The other side of the bed was empty when he awoke. He made no sound - swamped with muck and fever, the world like a thick painting of greys and blues. And she wasn’t there on the other side of the bed, where she should’ve been. Curious.
He heaved his sweating, aching form upright, facing the empty unlit bathroom. A streetlight in the window dotted yellow like a bright star. Dull pain swam in his head. A heavy combination of nasal congestion, and perhaps dehydration, and any number of things… Soreness in it all. Breathing, against a course of inflammation and mucus.
“*snrk* …. *’grmm*…”
He found himself standing some moments later, in the upstairs hallway. In a checkpoint of sorts, head still swimming. He dragged his feet to the stairs, and descended them in slow steps, clinging to the railing.
A lamp was on in the living room.
“*sdrff!*” He stood at the bottom of the stairs, still holding onto the railing. The air was cooler downstairs - somehow making the streaming of his nose more apparent. “*sndrff*…”
There was a tissue box on the coffee table in front of the sofa. And on the sofa, there was a lump of blankets, and from the lump of blankets, came a peculiar sound. Slowly, he shuffled closer.
The blanket pile groaned softly as he reached the sofa. From an opening in the fabric, her face peeked out, half-obscured with a rumpled tissue. Making the same strange muffled sounds as before, her body shuddered beneath the blankets, as she muffled sneeze after wet sneeze into the tissue in her palm.
He sank down next to her on the sofa, not trusting his face not to burst with pain if he bent over. He pulled the tissue box nearer. His hand found her shoulder on top of the layered blankets as she sat in a dizzy interlude, panting through parted lips. Her head hung, causing her hair to fall into her face. Carefully, he lifted a hand and moved back the unruly strands.
Her face crumpled with a closed-eyed scowl as- “iyY’ISSCHhiuh!” another sneeze came, misting his hand. She lifted the damp tissue to sneeze again, over and over, intense and less smothered than before. “huUd’ISCHHh!! uht’ISSCHH!!-isschh!!-isschhioo!!” Suddenly, he turned away from her and let out a harsh, spraying sneeze, too quick to consider covering.
“hdt’zZZSCHHhioo-!!” He sniffled liquidly, and coughed, blinking teary eyes. She huffed an awful, wheezy shell of her laugh. The “Bless you” sounded worse. The urge was still strong, making his breath snag. She was pressing a tumbleweed of tissues into his hand, which he only had time to lift before a fierce second sneeze burst from him. A desperate exclamation, grazing his raw throat and soaking the layers of tissue. “haAD’TCHIEWWhh!!!” He pulled more to blow his nose, making a noise he could’ve compared to a brass solo in a sad andante.
As he sat quietly, blinking in reset, he felt her head sink onto his shoulder. She drew a thick, liquid sniffle. The warmth that emanated from her was both pleasant and concerning. He let the side of his head rest gently against hers.
two dusty attached survivors of an apocalypse. one night they find a crate full of moonshine and A admits to being a snzfucker, drawling on for a bit about it. afterward the two don’t talk about it for some days, then one night B passes A a skilled pen drawing on a ripped empty envelope, of a flushed dripping nose. A goes red and tucks it away somewhere safe. more days pass. then a month. one chilly night after their coal-cooked dinner, B pulls something out of their bag and gives it to A. a small voice recorder. A gets confused and asks what it’s for. B says something vague like ‘day journaling’ and ‘recording humanity during this era’, and A shrugs and puts it away. days pass and one night A is lying alone inside an abandoned house where they set up camp, and B is outside hunting. A finds the voice recorder in their bag, and out of boredom, presses the little buttons. their eyes widen as a waveform-clipping sneeze plays through the little speaker. they sound like B. A finds more recordings, feeling warmer, fascinated. when B returns, A is looking at them some way.
aghh. I don’t think we’re reaching hurt/comfort territory yet, just a great deal of angst. in this next part, the scavenger returns to the cathedral with supplies and intentions to help the great Houdini, who is less than receptive.
The ill survivor was a snorer. At least, the scavenger thought, when she was ill. There was a painting in what looked like an old meeting room at the back of the cathedral, with a number of curious handmade throwing knives pin-cushioned in the torn, scratched out canvas. On the folding table pushed to one side, there was a black roll of tape, and next to it, skinny fragments of broken stained glass window taped together.
