The Old Divide
Post-apocalyptic world.
I live in a war zone.
When I trudge through blood-stained roads, I pass several bodies embedded with deep red claw marks and even deeper expressions of torture. Chunks of their neck and torso are missing as if they had been torn off in haste by a row of desperate, harrowing teeth.
I walk through these corpses by day, hide from them by night. Still, I feel as though I watch them from behind closed windows. The death happens before me, certainly behind me, but I am safe behind glass walls. Nothing touches me. I still live. How does a translucent layer of nothing protect me from fate itself? I turn around to seek answers, feeling a warm and rare breeze upon my neck, but no one is there. Steaming cars totaled by the same claws lay ominously on their backs, a heap of devastation left behind by a very recent battle.
I run from this scene only to come to another.
“Gray?” I whisper hoarsely, a puff of cold escaping my lips. The clouds and mountains are steely gray before me, the weakening sun beginning to clog up behind a large patch of storm. Boarded up houses stand ominously quiet on either side of me. As my shadow becomes dimmer, so my heart ladles itself in frost. I count numbers in my head, pat my jacket pocket for the bottle of painkillers, and continue on through the streets.
Once again, a warm breath leaks through my scarf and tickles my neck. I swivel around. Calloused hands arrest me, sending a jolt through my nerves. Gray’s sinewy arms lock me in place against him, and though he is twice my size and his eyes too high to touch, our gazes hold fast for a long, silent time. Where he once had a face carefree and gentle, he now has a feral and gaunt expression full of hunger and wrath. His lips glisten crimson with blood, his wide eyes quivering in a battle of wills. The rancid smell of endless travel and raw meat is putrid in the air between us.
I swallow hard, wanting desperately to hear his reassuring voice again, but my throat is parched and my body paralyzed. I could see my own scared expression in the shiny glass of his eyes, and suddenly I despise myself with all the loathing in my gut.
“Gray,” I manage to say at last. His hold on my arms tighten so that the veins across his own bulge forth with streaks of sweat. I bite my lip to suppress the screams, knowing he is enduring an even more difficult pain. An inner battle to keep himself from doing the same to me as he did the others.
The others had, just like Gray, turned into monsters. For some reason, they lost hold of their humanity much faster than Gray, who had long before them began to show signs of the plague that plunged humanity to its downfall. I remember exactly the single huff of breath Gray took before sprinting away to darkness. I always listen for it. It’s the only reason I’m still alive.
I feel his grip loosen suddenly, but I latch onto him with my own fists. Despite the blood still dripping fresh from his mouth, I’m not afraid of him. He does not resist me, though I feel a jolt of surprise pass through him. The sun behind him bursts bright orange before falling halfway behind the horizon. I savor every droplet of his being, sifting through the blood to find the old Gray.
Eyes watch us from open windows. Gray feels them too, his hair prickling beneath my fingers. A low, voiceless growl escapes his throat as he thrusts me aside. He lingers for a moment before disappearing behind thick shrubs of thorn. I do not call after him, but instead search all around me for the source of his worries.
My sight immediately falls upon a little girl standing at the doorway of the blue house behind me. She holds a small bottle of spray in her hand, a baseball bat in the other. Her expression is blank, but my imagination sees grinning fangs and wide, blood-shot eyes. As I step back, nearly stumbling on a pothole, she calls out, “Why didn’t that monster kill you?”
I stare, bewildered. “I don’t know,” I answer hoarsely. “Are you alone?” She shook her head no. At that moment, two hunched over, deformed humans emerge forth, snarling wildly. Drool flings from their lips, and I plunge a hand to my knife’s hilt only to realize quickly that any fight was unnecessary. Unlike Gray, these two are much more clean, though no less monstrous. They stood idle behind the little girl.
One of them swipes a claw at me, though lets it fall back harmless at its side.
“Mom says to come in,” the little girl says casually as she turns around and returns indoors. The other two soon follow, not waiting to see if I would obey. The zenith slowly darkens with the fleeting seconds. I take one glance around the streets for Gray, and finding no trace of him, follow the little girl and her supposed parents into their home.
Please answer these questions: what gender do you believe the main character to be? Is there a reason you believed the main character to be the gender you believe it to be?
Did you read something along the way that made you change your mind about the character‘s gender? If so, what and/or why?
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