Saturday Sample: Afterwards by K M Kendrick, spring water

 

Girl

 

 

This is the story of my death.  And of what happened next.

 

 

They don’t understand what is happening at first.  They arrive confused, frightened, and entirely naked.  They have no memory of what their life was like before.  I am the only one who does, and I have no idea why.

I like to help them, if I can.  It can help just to see another human.  I show them where their things are.  I try not to hang around once they’ve calmed down.  I’ve never been much of a social person, even before.

It never gets fully light here.  I used to love that time, back home, when the streetlamps were flickering on, and the sky was becoming a deep indigo.  It felt like a twisted joke when I arrived here: a messed up version of Heaven where the stuff you love becomes, well, hellish.

I know I’m dead because I remember dying.  I took an overdose when I found out I was pregnant.  An overreaction, in hindsight.  It was a proper overdose, designed to kill:  I did my research.   I became sick, and sleepy, and at the very last moment repentant and cowardly: ohgodnowhatdidido?  Too late, here I am. 

The first few days in this place were predictably nightmarish.  I woke up stark naked, in the middle of the night.  I remember screaming with cold, and fear.  I had never felt cold like this when I’d been alive; it felt as though my blood was freezing on the inside.  I curled into a ball and wished to die all over again.  Except this time I didn’t.  I remained miserably alive, in Hell. 

It wasn’t until I’d calmed down that I found the bundle which had been left for me.  Clothes, shoes, a knife and some food.  I didn’t stop to wonder who my benefactor was.  I dressed, I ate and then I curled up again and cried myself to sleep, hoping to wake up somewhere else.

There isn’t much to look at in this world.  I remember the old world being so full; of people and things, lights and noise.  This world is quiet, and dark.  I spend my days trying to find shelter for the night.  You can’t stay in the same place because you might get found.  So you look for somewhere new each night.  A tree with leaves is OK if you can climb it; if you can get high enough up they probably won’t see you.  Most of the trees are bare but you can still camp behind them. 

Some days I want them to find me. 

The tree I slept behind last night is a huge old skeleton.  I’ve been here a couple of days now, which is unusual for me, but I like this old fella.  One of its limbs is pointing out towards the edge of the trees as though it’s trying to direct me.  It has character.  I’ll probably move on today though.

I’ve started leaving markers around the woods to help me to navigate.  I carve a heart shape into the bark.  Sorry old man.

 

It’s the middle of the morning before I start to pack away my few possessions.  I’ll travel in the direction I’ve decided to call North.  There is no reason for this decision and it isn’t really North.  It’s as meaningless as everything else in this place.

I’ve just picked up my bundle and am about to walk when a tiny noise immediately puts me on my guard.  I stop and look around, trying to seem as though I’m not looking.  I spot him almost straightaway.  I remove the knife from the pack.

‘Come out.’

Nothing.

‘Come out.  Now!’

Still nothing.  I move towards the trees, holding the knife in front of me.

‘Who are you?’

I can see him a little more clearly now.  I relax a little. 

‘Oh.  You’re new.’

He’s a boy of around twelve or thirteen.  He’s staring at me with terror in his eyes.

‘It’s alright.  I’ll help you.  There must be some things around here for you.  Let’s see.’

I find his pack behind one of the trees.

‘Look.  You have some clothes here.  And food.  Oh, and –’ I hold up a bow. 

I half turn my back as he dresses.  You can never be totally sure about them, but he looks alright.  When he’s dressed I hand him the rest and he eats, hungrily. 

‘You’ll be fine, now,’ I lie.  ‘Just stay hidden at night.’

He is staring at me with wide eyes.  He looks like he is going to cry.  For a moment something stirs in me; something I’ve locked away.  Then I turn away from him and begin to walk.

After a few minutes I turn and look back.  The boy is behind me.  I stop walking. 

When he reaches me I say ‘Look.  You can’t come with me.  I can’t even look after myself.  I’ll get you killed.’

He just looks at me.  Sometimes they can’t remember how to talk.  He must be a mute.

‘Just stay here, okay?’

He stops walking.  For a moment I feel something – disappointment maybe, or guilt.  Then I carry on.

I walk until the late afternoon.  I finally stop when the light is disappearing.  I’m still in the woods.  The clearing in front of me looks disturbingly similar to one I spent the night in a few days ago.  That should have been way back, in the opposite direction.

It’s more open than I’d like but I’ll just have to take my chances.  Soon it’ll be too dark to continue.

I sit on a rock and eat the remains of my breakfast.  The fading light is casting eerie shadows across the landscape from the skeletal trees and jagged hills.  I daren’t risk a fire, not here. 

