I, Dead
by
Chris Riker
“Death smiles at us all; all we can do is smile back.”
― Marcus Aurelius
“The meaning of life is that it stops.”
―Franz Kafka
"To die will be an awfully big adventure."
― Peter Pan
Chapter One
Rise from the SHaDo
She despised them for owning Ascension Day as they owned everything else, these royals among the roaches, but she’d play their games. The skeletal girl would smile and bow and tell them how important they were, the most important people in all of Sanctuary Hab Dome Four. “Yes, how wise you are. How your words shape the lives of the thousands of your grateful people here in SHaDo 4. You alone have kept us alive when the other SHaDos have fallen silent. Your leadership inspires us towards a brighter future –” She’d bite back the rest of the words: of endless labor and starvation. For months now, she’d done whatever it took to be flattering, deferential, indispensable. It was essential in order to ensure she was there when a scrap of food fell from an overloaded plate. The humble servant planned to be there when the next of these shit-stained gods went wandering off into the wasteland, proudly dressed in glittering golden robes, alone, to claim their forever prize.
That day had come.
“SHaDomeister, your cloak looks splendid upon your regal frame,” she said, wrapping the garment about his weak, slouching shoulders. She restrained myself lest she boast that she’d labored all night to brush the gaudy cloak free of the crusty indulgence left over from his joyless attempts to use her. Guile had kept her better fed than any of the boys, but she was still painfully thin and less developed than the women in the SHaDomeister’s inner circle. This worked to her advantage, as he clearly preferred a flat chest and boyish hips; though they differed on which hole was for pleasure. In any case, all of this would be for nothing if she asked for a reward for her efforts. It would only set the old man off on one of his petulant rants and might lead him to choose someone else to help him on his procession into the wastelands. That could not happen.
Like so much else in life, you either claimed the prize or paid the price. She refused to become that image in her head: belly swollen with fluid but no food, eyes hollow, lips parted to reveal teeth weakened or missing from lack of protein. That image never left her. She’d seen it a hundred times. She could forget most of those faces, but at night she’d see Jaken and Jareel. She saw them again, struggling through their early years only to grow listless and finally fall still. Their dead eyes looked up to their mother, who could do nothing. Mother was sentimental. She left the dome each time to bury her fallen angels. It was the girl who found her brothers’ shallow graves. It was wrong to waste valuable protein, and she was not going to end up like them.
The celebration was full of dull speeches. “A better life,” the fawning voices said. “Renewal.” “The great dream will come true where you’ll soon be.” It was all nonsense, couched in the language of unchecked superstitions involving gods and magic and ultimate justice. Religion remained that old sword and shield of powerful men. In fact, it was an excuse for this crowd of swollen parasites to drink eau-de-vie pressed from fruits that could have fed hundreds. They sang. They drank. They groped.
The guests were up for fleshy debauch. Other attendants fared less well than she had. She used her wits to talk her way out of that carnal distraction. Sometimes, she would recall a clever passage or line of poetry to delight a guest or throw up a strategic delay. She offered one reveler the opportunity to “make the beast with two backs” but later, knowing the drunken chode would be passed out soon enough. She hoped his pockets were as full as his lust.
Knowledge often proved more useful than a blade. She would not call herself a good reader, but she had searched out the neglected archives and taught herself much. Poetry became a particular indulgence. The crumbling books fed her mind, giving her focus enough to feed her belly.
Standing by as the guests satiated their appetites was the greatest challenge of her masquerade. She was the servant. It was not her place to ask for food, though her belly screamed for nourishment. With determination, she met the challenge. She did not touch a morsel. She did not stare. She did not scratch her head or crotch, though tiny pests were eating her alive. She merely attended the SHaDomeister and his guests through the night.
At last, he rose unsteadily and announced, “It’s time. Farewell to you, my dear friends. I am off to meet my destiny in ascension. I will remember you when I am in that better place. Now, I must take my final steps on this Earth alone.”
