The Last Contract by Jason

Meredith is a happy child and today is her birthday. She has been given a wonderful gift; a song called “For Hope.’ She is seven and this is not just any song. Mama has impressed upon Meredith the importance of this song above all others. There will come a time, when Meredith is much older, when she will need to sing this song, to offer it up to the world with all of her heart. As happy as she is to receive this gift and keep it safe, Meredith cannot help but be worried by the look on Mama’s face: behind the smiles and the laughter, Meredith sees a sadness in her Mama, like an ice chip sitting in her heart. It’s like Mama knows something bad is going to happen but she won’t tell Meredith, like the time just before Papa walked away from them for good. Meredith takes hold of Mama’s hand desperate to make her happy again.

In the soothing coolness of the pre-dawn night the chapel stood on the outskirts of the abandoned town. A simple building, square and squat with a rusted crucifix jutting up from the roof directly in line with the single, wooden door. The once white adobe walls were pock marked and pitted, scoured by the relentless winds that whipped off the barren sands. The only source of illumination came from the scattering of cold stars. Silence hung about the old building like forgotten cobwebs.

A harsh metallic line broke the horizon, and suddenly light blazed, silver slivers tearing into the indigo calm of the night air. The unforgiving sun reared up over the rough edge of the world, forcing its searing white rays into the sky and across the purple bruise of the desert plains, banishing both stars and shadows with its cruel intensity.

A car, beetle black, pulled up at the chapel, its engine running hot in the morning air. A door opened and a man got out. Alone. No luggage. No companion. He looked into the car’s interior as if about to ask a question and the door slammed shut, the car drove off, leaving behind the man and a cloud of amber dust. He squinted, holding his hand across his face to shade his tired eyes. He spat on the dry ground at his feet and sighed, then entered the old chapel.

The Priest had finally arrived. 

The Women are walking to the Edge. To the place where their songs must be heard. Always moving, if they stay still, they will be discovered. They walk in daylight and rest at night, no right-minded person would walk the worlds when the storms bring the night-beasts. The sun is getting low but Meredith is happy. It is hard to be happy but for some reason that she cannot quite work out, she is happy this day. Happy in this moment. There is a vague recollection in Meredith’s mind that tomorrow is a special day, a marker of some sort. Long ago Mama would have made confections that Meredith would have been able to share with her friends. Her school friends? Yes! It was when she attended school, reading and writing and friendships and the like. She smiles at the memory and is glad of its company. She is old now, born in the Preceding, just. Most of these Women were born in the After and don’t have many happy memories. Meredith knows she will tell the others of her memory in tonight’s gathering; she will share this happiness as she used to share her confections. Cakes! Mama would call them cakes! The strange word pirouettes in her head and giggles at her. Meredith is positive that tonight she will tell the other women all about cakes. She hopes it will ease them into happier dreams.

“…just sign on the dotted line,” the voice slunk its way out from the darkness, deep, soft and silken, like a wave of warm caramel rolling over a burning stove.

The Priest looked into the shadows, into the dark end of the chapel. Was that movement, the flick of a hand moving in his direction? Get on with it! He couldn’t be sure – it was like watching shadows passing through each other. Crow black shapes scraping against the night sky, sending out shards of jet. But he felt it – the heat, the simmering heat and the impatience. The pyrotechnic need to get the documents signed and stamped and filed away.

Sign on the dotted line.

But this was not just any signature. No. It was not just letters arranged neatly on the page and pressed into the bone white paper. It was more than that, much, much more. It could never be so trivial. This was an admission. This was a capitulation. This was the tipping point. It was no ordinary document. It had weight and enduring finality. It was the last link in the chain, the one that locked them in, for good. Like the ghost in that old book rattling his chains trying to warn his greedy friend. But there was no-one else here to listen to the clank of this ghost. There was just the Priest and he could only hear history screaming at him. There was no going back, no do overs, no time to reconsider. No more – could we just?

This was it.

Sign here.

Sign and be damned, don’t sign and be damned. Chose the nature of your damnation like you were deciding which syrup to have in your morning coffee. Should I get the hazelnut or the peppermint today? He looked in the other direction, out beyond the small church doorway and across the burning desert plain. In the distance the hot winds picked up sand and dust and ash and played with them like a child would a spinning top. Dust Devils. That’s what his grandfather had called them.

Dust.

Devils.

That was more than just dust playing in the wind. It was the final pieces of the world. The minute remnants of civilisation: the roads, the schools, the offices and the homes. The glass and steel of the final dreams.

It was the bones.

The remains of the men and the women that had drawn up the plans – the spires, the castles, the glittering cathedral cities and those that had built and populated them. The ones who had thrived and connived and made fortunes and fairy tales would be protected by his signature. And those that laboured in the depths to witness the dreams of the thrivers come true? The dust was like memory – transitory, incomplete and unreliable. The swirling clouds were the last monument of mankind. The only true memorial. These devils played with the dead.

This signature sealed the fate of The Priest’s employers.

He looked away from the swirls of dust and took a deep breath.

Meredith regards the metal tube. As a teenager, she watched them from a far. There were so many of them, all scratching their thin white tracks across the sky, so high up they were mere specks. Yet, they seemed to fill the skies, so many that you stopped noticing them. Then, one cool autumn morning, it happened, quietly but all at once. The first flying machine cutting through the clear blue encountered some nameless fault. Then the seemingly gentle kiss of metal on concrete followed by the red orange ball blooming, rising and engulfing.

