The basket of eggs sat precariously on the ground, threatening at all times to defy physics, gravity, and the well-wishes of various theoretically possible but physically non-present onlookers by falling over. It didn’t, but we would keep our eye on it if we were you. Not for any kind of serious reason, but with an understanding that food waste is bad and this would be food waste. Concern yourself with the things that are important, rather than silly things like, say, narrative, geopolitics, or your personal dating history, and maybe life as a whole will improve.
Sheila held the knife out in front of her, hand steady and cocked for slashing. Countless repetitions on dreary, boring days with the training dummy had her ready, insofar as she could conceive, for the knife duel that would propel her into the final stages of her own glorious hero’s tale, and she imagined the wide, swinging arcs of the blade and the ribbons of brilliant scarlet that would erupt from beneath each scything stroke.
She did not anticipate having someone with a longer reach extend said past her own arms, put their hand on her forehead, and push her backwards with force that- when combined with her own poor stance and footwork- sent her rolling backwards towards the not-in-otherwise-peril basket of eggs.
“No!” a voice shouted, presumably, though at the moment unknowably, the voice of her repellent hand. A leg flew through her field of vision, frayed pants hem swishing atop a foot semi-encased in polyurethane Birkenstocks, and then as she rolled her vision became a kinetoscope:
- the eggs being rescued by a real dirty hippie.
- the sky, slate gray through the mist.
- a Winnebago; filthy, cluttered, and uninviting.
- the sea; green, expansive, and uninviting.
- the emerald green grass of the wet country.
- her assailant, holding a basket of eggs and sighing with relief.
- the muddy ground of the training circle; viscous, brown, and uninviting.
“I saved ‘em.”
Great, Sheila thought. Now I have to figure out what to do with tomorrow’s. Not for the first time she considered killing something and seeing what happened. As always, she couldn’t have told you what.
“I could have just brought you another basket,” she said, as she flipped, flumped onto her back, and lay, breathing, with her face to the sky. “There will be more.”
“But then what would have happened to these?”
Good question. What’s going to happen to anything? She caught her breath and pushed up into a reclined lean. The trailer on the crest of the cliff was a beacon of the old days, dirty as it was, and within its particular brand of symbolism lay a truth that made Sheila’s treks out here, carrying baskets of eggs and bags of refuse, worth it. This was growth, on several levels. It reminded her of a time when things were dry and nobody was more sick than the system demanded and she wouldn’t have been caught dead in a place like this with a man like this. That this was a normal occurrence now was something of a minor miracle, as long as one lowered their requirements for what a miracle could be. Sometimes she called the hermit The Alchemist, but never to his face and usually only when she was drinking the absolutely horrid liquor he distilled from who knew what up here in his edge-of-the-world survivalist shack. It was also growth on another level, and she picked up the knife that had clattered to the grass- inasmuch as things can do that without any moving parts and to other things without any solid ones- ready to try, once again, to kill this man in front of her.
We think there is an obsession with defense that is both wholly unconnected to modern life and wholly understandable as an inbred survival mechanism. Consider the meatiness of a being. Consider that most other beings have teeth, acclaimed for their hardness and often their sharpness. Consider what sulfuric acid- or any acid, really- will do when introduced to the softness of whatever flesh you choose to make a steak from tonight. We suspect the instinct to ward against having that experiment performed upon one’s person is a thing not so easily lost across the course of time, and a thing worth considering in even the most genial and collegial of circumstances. Also consider the grocery store, which in itself seems to be an argument in favor of the idea that defense as a concept is outmoded and possibly even dangerous. When pears are not in short supply, but individuals are introduced to them who believe they might be, simple miscommunication could theoretically lead to literal nuclear war with the right chain of action and reaction, and it wouldn’t even be weird.
Which is as good a comment on society as any. The veneer is thin. It’d be nice if it was thicker, but we believe the necessities of life- and the roots from which it sprang and still must necessarily nourish itself- make it beyond the capacity for most to layer it. And maybe that’s why humanity’s journey to the stars ended short of any, including the one that comes over and says ‘Hi’ every day, Hume be fucked, hoping to be invited to breakfast. The very act of stretching forth into that new unknown, with that kind of ambition, pulled holes in the dough of all of it and showed every weak spot to every threat humanity has ever known. They can land a man on the moon but they can’t keep humanity from destroying itself, as the old saying goes. Which raises the question of why one might murder an acquaintance, and whether, given a declaration, they actually would.
“You’re never going to get me with your feet like that. Here, look.” The Hermit shifted his feet so that they mirrored Sheila’s, then feigned a stab at her with his knifeless hand. It looked pathetic. Then he stepped sideways once and became a visible threat, thrusting again and nodding at her to try. Somehow he held the eggs in a protective cradle with his other hand and didn’t look ridiculous. He even, Sheila noted with grim disappointment, made it look like the hand that wasn’t anywhere near the non-knife was supporting the thrust. The idea that she might one day pierce him became, for this day and as it usually did, hopeless, and she questioned the purpose of it. Then she mirrored the shift he’d made, tried her best to interpret his egg-laden support motions, and thrust again. Undeniable power surged through her motion, and the realization that she’d made some progress surged through her core. Simultaneously so did pain, as the Hermit grabbed her wrist, ripped it outwards, and squeezed until she dropped the knife once more. Sheila sunk to her knees. “Good job!” he said over his shoulder, as he walked back to his Winnebago and set the eggs on a counter inside the flimsy screen door. “You’re getting a lot better.”
“Still nowhere close,” she said, deciding whether to rub her wrist in futile comfort or pick up her knife and do something with it. Clean it, or sheathe it, or clean it and sheathe it. Maybe just look at it. The temptation was endless, especially in the absence of clear direction. She rubbed her wrist. Some things are deeply ingrained. “The mornin’ I hit you I’ll find out you’ve been dying of rock plague or something.”
“Don’t wish rock plague on me,” he said, suddenly quite serious. Sheila, taken aback a bit, nodded. This was Rob McKenna. His face, not to put too fine a rhetorical point on things, was set in stone when he turned back.
“Sorry, ain’t I? Just a bit of… . Well, I thought I’d made it up. I did make it up.”
“Tell that to the 14 of ’72.”
“What happened to them?”
“Rock plague,” Rob said, and without another word he stepped into his Winnebago and shut the real door behind him.
Lots to unpack there, Sheila thought, sheathing her knife and tucking it back in her waistband. Wonder if that one’s real. Wonder which ’72 it was. Was it fourteen people total and in varying degrees of fate? Or did fourteen people experience the same fate with a wider umbrella getting some lesser version of the disease? She looked up. At least he kept the eggs, she thought. Dunno what I’d have done with ‘em. Maybe threw ‘em off a cliff. There is, after all, one to hand.
She walked to the edge of it, the cliff to hand, considered treating herself like an unwanted egg for the briefest of moments, and then returned to the sparring area. A cluttering of materials stood piled beside the makeshift, non-delineated circle, and she began collecting them. A radio, old when Sheila had been new, sat atop the pile and she wondered whether to smash it before she took it home- maybe with the butt of her knife- or wait and do it with a more appropriate tool. The hermit had fixed it, and a decent number of other things besides, but somehow on this particular day she felt no call to stomach the noise that must result from bring such a relic into her life.
