Kasmilah

An arrow of the road, the smoky run-down car sped through the deserted passage of gravel and dust, begging to stop. The filth of its mechanical waste bled into the morning spectrum of numbing sunshine and beauty. Richard biting onto a dead cigarette was driving with his right hand while his injured left, wrapped with folds of bloodied bandages hung out of the window to dry in the wind. The sunny dawn was alive only because of the death in the vehicle.

Kasmilah was at the back of the car, holding her son's head in her lap, caressing it. Her hair was in her wet face, her hair was everywhere.

Kasmilah ignored the short bursts of sunlight and fixated on the flapping of Richard's bandages in the breeze. She saw the eyes of the driver through the side mirror. Richard's eyes had been serene now, almost glassy like a doll's. Kasmilah wondered how long did it took for those eyes to slimmer after a murder, or even any else’s to. Richard's eyes had been licking with vile trepidations when he had bludgeoned the National Guard to death yesterday’s morning. They had been trying to get through the Public Health Checkpoint and there was trouble. Trouble was a shameless host, inviting death everywhere these days. Now he could live forever in her heart as the defender for he could just surrender, but he didn't. He had killed for her. Or did he ever? Everyone for himself, even if murder, especially murder. Then, will Richard kill her? Those young eyes. Alive for only the meanest stuff in this hell. And in this hell, anything goes.

But he wouldn't. Kasmilah had the pistol. Panting from his blood lust of killing the National Guard, Richard as if knew he had transcended into something bestial, unleashed from primal cages of reasoning, knew that if survival was the sole excuse then no one would be safe from him. He handed Kasmilah the Guard's pistol. Five bullets intact. Five times over.

Coming to a junction, they saw more cars on the road. Survivors of the 'Grip'. They were heading to the North. Word had spread that the Communist North had the cure. It was only five weeks ago that Hans Scolofey had declared that he found the vaccine too. The zealots renewed God, the bacteria had begun to fry in pure oxygen, people recovered and tons and tons of bullshit like that. Richard reeled his choking and sputtering vehicle into the direction heading towards the beach. 

In the cool evening, under the blanket of stars, their car was dead like a rock. Miles of grassland stretched endlessly in the darkness.

Kasmilah mouthed, 'That's that.'

Richard ignored her and restarted the engine for the thousandth time. Sweat reeked from his pores and veins turned at his temples.

Kasmilah put her hand over Richard's shoulder, her softness sunk into his heaviness, 'It's over.'

Richard stared wrathfully at the night skies and mumbled, 'Get the torch.'

He got out of the driver seat and fetched Sal from the passenger seat, away from his mother.

'Don't touch him!' Kasmilah screamed and pointed her pistol at him. 'I'll shoot you. I'll shoot your brains out! I will shoot you, shoot you, shoot you.' Five times over.

Richard held the young Sal in his arms and walked on the gravel of blackness. 'Get the torch.' He repeated. Little stones crackled under his shoes echoed against the trinity of shrouded darkness. Under the pale moonshine they walked on foot to the sea.

When they were tired, they sat by the road side catching their breath. Wordless, the night was only filled with insects and bullfrogs. A jeep had drove by, Richard jumped at the chance to hitch a ride. An old woman had loaded her jeep with supplies peered out of her car at them. 'The sea? What for? There's nothing at the sea. No ships, no shit. You want to die there, you walk there. You could be there at dawn. I'm not nearing folks like you. What you got there? Wanna trade? I have eggs.' The crone asked.

Kasmilah withdrew to stroke her son's hair.

The hag took a long look at Kasmilah and her son and grinned her yellow teeth, 'Your kid. Sick like the others?'

Kasmilah shook her head.

The crone realized what Kasmilah meant, spat at their feet and sped her jeep away, away from death.

'Come on.' Richard got on his feet to take over Sal. 'We can reach there by dawn.'

The crone was right. They had reached the sea at the time that the sun began to flower the horizon with golden petals. The sea was unaffected by the Grip, sodium scented and breeze breeding. It was the ideal place to reborn and relive. Richard took off his shoes to feel the brown sand between his toes. The little rubbles of nature held false promises of hope and salvation, of help and future. But Grip was nature as well; the bacteria thrived on the very same elements as those of the sea and the sand. The cosmos of enemies and friends wrapped together in the same bed covers. Furthermore, nature spewed characters like Hans Scolofey and his lackeys, which so believed in genocide. They breathed the same sea and sand in their lungs and would stand to awe the sight of nature if they were here. Everything belonged together, righteous or not. Richard wore his shoes back and began to work.