She was curled up on the floor behind the altar, covered in her big black hoodie and a nest of choir gowns. Tucked between her body and the table with the Eucharist were a couple of bags. Quietly, the scavenger pulled the strap over his head and lowered the duffel bag onto the floor. Her complexion was worrying. It occurred to him that he might have to come back again later or the next day, and he didn’t even know if the wild thing was someone who swallowed pills, or…
As he thoughtfully looked up at the pillars that curved into the ornate ceiling, his eyes caught on a sharp object attached to a chandelier. No, in fact, many sharp objects. Above the pews hung wrought iron chandeliers, whose delicate halos were decked out with numerous blades and shards of glass. Two columns of six above the inner-nave side of two columns of pews. Each chandelier was no longer chained and wired into the ceiling, but rigged from the wooden framework, hanging from rope or cord in a sort of deadly fly system. The scavenger's eyes shifted to the third pew on the right side, where he’d sat and spoke to her for the first time.
He stood staring at the polished wood, wondering how long it would have taken someone to find him, had he done the wrong thing and kicked it Phantom of the Opera style. And then, his back was thrown against the hard sanctuary floor. His teeth clacked, his shoulder blades taking the brunt of the impact.
“You,” she hissed, as he groaned. Her throat barely let her voice a growl.
A knee pressed down on his sternum and in a millisecond she unsheathed a knife. He was then fearful in a whole other way as she sucked in a noisy, liquid sniffle; then another, and then moisture began oozing onto her upper lip. Directly above him, her flushed nose was wriggling. The daylight revealed a chapped soreness that wasn’t as clear before in the orange candlelight. Her sunken eyes shone and she scowled, trying to focus. She lost her balance as he pushed her thigh forward with one hand. As she fell on top of him, he grabbed her left wrist, the one wielding the blade, and rolled over to pin her to the ground.
“What was all that- about respecting gothic revival?” he grunted, pushing down on her arms with both hands. He cried out as she kneed him in the stomach. “The sconces are weeping…”
“I redecorated,” she wheezed, gripped his shoulder, and pushed him off of her with all her might. “It’s called collaboratiod.” She sounded as if she could barely breathe, crawling to pin him sideways across the chest.
“Who are you? Jan Hakon Erichson?” He simply sat up, planting a hand on either side of her frame, and shoved her outward, succeeding in rolling her a couple of feet away from him.
She lay there, panting, a hand on her ribs, the other bracing against the ground. As she began to attempt to push herself up, a consuming, chesty cough overtook her. Rather than try and pin her again, he scooted backward, watching as she coughed heavily and sniffled. The sound echoed in the spacious hall. Very wetly, and thickly, and… “Who… who the fuck is… Jad…”
“He was an Instagram sculptor-artist guy who- fucked around with knives and pulleys and- actually hurt himself pretty badly once,” he went on, staccato. Instagram had once been a thing. He imagined her as the type to have used it.
“What do you wadt?” she demanded hoarsely.
“Nothing, I swear to god.” She glared kitchen knives at him. “I brought you medicine.”
“You were supposed to leave mbe alode,” she croaked.
“I brought you water.”
“For god’s sake…” her weak voice hitched with laughter, a sad, defeated noise, then thick, phlegmy coughing. She drew a long, exaggerated breath.
“And you know what else?”
“heEHyY’AASSCHHieww!!! -euh….” she erupted with that same shrieking sneeze, groaning a little after. How hard had he thrown her?
“Handkerchiefs.”
Wincing, she looked at him sideways. Her shoulders hunched, her eyes and nose streaming. Under the gentle hues casted by the stained glass, she sniffled and pawed at her face, half-hiding. There wasn’t anywhere to hide. This was the rumoured Houdini.
“What is even your problem with me? You seemed chuffed getting to know me last night.”
“I was drunk.”
“And why? I could’ve-“ he paused.
“*sdrff* …Yeah?”
“I could’ve killed you.”
A pause, as the ill survivor smirked at her knees. “Ndo you wouldn’t have. *sdrf-sngk*”
He sat there, about five to six feet away, watching her reposition the knife in her hand. Under her hoodie sleeve, she had some sort of armband. The knife was attached- he couldn’t see how, before she hid her arms between her bent legs.
