Lasting Damage

Lasting Damage

'I have a very clear memory from the time I was eleven years old. There I am running through my parents' first house, my first house, thinking that this is the only summer I would be eleven. Perhaps this was my first existential crisis. Didn't it seem like you'd be eleven forever? We moved from that house when I was nine. There was no way that memory happened.'

You were my first. My first creation. Everything that was right in this world. I can barely remember how long it took me to find all the pieces to put you together. Beyond the wall of a city torn apart by war, past the barricade and a line of crudely assembled mannequins used both for shooting practice and decoys. It was there that I found that very first piece of you. All lit up by the flares of weapons, you lay there on the ground between bodies and ruins. There was shooting just to the north. A whir of smoke came down through the alleyways and brushed against my brown scarf. I had originally set out to scavenge for food. Soldiers shot, reloaded, and ran as the onslaught around me grew thicker with every passing moment.

In the sky above me clouds burst like blooming flowers raining red from the sky like pollen. Almost falling I crept through the darkened street to where you lay. You were sprawled on the cobblestone. What should have been your final resting place. I swayed with the wind. Your short blonde hair sent chills down my spine as I wrapped you in a soft blanket and began to carry you back with me.

My rifle dangled in my hands as my vision blurred. I dragged your body behind me doing my best to lift you up and past the barricades that surrounded my temporary home. The monsters to the north were regrouping. An explosion made the ground tremble. I didn't move for fear that if I fell I would break you. At last I exhaled and when I could finally control my shaking I picked you up again.

Three months passed before I managed to find the rest of you.

I dressed you in a dark but dirty dress. Wrapped my own scarf around your neck and watched as lightning struck the down from the sky above filling you with life and love. A small part of me wanted to scream "its alive" like some kind of mad scientists that had just fulfilled his dream. You were after all my first. I had studied the alchemy for years, reading through books and scriptures hoping one day I would find a way to make sense of it all. Blood ran down from your eyes. For the first few minutes of your life you were blind. I had to do everything to make sure your senses adjusted. Like a frightened child you clung to me in the pitch black dark. I could only wonder what it was that you must have been so afraid of.

I had so many questions for you but I asked none. I held you in the silence and brushed your hair with the tips of my fingers. What kind of place had I brought you back from?

I was not that much older then you when you passed. We both stood just under six feet. Perhaps you were a bit shorter. I had done my best to stitch you together but I was no surgeon. My house had three stories and a basement. We spent most of our time down below. The top two were less finished then most. Full of wires and conduits that my father had once used to run technology that has almost all become forgotten during the time of our war. I dared not go to the highest level of fear of being seen from the skies above. On the ground there was a small kitchen, living area, a small study, and my fathers old workroom. I could still remember trying to spy on him as I slept in the corner wondering when he would be finished with his work. I liked to climb to the second level and feel the wind against my skin. The cracks on the wall where window frames were joined by melted plaster were covered in ash.

The basement was the most active part of the house. Filled with wallpaper that neither I nor my father had chosen. It had been something that came with the house from a time long forgotten filled with Mandela like designs that made my stomach fall ill if I stared into any of them too long. On one wall where the wallpaper had began to rot away I as a child had drawn figures, portraits of animals and symbols my father had shown me. Art was always something I held close to my heart. My father thought it was nonsense. I imagined one day I would change the world. I covered the alleyways around my block with many of the same figures I drew as a child. Hoping somehow it would bring hope to the other survivors that hid in the shadows.