Indeed, the SHaDomeister did his best to walk on his own, but he was an old man, and hardly fit to cross a room, much less a desert. She allowed him to struggle his way out of the ceremonial chamber, leaving the others behind. She knew which way he would have to go to reach the Western Gate and the wastelands beyond. She remained, serving more fruit spirits, for half an hour. The guests were far too drunk to care, but she played her role to the full.
When she was certain the revelers were all but insensate, she slipped out of the chamber. It took no time at all to find the old fool, leaning against a wall, barely making any progress.
“SHaDomeister, let me be your servant to the end.”
“No, I must be alone. Magister Syn commands this, and I dare not disappoint him.” It was the first she had heard this name. Magister Syn. She was full of questions she would not ask for fear of revealing her curiosity, a fatal flaw among servants.
“I live to serve your commands, SHaDomeister. Without your inspiration, I have no purpose at all. Let me help you walk where you must go. When we reach that place, I will end my own existence, ensuring you are alone to meet Magister Syn.” From within the folds of her wretched clothes, she produced the curved blade of an abattoir worker. “I have used this to slit the throats of many plump swine and send them to the tables of the finest citizens of SHaDo 4.” She’d breathed in that pig stench of ammonia and sulfur so the privileged few could stuff themselves with meat. She snuck a few mouthfuls, a risk that could have found her cooked and served up on those same tables; she took that fatalistic gamble. The meager protein allowed her starved brain to think, and what thoughts it had! She did not say any of that, of course but hastily added, “Let my humble blade serve one last time.”
Age and fruit spirits spun a web of indifference upon the fat man’s features. “Very well. Though I’m fit and ready, it is a long walk.” His considerable weight pressed her shoulder while his fetid musk engulfed her. He stank of decay and unwashed excrement. He stank of a lifetime of self-indulgence. She drew solace from the thought that he would not burden her much longer.
The Western Gate stood unattended. That was the way things were now. Those who had duties ignored them, even while those who would kill to hold secure positions starved. The lock was a simple matter, three rotating bands marked with symbols operated the anachronistic device. Twist the bands so that three moons aligned, and the lock released. The trick was meant to keep things outside rather than holding them within the dome. Anyone who wished to leave a SHaDo was welcome to do so and relieve the demand on limited food.
The ascension ceremony had run through the night, and the effort to reach the Western Gate had added hours more owing to the SHaDomeister’s sluggish girth. They stepped out into the midday sun. The heat struck her drawn face even as the sun blinded her. She hadn’t been outside in months to see this world she loathed. Little grew in the heat, and the few living things that survived here saw her as she saw them: food.
A quick glance back revealed the truth about her home. Deep fissures of dark lightning spread over the great concrete shell. At some point, the dome would breach, not just on one side but in many places. Without this shelter, all of the mercilessly-governed activity inside would be laid bare, as if the Earth herself had kicked over a termite mound. The residents would not last long out here. Indeed, she knew with certainty now what had happened to all of the other SHaDos.
She was about to dare ask her lurching burden how far he intended to walk to meet this Magister Syn. Before she could, however, he straightened his stance and took command of his own frame. He set his gaze upon the horizon and began marching in a steady, albeit waddling, gate.
“SHaDomeister, let me help you. Do not tax yourself in this, your hour of destiny.” She hurried to catch up to the man, her own energy quickly ebbing as the heat liquified her body’s strength into sweat.
He did not reply; instead he walked on through the blasted wastes.
They continued without exchanging a word for many hours. The SHaDomeister never took his attention from some indefinable point on the horizon. She felt herself reduced from relative strength to a wanderer increasingly desperate for water, but she dared not ask for a drop. She’d sworn herself to suicide in the SHaDomeister’s service. Water should play no role in her final hours. And yet, she was curious to see that the SHaDomeister himself never paused his trek long enough to take a draft. It had been many dry hours. Now a terrible thought occurred to her. What if, under his golden robe, the doddering fool had forgotten to take any water at all. If not a canteen, surely he hid a flask or two on his person.
She was motivated to learn the secret of this ascension. It must involve wealth, or food perhaps. It must. Why else would these cockroaches come out into the cruel sunlight to claim it?
