didn’t scream or fight or magically waste away. They just stopped. Drivers didn’t bother to stop their cars. Families sat motionless at tables laden with food, until they starved. They could not be moved, no matter how the survivors tried.
And they tried.
IV
“We’re running low on food,” Marsha called from the door to their little hideaway. “I’m going to get some canned goods from one of the caches.”
“Be careful,” someone else calls out. Rakeesh doesn’t know his name yet, one of the new arrivals. Heavens only knew how he’d survived long enough to find them. Or maybe he’d had another group of survivors, and had been separated. There’d been little enough time to ask.
He heard Marsha laugh quietly. “I always am,” she said with her customary cheer, before the door closed with a loud squeak. They could oil it, he thought idly as he sat back down by the window, but at least this way they could tell when someone was coming or going. They hadn’t found very many new people recently, but he kept hoping.
Life after the end was quieter than anyone had expected it to be. Rakeesh had been an English professor before the end, and he had distinct memories of lecturing to his students about poetry, Robert Frost and T.S. Eliot, and of asking class after class for their thoughts on how the world would end, their own attempts at poetry....
He couldn’t remember any of their responses being quite like this. Nearly everyone assumed there would be violence of some sort or another, just as the old poets did. The flames of desire, the icy grip of hate. A great explosion to rend the world asunder, or a whimper, the cries of children as they slowly sickened and starved.
Ice or fire, they’d all said. Hate or desire. He could not remember a single poem that suggested that apathy would be their end. That the will to live would simply vanish, as if blown away by a gentle breeze.
He sighed briefly as he reached for his book - this one was nearly full, he noted, though he had others. It had taken the group of them some time to stop caring about looting, much longer than it had taken the people who had once owned and run the stores, but that had been what felt like ages ago. He had as many journals and notebooks as any man could ever want.
Many of them were full of his pencil scratchings, in Tamil and English alike. Only a few were written in ink. There wasn’t that much he’d thought to preserve; who would find it? But a part of him still felt that old optimism that had kept him in the city, even on a professor’s salary.
Behind him he heard Callie snoring lightly, and turned automatically to look at her. His eyes lingered on the curve of her stomach. He wondered, briefly, whose child she carried. He wasn’t particularly concerned; jealousy was a waste of time, with so few of them left. Still, he kept hoping that if they could just find the right combination of genes, the child would...
He clenched his jaw as he turned away. No. He wouldn’t think about it. He wouldn’t think about holding another silent baby in his arms, begging it to cry. He couldn’t.
Abruptly he found himself standing. He wouldn’t sit and dwell on his nightmares, he told himself. He had to prove, if only to himself, that he wasn’t like the rest of the world outside.
He walked to the stairs, headed to the roof. A few people looked up, seeming ready to greet him, but the look on his face must have given them pause, and they quickly turned away. He heard himself muttering apologies as he walked past, barely paying attention to what he was actually saying. Later he could make amends.
The roof was bright, the sun hot that day, and the sky was a brilliant blue. For months after the end had started, the smoke had been thick and unbearable; people who had once had the drive to start fires no longer had the desire or the energy to put them out, and not enough people had been left to fight the resulting wildfires. He had a sudden flash of thought – a line of men and women in their coats and hats, hoses forgotten behind them as the fire grew closer. He still couldn’t help but wonder, had they even thought about running? Or had it been a relief when the fire had swept over them and burnt them to ash?
He took a breath and forced himself to look up at the clear sky. No thoughts of smoke today, he told himself. Not when there was still work to be done.
The sun shone on trough after trough, boxes filled with potting soil. Most of them were filled with green sprouts, tentatively poking from the soil. At least whatever had been done to humanity hadn’t stopped the plants from growing. The garden of sorts hadn’t been Rakeesh’s idea, though he found himself the one who took care of it more often than not. Jeong had come up with the idea, as he recalled, had laid most of the groundwork.
No one had seen Jeong for the past two weeks. A few of them had gone out looking for him, but with little success. Rakeesh hoped it had been an accident, that he’d simply gone too far afield to get back. He hoped that if he had died out there, he’d died still trying to find something new for them to grow. He’d been an old man, and he had known that he wouldn’t last not longer, not without the treatments that had kept his heart healthy after the end. They’d lost any chance of finding more of the medication after the power, and by extension the refrigeration, had finally failed.
Before he’d disappeared, he’d filled eleven of their notebooks with what he remembered from being a farmer. Not just memories of his life, though he’d left a few that they all still treasured, but practical information too, notes about what to do once the seeds sprouted, how to thin out the sprouts and move some of them to other containers to grow more freely. What plants could be grown together, what should be rotated to add nutrients to the soil so that they wouldn’t have to rely on fertilizer, and other bits and pieces about gardening. It was a wealth of knowledge that Rakeesh was grateful for now; it was almost worth the awkwardness of pushing him to write more whenever he saw him.
Rakeesh had insisted that everyone keep a journal. Sometimes he regretted it; he’d watched Callie hold it to her chest as she wept, not long after she’d lost her first child. He could not comprehend the cruelty that the Heavens were capable of, to have a woman who wanted to be a mother so badly born in such an age. But for the most part he believed that he’d done the right thing. If there was anyone after them, at least they would know that someone had still cared.
So many people had stopped caring that day. He had been walking through the building, seeing entire rooms of students and their professors, sitting in eerie silence. He’d passed a television in one of the lounges, saw Marsha - she’d been an anchor then, he remembered - vainly asking someone to answer her, please.
The phones had still worked then. He’d found the number for the station and called until she’d picked up. Knowing that someone else out there was still alive had been enough for them to keep searching-
The door slammed open behind him, and he jumped as Marsha ran back in, eyes wide. “Rakeesh!” she said breathlessly. “You’ll never believe it! Come down, now!”
“You got the food?” he asked, baffled, as he followed her down.
“What? No, not yet, you have to see it, you have to-”
He was barely listening as he saw the others gathered around a table, even Callie. He’d started to speak, but then... he heard.
A baby’s loud, strident cries.
V
No one could explain what strange force had driven so many to hopelessness, and to a despair so deep that they could not break free, even to end their own pain. Most of the great minds who may have been able to answer those questions had been the first to fall prey. So few of them were left to carry on in a broken world, finding homes in the houses of the dead. But as a great man once said, there will always be survivors.
At least he might’ve been great. In all honesty, they could no longer remember.
VI
”Al? We’ve lost you, Al. Are you there? Al? Mikail? Anyone?
”Is anyone listening? Can’t you hear me? Oh, God... please, if anyone can hear me, call in. The station extension is -”
VII
But we go on, we few, to bear the weighty torch.