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weareallfallengods · 5 years

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Survival

Writing prompt:

If you’re over 25 and haven’t done something remarkable, you are hunted down and killed. Some people invent things. Some make cures for diseases. Others become established members of their community. You’re pushing 30, and somehow not dead yet, even though you cant think of a single thing you’ve done thats remarkable in any way. Why aren’t you dead?

I write for adults about adult themes with adult language. I try to tag possible triggers (but I know I'm not going to get all of them), so if violence or implied death or cussing bothers you, you'll probably want to find a different author.

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Somehow, that date came up again. Not quite sure how, but somehow, the number circled on my shitty wall calendar with the coffee splatter on it managed to be today. Again. It's been doing that for 5 years now.

At first I wanted to be a surgeon- save people's lives, make a difference, all that shit. Yeah, I was caught up in the hype for a while too. Just like everyone. Thought I'd make some ground-breaking discovery and change the world. Just like everyone. And then, at 22, I flunked out of med school. That was it. Dream over, kaput, fin.

When I opened my termination letter, it was like reading a death sentence. 10 years of prep and study down the drain. 3 years left. 3 years, and no idea what to do. No clue what I could do to save my own life after all those years learning how to save others.I drank for a solid month. I dont even remember that month now. My only memento from it is an entire skip of liquor bottles. It's a miracle I didn't die from alcohol poisoning. Not that I didn't try.

See, I was afraid. Scared, actually. Terrified would be more accurate, if I'm honest. I knew I only had 3 years left until they came for me. Unless I managed to do something extraordinary within the next 3 years, they'd come for me, and the only thing that would remain is a 2 paragraph obituary in the local paper, followed by a vacancy announcement. When you're suddenly forced to confront your own imminent demise, and see every dream, hope and aspiration you'd had evaporate, right in front of your eyes, its perfectly natural to drown that in a swimming pool of vodka.

But then, after a month of drowning, and a week of curing a hangover that would make Satan shudder, I got angry. Like Bruce Banner angry. As I was leaving an all night diner, the notice board caught my eye. Having nothing better to do with my life, I stood there for a while just reading every single card in detail, every single lost cat, every used car, every 5k charity run. And then I saw it. And I thought, "You know what? Fuck it, why not. I've spent all this time trying to do one thing that I've never actually done just whatever I feel like, had hobbies, anything really. Why the fuck not."

And that's how I ended up 2 days later in some shity warehouse district, rolling around on a mat with some dude I didnt even know, sweating and swearing profusely and having the time of my life. "Sasha's Self Defense" it said on the small, weathered and rusted sign on the brick wall out front, next to a door that looked like it had been transported straight from the proverbial gulag.

I'd naively thought this was going to be one of those Karate Kid knock offs for some reason when I first arrived. Sasha soon disabused me of that notion. In fact, when he saw I'd brought a new gi in a duffle bag, he laughed so hard he had to slap his ass down on a rickety folding chair just to keep breathing. Once he calmed his mirth at my expense, he let me know in a no-nonsense, 'I'm an old-timer and seen some shit in my day' heavily accented tone that this would be a class that focused on survival at all costs. "No bullshit wax on-wax off," were his exact words I believe.

And boy was he right. When I told him I'd set aside my year's tuition for lesson payments, well, wouldn't you know it, I became his most prized pupil; I quickly learned this was not a good thing. It meant 14 hours a day of the most humiliatingly punishing activity ever dreamed up by Moscow's Finest. I couldnt even move the morning after my first day. But somehow I limped my battered frame down to the bus stop and was only an hour late. Ha, only. Sasha seemed to take it as a personal insult. The only thing he hated less than sloppiness was tardiness it seemed. Apparently the 10th Circle of Hell was reserved for those who dared be late. And he made you earn your way out of that circle.

His only saving grace was fairness. If I had to suffer, at least I wasnt alone. Well, at first anyway. The few other students that suffered his wrath along side me doing slavic folk dances with wrist and ankle weights very quickly learned that this wasn't the type of class they had thought it was and soon I was alone with Sasha.

On the days I did well, I got treated to pierogies. Oh man, I lived for those pierogies. They were made by angels and served by someone I can only describe as if Jesus came back as a woman. Who was Russian. And spoke even less english than Sasha, if that was possible. His sister was as completely opposite to that sadistic maniac as it was possible to be and still be a human being. Where he was loud, she was soft. Where he was tough, she was gentle. Where he was strict, she was generous, even indulgent. Blonde to his brunette. Slim to his barrel chest. Cousin by marriage, I think they said. Well, relatives of some kind anyway. And she was the only one who could make him laugh. And when he laughed, the whole block knew! He was just that loud, that boisterous, with everything he did.

