Halfkinds: Survival and Superiority (Volume 1 - Contact)

  Chapter 28 - Iris Lawton - Memories

  November 17, 3040 4:04 AM

  We've made it back home, back to 1523 Chakming Drive, back to where it all started. Dawn is approaching, rays of sunlight stretch into the landscape. The journey from the Li station to home was far, so we had to scurry as fast as we could if we wanted to stay under the shade of nightfall. I didn't think the walk would take so long and I was afraid that we would get lost since we were journeying through unfamiliar territory. Fortunately, things looked familiar enough from all the moving we had done this past week.

  When we arrive, it's like I barely recognize the place. Nothing has changed. The walls are still dented, the front is unkempt. Pieces of garbage float by from the gusty Nevada winds. The windows are barred. It's always been a little grimy, a little dingy, a little bit rough. I can't say it's ever been the most welcome looking place, but it just doesn't feel like home. It was where I grew up in, but that's now a memory.

  When I step on the front porch this time, it feels different. When we lived under this roof, it was a place that I found comfort and joy. I must've sat on this front porch several times. Mother let us hang out in the front and backyard since our house was so isolated. Each time, I felt like I belonged here. Now, I feel unwanted, that I'm a stranger in a strange land. I can already sense how deserted my home is, how empty the rooms are inside, without setting foot in it. I look at my house from the outside and I see a body without a soul. I don't feel happy coming here, I feel wrong. I never thought that a homecoming could be so unwelcoming.

  I step inside and things hit closer to home. Ace said the United Species Alliance Science Division was here earlier. They must have inspected and cleared out our things, because the house is empty. Every precious memory, every item we couldn't take with us, they confiscated. I knew that the USASD was thorough, but I didn't think they would be that detailed. Only a week after leaving, the vacancy of my home is quite astonishing.

  No one is here when we arrive. I doubt they need workers showing up at 4:00 in the morning for inspection. Since they already swiped every piece of evidence they could get, I'm not sure when, or if, they will make a return visit. I don't see any surveillance equipment or patrol drones. Actually, I don't see anything at all. For the time being, it seems that we are safe.

  I look at Isaac and wonder how he feels about coming back to an empty home, but something else is on his mind. He stands here in rage, still angry over how we were cast aside so easily by Tiago.

  "That bastard, I hope you're right," he mutters under his breath.

  "About what?" I ask.

  "Your premonition, about how you said they'd all perish. I hope Tiago doesn't set one foot on the Moon, I hope he dies trying."

  I'm a bit flabbergasted by the callousness of his words. I can see they are genuine.

  "Isaac," I say softly, "don't say such things. You may be upset now, but still, he's family. You know he cares."

  Isaac sneers at my comment. "He has a funny way of showing it."

  He lets out a sigh. He knows his words are reactive, not thoughtful.

  "I'm sorry, sis," he says to me, "you're right. He is family. But what do we do now? We have nowhere to go."

  "We could stay here," I say optimistically.

  Isaac makes an uncertain face. "I'd like to do that, Iris, I really would. But the house is only empty now. I can't guarantee it'll stay that way. You know someone is going to come back. This visit is temporary. It's not safe here. This place isn't our home anymore."

  Before we arrived, I was hopeful there'd be something for us here, but my eyes cannot lie, my home is a ghost of what it used to be.

  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 wante
d 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 cla
imed. 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.

  Everything is packed and I'm about to leave when one more thing catches my eye. It's the story tablet mother had, the one she read fables from. When we grew old and had no interest in those stories, she threw it in the trash. She hadn't read to us in years, so I guess she had no use for it. But I did and I plucked it from the receptacle without ever telling her. I needed something to remind me when times were simpler, when I had no worries.

  I remember standing there with my bag. There was no more room to fit any items. I take one last look at the story tablet, the last piece of my childhood and walk away.

  The room starts to darken and I snap out of my trance. It's no longer filled with mementoes. I'm back to reality.

  I walk up the stairs and return to my brother.

  "So, what do we do now Isaac?" I say.

  "I've been thinking about that, Iris," he says. "We should wait until sunrise and then we'll have to find another place to hide. It won't be safe here for long."

  "I know, I never thought our home wouldn't be."

  "Huh?" Isaac asks.

  He's unaware of the things I've been thinking, unaware of the emotional journey I've taken through the past.

  "Are you okay, Iris?" he asks.

  Tears start to flow down my eyes and I let out a light sniffle.

  "Yeah, I'm fine," I say, struggling through the words. "If it's okay with you, I'm going to sit on the porch for a while."

  "Sure, sure," he says softly.

  I plop myself on the front porch and let the tears come out. So much flashes through my mind and every image makes it harder for me to regain my composure.

  There was a time when I could sit on this porch and find moments of peace. Tiago could be fighting with mother, or I'd be distraught about my future. It didn't matter, though, because on that porch, I could look up at the sky and let all my troubles drift through the wind.

  "Sister?" Isaac says from behind me.

  I wipe away my tears and sweep aside my misery.

  "I'm fine, I'm fine," I say.

  "What were you doing earlier?" he asks.

  "Nothing, just thinking about things."

  "Like what?"

  "The past. You know, when we were young."

  "Oh," he says. He treads cautiously. "Those? were good days, right?"

  "Yes," I say, wiping another tear away. "They were."

  Those days were some of the best I ever had, but now they are tainted. I can't look back on the past and find happiness anymore. If I do, it'll remind me of what I used to have and what I never will again.