As her tongue thickened and her clammy flesh ceased to provide cooling sweat, she determined to wait no longer. She would kill the SHaDomeister now. If he carried no water, she vowed to drink anything liquid within him!
He walked like a man inebriated beyond all self-awareness. She’d fallen back as her muscles stiffened and protested for water. She willed her limbs to move faster so that she might catch up. His pace was not rapid, but he never missed a step, while she stumbled and paused often. He was now perhaps fifty yards ahead. How is this fat, old man moving faster than I am? What keeps those bloated legs moving? What manner of will serves this man who’s never found a need for self-control in a lifetime of gluttony and consumption?
Her senses abandoned her in those hours. She remembered looking at her own feet trudging over the rocky soil, then seeing something skitter a few yards away from her. Her next wakeful moment found her face-down in the sand. She pulled herself up. Her throat stung and her tongue was a dead lump of desiccated flesh.
Looking about, she found the SHaDomeister in the distance. He had not stopped to check on her, of course. Her brief rest, if rest it was, had given her back some modest pool of energy. She tapped this newfound reserve to reach the man, though it took longer than it should have. She found him standing there unmoving, staring directly into the sun now plunging between the peaks of the distant mountains.
Blisters peeled his balding head, and his eyes appeared dried and partially clouded over, like the eyes in a slaughtered pig’s head. Had he forgotten to blink? No matter. My masquerade is at an end.
She drew her blade. “This is my sticking knife. After I stun the pig, I use this to drain the blood. You are already stunned, I see. I think the blood in your fat skin will do me more good than you.”
With that, she thrust the blade deep into the SHaDomeister’s round belly. At last, emotion returned to his face in the form of sadness.
“No,” he cried. “I must meet Magister Syn. He promised to take me to his castle in the sky.”
The fool’s knees buckled and he went down.
“What promise? Talk, old fool, while you still can. Talk, or I’ll slit your throat right now.”
The old man’s lips were trembling. His speech became little more than puffs of air from his failing lungs. “He promised me a better life.” The words came out haltingly. “A life of plenty.” And yet, life was leaving this old cockroach. His final word escaped him in a mix of ecstasy and sorrow. “Paradise.” He said it and died.
The sun had fallen out of the world leaving night to bleed all trace of color from the sky. It was mercifully cool now, but she knew from her readings that this land that appeared so barren by day would teem with snapping jaws by night. She had to move quickly.
Whatever this ascension is supposed to be, it’s a lie. One among multitudes trafficked by the SHaDo elites. Her plan was simple; she began stripping the SHaDomeister’s body. She could find no water on his person. That meant she would have to keep moving tonight, through the open desert. She would never survive another full day exposed like this. She would take his clothes, jewels, and as much of his meat as she could carry, poor quality as it was, back to the dome for sale. This will bring in enough to keep me fed for many months.
She knelt beside the body and got to work. Her blade carved with greater certainty than she’d expected, her strength having returned somewhat as the desert gave up its heat. In fact, the air was growing cold, so she pulled the golden cloak around herself. It glinted under a sea of stars – thousands upon thousands of them. Among this multitude, two circled.
Unwilling to waste time removing the offal, she cut several generous fillets from his fat thighs and wrapped them in his voluminous loin garments. Ravenous as well as thirsty, she raised a pink chunk to her lips only to realize she could never hope to swallow it without water. She tried lapping at his wounds, but with his heart dead in his chest, the red well was a trickle while her thirst demanded a torrent.
“I will die out here.” Her words were thick and dry as the dust all around her. Any plan she had was as ridiculous as those of the old man. She was not going to be able to drag a heavy bundle back over the desolate miles. She could not eat without water. She could not travel without eating and drinking. Had I tears, I would weep for myself.
Instead, she lay down, finally resolving to abandon her prize and strike out back toward the dome. Life might be all she could steal back from this mad errand, and even that would be through luck or sheer stubbornness on her part.
