Michael Soll - Scorched

Kaolin and Cotta talked about nothing as I gazed at the black. It was the same darkness our ancestors had once gazed at. I wonder if Janathon Weshington ever imagined or fantasized about me. I wonder if he thought one day I would journey back to the mine shaft that acted as a safe haven for him so many cycles ago. I wonder if I will have descendents like myself, if I will have a future Spec who will travel back to his ancestor’s hive, to the path his forefather once journeyed on.

Our feet were rested and up we were, moving forward and shifting our world. Kaolin took some more chum and stepped in the lead. She was a couple feet in front of me but instead of staring at the darkness ahead, I was staring at her behind. I watched it rhythmically move up and down, hypnotizing me and placating my fears.

I regained control of my mind and looked over at Cotta. He too was staring at her backside. He regained his composure and hurried forward. I stared at his backside as he walked beside her but for some reason, his rear was not nearly as exciting as hers.

Our bodies were worn out so we decided to rest. Cotta piled up some dirt to form a pillow while Kaolin used his chest as a mound of dirt. I could’ve slept in the pile with them. Perhaps it would’ve been more comfortable having life so close to me, reminding me I too was alive, but instead I chose to lay by myself. I placed my equipment to the side and built a little bed. It wasn’t that bad, but it paled in comparison to the one back in the hive.

I lay on my back and stared up at the wall several feet above. At one point, an ax scraped against its surface, irreparably shaping and destroying and fixing and creating. My blood had carved these walls. Did they know how important their actions were, how meaningful their decisions were?

My eyes close and I dream of sunlight. I dream of freedom and air. I dream of an up, a world without tunnels. I dream of a breath, so clean and sweet. I dream of a purpose, a reason for being and for dying. I dream of the Original Hive. Before the world became my world, when there were hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of hundreds of people like me and Cotta and Kaolin.

If there’s one truth I’ve learned during my time in this planet, it’s that in the midst of destruction, life will prevail. When the sun charred the surface and destroyed the exterior of our world, it meant the creation of my father and myself. And when one of our friends’ lights go out, their life gives us life. And if all of those people in the past had not died, then I would not have lived.

My thoughts escape me, and I find myself sitting atop a giant insect as it sprints across blackened dirt toward the giant ball of burning fire. I feel a warmth I’ve never felt, I reach a speed I’ve never traveled, but then, the insect trips and we crash into the ground. The insect takes its last breath. I place my hand on its rough skin and feel its damp blood on my hand. The blood is warm and feels as real as anything I’ve felt.

My eyes fluttered and I regained consciousness, but the dream persisted. I examined my hand to find it stained red. I looked at Cotta, blood smeared across his abdomen.

I hurried over to my friend, shaking him, wondering if his eyes would open and then, they finally did.

“What’re you doing?” he grumbled.

“I thought you were dead.”

“You’re the one who sleeps like he’s dead.”

I pointed to his stomach. He felt around, searching for a wound. “I think I’m okay. Where’s Kaolin?”

I had forgotten about her. I searched all around but couldn’t see her. I picked up my lantern and only had to run a few feet before I spotted a desolate Kaolin staring into the darkness.

“Are you okay!? Are you hurt?”

Kaolin turned, and I understood what had happened. Dribbling down her leg was a thin trail of blood.

She smiled, tears in her eyes, “I’m a woman.”

Kaolin had evolved into a woman while Cotta and I remained boys. We had only heard of women bleeding but never seen it with our own eyes. A woman usually bleeds only once in her life and then she gives birth and either dies, or she lives and gives birth again.

The first thing we did was collect all of the blood and divvy it up between the three of us. It was bitter as blood often tends to be, but the extra nutrition would help us on our long journey.

Kaolin’s mood quickly changed. She walked in the back and kept mostly to herself. When we tried to include her in the conversation, she just ignored us. Her mind was off in some faraway land and neither Cotta nor I were allowed in. We continued forward, pushing the world behind us as we walked into the unknown.

Our feet had never been so sore. Blisters formed all over our toes and then quickly turned to calluses. In addition to our bodies deteriorating, I could see Cotta struggling with the mental aspect of our journey through the Ancient Tunnel. It wasn’t the fact that we were walking into a void, it was that the tunnel was so high. Whenever we worked in the tunnels, we were forced to hunch, as we snugly moved toward our working position, but the Ancient Tunnel was so massive that he was beginning to feel uneasy. He would often spend most of his walking looking up at the faraway ceiling, worried some unseen creatures were about to strike. How could he have survived in the olden days with no ceiling at all?

“What if it never ends?” Cotta asked, chewing on a piece of food.

“Everything ends,” I told him. “Beginnings can’t exist without an ending and we saw where the tunnel began.”

And then Cotta said something that caught me off guard. “It was the beginning of the tunnel for us but the ending for them.”

He was right, but how could a beginning also be its end? If a man grabbed his toes, there would be no beginning or end to his body, he would just be. But if his feet were his beginning and end, what were his hands when raised above his head? If a man and woman come together and have a baby, that baby grows into a man or woman and has a baby of its own but which is the beginning, the baby or the man/woman? And then, a baby is born and that is his beginning. He grows and dies and that is his ending. But then after he dies, we consume him and he begins again within us until we die and therefore he dies. But then we’re eaten and we start new within those who eat us. Maybe there isn’t an ending until nobody is around to consume the dead. Maybe the tunnel doesn’t end until we die and nobody is around to question if it has an end.

Kaolin quickly stopped—

“You hear that?”

She put her ear against the wall. We followed. “What do you hear?” Cotta whispered.

She shook her head and put her ear to the ground. Cotta and I gave each other a look, then did the same.

I placed my ear against the ground and heard what sounded like a faint whistling coming from below and then—

Kaolin’s foot stomped the ground as hard as she could. Dirt crumbled from above. She stomped again and more dirt came tumbling down.

I jumped to my feet and held her as tightly as I could to prevent her from stomping again.

“What’re you doing!?” She paused for a moment and looked me in the eyes. I had never been this close to a girl in my life, not since I was ejected out of my mother’s uterus.

She put her hand onto my chest. “You don’t want to die in this tunnel, do you?” And then, she pushed me back, jumped as high as she could and smashed into the ground beneath her.

The tunnel rumbled. Dirt and rocks came tumbling down from all directions. There was nowhere we could run. There was nothing we could do. I took what I assumed to be my last breath and closed my eyes when the floor beneath me collapsed and we plummeted below.