But I loved his little Anya. Just like everyone. But like in a wholesome, mom-ish kind of way. I loved her because I got to sit for an hour when she was around. Because she"d always tuck a to-go container of pierogies into my bag. Because she'd chide Sasha for pushing me too hard. In short, she was an angel.

But I have to hand it Sasha- in 4 months, he took a scrawny bookworm into someone who could pose for Men's Health. In 6 months, I could beat Ivan, his partner, in 5/10 sparring matches. In 7 months, I ran a marathon. In 9, he had me enter a triathalon. And I made it into the top 50 out of 500 entrants. Not too bad if I say so myself. In 12 months, I was beating Ivan almost every time.

And that's when the other Ivan showed up. After a year, Sasha decided it was time I learned weaponry. After all, no real fight was fair, he said. And Ivan (another cousin? Sasha had one heck of an extended family) instructed me on everything from broken beer bottles, to knives and pool cues. And my medical training paid off, because more often than not, I was the one stitching myself up if training got a little rough that day.

Eventually, I moved into the gym. Not sure how it happened, but I think I just got too tired to leave one day and never really left. Sasha didnt seem to mind since it meant I wasnt ever late again. Plus the coffee he imported was the best thing ever. Like it was so good that's probably the Extraordinary Thing he did to live as long as he had.

The days just melted together, into one long symphony of beautiful exhaustion and physical torment, as I poured myself into the first activity I could remember doing purely because I wanted to, something that numbed the dread of the finality of my life expectancy.

But then one day, one specific day, the one I'd been dreading in the back of my mind for a year came around.

They found me.

I guess they were a little slow in finding me, not surprising since I'd basically just disappeared from my old life, no forwarding address type thing. It wasnt intentional, it just sort of happened, what with me diving head first into something purely for me, without the thought of doing it for someone else. But they found me. Just like they find everybody.

See, it doesnt matter if you try to run, if you move, or change your name. They always find you eventually. I just hadn't thought about it in a long while. That year was the first time since I was probably 14 that I'm hadn't thought about the Gardeners. I guess that's why it surprised me so much.

Yeah, Gardeners. I dont know who came up with the name, in guess some misguided attempt at a positive PR spin bullshit to pass off squads of government assassins who's only job was to track down the NCs of the world and eliminate them. Sorry, NCs- Non-Contributors; the people who hit their expiration date without doing something noteworthy, something that was deemed to "advance or bolster the Human Condition" to borrow a phrase from the civics classes we had to take every fucking year of school. A cutesy sounding name that was supposed to make the government sound like a benevolent old couple pulling weeds from their garden of humanity. The worst lies always sound the sweetest, dont they?

And I was now 25.

It happened a few weeks after my birthday. Just another routine day for me, going for a light 5k run after my soak in a mineral bath. Light rain, most of the streetlights out, the few lights on in the warehouse district reflected beautifully off the streets. That's why I ran at night, all the colors changed that normally bleak neighborhood into something beautiful. It was just one little thing to balance out the harshness of reality, and I reveled in it.

I don't actually remember what happened exactly. I do recall seeing a suspiciously conspicuous homeless guy huddled under a loading dock awning, and then just a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. I think it happened really quickly; at least that's what Sasha said the next morning as he was making arrangements for me to visit another cousin of his "back in the old country". It could have been. God, after seeing the bodies around me in the aftermath, I hope, for their sake, that it was fast. 5 bodies. All still. I still remember my breath turning to blue fog, blurring the details of them. Helping me to be able to pretend I didn't see the blood mixing with the rain and oil, spreading out over the concrete like a macabre inversion of the cloudy sky above.

I'm glad they wore masks. It's bad enough having that scene burned into my brain forever, without specific people's faces being etched there as well. I'm glad I dont see their faces in my mind every time I close my eyes. I just wish I could still enjoy the rain. They managed to take that from me, even if I'm still breathing, so I guess they didnt completely fail. They just killed a part of my soul instead. But hey, there's plenty of people that don't like the rain, right? But I bet they don't smell blood when it does though.

And that was pretty much it. No sirens, no manhunt, nothing. Before I could process what was happening, I was on a bus, headed for "the old country", which, as near as I could tell, looked an awful lot like Pittsburg. Sasha's 'cousin' met me at the bus depot there, a man of very few words. Not as loud as his cousin, Zhena tended to communicate with looks, grunts and shrugs mostly. Same work ethic though.

