3: As a Gift

The trees shake, compelling a fatty robin to fly away. A few doves crowd around my legs, to the point I can reach down and grab one.

“We do not require food, Tucker.” Mordred places a hand on my shoulder and leans forward. “Please don’t kill it.”

“I’m not hungry. Just impulsive.” I place the dove back and shoo the rest of them away. They resist, but find their way to the skies eventually. One lands on the remains of a sign. There was once a greeting, but it seems “Johnstown” lost their formality. The crusty sign now stands as an effigy to bird shit.

“It’s kinda sad, how much people worked to be taken over by birds.” Mordred shifted the bag and came up beside me.

“No. It’s fitting. If you build under a cliff side, expect to be crushed.”

Mordred tilts his head and stares at me, silently.

“What?”

“The cliff side was invisible for years. It came out of nowhere. Atlantis was just a- a thing that suddenly killed it all. You can’t protect against an invisible threat. You can’t execute a criminal before they commit the crime.” I feel an extreme pulsing in his direction, one of stress and worry.

“A disease is still a cliff side. Like the Black Plague. That killed, what, most of Europe?”

His face went a bit white, with his body still pulsing. As I think to pat his shoulder and give some support, he grabs my arm and smiles. The pulsing stopped, replaced with happy buzzing.

“Let’s look around! There’s a pretty building over there!” He points off to a tall brick tower beside the river- Conemaugh River, I think. The top is overflowing with vines and red specks.

I pull out the map and glance down. “We woke up here, and it says we should go over here first. It does appear that the building is the place marked. Easy one, then there’s another… 7. Windber is very close, Pittsburgh will be a long walk. Oil City will take even longer, then we’ve got a few places in Philadelphia. We’ll hit Lancaster on our way to Philly. Sound good?”

“Ya.”

“Good.” I begin to walk in the direction of the house, letting him follow behind. He grabs onto my left hand.

“Humans liked doing this in a lot of pictures. I want to know why they smile so brightly.”

I glance back to him, bitterly grumbling, “You already have a bright smile. The brightest, in fact.”

“Aw, you’re the sweetest!” He grasps my hand tighter and smiles his shiny, white teeth, this time revealing a crack on his left tush, his barely pointed fang. Any other tush he had was pristine; he was perfect in a way ignorant to the human form. I ignore his buzzing and bouncing for the rest of the walk.

We enter the house, the door being surprisingly sturdy. I hit a knuckle to it. Definitely not wood. The first room is preserved from nature, sporting light blue walls, portraits, pictures, and a black couch set with a matching black coffee table. The black-and-white photos look darker and bluer than they should. The largest portrait is of a gentle woman with a white-haired child, grumpily pouting at the camera. The two are surrounded by thylacines dressed up with ribbons. The carpet is worn with a gray pattern.

Mordred mumbles something in amazement and grabs my hand with both of his. My hand is moistened by his grip, but his flesh seems to burn some sort of a warm emotion into my hand. Embarrassment, I believe.

The large room leads up a set of black, steel stairs, to a white kitchen with marble counters, a small open pantry, and a glassed-in wine storage tempt me to drink pink champagne and eat expired, preserved artichoke hearts. A humble gray dining room with a tiny, raised-up chair has me imagining eating actual human food, but the chair redirects me from what chicken tastes like. Perhaps it is for a tiny human who requires raising up, or it is for a child.

Mordred points to the small chair, “That’s cute! I want one.”

“You won’t fit.”

He lets go of my hand and slaps the chair. “No, I mean I want a tiny human. Or- would a tiny android be possible? Just, one of those little pets that turns into one of us.”

“Ah. That won’t happen.”

“I dream of it.” His hands cling together at his chest.

“Dream of something different.” I think of eating the skin off of rotisserie chickens. Maybe I could roast some tomatoes to go with it.

His freakish hands clasp mine again. “I don’t like nightmares.” He releases and runs off to the next floor. Grumpily, I follow behind him.

I hear an excited buzzing, and going up a level, I find several doors and another set of stairs. One door is opened, and going in I find Mordred rummaging through every drawer, having opened all of them entering the room. After he gets through one, he closes it. The king-sized bed in the center looks so, so comfy. Soft blankets, plump pillows, cotton sheets, and a vanilla scent all screech to my ears. The screeching is lovely.

