The After Effects

2nd Place in the Fiction Writing Contest

Issue 19

“You like yoh survival kids?”
         I snapped out of whatever daydream I fell into that took me to a world with a different outcome than my own.
         “Sorry. Uh, whaddaya mean?”
         He gave me a look that seemed annoyed. “Did you like em? Mine was the worst. Couple of brats. You woulda thought everything around us was back how it was the way they acted when we got rations.”
         “Yeah, mine were okay. I didn’t have em very long after they were assigned to me. They uh, got lost.”
         He didn’t say anything with words, but his face told me he knew what I wasn’t saying. I wondered if he did something similar with the kids assigned to him, the way he was talking about em.
         After listening to the fire crackle for a little bit, and being tempted back into another fire trance, he said, “Yeah , we all got stuff we ain’t wanna talk about anymore. The After isn’t what we thought it would be. The movies made it almost seem fun. But there’s nothin fun about this.”
         He never told me his name. He said names only existed for the police to track you down and for the government to get your money. I couldn’t argue that. And I didn’t mind his secret. It made it easier to keep mine.
         He’s not someone I would have been friends with during the Before. The world wasn’t set up that way. Not the one I lived in at least. We could have gone to the same school, had the same job, drank at the same bar, and I would have never known his name. Now he doesn’t have one to know.
         “Were you married?” I asked, trying to keep up my end of the conversation.
         “Yeah, but the After isn’t what ended that.”
         “What did?”
         He looked at me for a cold moment, wondering something. I guess he figured it out and said, “I did. Well, she did. But it was cuz of me. I uh, I wasn’t a great guy. She wanted more that I wasn’t about to do. I thought I could get away with bein me, til I came home and she was gone.”
         “I’m sorry to hear it. No other lovers after that?”
         He stared at the fire for a long time. Long enough that we both forgot the question.
         “It’s not all bad I guess. I always said I wanted to go campin and never did in the Before.”
         “Why didn’t you just go camping?”
         “How many black people you see camping?”
         “Well, I guess not a lot. But why is that?”
         “It’s not somethin we all got together and talked about, man! Do you know why no white people are going to restaurants in the hood?”
         I started to answer, but his expression told me it wasn’t a good idea.
         “Yeah, I guess you white guys probably did get together and talk about it,” he said. We both laughed, but I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to. “What about you? You go camping? Did you have a wife and kids and all that?”
         “No, no family. Not one by choice at least.”
         “Any friends? Or were you just a lonely guy?”
         “I don’t know. I just don’t like people typically.” I kept my eyes pointed at the base of the fire watching the embers play movies on their skin.
         I thought about my parents, never talking to me unless they needed something. And if I didn’t do it right, I was taught to never make the same mistake again. And I never did. I got where I never made a mistake. But they didn’t like that either. They told me I was cocky. Got good grades, and they said I was pretending to be better than them.
         I thought about the day I told them I wasn’t pretending. My dad, who had a hundred pounds on me, beat me nearly to death. They dropped me at a hospital two states over after a long ride in the trunk. I didn’t know where I was, and didn’t want to tell anyone my name, afraid they would send me back. I figured if I stayed away it would be better for all of us.
         I thought about how the next twelve years of my life consisted of shorter and shorter friendships and dating relationships. All I could see in people were the little mistakes. Not just the ones they did, but the ones they were. And what was their excuse?
         “Well, I’m honored to make the list then,” he said, once again snapping me out of it.
         I lifted my cup, which was really an old green beans can I ripped the lapel off and sanded down the tops so as not to cut myself. He did the same with his invention, and we drank the whiskey he shared with me.
         “So, how did you survive?”
         Again, he looked annoyed, maybe amused.
         “Same way you did.”
         “How do you know how I did?”
         “Cause it’s the same way e’eryone did! How may people you talk to that tell a different story? None. The sewage was the only way. I’d like to think it was the smart ones that figured that out, but there wasn’t time to be smart. Only time to listen to your instincts. Truth is, who survived prolly wasn’t based on anything other than being someone who had to survive before.”
         “Survival of the fittest.”
         “I doubt it. I aint fit for this world. No one adapted to this. It had nothing to do with who could survive this. It was all about who could be an animal, and run and hide from the bigger and louder animal.”
         I remember when I was a kid, I always wondered where birds went during a bad storm. Their nest? That seemed odd. I couldn’t ask anyone, of course. I never found out. Now I know. They went to the sewages.
         Not many birds left now.
         “What kinda food do you miss the most?”
         It was getting harder and harder to avoid the reality of being in a conversation I had had a hundred times before. But in a way it was comforting. It was familiar, and that was a rare thing in the After.
         “The kinda food that I knew wasn’t gonna run out.”
         “Yeah,” he said with a laugh. “That was some tasty food. I do miss that. And brats. I miss my brats, man.”
         We both stared at the fire and nursed our drinks. I finished mine and tried to make it obvious without saying anything, hoping he would offer some more. He never did. It was probably for the best. Better to ration things out in a world gone bad.
         I yawned, and seconds later saw him yawn. I waited after tapping my finger fifty times on my arm and then yawned again. After nine taps he yawned. I played that game for a while until he broke.
         “Well, I’m headed to bed. Ah, here I am!” He laughed, and I knew that wasn’t the first time he told the joke. I laughed, but only with sound.
         I watched the fire for a while, and then he started to snore. I propped my head on my hands wedged into my neck and shoulders and went to sleep. I knew I would wake up in a couple of hours when my self-made pillow gave out or started to cramp. 
        