And then the cycle repeated- 14 months this time before they caught up with me. Too bad that Zhena got caught up in it, he was a great guy. He and I didn't really become close or buddies or anything, but it still hurt to see what happened to him. To what was left of him anyway. The Gardeners definitely were trying to send a message with that. To quote an old wise man, "I didnt want to know, but now I do, and I'm telling you, you dont want to know." And that's coming from someone who was training to become a surgeon, so just trust me on this one.

This time, they were waiting for me. I think they'd planned on Zhena being enough of a distraction that they'd be able to take me out easily, but since since I woke up the next day on the floor of the sparring ring in a too large pool of blood that wasnt my own, I'd say they failed. The difference this time was I was on my own. No 'cousins' to call in favors from. No family I could call because I didnt want them getting a visit from the Gardeners either. I was alone this time.

Weirdly, I was actually OK with that. I'd been surrounded by family, teachers, advisors, tutors for so long that solitude was actually kind of nice. I could hear myself think my own thoughts for the first time in what seemed like forever.

I'm not ashamed to say that I took what little of value there was from Zhena's gym (I knew him well enough to know that Sasha was his only family) so that I could get a seedy hotel for a while. I did at least have the decency to let Sasha know, and that that would be the last he ever heard from me, to keep him out of trouble. Bad enough that 10 people were already dead, I didn't want Sasha or Anya's name added to that list because of me.

And so I vanished. Completely. Sure I travelled, kept studying and training like I had been, but never staying longer than a few months, never using the same name, copying other random people's habits and patterns so I didnt have one of my own for them to track down. Yeah it was cliche, but hey, I figured my dad watching all those spy flicks when I was young had to be good for something, right?

Sometimes I was a baker, sometimes a delivery driver, even a dock hand. Whatever it took to make a buck so I could eat.

I got really good at other things too. Like disposing of bodies. Not really a skill I ever thought I'd want or need, but Necessity is a harsh and demanding teacher. Sadly, my skill as a surgeon came in handy- bodies are easier to get rid of when they're in smaller pieces. And people are easier to turn into bodies when you know how they're put together intimately. Not what I had in mind for my life, but since it was the choice between this or dying, well, I guess I can put up with it.

I suppose that catches us all up to the present, more or less. OK yeah theres a lot that's gone down between Pittsburg and now, but it was all pretty much the same: lather, rinse, repeat. Literally sometimes. Those were the days it felt like there wasnt enough soap in the world to get all the blood off.

So here I am, I'm my single room in Kandahar, staring at the date that had somehow come up again. Every year, they send someone. Usually a team. And I survive. No matter how they come at me, or when or how many. I survive.

And I'm sitting here, staring at the calendar, steaming cup of espresso, just staring, as a light breeze fluttered the corner of the calendar page, sending the orchids dancing in the vase next to it. All I could think is, "How? How does this keep happening? I'm not even supposed to be here, not supposed to be alive."

As I raised my cup of espresso, something slid under my door. "OK that's weird," I said aloud as I stood.

The chair made an ungodly screech as I pushed it back and made my way over to where a small, cream colored envelope sat on the floor, a couple inches from the bottom of the door. It was heavy for it's size, but not because anything was in it, just the paper was that thick. Probably hand-made. It's odd the little things you notice in times of stress. Heavy, rough paper, no postmark, nothing written on the outside, just the flap tucked in, not even sealed. Reminded me of how my mother used to give out birthday cards. I always thought that was a little weird, but it was just one of her quirks that made her even more endearing to everyone.

I sat down a little heavier than I had planned and felt the chair crack a little. There was a single sheet of paper inside, folded in half; I was right- handmade paper. But that wasnt important, what was important was the heavy, blocky hand-written message it contained.

"We've been looking for you for a long time. It has come to my attention that you may have something unique to contribute after all. We may have been too hasty in judging your Ability to be a Contributor. I believe you do actually have a remarkable Ability to Survive. I'd like to speak to you this afternoon in the plaza outside the Blue Mosque. I will be alone, and you can approach me, so as to allay your justifiable suspicions. I will have a silver coffee set on the table in front of me.

I believe we can help each other, if you're willing to listen to my proposition.

-Soon,

Baddar"

Well, this is interesting.

#writing prompt #short story #what if #what would you do #one shot #writeblr #death #language

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weareallfallengods · 4 years