“Hey, Tucker, try these on.”

He tosses white leather gloves at my face. I put them on as not to offend him, and they fit quite well. Glancing back to him, he seems to be staring down at his hands and wiggling his fingers. Oh, his fingers are too long and skinny. I mean, that goes for his entire body, but his fingers are especially noticeable. He can reach far too many things if he tried.

“Thank you.” I didn’t put any effort into the words.

He glances up to me and smiles. Then, he focuses back on his rummaging. I shrug him off and go back to the hallway, opening up more doors. Just smaller bedrooms, with different colors and some odd belongings. One room had yellow sheets and walls, along with a painting of a kitten snuggling up to a wine bottle. The next was red, displaying many pictures of cars, planes, and navy ships taken out of a magazine. The next was pink and bleak, with a broken window exposing the place to the elements. It smelled gross and moist.

I entered the last room, with white walls and black sheets. At least, the walls were white at some point. Brown hand prints slap and smear on every wall, along with black mold consuming the floor. The window is completely covered in brown, making it impossible to see through. On the door, I see one hand print that’s defined.

My fingers are much shorter and plumper than them.

The buzzing is still excited as I climb up the last set of steps to a lab. On one counter, I spot a rifle with a broken glass bubble where the ammo would be. I feel compelled to hold it. For now, I back off, redirecting my attention to… well, I don’t care about all these bits and bobbles, but a labelled poster of the rifle’s construction drags me in. Comparing the two, I get an idea of the issue.

The glass bulb is heat treated, and it seems that one would pump the lever to get the initial electricity. Then, the energy would be directed to the bulb, and the electricity would break down the object inside for an extra burst of energy, then that energy would be shaped into a bullet form. In short, it was a laser gun. Reading into the “bullet recipe”, it seems they were also radioactive. Using uranium encased in zirconium was noted to be the “best in use”.

With a better idea, I pick up the rifle. I put one hand on the trigger and the other beneath the bulb. It’s broken, but I want to play with it. Closing one eye and looking down the sight, I direct the rifle at a bare wall. I hear the happy buzzing quiet, and in the silence, I pull the trigger.

“ZYEP-PIP-BZZZET!”

The gun flops back, the stock hitting my chest and the barrel smacking my forehead. I fall to the floor, coated in pain and static. The happy buzzing is no longer happy, but now anxious.

Mordred trips up the stairs and slides to my side. He gives a look of dread, then a crooked, fake smile. One that tries too hard to be real.

“What?” I reach my right hand to his shoulder, to which he shoves his forehead against mine. Reaching up further, I pat the back of his head, causing him to lift his forehead away. His ginger bangs have a wet, red tinge to them.

After forcibly helping me up, Mordred clings to me, wrapping his arms around me. I put one hand to his back and the other to my forehead. Checking my hand, there’s nothing red. I shrug it off and run the hand through Mordred’s orange locks.

“I saw a few images like this in the room. A cool dude with a weird face and a cowboy took tons of cute pictures like this. It looked nice. Do you agree?”

I groan in response.

“Yeah, I guess you can’t really see it. Well, I can’t, either. I can only imagine it.” He releases me and walks back, admiring me. “Mmh… I misjudged your hair length.”

I close my eyes and sigh, looking about for a distraction. A ladder calls out to me. I dash to it, and he follows. I’m halfway up when Mordred grabs on, and I hush out the clueless buzzing in an act of curiosity.

“Ow! It shocked me!”

I hold back a chuckle as I shove the ceiling door up. Or, rather, the roof door. I climb up like a goblin discovering gold. The entire roof has been consumed with tomato plants. Fat, plump, juicy tomatoes falling from every twisting vine.

“Hey, Tucker, what’s going o-”

Mordred looks to me as I bite into a nice and salty tomato, juices dripping down my chin.

“Oh.”

I sit down on a thick vine, overlooking the ruined town. It’s a coal town built on strong dirt and the stuffing of enlarged pockets, nestled in a giant valley. Now, the rust consumes the poor town and coal tar swims with the fish skeletons. Mordred sneaks over and sits beside me, looking towards the mountainside. He bumps my shoulder and points towards a machine that clung to the mountainside.

“World’s Steepest Inclined Plane, y’know. It took steel mill workers up to their homes and down to their jobs.”

