Maxim Shortus

Left foot, then right foot, sun up, then sun down, round and round my head, tick tock. Who knew the end of the world would be so mundane, so pathetic—like a wounded pup, slowly bleeding out. Already dead for all intents and purposes but forced to sit and stew in that death in those long final hours. A world is so big and empty, an echo chamber, the same thing day after day. It’s my 2000th day out here. I’m not sure if that’s true, but it feels right, and it doesn’t matter. 2000th or 200000th, doesn’t matter. Today is today, and the rest is just noise. Noise? What’s that noise? I can hear something. It sounds like someone; it sounds like a person. Where? In this vast echo chamber, I could never know where it was coming from. Were that I could help, but they are lost, another grain of sand, another monument to a forgotten time soon to be buried. Oh god, they’re right there, right there at my feet. I couldn’t see them. Impossible to tell where the sand ends and they begin, eyes like raisins and rot for skin.

‘Water… water…’

His meek hand trembles toward me as he pleads for relief. Water—it’s the only thing I hold true possession of out here, the only thing I need. If he’d ask for anything else I’d gladly oblige, I would. I’d give him anything, but I can’t give him that. I can see the deep crimson stain of dried blood in the sand, marking the spot where this man died. The closest thing to a grave he’ll have.

‘Here, have some.’

I tell him as I pick up the largest stone from this nearby pile. I can’t stand to look at him any longer. The stone meets the sand beneath his head. It sounds like my boot, stepping through the sand and ash that litter the earth. Left then right, up then down. I’ll forget this before long. Out here, nothing holds its shape, and nothing sticks around. The sand buries everything out here.

I look to the horizon with anticipation. I can’t even remember what I’m looking for. Am I running away from something? Searching for someone? Looking for something? Maybe I knew one day long ago, or maybe I never did. That’s when I see it, rotted bones resting uneasily on the horizon. No, not bones, a city, or what used to be a city. It might as well be bones. Is this what I’m looking for? It calls to me across the dunes, drawing me near. My eyes fixed on the lifeless husks of these buildings and, before I can blink, I stand beneath them. Is this what I’m looking for? Is this what I’m running from? Does it matter?

How is this here? It feels vaguely familiar, like seeing my child’s lifeless body. It looks so familiar from the outside, but inside and on some different level, this is not at all what I know it was. Is that a metaphor or a memory? Standing on the precipice, I think I see something strange. A gun buried beneath the sand; I can see the distinct outline reposed in a dune beneath the nearest building. Do I want a gun? I walk over to the dune and brush away the sand. Not a gun? Confused, I stick my hand into the dune, pulling out a shoe. A very small shoe. Very small and far too small for me, far too small for anyone I can think of. This place is messing with me, it’s different from anywhere I’ve ever seen. I wonder if I’ve been here before? Before it all. I wonder if this is what I’m looking for. It has to be. Is this an obstacle placed in my path? Or is this a reward? A resting place? I guess I’ll find out.

For three days I wander these ruins looking for something. There has to be something here, and I can’t leave until I find it. It’s this or back to the sands and what lies buried beneath them, and I can’t go back. That man’s face still haunts my mind, yet to be buried. I don’t think anything that’s happened out there has stuck with me as long as this. How many times has this happened? How many have I left to die out there? It’s not my fault. If I’d helped him, I’d have died as well, and I can’t die. There’s something for me yet. There’s something for me, and I know it’s here, I know I’ll find it. Was he the first? Was he the last? How many came before him? I see the faces of countless men looking at me in their final moments. Who are these people? Did they all meet the same fate by my hand? Their faces haunt me in the quiet solitude of this forsaken city.

