Halfkinds Volume 1: Contact (34 page)

I walk through the rooms and
reminisce of the times when things were simpler.  I refuse to see the void that
my house has become. I visualize the memories that will haunt my mind for days
to come.

Our living room is right beside
me.  It’s dark right now, a little dusty, and some foliage has crept its way
onto the floors.  It already had been wearing and tearing away, long before
mother died, but the condition emphasizes how abandoned our house is.

I close my eyes and see the same
room in a much different light.  I go back thirteen years.  The floors and
walls are new, shiny, and clean.  It’s evening, but the room is glowing from
lamps that mother had recently purchased.  There are couches, chairs, rugs, and
decorations on the wall.  The room greets me, the comfort I feel warms me.

I am not seventeen, I am four
years old.  All my brothers and sisters are with me.  Mother has a fairytale
tablet and it’s story time.  We all sit on the ground while mother towers above
us with her tale ready to read.  We aren’t bickering, alliances aren’t drawn.  We
don’t know about the world outside, how much they hate us, how much they want
us dead.  Instead, the eleven of us sit there in marvel, hanging on every word
she says.  The only world we have is her.

She’s telling us the fable of the
wolf and the dog.  A fatigued wolf meets a healthy dog and is impressed over
its fit appearance.  The dog tells the wolf his life of ease, having free food
and shelter, while the wolf has endured a life of hardship.  The wolf decides
that the dog has the perfect life and wants to join him, and the dog happily
accepts his company.  However, as they travel to the dog’s home, the wolf
notices the fur around the dog’s neck is worn away.  He inquires about this and
the dog replies casually that his collar leaves a mark around his neck. 
Collar?  The wolf knows no such thing and soon realizes that the dog is not
free, so he leaves him.  A full belly is a poor price to pay for liberty.

“Why does the dog have a collar
around his neck?” I ask mother.

“Because he has an owner,” mother
responds.

“But why is that a bad thing?” I
respond.  “Why doesn’t the wolf want to be owned?  He’s hungry, shouldn’t he
eat?”

“Because, he isn’t free,” Tiago
interjects.  “It’s better to have the choice of feeding yourself than have
someone feed you.”

I am a kid so I make nothing of
the story, but Tiago is old enough to understand its lesson.  He realizes he is
not the wolf in the story, he is the dog, and mother is the owner.  She
provides us with food and sustenance, but carries our collars high above our
heads.  It isn’t only her who is our master, but the rest of society as well. 
They force us to live underground and they dictate our actions.  This fable is
a tale that resonates with him for a long time.  That is what drives his
yearning for freedom.

I move on to the kitchen.  The
piles of dishes and cooking utensils are gone.  The many spices and canned
goods mother had are no longer there, only empty shelves remain.  On the
counter where the outside window is, there used to be a vase of handpicked
flowers that she would fill every month.  There would be roses, tulips,
daffodils, but even that has been taken away.

I notice a red stain on the floor,
and can only picture Leonard face down in a puddle of blood.  It sets the grim,
new tone of this house.

The only thing left is our round,
wooden dining table that we ate so many home cooked meals on.  I see myself at
age five, eating a bowl of chicken soup mother had prepared while she is busy
tending to a boiling pot on the stove.  I entertain myself, doodling away
pictures of me and my brothers on my tablet as I happily slurp my soup.

“Mom,” I call to her.

“Yes, dear,” she responds.

“When you were young, what did you
want to be when you grew up?”

My question startles her and she
drops the metal stirring spoon into her pot.  She looks out of the window and
stares off to space.  I am young and unaware of the effect my question has on
my mother.

“Mommmm,” I say, nagging at her. 
“Did you hear me?”

She snaps out of her trance and
focuses on the question.  “Yes, dear, I heard you. Sorry, mommy was thinking of
something else.  What was your question again?”

“What did you want to be when you
were young?” I repeat my question.

She turns off the stove and takes
a seat next to me.  She observes my sketches and gazes at me.