I wipe tomato from my face and add on, “Probably dangerous.”

“No, I’m sure the owners wanted their employees to be safe. Lives are worth more than profit, right!”

I take another bite of tomato, wondering how our knowledge differed so much.

2: The Potential of Life

The screen flashed to a man with brown hair and blocky glasses. A few moles poked through his tan skin. He’s wearing a neat white t-shirt, leaving his moled arms bare.

Mordred whispers into my ear, “You can see through his shirt. He’s a star.”

The man blathers on, and I lean in a bit closer. A six-pointed star is drawn on his chest.

Mordred grabs my shoulders and yoinks me back, panic-whispering, “He’ll notice that you’re looking! Tucker, no!”

He pauses, and I feel his grip tighten.

“I think he’s dead, Mordred.”

“Why?”

“We’re here because humanity is dead. You told me this.”

“…Oh. Oh! Okay. I’m sorry, I’m forgetful.”

I twist my body and look to him. “The reason we’re here? Pretty fucking hard to forget.”

He fakes a laugh with tiny pupils and points to the screen. “Look! New content! New content!”

I focus back into the screen. A man with broad shoulders helps up what I assume to be a woman from the ocean. The screen flips to a woman holding a child, then to a man working in a lab, mixing something together. More sounds are coming out from the speakers, but I can’t focus on it. I gently rest my hand on the keyboard and look back at Mordred.

“Hey, what are you doing? Why is the stuff skipping?” He tilts his head and cocks a brow.

I lift my hand off the keyboard jumpily and allow the screen to continue. Looking back, it was a man with pale skin and black hair beside a ginger woman with moles and freckles. Mordred shifts.

“The good, American man of the 1920’s is a hard worker that provides for the family, while the woman engages in no flapper nonsense. Servitude and parenthood is the future for the woman, all within a cozy home.” It’s not the moled man’s voice. It’s full of static and, while I do not understand what the word means, full of Boston as well.

I grumble, “Sounds like the worst. Dehumanizing.”

“It’s just how human society works, I guess.” He leans into my chair and whispers something to himself. I hear a high-pitched buzz coming from somewhere behind me.

“Well, we’re not humans and I don’t care about this bullshit.” I slap my hand on the keyboard, hoping the same thing would happen. The clip skips, and the grinding of metal sings from above. The lights turn on, and the room

“Well- well-”, he angrily looks around the room, and dashes to a corner. He picks up a black leather bag that was leaning against a previously hidden by darkness bookshelf. He rips through and seems to find every book with a human on the cover, and one book of just red. He starts to look through them, and I leave him to his bidding. I walk to the other side of the room, with a small end table.

On top, there was a dusty book with some gold paint on it. I swipe it off with my hand, not realizing how brittle the paint is. Now I have a blank book. Opening the thick, leathery book, my eyes swipe through a jumble of words. The term, “deadly beasts wearing fingernails as trophies”, pops out to me. The table has a drawer I struggle to pull out, but it gives eventually. Another book, this one smaller. I untie the lace holding the cloth book together and release the contents into my eyes. Pictures, with colors.

The first page is the man in the video, with smaller moles, happily exposing his chest to show off the six-pointed star. He was holding a kitten. In the next picture, he was simply sitting at a table and drinking some dark and foamy liquid. The next page had a skinny pale woman with eyes I found strange. She was posing in dresses, each looking completely different. In one, she was gagging at a cigarette. The next page had a man with extremely dark skin posing on cars and airplanes. He looked tiny and overdressed, and his hair was way too curly to be real. I look back at Mordred, still going through books. His hair is very straight. I don’t think I have all too many curls, but my hair is still a bit wet.

Next, there was a large man with white hair and purple eyes. The right side of his faced was messed up, but he still had sharp jawbones and an overall handsome face. He posed with a motorcycle, then with a tiny, tiny baby. Then, some guy with the same strange eyes was holding the baby. He was dressed straight out of the Wild West. Unlike the girl with weird eyes, he liked cigarettes. He was also the only one with facial hair.

Then, there were blurry pictures of a man with growths from his back. I don’t want to see that.

I close the book and stack it atop the other. I carry them over to Mordred and poke him.

“Throw these in the bag, too.”