Kasmilah held Sal by a coconut tree and admired the glorious sunrise over the jeweled ocean. She watched over her shoulder at times to see Richard working away. She was grateful. Sal's father should be here for the rites, he should be the one digging in the sand. She started crying. Why did she never have time to bring Sal to the beach before? The dry land was mere mass compared to the oceans and children should know and love the beaches. There were many things children should have the chance to explore, to learn and understand. But many would not live past their next birthdays. The Grip had hit the children the hardest. Their immunity was raw and unfit for such invasion of the meninges. With that she wept her heart out. For her son and all the mothers in the world.

Richard had a deep hole prepared and stood in silence as Kasmilah descended into the hole to rest her child. She was trembling with fits of sobbing as her hands crawled and pushed the sand over her dead child's body. She had refused Richard's help in the burial, was determined to see it through herself. Richard went to the water and smoked in the grainy breeze. Her crying had only gotten louder in time. Washed away into the sea.

They did not mark Sal's grave, leaving him to enjoy his peace. Folks had tried to bury their love ones all over the South, defying the mandatory rule to incinerate their bodies. Graves marked would be dug by law to burn along with the rest in the pyre.

They then walked in silence, in search for a shelter as rainclouds formed from a mist by the horizon. They settled in a ruined shophouse among the cluster of deserted beach haunts. The storm fell like silver coins. Richard took out a Campbell soup from his supplies and cooked it. In stony silence, they sat at a table and ate the stew. Hunger had always been an issue but not today. They ate only because it was the only sensible thing to do. Soon, Richard expected, they would part and would not see each other ever again. His role in her life had played its due. He watched the shadows jigged at the windows. Kasmilah boiled water and took Richard's bloodied hand and unwrapped the bandages. She cleaned the wound and re-bandaged it with bits from the curtains and held his hand for a long time. The thunders raged on, its discharges rapping onto the roof as if the most spectacular show had ran on Earth and the clapping went forever.

Kasmilah leaned closer to Richard and put his wounded hand on her heart. The love they made was quiet and tender, marking a contrast against the storm. They slept like pebbles in a waterfall, the first for many weeks.

Daylight bounced through the morning dews into the shophouse. The storm was over. Richard woke up to find Kasmilah gone. He had made plans for them to travel to the North. The country infested with the Grip was now torn even further apart by civil wars. Hans Scolofey's short regime was crashing down. That fascist fucker. Richard put on his clothes to ward off the freeze and attempted to find Kasmilah.

Richard found Kasmilah dead by the entrance of the woods. She had shot herself in the mouth. Richard gritted his teeth, his eyes swelling up as he held Kasmilah close. 'Shit.' He muttered in his trembling breaths, rasping as his chest tightened. ‘Shit. Shit. Shit.’ He found himself saying as pearls of tears hopped from his shaking face. Maybe they would never get to the North at all. The genocide had gotten too many people. The wrath of God spared nobody. The nature He made out of His shinning hands, He had made the Grip too. With an intention to kill and made His children kill one another. He had made Hans Scolofey. He had made doom for Man. Maybe the North would kill them too even if they had made it there. To reject the infected. To reject the South for rejecting them. The North had been impoverished and outcast from the world. To reject the South justified everything. Democracy after all had shot to hell. The woods had appeared appealing. The freshness and the rotting mosses and greens. The cycle of life unaffiliated by Man. We had gone back to three hundred million years ago, thought Richard, where unmanned floras were the zeitgeist of this world. We are back to the Paleozoic period where ferns and corals ruled the Earth. We are all walking with our backs into the future where we would meet the past even as we walked further and further away from them. The circuitry existence. The ascension to the bottom. Soon, we would fry in the air we breathe when the Earth had returned to its organic stage where the atmosphere, our Teflon was doused with hyper-oxygenation, the fumes by Alpha of birth. In chemical euphoria, we danced forever in flames.

Richard put the pistol in his mouth. He could taste Kasmilah's blood. Same warmth, different orifice. No anticipation should be greater than ending your life. He gave the trigger a squeeze. It was that easy. ‘That’s that’ He thought he had heard Kasmilah said. Suicide was no longer ritualistic, like everything else around Man, it was made convenient like making a drink or changing a channel. It was made so everyone had the right to sought death. Richard wondered if he would ever live long enough to hear the bang in his head. The fireworks of his smearing brains. The magnificent red on the magnificent green. But there was none. He felt his eyes roving with curiosity and disappointment, his ears listening to the living sounds of the forest. He pulled the trigger again with spite this time, hurting his palate with the gunpoint. He wanted his insides to feel the gun, the bullet tearing his nerves away. And again. And again until he felt the pistol was snapping apart. Click! Click! Click! The barrel was empty. Five bullets. One for the maiden. There should be four bullets intact. He could die four times over. But the gun was empty. Kasmilah had discarded the rest of the bullets, leaving one for herself, fully expecting that Richard would use it. Kasmilah had not committed her suicide in the shophouse was her way of not scaring Richard, not robbing him of her gratitude and love. She had wanted Richard to live on.

1. Vivi

2. Dara