“Oh,” she begins saying.  “I
wanted to be a lot of things growing up.  I wanted to be a dancer, a singer, a
model.  I wanted to travel the world and meet the man of my dreams.  What do
you want to be, my little princess?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I say
casually.  “Maybe an artist, or maybe a space explorer!  Oh, maybe I can be a
dancer or singer too!  Maybe I can be famous!  Do you think I can do that,
mom?”

She is weary to answer my
question.  She doesn’t have the heart to tell me I could never be those things.

“Maybe one day,” she says
indecisively.

“So did you get to do those
things?  Did you get to be a dancer?” I say as I continue to scribble on my
tablet.

“Sort of.”

She looks away from me and stares
at the ground.  I continue to color without a care in the world, but she
silently reflects on her past.  All she can think about are the sins she’s
committed.

“Did you fall in love with the man
of your dreams?” I ask her.  I set my tablet aside and look straight at her.

“Well, kind of,” she says
hesitantly.

“Is that who our dad is?”

She looks at me and doesn’t know
what to say.  I’m a curious child and I want to know the answers to everything,
no matter how uncomfortable they may be.  I don’t know the gravity of the
question.

Suddenly, she hears Oscar
screaming in the background, followed by Tiago’s childish laughing.

“Looks like the boys are at it
again,” she says, changing the subject.  “You finish your soup, sweetie, I’m
going to tend to them.”

I finish my meal.  I never do get
my answer.

The memory fades in front of me
and I’m transported back to the empty kitchen.  My siblings and I had so many
entertaining times eating and cooking away in this room, but there won’t be any
more meals to cook here.  I’ll only be able to look back on those times and
remember how long ago those days were.

The kitchen window has a wonderful
view of our backyard.  It’s unfenced and there’s nothing but tall grass fields
that outstretch for a mile.  Our house is at the edge of town and there is a
lot of undeveloped land surrounding us.  The backyard was a haven of sorts. 
Mother let us go out, she wasn’t worried about someone spotting us there.

There used to be a tree that stood
in the middle of the field.  It was old and the roots were weak.  It had a
makeshift swing hanging from its branch.  I look outside and I imagine a time
when the tree was there.

I see it not tall and proud, but
on the verge of collapsing.  It’s a clear spring day and I’m nine.  Mother has
planned a picnic so we could enjoy the wonderful, sunny weather.  By that age,
we are already plugged into all of our electronics and she wants us to take a
break.  An outdoor outing is the idea she comes up with.

She had everything ready,
sandwiches, drinks, and some stories she could read to us, just like she did
when we were young.  Some of us aren’t interested in that kid’s stuff anymore,
like my older brothers, so they are begrudgingly forced to join us.  Everyone
is about to settle in, but mother has forgotten to get a serving spoon for her
salad, so she asks me to run in the house and get it.

I gleefully accept my task.  I
walk toward the house, but I start feeling queasy.  A throbbing pain hits my
head and I kneel down over, clutching it.  I can hear Isaac yelling to see if
I’m okay, but I ignore him because the pain is too strong.

It feels like something is
pounding at my skull from the inside and I hear a barrage of high pitched
sounds.  It lasts for seconds, but it feels like minutes.  And then I see
something.  My family is happily munching on their sandwiches when a cracking
and crunching sounds speeds through the air.  The tree is falling.  They
desperately try to run away but they’re not fast enough.  It falls over and
crushes everything underneath.  I am helpless to stop them.

I start to cry and open my eyes
only to realize that what I saw didn’t happen.  They’re still sitting there,
talking, starting to eat.  It’s only Isaac who has gotten up and he stands in
front of me.

“Are you okay, Iris?” he asks.

“Um, yeah, I think so,” I say
confusedly.  “The tree is still there.”

“Of course it is.  Why wouldn’t it
be?”

Suddenly, a panic overcomes me.  I
don’t know why, but I have an impulse to get everyone away from the tree.  I
dash over to the picnic area without responding to Isaac’s question.

“Iris, what’s wrong?” he yells at
me.

But I’m already near the others. 
I wrap up the blankets in haste, engulfing the nicely set plates and food in
them.  Some of my siblings look confused, others look angry.

“What the hell are you doing?”
Alex yells at me.