He smiles and nods, like he forgot he was angry at me. He’s sitting on the ground, sorting through piles of books. He has about three in the bag. I pet his head, causing him to stop moving, and tell him, “Grab one more. Let’s go.”

He quickly throws my books into the bag, then grabs the red one I saw earlier. Standing up with a quick jump, he whimpers to me, “There’s a map by the door. He said we needed to go to the circled locations.”

“Sure. We’ll get there when we get there.”

He followed behind me as I trekked up the first set of steps I saw. I felt as if he was trying to see my face, but his finicky movements only caused him to trip on his own feet. My feet clacked against the metal stairs, loudly sounding ahead of me. However, Mordred’s steps were tiny, echoing behind me.

“Are you doing that on purpose?”

“What?”

I turn to him, eyeing him down. He blankly smiles up to me, ignorant of his own actions.

“Nevermind.”

Continuing up the steps, a series of metal doors looked to be freshly opened, spreading years of dust throughout the air. A beam of light reflects off the aluminum flooring, striking me in the eyes.

Good to know the world already hates me.

[Sorry for forgetting to post. I’ve been arranging stuff to start a YouTube channel, and I’m currently on vacation. On a related note, email me some small towns to look into! I’m gonna focus more on American towns, but I will be sure to look at some towns in other countries. The exception, as always, is Utah. The first town I’m covering is actually the beginning setting of Abide the Bride.]

1: Consider

The tubular machine spit out the man much like a child trying garlic lemon chicken would. The disgusting residue dripped off him and coated the ground. By the second, his muscles were forming around the steel skeleton, and his eyes gained a blue hue. His flesh was still very white, slowly settling to a Caucasian hue, but his lips kept turning red, declaring themselves like a paintball on a white picket fence.

A large piece of fabric is thrown over him, and he can hear someone approaching.

He realizes existence.

I realize consciousness.

He lifts the fabric, and I hear his gentle, flowing voice whisper to me, “Who are you?”

I try to lift myself, only to have my hand slip. My jaw meets the ground.

“Fucker-!”

“Tucker?” He crouches down to me, and tilts my head up. “Wow, your face is… wonderful. Have you heard of society?”

I cough up more gunk, feeling my tongue develop nerves. The gelatin tastes like sugar water, but it’s much more chunky. It schlops onto the cement.

He lifts me to my feet and rubs my eyes with long, rough hands. He’s like me, but of a darker, oranger tint, with brown specks. His eyes are green as envious frogs, with a blue pond settling at the bottom. Lips thin like fleshy banana peels, pale as my skin yet visibly dryer. Black mascara looked odd with his long, skinny nose. Rounded eyebrows gave the feeling of looking at an adorable yet stupid puppy. Bright orange bangs met his brows, while the rest of his hair trailed down to his thighs. He was far taller and skinnier.

“I’m Mordred Freck, and you and I are meant to repopulate the dead earth!” He posed dramatically, smiling like a car salesman.

I barf more slime silently as he continues.

“You see, in the August of 1929, humans found Atlantis! They were so happy, they broke down all the walls and just walked right in! This is how we learned what killed Atlantis: a virus that rapidly evolved to kill and use bodies as puppets to spread the sickness! Then, in 1951, Marshall Curie and all his friends started rebuilding the world! You good?”

I nod.

“Then he got shot and died.”

I shrug.

“And the virus came back due to some I.N. Kline.”

“Fuck?” I know limited responses, yet many words.

“Okay. Anyways, our creators were Marshall’s friends. Elliott Dixon made our metal skeletons. Rose made the pods. And then Joseph Higgins made the rest. That’s all. Questions?”

“Fu-”

“No more profanity! Women can’t-” He looks down at me, then crouches down to be at the level of my crotch. He stares.

“What?” I feel a little embarrassed, but I don’t know what to do.

“You’re not a woman.”

“Okay?”

“I’m not a woman.” He motions to his chest, spreading his fingers and pressing his palms to his chest.

“Does it matter?”

“Did you… listen to me? Humanity is dead. We are humanity. Two wrongs don’t make a right! In this case, two men don’t repopulate the planet.”

“New plan?” I shrug, then point to his clothes. A black turtleneck and red jeans. “I need clothes and a coffee first.”

“What the hell is coffee?”

“Beans juiced and filtered through water.”

