Man without women
Chapter 36 of The Lost City of Desire, my utopian novel set in a dystopian world
[Read chapters 1-35 here]
Joe had no bounce, no flow, everything was a push, a struggle. He couldn’t shake the fear he’d felt being tied up. His thoughts kept the script, only worse. As he trudged along the trail suddenly a fantasy played out in his mind, the strips of leather dug deeper into his wrists and the “Indians” strung him by ropes so the weight of his body pulled his wrists apart and he felt the blood pouring out of the stumps.
Jesus, he thought, shivering. Stop it! Stop thinking. But he couldn’t control these intrusive thoughts. They were so real that they sent his heart racing, or he shivered, or cursed out loud. He was a failure.
I must have a fever, he thought, touched his head, damp, hot. How had he ended up like this? Infection. He just wanted to see his sister, to see Sarah. The thought of them comforted him, though at the same time he feared Sarah would also think he was a loser. Who wouldn’t? First of all, he’d let her go into Shonda’s camp alone. Then he’d been captured. He was hurt, he was weak, he was afraid.
By mid-morning he could see the trail winding up and around a rock face and then continuing past the far side of a sloping meadow below, so he set out from the trail across the grassy space, certain it would save time and lead him to the trail below.
Twenty feet in, the grasses got spongy and he didn’t think the squishing sound was good, but he kept going and after fifty yards his right leg went down into the muck, up nearly to his knee and he had to physically pull it out with his arms, but that threw him off balance and he fell on his side, soaked by the muck. What about snakes? The fetid smell overcame him. He struggled to stand, but found his way, and looking forward he thought he could see a dry area. Carefully, step by step, he planted himself on the thickest root clumps of grass. It was a swamp now, there was water everywhere. He looked back, too late, too far. He went forward, towards the other side of the trail.
Joe fell a few more times and the last time both his legs got stuck deep in the muck and his shoes came off as he pulled his legs out. He lay down on his stomach and reached into the mud for his shoes but they were gone, sucked deep into the earth, too deep to reach. He was fucked. The grasses sliced his feet as he jumped from clump to clump and by the time he reached dry land he was soaked with watery mud, the soles of his feet covered with thin, shallow wounds from the grass. A circle of pus expanded on his ankle -- something infected, he didn’t know. He stepped barefoot on the trail and kept on his way, sharp pebbles digging into his torn skin.
Those motherfuckers. Sarah -- Jesus, where was she. Carmen? I’m all alone, he thought. I’m all alone. He had to find them so he could chew them out, leave them behind. Let them know what it felt like.
Fuck this, he thought. Fuck fuck fuck fuck. He was hungry. He was angry. He was lonely. He was tired. But he knew he was close to the meeting spot. If he made it, he would see Sarah, her curious, friendly eyes, and Carmen, who would give him the biggest hugs, he knew. The trail led into a forest of lichen covered trees. He hoped to find a stream to catch some fish. He did find wineberries and some lady apples, and stuffed his mouth with the berries while sticking a few apples in his pocket.
Then he took a step onto a bunch of leaves. As soon as he stepped, he realized his mistake. The world gave out from under him and he was falling, then smashing, his body buckling. He was at the bottom of a deep pit looking up. A trap. Both his ankles immediately swelled and he looked down at his screaming feat and watched them swell, blue and black, in a matter of moments. Broken, for sure.
“Help me!” he screamed. “Help me”
He looked up at the circle of blue sky and the trees that defined the edge of the hole and screamed again. The hole was the size of an outhouse, and the sides were smooth and hard, almost as if the mud had been turned into plaster. Without his ankles there was no way he was going to get out.
For the first time in his life he felt he might be dying.
Where was hope?
It was not here.
The sun set and the hole got chilly and then it got cold and his clothes were still damp and his ankles still screamed and eventually, somehow, he fell asleep. This is what the end felt like. Eyes closed, dreaming, pain throughout, this is what he knew.