Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

If I jump, we’re both dead. I see it. It’s obvious. Below me, a tree passes, shuddering as it shoots by. If I had jumped, the tree would have struck me. I turn away from the bank and start running downriver, following the pounding water on its course, racing into the dark forest as the light of dawn begins to brighten the sky.

I dash through the forest downriver as fast as I can.

I see him sometimes, up ahead, in the river, usually only a glimpse of his red, plaid shirt, bright as blood in the white water before he vanishes in a maelstrom of roiling water.

I have to concentrate on the run. I jump over rocks and duck under tree branches. When I can, I turn to the river to see if I can see him, to see if the river hasn’t washed him up on the shore, or if some overhanging branch hasn’t snagged him. But the river is moving too fast to stop him. The water is all I can hear now, a thundering, rushing noise in my head.

I breathe. I run. I concentrate.

I look for signs of him and I think I will probably never see him again. The river will take him away from me, tear him apart as it crashes downstream, leaving me nothing, nothing.

But this doesn’t come to me as a thought. It’s just a feeling of doom, of loss, of horrible, aching emptiness. In the end, after all I’ve gone through, I lost him to a river! I lost him because I didn’t think about the sound of water and what it would do to him. I lost him because I forgot what he has become.

I run longer than I’ve ever run before. I notice that the sun is up. I see the sun shining, the blue sky, the rays of bright light striking the white water, sometimes highlighting the blood red shirt that surfaces for just a moment.

The sun is high when the river widens and slows and darkens. I see Eric floating face down. Turning in the river. Spinning slowly under the sun.

I splash into the water, grab him by the shoulders, and drag him to the bank where I turn him over. The bandage over his eyes are gone. He stares up at the sky, up through a pale face, through eyes black with blood. His chest is unnaturally large, bloated with flood water. The force of the flood has stripped the boots and socks both from him. His feet are white and pathetic in the light. He doesn’t breathe. He doesn’t move.

“Eric,” I whisper. I reach out and touch his face. It’s cold. Cold and stiff like leather in the morning. The touch sends shivers up my arm. For a moment, I think I’m going to break. I’m going to shatter like glass. And then I feel a shudder come over me. It’s followed by a complete absence of feeling, like I’ve stepped into death. I don’t feel anything. I don’t want to cry. I don’t want to move. I don’t even exist. I’m not even here. Everything is unreal, distant, and I don’t care at all. I feel like the river has hollowed me out, leaving nothing behind. It’s worse than death, it’s a living death because I’m here to experience it. I can feel all the nothing around me, cold and horrible. It’s in the blackness of Eric’s eyes. It’s in the brittle, senseless rays of sun that strike us. It’s in his frigid skin and his strange, swollen, fish-like feet. It’s in my body, which can’t feel anything, and in my heart that won’t work.

It finally happened. Eric’s dead. I am suddenly in a world of nevers. A world I can never share with him. Never ask him questions. Never hold his hand. Never feel how I always felt when he smiled at me and called me Birdie. A never world, hollow and cold. A world entirely without.

“No, Birdie. Don’t give up yet.”

I speak aloud, from the emptiness. I have to hear it, have to have some hope.

I lean over him and push down on his chest. Eric’s mouth, almost black, opens and water flows out. I push again and more water comes out. I know what I have to do, but I think of his dark mouth wriggling with Worms. But this isn’t the time for thinking. I plug his nose, take a deep breath, and then groan. I could get infected so easily. I really could. This is stupid, a great way for me to become a zombie just like him. Doing what I’m about to do is practically suicide. I imagine some Worm crawling from Eric’s mouth into mine, working its way into my stomach, through my body, up to my brain. I see it wriggling, slithering, creeping its way through me, attaching itself to my brain. But I can’t live thinking I haven’t done everything I can. I have to try.

I take a deep breath and then, closing my eyes, I bend over, cover his cold mouth with my lips, and blow as hard as I can. I smell ammonia and urine and turn away and gag. I push down on his chest and watch as more water comes out of his mouth. I take another deep breath, plug his nose, and then blow the air into his lungs again, trying to ignore the cold feeling of his lips, the smell of the Worm that is so strong this close to him. I take another breath and blow it in, without waiting, without pausing to think about what I’m doing, how I could be killing myself. I pump down on his chest with my hands and watch as more water comes gurgling up from him. Then I bend over and again breathe into his lungs. Again and again. My head is swimming and dizzy, but I can’t stop, not until I’m sure, not until I’m certain that he’s gone. My mouth tastes sour.

I lean over to breathe air into him again when Eric suddenly erupts. A fountain of dark, stinking water spurts into my face and inside my mouth. I leap away, rubbing away the stinking water, and then collapse to the side, vomiting. My stomach churns with revulsion at the smell of ammonia and the bitter taste in my mouth. I keep thinking I can feel Worms in my mouth, turning and twisting, and so I keep vomiting. Finally, my stomach begins to cramp painfully, and groaning in pain, I struggle to stop heaving.

Somewhere through the pain, I’m aware of the dark fountain that continues to spout from Eric’s mouth. I want to help, want to turn him over, but I can’t do anything but hold my stomach. I’m so relieved, but at the same time, I’m completely overcome with nausea. Finally, between retching, I go over to Eric and roll him over. I watch in equal horror and relief as Eric vomits out enormous amounts of putrid water. I notice innumerable Worms wriggling inside the water. I stagger away and then go to the river to vomit and wash my face in the frigid water. I rinse my mouth with cold water and then vomit and then rinse again, trying to rid myself of the acrid taste.

At some point, I can’t vomit any longer, and the cramps in my stomach lessen.

“Unh,” Eric says as he sits up, his eyes turned up toward the sky.

The sound makes me laugh out loud. Suddenly I’m on my knees in the water, weeping, and looking at him. I’m crying and laughing at the same time. From his eyes, long tendrils of white Worms are waving up toward the sun, like a host of angels, praying.

It’s not a cave. Not really. It’s just that the granite stretches over us a little, giving us a little protection from the rain, from the wind, but most importantly, from eyes. I dragged us here yesterday, and I bent over some trees and wove some branches together so that it’s difficult to see us. Then I dug down at the base of the rock. That’s where we are, sitting in a muddy, cold pit under a rock, waiting. Waiting for me to die.

I sit shivering in the pit. There’s no way I didn’t get the Worm, I think. I keep checking my head for a fever. I can’t tell. Every time I cough, I think it’s coming. Every time I tremble from the cold, I think it’s the beginning of the sickness that will kill me. I think sometimes I can feel the Worms in my stomach, writhing, multiplying, sending its offspring to my brain where they will sink their hooks into me. Will I just die of the fever or will I turn into something like Eric? Or will it be much worse? Will I crack and run crazy through the forests, killing everything in my path, and passing on the disease?