He stares at me, a slight twitch in his right eye. He rushedly whispers, “I have HEINZ.”

I roll my eyes and pick up the fabric, wrapping it around me. He shakes his head and grabs both of my shoulders. He leans in close to my face, and mumbles.

“Why?” I feel his breath on my face. It smells of pickles.

“You’re still the only thing I have, and I told myself I’d make you my partner. I must ensure that you are doing even better than me. You need a bath first, then warm clothes, then food, then we’ll discuss plans.”

“Okay. I won’t fight that. Just show me where the- gah!” He sweeps me off my feet, heartily laughing. I let out a long, antagonizing groan as he treats me like a cat he’s found in a Philadelphia dumpster. Yes, I find the restroom, but he carried me there, ran the water, and scrubbed every inch of of my skin. He turned on the shower head to clean my hair- which I was particularly aggressive about, due to him using far too much hair conditioner.

He smothers me with the towel, then introduces me to the bedroom. He places me gently on the bed, more carefully than anything else I’ve seen him do in the half an hour I’ve known him. I clenched the blankets and fully covered myself as soon as his hands came off of my body. I watch him rustle through some drawers, until he comes up with a pile of clothes. He sets them on top of me, then sits on the bed, facing away from me.

“Pick what to wear. I won’t look.” He smiles and covers his eyes with his hands.

“Yep. It’s not like you’ve only ever seen me naked.” My voice is full of sass, I think. I’m not too sure what sass is.

He’s silent, still smiling and covering his eyes. “I won’t look.”

—————

I jumped up to sit on the barstool, my jeans catching on the old wood. My black sweater and socks warmed my bitter cold bones. Before I could settle, he slammed down a hot cup of baked beans in front of me. He extended a spoon of beans to my face.

“Mordred Freck, you do not need to feed me.” Yet, I didn’t deny the spoon’s entry.

“I want to hear you swallow.”

“I- I feel violated?” I swallow out of necessity. I didn’t want the things to just stay in my mouth. “I get it, you’ve never dealt with other- well, we’re not really people, but…” I trail off, staying silent for a few seconds. The moment his mouth opens, I begin again. “I’m no princess, nor child. I am of the same making as you. And, I get that you’re lonely or disappointed or something, but it’s… do you not know how to act?”

He tilts his head and frowns. His little puppy brows shift downward and his swampy eyes stare emptily at me. Immediately, I feel the need to defend myself.

“I mean, haha, I don’t know how to act, either. I’m lost. I just don’t like being touched and harassed.”

He continues to stare.

I stand up on my own, reaching out to his head, and running my fingers through his hair. He won’t stop touching me, so maybe reversing the roles will do something. His eyes widen with a spark as he mumbles something out. His teeth are pure white. Almost freakishly white. My fingers felt slightly greasy, but it was nothing compared to how gross his coffee-advertisement smile made me feel.

“Ask me before you do anything.” I try to force a smile, but it’s hard when someone stares at you with such… unreadable emotions.

“Could I get up to show you something?”

“Yes?”

He immediately stands up and walks, and I notice the click of his wooden heels. I follow behind, trying to stay a foot away from the hair that swung behind him. The bright orange hair swings to the front of him when he stops. An open doorway stares ominously, containing tons of dusty relics I couldn’t wish to identify.

“It said it wouldn’t open until the two pods opened. Something I forgot to mention- the speaker voice said an odd little thing: ‘If you already woke up, you’re probably the Curie android. The man never spent too long in recovery, and I heard he was two months early from the womb.’ I already told you the rest of the message.”

“So, are you the Curie android?” I extended my hand to the doorframe. Dust still floated about.

“I don’t know what it means. One of us may share blood with the man, I guess. Or, one of us is meant to look like him.”

I stumble through the door towards a square, white glow. In front of it, two chairs made of white pleather, one stained blue with jeans and ripped between one’s legs, with the other still pristine. Both were a tad dusty.

I rested at the torn-up chair and pressed the enter key like I knew what I was doing.

A voice echoed from throughout the room, mostly covering up Mordred’s rush to see the screen.

“America was once the center of perspective, then a center of reconstruction. Although, it doesn’t matter what I think. I can praise freedom, flappers, and French 75, but dwelling on death is for artists and historians.”

And the screen flashes a new image.