“Everything’s in the bag,” he told her. “I’ll go, if that’s what you want.”
She said nothing. Frowning, he didn’t wait much longer before getting to his feet. He brushed the dust and dirt from his arms, hoping he wouldn’t have shards stuck anywhere, and began a steady walk to where he came from.
“Don’t wadda be here when it detodates?”
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” he exclaimed. He stepped over to the duffel bag beside the pulpit. He unzipped it and pulled the edges of the opening apart. “Fabric. Okay? Look.” He showed her the handkerchiefs, which really, were more accurately rags, but they were clean and the softest cloth he could find. There was a folded blanket too, which was warm itchy plaid. “Plastic and water,” he pulled at the water bottles he’d looted from a motel, in a back room with a cork board covered with staff group photos. “Pills.” The canister in the sealed box rattled. “I don’t know- can you swallow these? They’re expired, but…” He tossed the box back into the bag. “Take them or don’t.”
He saw her peek at him in his peripheral vision, but her gaze had hidden by the time he looked over. He released a huff of air, like a provoked bull. Unwilling to fight or deal out unnecessary harm. Not wanting to be talked down to either. Again, he started towards the arch at the far right side at the back of the sanctuary.
“You kdow the cool thi’g about gothic architecture? *hsdff*” The ill survivor spoke, as his feet reached the marble edge outside the dirty carpet. “It’s all so… poidty.”
The scavenger paused. She rubbed a very flushed nose, breathing heavily. She pivoted to face him, and sniffled deeply, her nose crinkling.
“You ever seed the Mbilan Cathedral?” she asked him.
He wasn’t sure why he was still standing there. “No.”
“Poidtiest buildi’g you’ve ever seed. Gorgeous.”
Her eyebrows furrowed a little as her nose twinged. While she took a moment, distracted by a dawdling sneeze, the scavenger looked up to make sure he wasn’t standing beneath a hidden knife-chandelier. She sighed, and sniffled, raising the back of her hand to rub her nose.
“hh’They say that sobe mbotifs are borrowed frob Islabic architecture. The trefoil- -’ISSCHHiuh!!! *hsdrff!* AAEEISCHHh-!!” She paused for air, eyes glassy from the harsh, throaty pair of sneezes. Without the rain to dampen the sound, they rang out clearly, bouncing off the church walls.
“Bless you,” the scavenger heard himself say. She blinked up at him with teary eyes, with a soft sort of bewilderment. Quickly, the scavenger diverted his gaze. Then, “The trefoil-?”
“Umb… *snrK!* The trefoil arches- *ahem!* were copied by Christiads, *sddrf!* to represedt the Holy Tridity. Isd't that fud? *snngk~*”
He stared at her. “Are you like a historian, or something?”
In place of her bitter chuckle, she huffed a tight exhale, wearing a tired grin. “I’b just saying. All I did is make this place a little poidtier. In mby owd way.”
His brow furrowed. “Is that why you don’t like gothic revival?”
“I just thigk the soul gets lost in certaid levels of grandeur.”
He frowned at the top of her scruffy brown hair. Then he took a replenishing breath through his nose. “Woman, if you don’t take these,” the scavenger marched back over to the bag.
“You’ll what?” He looked over. She was ogling him with a Cheshire Cat stare, wholly unafraid. “You godda kill mbe, Doubting Thobas, before this fever does?”
The church walls seemed to swallow him, as they always had. The scavenger dug his fingernails under the glued flaps of the medicine box. “Nah. The good news is, if I get found out, you’ll never see me again.”
“So this is sacred? Mbeadi’g doe ode else kdows? Hey, dod’t litter,” she scolded as the stiff paper hit the ground.
The look of incredulity he tossed didn’t seem to faze her. After a beat, he crouched, and picked up the empty box. It was a good thing he did, as the directions were printed on the side.
“Cross my heart. Here, take this.” He tossed her one of the rags. She caught it reflexively. Their eyes connected for a beat, before he went back to twisting open the childproof lid on the canister.
