Wanderers

~ Fiction ~

At times like these, when there is little left, it is difficult to hold on to who we are.

They used to call us the damned, but it appears we have endured.

It is fitting, however, that we should live in such a hell as this country, ravaged, scorched and eventually crumbled by war. The places we pass through, like us, had names once. Those words are buried now, under the debris that gave them meaning.

They called us shadows and we are shadows now more than ever. When daylight burns down upon the land, we conceal ourselves wherever we can. We spend so much time underground, but at least it is cool there. The sun never used to be so hot, I am sure of it.

In the night, we search for anything that might keep us going. We hunt. But more than the scent of food, we search for the distant reverberations of previous lives. We pick up keepsakes all the time. We discard them just as quickly. Reaching equilibrium within ourselves is impossible. Keeping our disharmony hidden is impossible. Lashings of pain whip through us all. Sometimes they rush out our mouths and we scream without warning.

Mercy is that nothing surprises us anymore and that is a kind of peace. On our best days, we are adorned with an exquisite discontent and proud to be so.

Long ago, discontent was the fashion assigned us. Our dominion was veiled with melancholy and cynicism. Or else, we were draped in horror and abhorrence. We were chthonic serpents holding court in the mortal realm. It is curious that people would create such images. They gave us style and poise, casting themselves as the fragile mice. We were not merely demonised but also venerated. We were detestable and desirable. A meeting place of their traumas.

We were ever the endless witnesses of trauma. We were experts on its nature. And yet, many of us did not believe how that trauma would spill out into the world and destroy it. Some last vestiges of our own humanity were not cynical enough; there remained some unextinguished hope.

I suppose that is what keeps us going still now. After all, there are ways of ending our lives if we truly wanted it. Perhaps hope is our curse. The tragic scar left over from betraying our mortality and becoming monsters.

They used to call us vampires. But now that we wander lands so bereft of life, so empty of mind and speech, it it another meaningless word. Every being owes its identity to the world that contains it and now, our world is gone. There are strongholds out there in the wastes - places where small groups of humans do what they can to subsist. Occasionally, we pass close to one. Perhaps we are glimpsed in the night. Perhaps one of our screams is heard. Perhaps by only one. One who must then tell the others of the phantoms walking the dead lands. I wonder what stories they make of us then.