“We have to move, away from the
tree,” I say hysterically as I continue to gather everything.

“Why?” mother asks.  “What’s
wrong?”

I’ve collected all the items and
ignore her question.  Tiago grabs my arm.

“Iris, what’s wrong with you?” he
says angrily.

“Let go!” I yell.

This causes him to tighten his
grip, so I drag him and the others away from the tree into a safe zone.

“Let go!” I yell again.

“Not until you tell me what’s
going on!” he says.  I don’t have time to explain.  The tree starts to make the
same cracking noise I heard and its base crumbles.  Pieces of wood fly
everywhere.  Within seconds, a thunderous thump hits the ground, right where
they were sitting, and clouds of dirt fill the air.  Tiago lets go of my arm.

“How did you know?” he says in a
stupefied tone.

“I… I don’t know, I just saw it.”

That was the first vision I ever
saw, though I would have plenty more later.  That spot always reminds me of it.

Isaac is still in the living room
inspecting and I slink away from the kitchen towards a door in the wall.  It
leads to the basement, to the underground sprawl where all our rooms are.  I
wonder if they took all our belongings from there.  I walk down, guided by the
streams of light leaking through the small windows that are barely above the
ground.

Sure enough, when I get down to
the bottom level, I am not surprised.  The rooms have been cleared out.  Every
single corridor is bare.

I walk to the end which leads to a
big room that was our study.  Mother homeschooled us there and taught us about
the world outside.  I remember the first time she told us about the world’s
history, about the Event, about the Ark Project, about everything.

“What about us?” Candy asks her. 
I see her and my other brothers and sisters seated in our desks.  I’m ten years
old.

“What do you mean, Candy?” mother
replies.

“You said that the Ark Project led
to intelligent species, but none of them you named look like us.  What are we?”

Mother doesn’t know how to respond
to the question.  “You?  Um, you are special.”

“No, we’re not,” Tiago says
bitterly.  “If we’re so special, why do we live underground?  Why do you keep
us hidden from the world?”

He is now a teenager and rebellion
courses through his veins.  He is older than us and he’s been here longer than
anyone else.  He yearns for freedom, but mother denies it from him.

“Because, they won’t understand
who you are,” she says.

“They?  Who, humans?  Wolves? 
Dogs?  Lions?  How do you know that?”

“I just do, trust me, Tiago.”

He is still young, so parts of him
obey our mother.  He sits his down and rests his head in his arms despondently.

“Children,” my mother says, “I
know some of you are curious about the outside world.  I would be, too.  But I
can tell you that your curiosity will be unsatisfied.  There is nothing for you
out there, only pain and misery.  People, animals, they will all want to hurt
you.  You’re only safe here with me.”

Some of my brothers and sisters
look terrified, others look skeptical.  This is when our family started to
divide, when factions started to rise, factions that would shape the events of
this evening.  They weren’t pleasant memories and I walk away from the room.

I traverse back through the
corridors.  Each one belonged to a different sibling.  One was Isaac’s, one was
Maddie’s, one was Lombardi’s.  All of us had our own special little place and I
make my arrival to the one I claimed.  It’s empty.

My mind travels to a few days ago,
right after mother had died.  I am frantic, messily packing my things into a
bag, carrying whatever I can. I know there’s a chance I’ll never come back
home.  My room has so many memories and I don’t know what I should take.

The essential survival items come
first.  Food, bottles of water, and several changes of clothes fill my bag,
leaving only a little room for other things.  I see a picture that’s framed,
one that has all of our family members.  It was taken only months ago, one of
the few times that all of us were in a photo together.  We took it on the porch
and I remembered how happy it made mother knowing that after all these years,
we were still a family.  She was so ecstatic that she made copies for everyone
and made sure we cherished it as much as she did.

Tears hit the frame as I look at
it.  She was dead and that picture reminds me that I will never see her happy
again.  But it’s also one of the few reminders that, for a time, we helped her
find some joy in life.  Our mother had a tough life, but in her eyes, we were
the reward for going through those challenging years.  I will be forever
grateful.  I wipe the tears from the glass and put the picture in my bag.