He appears in the distance.  He’s followed me all day.  He looks exhausted; he’s walking in zig-zags.  Pity finally overpowers self-preservation.  When he reaches me I offer him my blanket.  He accepts and falls asleep immediately, while I watch him and shiver.

 

I lived in a city.  Cars passed our house day and night.  There was always light.  I had a telescope but you couldn’t see many stars because of light pollution.  So every now and again we’d go off somewhere into the countryside with a blanket and the telescope and just look at the stars.

I miss stars.

 

I finally fall asleep.  I’m awoken by a noise I don’t recognise.  It sounds like an animal.  My hand goes to my knife.  I stand over the boy and wait.  He stirs.  Don’t wake up.  The last thing I need is him panicking and crying right now.

There is a snuffling sound to my left.  I close my eyes even though it is completely dark.  It doesn’t sound too big.  It is getting closer.  I wait until I actually feel its breath on my skin and I thrust forward with the knife.  It makes a thin squeal and I hear it drop, heavily.  I stand motionless for a few minutes in case there are any more but everything is silent.

Sleep has left me now.  I’m alone with my thoughts. 

 

Another memory appears, unasked for.  Me and Mum.  We’re in the kitchen, making a cake.  I can smell it as it cooks; it smells really nice.  I’m happy.  I hug Mum, and then out of nowhere she starts to cry.  Big crying, as she used to say, not just a sniffle.  She won’t tell me why.  I wonder whether I did something wrong.  It isn’t till later that I understand.

     

The boy wakes with the meagre morning light. 

      ‘Hi,’ I say. 

He stares at me for a moment.  Then he says: ‘hi.’ 

I smile.  I think that’s my first smile in this place.  I’ve almost forgotten how.

‘You can talk!’

He nods.  ‘Yes.’

‘Are you hungry?’

‘Yes.’

I use the first light of the day to help me skin the animal I killed last night. 

‘What is that?’

‘An animal.  It was him or us.  And now we can eat him.’

‘OK.’

I make a fire.  That’s one thing that’s easy enough here; everything is tinderbox dry.  Keeping it small and hidden isn’t quite as easy.

We tear off strips of meat and cook them in small chunks, eating as we go. Then I wrap up the rest to eat later.

‘Can I stay with you?’

He looks at me with pleading eyes.  I don’t know how to refuse.

‘Alright.  But you have to take care of yourself.  I can barely take care of me.’

‘Alright.’  He seems to relax a little.  ‘Where are we?’ he asks.

‘I don’t know.  I woke up here like you did.  Do you remember anything from before?’

‘Before?  What do you mean?’

That would be a no then.  ‘Never mind.  Do you have a name?’

He stares at me blankly.  I consider him; short black hair, brown skin, big brown eyes.  He reminds me of my cousin.  ‘I’m going to call you Ali.’

He nods.  ‘What should I call you?’

I think about this.  I had a name, back then.  But the person attached to it was so different from me.  ‘I don’t know.’

‘What about Girl? I could call you Girl.’

I shrug.  ‘Alright.’

It doesn’t take long for me to discover that not only is Ali not mute, he’s very talkative.  Annoyingly talkative.  He’s a question-asker. 

‘Where do the things come from?  The packs?  When we arrive?’

‘I don’t know.  Where do you think they come from?’

‘I think someone is looking after us.’

I look around at the dead landscape.  The earth here has been scorched in a wide arc.  It grins at me unpleasantly.  I can see no goodness here. 

When I look back at the boy I see the hope in his eyes.

‘Yes, maybe,’ I say.

 

There’s something I should probably share with you at this point.  It seems like you’ve earned it.  You’ve stayed with me this far.

I have a secret, and it goes like this:

The truly ironic part of all of this is that the thing the overdose was designed to cure is still here with me: I am still pregnant, the only lost soul in the whole of the underworld who is with child.

 

My life had been pretty normal until my fifteenth year.  It was just me and Mum, living in a council flat.  My Dad didn’t exist to me in any real sense; he was a story Mum told every now and then.  Sometimes the details changed as though she had made him up entirely.

We were happy.  Take a look at fifteen year old me: I was confident, doing well at school (take that statistical probability).  I had a boyfriend, sort of.  He wasn’t my baby’s father.  He was a sweet, nerdy kid from my school year.  George.  We had fun together that was never going to amount to a lifetime commitment.  We’d bunk off school together every now and again and do something more enjoyable. We lived a couple of miles from the seaside so we’d walk up there sometimes and play in the arcade or mess about on the beach.

I barely recognise that happy, carefree girl: taking selfies on the pier, getting detentions.  Thinking too much about her hair.  A normal teenager.