“Oh mby god…” she murmured nasally, unfolding and refolding it. “heuh…” There was a soft, vocal, fluttering breath, and then a sneeze that seemed to crash upon her throat with a dry, pained ferocity evolved from the night before. “aAAR’RESSCHHIUHh!!! …unhh… *hsddf*”
The scavenger checked for the gun on his hip, and lifted his eyes to the brilliant stained glass windows, which were striped with splintering boards. A few feet away, he heard her blowing her nose, productively.
“*ahemm* … *snnrfh!*” She kept blowing, then paused to breathe.
“Hey,” he said, turning. “Would you take candy from a stranger?” He connected her gaze, pills in hand. He hoped a bad joke wouldn’t get him killed at this point. Truth be told, his back still hurt.
She eyed him wearily, her expression heckling. Then she snuffled, and lowered the rag, addressing him in a battered professorly tone. “What did the first wobad do id the garded of Eded?”
He pouted vaguely. “…Entertain some snake and get banished for eternity?”
Eve held out her hand. The scavenger shrunk the gap between them with two steps, and dropped the pills into her palm. She studied them for a moment while he turned to get her one of the bottles of water.
“How do I kdow these aren’t poisod?”
“Because the packaging was sealed,” he masked less of his annoyance. “And so is this, just so you don’t accuse me, yet again, of trying to kill you.” He set the plastic water bottle down next to her on the floor. “Look. The cotton that was inside,” he held up the half-handful of fluff.
“Do you deed like a kidney or sobethi’g?” muttered the ill survivor.
He huffed his first chuckle in a long time. “God forbid, as they say.”
“Piece of mby liver?”
“Not unless I have eagle feathers.”
He turned to see her still looking at the pills in her hand. They were liquigels. A fluorescent Tide Pod orange. They weren’t the drowsy kind, not that he’d had many options. There was an empty offertory basket lined with darkened velvet by the altar. She reached over and dropped the pills into the donation box, a gift for no one to receive.
“Oh, honestly?” the scavenger muttered, frowning.
The ill survivor didn’t look at him. She sat there, still, on the floor. She tugged at the sleeve of her hoodie, reminding him subtly that she was armed.
“What, so…” He paced a couple of steps, and put his hands on his hips. “Syrup, then?”
She sucked in a couple of deep, snorting sniffles. The scavenger sighed and covered his face with his hands. He dragged them down slowly, staring at the carvings under the stained glass windows. Shapes of saints whose names he didn’t know.
“Go,” she said, her voice low and tired.
He glanced at her again, feeling an empty despair. What was different? She hadn’t hogtied him or made him swear not to reveal her location to his superiors. She would rather chug holy vinegar than touch the factory-sealed water he’d given her. In fact, she hadn’t even secured the building much at all. Twice, he’d waltzed in, and other than being shoved over, there wasn’t a scratch on him. He watched her thin shoulders rise and fall with laboured breaths, her eyes lost in a faraway stare.
“Eve,” he breathed.
“Please, just go. *grm!* Take the stuff if you dod’t wadt to waste it.”
The scavenger looked at the open duffel bag, with no intention of moving it. The bottle of water still sat next to her. She hugged her knees to her chest, fiddling with the armband under her sleeve.
The scavenger took one last look at her. The dusty black hoodie that cloaked her. The singe marks at the bottom of the denim skirt, the distressed threads. ‘I was drunk’, and ‘You were supposed to leave me alone’. He swallowed hard through a tight feeling in his throat, then made himself turn and walk away.
“*hsddrff* …. *kof, koF!*”
Before he reached the door, he stopped. With a non-god-fearing impulse, he drew on his buried credentials and tried talking like her.
“We aren’t just souls, you know. The- The settlers, and their descendants, the ones who built all this? They were breathing beings like us. Skeptical beings, like Saint Thomas.” He turned to see her looking at him, her eyes and nose reddened to a state that made his face hurt sympathetically. “Unlike God - we have the burden of skepticism. It keeps us alive, until it doesn’t.”
She didn’t smile, but huffed a ghost of a chuckle. “What about sobeode who trusts? Then gets alienated and labelled a sinner for every generation to cobe?”
Thomas shifted. He blinked down at his feet, then lifted his gaze once more. “She gets to see the generations.”