They stare at me as I lay awake, eyes piercing my soul. Eyes that burn, but not with hate. They burn with anticipation. They’re waiting for something to happen. Do they wait for me to meet the same fate as them? Do they think that’s what I deserve? Do they see an imagined guilt in me with those eyes that burn? Do they see what’s buried beneath the sand? Do they think they’d act differently in my position? I did what was rational, what was right. I didn’t have a choice. Out there, there is no choice: you keep moving, or you get buried. But, I’m not out there anymore, I’m in here and in here I can make that choice. The choice that I wanted to make out there, that I would’ve made if I could. I have a chance to make the choice, a chance I didn’t have before, and I’ll do it. I know I’ll do it when the chance comes. The chance is coming, the chance then the choice and then I’ll know. I need to know.

Impossible. What I see before me I know to be impossible. Yet it is there. I can smell it, the strong yet sweet odour. I can reach out and touch it, the rough yet soft bark peeling at my touch. A living contradiction. Rooted in the middle of this sand dune, a tree towers over me. I claw at the roots, digging around them, searching for a bottom. I find only an endless abyss of sand, somehow holding this all up. The bottom holds no answers, so I begin to climb. My knobbled fingers grasping at any branch or vantage they might reach. I scramble barely up the trunk before losing grip and being expelled back to the sands below. Laying dazed in the sand, I begin to see what hangs from the tree. Fruit? Fruit hangs from the branches. Taunting me just out of reach.

‘Cruelty!’

I cry at the fruit, my voice coarse and strained, beckoning them to fall in my lap as they ought to.

‘You know what you do! A cruelty and injustice upon an honest and undeserving soul!’

My harsh words register no impact on this monstrosity. I heave myself from the sand and strike at the tree with all my might, determined to bend it to my will. This evil creature holds its bounty far above my head, offering it to the ghosts that encircle me. I pound until my fists are bloody and red as the fruit I dream of. I use what little vitriol I have left to curse the tree once more. What can I do but weep. My tears patter the earth, a drop of salty tears in this ocean of sand. My tears and blood stain the sand beneath me, marking my failure a rich red on this scorched earth. I look to the sun in the sky as the vultures join the demons in circling me, circling a corpse.

As I lay there, the tree looming over me, resigned to die in the shade of my failure, I hear something. A noise? Laughter? The laughter of a child. I peel myself from the sand I lie on, sitting up and searching the streets. I can’t see anything. It could be the vultures overhead, laughing at me as I lay myself in my grave. But no, vultures don’t make noise, everybody knows that. It’s a person, a child. I’m not alone here, but they are, and they need my help. I rise from the ground and bid a bitter farewell to my foe. I had vowed to battle this tree to the death, but I can’t think of a more noble reason to abandon it here. A child, this explains the gun. The shoe? This explains the shoe. It all makes sense. I was meant to be here, and I have been tasked with redemption. I begin following the root of the noise, but it has no direction, no path for me to follow. I know it to be coming from in the city but I have no way of narrowing that search. Alas, I have but one option. I will rove every street and scale every building. I will search this skeleton of a city until I can walk no longer, until I falter and fall. I shall find them.

I move through this city on a breeze, aimless but not without cause. There is some greater force that pushes me forward and deeper into the bowels of this long-dead beast. I pass shop fronts and schools, empty cavities and hollow reminders. But not empty. The sand spreads to all corners, filling the space like air. Creeping up the wall, it spreads its reach, taking more and more. It feeds and makes a nest in those empty cavities. All that we built simply amounts to shells made long ago for some forgotten purpose. I plunge my fingers deep into the sand. It’s cold, but a comforting cold. I can clench my fist and touch my fingers. It feels so timid and obedient in my hand. But I know that it will swallow me up, another empty cavity. I lay my head down and close my eyes. As I sink deeper and deeper into sleep, I feel it creeping up my walls. Will I sink to the bottom? Will I greet the buried ghosts like old friends?

---

Maxim Shortus is a 22-year-old uni student studying creative writing in Melbourne. He mostly enjoys writing short fiction and screenplays. ‘Blister in the Sun’ is an introspective post-apocalyptic story inspired by Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, as well as some short stories by Rudyard Kipling. This story was quite the departure from his normal area of writing which is more literary fiction and romance.

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