It changed.  Why did it change?

How did I get to here?

 

I know I am pregnant because a) I feel crappy all of the time and b) I still have all of the symptoms: sore boobs, nausea, pain.  No period, if periods are still a thing here.  Who knows?

And also, I just feel it.  It’s as though the whole death thing never happened to me.  It’s like I’m exactly the same person I was before, except I’m in this shitty place and I remember dying.  So there it is.  In about seven months Hell is going to hear the pitter patter.  If I can survive that long.

 

‘Do you remember before?’

‘Yes.’

‘Well, what was it like?’

‘Big.  And complicated.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well – there were lots of things.  We had so much stuff.  Phones, IPads, TVs.’

‘What are they?’

‘Just things.  They helped us talk to each other.’

‘Oh.’ A momentary pause.  ‘How?’

I sigh.  ‘Enough, Ali.  Enough questions.’

‘Please?  Just tell me.’

‘Alright.  Last one.  We could see each other and hear one another’s voices.  And we could send messages.’

I could see him trying to decide if he could risk another question.  ‘No.  I need a bit of alone time.  I’ve been on my own for weeks, and now you.  It’s too much, all in one go.’

He looks a little crestfallen, then smiles broadly.  ‘I’ll get some firewood,’ he says. 

‘Be careful,’ I warn him.  ‘Keep looking around you.’

‘You do care about me!’

‘No.  I just don’t want to have to rescue you.’

He disappears into the leafless wood. 

I sit still, enjoying the quiet left behind in the boy’s wake.  It is nice to have some company.  Even if he talks too much.  I’m starting to realise that I’ve probably spent too much time alone.  I’ve adjusted to it, and now it’s hard to change back.

There is a faint breeze, which is unusual.  It blows the dust around in swirls around my feet.  I wiggle my feet and it causes the dirt to make new patterns in the air.  You make your own amusement here.        

I’ve been daydreaming for a while when I realise that Ali should have returned by now.  I pick up my knife and follow his footprints. 

A few metres away I find him in a clearing.  He is in a tree.  Below the tree are two – what are they?  I can’t focus on them properly.  They are looking up at him.  Something about them is repulsive; they’re beasts.  I feel sick just looking at them.  I want to kill them, to completely destroy them.  I know I’m outnumbered.  I go back to the camp and find Ali’s bow.  I’ve never used one of these before, but it seems like my best option.  I try to keep myself hidden and aim the arrow towards the nearest one.  It makes it hissing noise in the air and lands nowhere near them.  I try again and miss again and this time they see me.

The nearest creature comes charging at me making angry noises.  It’s still out of focus.  I discard the bow and charge towards it with my knife.  At the last moment the creature seems to panic and the two of them run away.

I’m shaking.  I walk over to the tree and hold out my hand to Ali.  He takes it and climbs down clumsily. 

‘Let’s go.  They could come back.’

‘Alright.’

We go back to the camp and gather our things quickly.  Ali looks scared.

‘What were they?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘They were horrible.’

‘Let’s just go.’

We walk in the opposite direction to the creatures, to minimise the risk of meeting them again.  The day isn’t too hot so far; the wind is keeping us cool.  If it continues we should be able to walk most of the day if we have to.  Maybe we won’t have to.  Maybe we’ll get lucky today.

Half a day’s walking takes us out of the forest.  This is progress, but it also leaves us vulnerable to attack.  We can’t walk for long in open ground. 

‘Let’s stop here a while and figure out what to do,’ I say. Ali looks pleased at this suggestion and immediately starts rummaging for the food in my pack.

Lunch is difficult.  The wind is blowing the dust around so much it’s impossible to eat and the meat is becoming ruined.  Ali looks like he wants to cry again so I stand over him while he eats, annoyed with myself for being soft. 

‘Thank you,’ he says, quietly. 

The dust storm solves our visibility problem anyway.  It’ll be impossible for someone to see us through this.  We can walk on.  We just have to hope it lasts till we get to shelter.  We walk, coughing and blinking and trying to swim through the dust and hoping against hope that there isn’t anything in the middle of the storm that we don’t want to meet.

     

The dust storm is followed by a regular storm.  Rain is infrequent here, but it does occur, and it’s drinkable.  This rainfall is pretty heavy; fat, globular drops which we catch with our tongues.  Once I’ve put out our empties to refill Ali and I set about splashing one another.

About the author

Karen Kendrick is a writer and creative writing teacher from the North West of England.  She writes poetry and fiction which straddle the boundary between reality and fantasy.  She lives in Astley, Greater Manchester with her husband, two sons, a dog and a snake, and many plants.  Afterwards is her first novel. 

Find a copy of the novel here