They all fell. All of them. Across the world, one by one, these metal machines fell from the skies. And just as quickly all the other man-mades stopped. The great shutting down. The Collapse and The Madness. Sitting in this twisted carcass now Meredith can’t quite believe that this lumpy thing ever touched the blue. It looks so heavy and cumbersome, so terribly crude. She marvels at the skill to keep this metal and plastic creation in the air and smiles. The seat cushions are musty but offer a comfortable enough bed for her old bones. The body of the inert machine offers shelter for her and the rest of the Women. The wind whips up outside, beyond the hole in the metal wall a heavy rain starts to fall. The hot downpour has a rhythm, a heavy, insistent beat. She rolls over onto her side and closes her eyes. Tomorrow will be another day, she thinks. Our journey takes us closer to the water’s edge. Tonight, we dream of bright confections and mothering smiles.

It was all dying.

Not everyone could be saved.

The Leaders had tried. They had invested as much as they possibly could, without damaging voter or shareholder confidence of course. By the time they had admitted the truth there was nothing else they could do but save themselves. When the Devil made them an offer it was recognised as having potential. It was a good starting point at least. After weeks of searching the Ordained Leaders confirmed that God could not be found. He was not answering their calls. So, a Business decision was made, negotiations with the Devil began in earnest. Light Bringer despatched his Advocate to negotiate on his behalf. The Business and the Church Leaders sent representatives to meet the Advocate’s Team. Over a series of closed meetings, assurances were sought, concessions were requested. Some were denied, others were granted – protections for assets and certain persons and their families. These details were not important in the grander scheme of things. A list was made and a deal was hammered out. Both sides eventually agreed to the terms. Contracts were quickly drawn up. The Leadership told the masses that this was a great deal, created for the good of all mankind.

The Advocate smiled.

Meredith is shaken from her dream to find a hand over her mouth, a face looming over her. Jess, the other Medician in the troop. Fear dances at the corner of Jess’s eyes, she holds a finger across her mouth. Meredith nods slowly, signalling her understanding. Jess’s hand drops from her face and she starts to sign.

• Rakshasa. Close. Sissy and Willa have been taken.
• Run or fight?
• Run. There are too many of them. I think Priest-Men are among their number.
• Dangerous!
• Yes. Gather your bag, we will need both our medicals come the end of the day.

Meredith moves with a silent precision. The sun is rising, dimly reflecting in the dirty pools left after the rain. It will be hard to be silent in this boot sucking glop, Meredith thinks, then she touches Jess’s shoulder and nods ahead. In the shadow of the twisted scrub Rakshasa, weapons drawn, watching the women as they emerge from the fuselage. The Priest-Men advance. Meredith knows there are too many of them. Jess begins to sob.

The Priest left the church with a strange feeling boiling his innards.  The late afternoon sun beat down on his head like a series of hammer blows and acidic bile rose up his throat and spilt out of his mouth in thick, glistening, yellow ribbons. When it finally stopped, he wiped his mouth with the sleeve of his expensive suit jacket and looked across the silver sands and up into the glassy sky. Empty. Even the dust devils had ceased their games. The world suddenly seemed devoid of all life. This is what it feels like to have missed the exodus, he thought. He felt as if he should feel more. Where was his anger? His remorse? His fear? In the blazing heat he felt nothing. He looked at the bile drying on the sand at his feet, perhaps the last of his feelings had already died, he just hadn’t realised it till that moment.

From within the church The Priest heard the crackle of tiny voices, the chitter chatter of the Advocate and their administrators at work, stamping documents and preparing them for filing. Followed by the booming laughter of Light Bringer himself. Champagne corks popped, cheers and congratulations brought a conclusion to the proceedings. The final victory. The Priest shuddered, glancing back into the tumble of shadows and in that instant, he knew his name had been charred, blackened in the furnace of his employers’ vanity and stupidity. He was irredeemable. Lost. He may have signed on behalf of the Leadership but it was his name and his name alone on the document.

He closed his eyes.

In the distance, a small black beetle shape juddered to a halt, clouds of dust settling on its shiny metal work.

The Priest straightened his tie and cleaned his sleeve as best he could and nodded. With the resolve of the damned, he headed out toward the ragged line of the burning horizon.

Metal kisses the skin at a point just below Meredith’s skull. She feels pressure, a point of delirious contact. The coldness of steel, pushing at her epidermis, sharp as it breaks through, finding its way deeper by degrees. Seeking the kiss, the splash of crimson, the wet blossom against old dry skin. She feels the edge cutting strands and fibres and nerve endings. Severing her memory from her flesh. The spirit from the corporeal. It’s hot and slow. It’s pain and laughter and sadness. It’s the end. She knows this and embraces it and still, even in the face of this inevitability, she wishes it weren’t so. She wanted to see the Edge. She wanted something poetic perhaps. Purposeful. She wanted to be close to water one last time, to sing one last time. Since the Signature the waters had, along with everything else, changed. They no longer obeyed any natural order. Damn that priest. Damn that pen. Falling to devils and temptations. Failing everyone’s futures.

The metal penetrates further, more strands are severed. Childhood pets are forgotten, the rules of a game disappear, the face of a lover evaporates. Memories lose shape and fall away. Life falls away. All she has left is metal and the light falling on Jess’s bloodless face. Moments left and all she can think of is the song. The notes, the melody and the rhythm. As everything else fades to nothing Mama’s song remains, brilliant and strong. She opens her mouth and the notes fly into the morning sky. Bright, clear tones dancing upward, in search of the winds and other voices. The metal meets Meredith’s throat and the sound falters. Meredith smiles knowing that she has done as Mama asked. She has given all she can. As Meredith dies, she looks up into the sky and sees an angel flying high on bright, gossamer wings. It is dancing in the winds and feasting on her song and Meredith hopes that wherever she is, Mama is finally happy.

The sun-scarred man in the expensive suit looks up, a flash of wing, a hint of song on the wind. He carries on walking towards the horizon, knowing he will walk forever. The fragile song passes over head. It is already forgotten.