 
 
 
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Had he woke up any earlier, he would have gotten away, and I would have stayed there forever.
         I had already slipped the wire under his necking let it rest while I slowly removed his blanket. I needed a clear view of his arms. I grabbed the ends of my wire in the opposite hands, and in one motion I pulled tight and dropped my knees on his forearms.
         It was so smooth. And for some reason he made it so easy. He barely struggled. He spent half the time trying to figure out why I would do such a thing.
         “Because if I didn’t, then you would.”
         He just nodded no as his face went a dark purplish brown.
         “Lie to me. But you can’t lie to yourself. Not really.”
         His eyes looked like they might explode, and then his body started to thrash, his instincts seeking the freedom his consciousness never attempted.
         Then he was still. I closed his eyes. I didn’t want him staring at me. And I felt bad, a little.
         “It didn’t take an apocalypse to show me not to trust anyone. Do you really expect me to believe you weren’t going to kill me?”
         He didn’t answer me.
         I looked at him with fury. I felt an animal inside and I wanted to spit it out at him in fire.
         “Answer me!”
         Nothing.
         I scrambled over to him like the earth was treadmilling below me.
         I ripped his eyes open and put my face to his.
         “You think I’m an idiot?” I yelled. I could see the fear in his eyes. He was frozen in it.
         “This is what you all were. Forever. Long before the After. All you survivors want to play a game that things were so great in the Before. I’m not playing! Look around us! Its desolate and ash and acidic and corrupted. We didn’t create this! We didn’t suddenly become this! All we did was pull the blanket away! Everyone I knew was this on the inside! The good ones? Maybe there were good ones…” I scratched at my face trying to get the thoughts out of me. “The good ones distracted us, and that’s all! They showed the bad ones how to behave so we wouldn’t find them out! What’s worse is they believed it themselves!
         “You know what they all were? Maniacs! Maniacs! Maniacs! Maniacs! Maniacs!”
         I ran out of breath and my body collapsed onto his. I cried and I hugged him.
         “I’m sorry. I’m sorry that this was the only mercy left to you in this world.”
         I hugged him tighter.
         I stood up and brushed myself off. I gathered my things and my new things, and walked away.
         Off to find another campfire.
         And I whispered the whole way, thinking of the terrors before, “Maniacs. Maniacs. Maniacs. Maniacs.”

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JORDAN THOMAS won 2nd Place of the Fiction Writing Contest. He is currently unpublished, but recently started writing more seriously and consistently, trying out new voices and genres. He lives in Springfield, IL with his wife and four kids.

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