As she struggled to rise, a large object landed at her feet. Thinking it a delusion born of thirst, she fixed her sight upon a rounded skin, sloshing obscenely mere inches from her. Her mind did not exist. She dove upon the skin and found its spout, fumbling the cap free. Picking up the full skin, her knees buckled and she tumbled beneath its weight to the ground. No matter. Her own hoarse, hysterical laughter filled her ears as she squeezed a stream of cool water past her cracked lips and over her dead tongue. She swallowed greedily and kept the water flowing. Her eyes closed, and she used one hand to cup still more water, rubbing it over her badly burnt face.
The books. The books spoke of miracles in the desert. This was one. Miracles. Miracles happened in the desert. Messiahs appeared in the wilderness. Her throat was finally moistened enough to produce a true laugh. “Miracles!” she said. She remembered the old fool’s last word: “Paradise!” At the sound of it coming from her own mouth, she laughed even louder. She laughed until she vomited most of the water she’d put down. When the heaving subsided, she cautiously sipped more water to replace what she’d so foolishly lost.
Slowly, very slowly, her thoughts cleared under the indifferent stars. Her head ached less and her tongue rediscovered the power of taste, specifically the cool sweetness of water. She welcomed this reality back into her life even as she formed a cogent thought: someone saved me.
That someone was still there, looking down on her.
He – though she hesitated to think of him as a man – carved a black figure against the jeweled sky. Under his hood, this grim individual’s features spoke of something long since spoiled. What hair there was hung in gray wisps of lank surrender. He was taller than any member of her ill-fed clan, taller than anyone she’d ever met. Straight this one stood, gaunt but not desperate, as if neither hunger nor fear dared trouble him. Indeed, he was fear itself, his eyes casting twin blue beams through the gloaming and straight at her. She could not move. Around this lonely form, tiny voices laced the air. When the dark man spoke, which was only three words, his lips revealed two silvery prongs like the rending fangs of some half-starved scavenger. Rare as those creatures had become, she sensed this being before her was even more so. Singular and solitary.
His impossibly blue eyes regarded the body of the SHaDomeister then looked at her red-stained hands. Those beacons narrowed as his thin lips curled downwards. Was this anger? Contempt? Some other emotion she could not discern?
“Get in, Jylun” he said in a low growl of a voice. His arm swept widely, taking the folds of his cape with it as he gestured to an oblong box that had not been there a minute earlier. Get in? Into that? The old books had shown her what coffins were. They gobbled dead people for burial, back when families could afford such ornamental ceremonies.
She stood petrified for long seconds. Slowly at first, then with an oddly relaxed motion, her legs finally moved, taking steady paces towards the dark oblong shape that lay before her. She was not willing this to happen; quite the opposite. Her limbs obeyed commands not her own. In the starlight, she could about make out the tell-tale shape of the coffin, sized for a fat man. Several bumps that resembled pig knuckles stuck out from either end of the box, though their purpose eluded her. With a hum, the lid tilted open, revealing a plush interior resembling a padded bed, far more luxurious than her frayed night mat. She silently wished she were there now, stretched out on her sweat-stained mat on the floor of her alcove back in the SHaDo, dreaming all this.
She laid herself down in the coffin, looking up at her strange benefactor, whose blue eyes never left her. What thoughts sparked the uncanny illumination in those eyes? The lid closed over her, and she knew only blackness.
For a moment, nothing happened, except that she became aware she once again had control over her fingers and limbs. Not that she could move much within the confines of the chamber. Next, the padded fabrics all around her began to engorge and swell with a thin hiss, constricting every inch of her slight frame, forming a mouth to swallow her whole. Her most primal fears rose and then quieted, as she sensed herself drifting off to sleep. The coffin, she knew, was responsible for this sudden torpor.
She retained awareness for a few more thoughts only. Her realizations were these: the dark man could easily have ended me but had not. Whatever was to come, he meant for me to survive, at least for now. “Good,” she said aloud, the sound of her own voice offering small comfort. “Whatever is happening, it is better than what I leave behind.”
Sleep engulfed her in its shared secret. An instant before Jylun surrendered herself to oblivion, she sensed the coffin begin to stir, rising higher and higher into the eternal night.
Thank you for sharing this sneak peak at I, Dead.
Check back later this year for news on the release of this novel. I promise you won't see what's coming until it bites you!