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Seven Days:Part Three of Seven
Posted By: SeverianofUrth<severn117@hotmail.com>
Date: 12 April 2005, 2:26 PM
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Seven Days: Part Three of Seven
Memories.
Sometimes, as I wander along the dead corpse that is New Hawaii, memories strike me; not mine, no, but memories of those deceased who have already crossed over to the other. This one that I will tell you about, Ben, is one of those.
Hell; maybe God existed, maybe He didn't, but Mary thought that it all didn't matter when the food was so good and the kids were so happy and the air was so clean and- so damn good, all of this, all of this sand and the stars and the moon, this freedom, this heaven, and so, who cared about lives after death? There was now, and then, and maybe later if you had some room. She wanted to enjoy herself.
Which was why she found herself curling like a glittering snake around Katsuo, his flabby brown muscles managing to gleam in the roaring campfire. They were old, both of them, and both had the scars to prove it; but their lusts were young. Not that young, of course, or they'd been boffing each other like a pair of bunnies, but young enough to feel desire, heat, passion.
"Heh..." Katsuo said, stretching his arm around her shoulders and drawing her close. His stubbly chin, half-covered with thick fat, rubbed against her cheeks. "Want some chips?" He held up some of the fried potatoes to her.
"Thank'ya," she said, as she took the chip. The grease still felt hot on the chip, and when Mary popped it into her mouth and crunched it all up, she thought she could hear her blood veins clogging.
Katsuo grabbed the fried potatoes by the handful and shoved them into his mouth, little crumbs falling off the edges of his thick lips. He grunted in enjoyment as Mary cackled with laughter at him- he looked just like a pig. A damn adorable pig, at that, but still, pigs were hilarious... until they were stripped down for bacon, that is.
Katsuo glared at her as she laughed, and said when he swallowed it all up, "I suppose you think it's all terribly funny."
"It is, yeah. You look like a pig."
"I do not," he said indignantly.
"Nah, you don't I suppose." Mary brushed back some of the wispy
Katsuo laughed. "Or maybe my lady, too. Wonder what they're doing? Sitting at home, worrying?"
Mary smiled. "Hell no. They'd be out like this too, loving, playing- tis all the same in the end. Think it's the air, though, Kat- the air's making me giddy and young again."
"You know," Katsuo said reflectively, "I used to go to this church, tall and white and all shiny windows- priest said that we'd be going down a hell of a long way if we do what we're doing now. But I see that the kids don't mind- and ain't the kids supposed to be the most innocent of them all?"
"Hmph. See nothin' innocent bout them kids," Mary replied. "Look! Jillian not ten years old and already tryin' to kiss ol' Henry."
Katsuo laughed. "Henry's not so bad. My son, after all."
"And Jillian ain't a daughter of mine," Mary said. "Glad, too. She's going to turn out a slattern or whatnot, see true."
"Heh."
They both sat like that for some time. The moon above shone. The sands were warm. The fires slowly died out until nothing remained but embers. The kids played out in the waters.
Mary could see others doing the same that she was, or sleeping, or resting, or merely enjoying the sight of their children having fun; perhaps, she thought, perhaps everyone sees their children and sees ahead a good future in a good land. Perhaps they all see what I can't see. Maybe what they see is greater then anything I could see.
She thought about the years in Apotrops. The guards. What they had called the electric-poontang, which had been a hair curler. The nights, spent in agony. The result, sterility.
She shivered, and Katsuo held her tight, lending his warmth to hers. Mary leaned her head against his mammoth chest, smelled the mingling scent of lotion and sweat, and thought again that for all its supposed beauty, heaven couldn't compare with the sense of contentment that now lay here.
The surroundings grew slowly darker, minute by minute, as the fires went from embers to ashes. People slept, rested, sat, thought.
"So," Katsuo said softly, "wanna do it, after all?"
"What?"
"Want to go through with it?" Even in this darkness Mary could see his glittering white smile. "My wife, she's good, we're friends, but we're not lovers. She wouldn't mind."
"Maybe, Kat, maybe."
"Wanna give it a good thought first?"
Mary nodded. "Yeah, suppose so."
They huddled even closer. The children were starting to tire, Mary saw. One by one the kids began to clamber from the waters to the sands.
But some still remained in the waters, ceaselessly playing. She smiled, when she saw that. What she and the others had gone through on Calibani and Prospera VI and Apotrops- this was the culmination of their efforts. What a end. What a beautiful end to it all.
Katsuo was nodding off now. Mary laid him back onto the sands- he muttered a thanks to her- and she lay beside him, warm and comfortable.
The nightmares would slowly go away, with time. Mary thought she could live with that. She would live with Katsuo, still be friends with her ol' man, and maybe someday she could adopt a cute little girl. Or get a surgery done. Either of them would be fine.
The stars dimmed above, and Mary felt the Sandman's gentle sprinkling on her brow. Katsuo's cushy flabby arm lay beneath her head like a warm pillow. Sleep it would be.
Then it all fell apart with shattering finality; the high-pitched screams of children frightened echoed from the waters; Mary woke, startled; and then she saw Jillian the future slattern fall to the water in two halves, blood spewing from her severed waist and dampening the sea with crimson. Screams, screams; Katsuo rose up, and ran for Henry, who tried desperately to wade in from the waters onto the beach as his friends fell in bloody ruin all around him-
A guttural scream from Katsuo, as Henry died. Tears blinding Mary's vision, as Katsuo's giant torso was ripped in half by unseen knives. Her dream falling around her like a house of cards, as the cold icy blade ripped through her, past her, and left her on the sands, her eyes blinking but not feeling, her legs somewhere else, and all thought rapidly draining away with the blood- and her last words, not spoken but reverbrating deep within her mind, was 'Why now?'
Memories that I glimpse are all like the one mentioned above. They are of tragedy. None of them show the simple delights of everyday life.
Beautiful endings. How I long for them, Ben. I wish that I could lie and fix one up for you- that I lived happily ever after, that I solved the case, got smashed with Jimmy, married the waitress at Jojola's, and after all that, had a dozen kids and lived in pleasure and peace and harmony.
Of course, you know I'm dead. So much for happy endings, even fake ones.
Author's Note:Seven Days was a disaster in making.
I'm sorry, but this series won't be continued, for now. I'll be concentrating on Invasion of the NOOBS- and when my writing skills have gotten good enough for the plot, I'll return to this story.
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