Ben Bedard - The World Without Flags

I stop to close my eyes for a second to imagine it.

Then the darkness comes down.

I’m dreaming. I know I’m dreaming, and I struggle to stop dreaming. I say to myself, wake up, get up, you can’t sleep all day. I say this again and again, even as the darkness grows and the horizon starts to burn.

Then the silky feel of hair in my hand. I look up and she’s looking down at me. I see her lips smile and she says to me, “You’re going to be fine.” And she keeps smiling and rocking me and I feel like I’m made of clay, like she could mold me into whatever shape she wanted. I keep looking at her teeth and feeling her hair, and then I realize I’m crying, great sticky drops of tears. They burn down my cheek.

That’s when the screaming starts.

I thought I needed rest and I’d be okay. But when I wake up from my nightmares, I just feel worse. I can’t feel my fingers. All I can feel is this stone where my stomach should be. This stone that drags everything toward it. I reach out and pull out some moss from the forest floor. I eat that, but it’s so hard to swallow that I cough up half of it. Besides it doesn’t do anything. It doesn’t stop the pain, the hollowness, the darkness where I used to be.

I notice Eric beside me, but I can’t reach him. I try to turn my head, but when I move, I feel bright stabs of pain. I look up at the trees and see leaves, so many leaves. Distantly, I wonder how there could be so many in just one day. I must have been sitting here for longer than I thought. How long have I been here?

I must have the Worm.

This is what it must feel like.

I reach up to touch my eyes, to see if the Worms are there, waving, searching, sprouting from my eyes like the roots of some backward plant whose roots are fed by the air and whose terrible flower blossoms in my brain. But then I’m sleeping again.

I wake up to some wet thing dragging itself across my face. I turn my head to look away and smell hot breath. My eyes flutter open. I see the snout of a dog lick my face from nose to forehead and move to push the dog away when I see more clearly.

Queen! It’s Queen!

“Get away now,” a voice calls. “Come on, now, let her be.” It’s a voice I recognize immediately. Then a familiar face comes into view, round, boyish, with dark curls.

“Well, hello there, Birdie,” says Pest, smiling.

“Don’t call me Birdie,” I say drily. I try to raise my hand, but I’m too weak.

Pest’s smile grows wider. “You rest,” he says. “I’ll make you some soup.”

How dare he, I think to myself, a pit in me burning, how dare he call me Birdie?

But I’m asleep again almost immediately.

I’m not good for anything except eating and sleeping. I didn’t realize how much it took from me. I didn’t notice how my own body had shrank, how my own skin stretched across my bones. I feel as light as air, but somehow still too heavy to move. Such a strange, humiliating feeling. It took everything I had to get Eric away from Dr. Bragg. If it hadn’t been for Queen and Pest, I’d be dead. I don’t have the Worm. I’m just starved and tired.

Queen lays against me as I rest. I’m grateful for the warmth, and I stroke her fur when I’m awake and not eating. Pest made me some soup with rice and dried meat and some carrots. It’s the most delicious thing I’ve ever tasted, smooth and sweet and meaty. I eat all I can. I keep waiting to get more energy, but I’m still so tired. Pest is trying not to seem like he’s watching me as he sits by the fire, but I can tell that he is. I hate that he sees me like this, so weak, so pitiful. I wish he’d leave me alone. I fall asleep with my arm around Queen.

I wake up to the sun rising through the trees, a stunning, bright light. I shade my eyes and for the first time, I feel well enough to get up. My legs ache as I move, but my body seems to glow. I get up easily and stretch and groan. I feel my whole body is filled with sunlight. I feel time again, not shooting by me like some strange, heavy thing, but time as a rhythm, like my breathing, my heartbeat. I feel awake and alive and the stony, blind weight of my stomach is gone, replaced by the normal itch of hunger.

Queen picks up her head and yawns, her long tongue curling out of her mouth. I smile and pat her head, scratching behind her ears. Eric is sitting with his back to a tree and I see that his eyes are covered with a band of yellow cloth that has already begun to grow dark. It annoys me. I also see that there’s little flecks of food down his front, which tells me he’s been fed, but not cleaned up very well afterward. This makes me frown.

“Good morning,” I hear. I turn around to see Pest get up from the sleeping bag he had near a fire that has now died down to gray ash.

I answer with a grunt.

“Feel better?” Pest asks. His face is open and earnest. The way he talks, you’d think he was like ten years older than me.

“Why’d you put that on his eyes?” I asked, pointing at Eric.

Pest looks over to Eric, confused. He looks back at me and shrugs. “I don’t like seeing the Worms.”

“And why didn’t you clean him up a little better?” I ask, ignoring his question.

Pest’s eyes narrow at me. “Aren’t we a delight in the morning,” he says.

“He isn’t an animal, you know,” I tell him. I feel hot and angry all of a sudden and I stride over to Eric and begin to wipe the bits of food from his shirt. Pest watches me and, I notice, so doesn’t Queen. I brush at Eric some more while those two watch me. I feel myself blush again and I don’t know why. “Stop staring at me,” I say and it comes out a lot more bitter than I meant. In fact, it comes out cruel. I hear it and I’m confused. Actually I feel pretty grateful to him for finding me and for feeding Eric at all. I know it’s not easy. But for some reason, I’m just annoyed. Really annoyed. I know I should be saying thank you, but instead, I sound like I hate him.

I don’t know what I expect from Pest, but he surprises me by staying silent. He crouches down in front of Queen and strokes her between the ears. Queen makes a little whine of pleasure, and Pest smiles at her. I’m not used to seeing him smile. It makes him look even younger. He’s just a kid. But then the way he turns to me with those eyes and he says, “You want some breakfast?” It’s like the right thing to say. The grown up thing to say. Just to ignore my silly mood. It’s really annoying and I appreciate it too at the same time. Pest confuses me.

“Breakfast sounds good,” I mutter. I’m annoyed, but my hunger easily overpowers all that. As I finish cleaning up Eric, Pest starts another fire. He brings out a canvas bag and pours flour into a bowl. Timidly, a bit ashamed of myself for not saying thank you immediately, I poke at the fire and encourage it along while he gets out a big slab of delicious yellow butter and begins to mix it with the flour. He adds drops of water to the mixture and then puts a pan on the fire and, pressing the flour and butter into neat little buns, he puts them on the pan to cook. The smell of it cooking is pure pleasure. I sit back, almost overcome with the smell of cooking flour and butter.

“Biscuits,” I breathe.

Pest doesn’t look up from the cooking, but I can see the corner of his mouth bend upward in a smile. I wonder if it’s too late to say thank you. I wonder if now it seems like an apology for being so mean earlier. I don’t want it to be an apology. I really mean it. I really want to thank him. But I think I ruined it. I think I missed my chance. Nice going, Birdie. I remember then clearly the last words I said to Eric, how mean I am without knowing why. Why am I so mean? What is wrong with me? I poke away at the fire and avoid Pest’s gaze.