PUBLISHED IN THE IRIS REVIEW VOL. 2. WRITTEN AND OWNED BY KRISTEN REID.
Life, some like to believe, is eternal. Death is a change of state, an altered condition of being. None of us on this plane of corporality care to think much on what lies beyond our own persons; however, if we had for all of time, perhaps we might have understood that this universe eats, and it eats things whole with a vile appetite for being. For what does a silent, unknown existence crave more than anything? It craves to be known, and to be known fully. It screams to be heard on dead ears, until those dead ears hear the existence, but then it is too late. It was indeed too late. The harvesting of souls in Greeley County was not from God, but from something else. Something that wanted to eat and eat it did.
I used to ponder on the why of it all, but frankly, I don’t much delve into the conventions of this world anymore. It’s not my world to question. It never was. I tear my eyes away from the ceiling in the dark of the living room and look down to a fuzzy, brown little head sleeping soundly at my feet with the ever-present huff of dog dreams.
With the electricity out for weeks now, there’s not much else to do except sit and feel time tick away amidst a few lighted candles. The only electricity that seems to be able to remain is from a few odd street lights scattered randomly throughout the town and down some streets. My street is not one with such comforting luck. The sticky, thick heat of midsummer, when the cicadas clump around the crevices of the house, has risen to an annoyingly high level, making it a challenge to exist in the South happily, but the real challenge to exist in the South happily and to be able to sleep at night is not one born out of humidity and weather.
Buck now sits up on the couch with me wagging his tail, because he knows just as much as I do that there's no rest to be had. Having Buck remain here with me has been the only thing to keep my sanity in check, because Lord knows how I would’ve managed being out here in the middle of nowhere on some long-forgotten dirt road alone through all this. Those things must not want Buck. For some strange reasoning, these things do not want animals. Cats and dogs wandering the streets without their owners do so without worry. Perhaps they are too pure to be taken by such evil. I just fear for Buck’s loneliness when the time comes.
I pat his head, and he happily groans and wags his tail. I know that there’s just a few of us left in Greeley County, and every night I make a run to Flo’s Diner for the town’s nightly group meeting to, if nothing else, see who is left and sit in the comfort of others no matter how terrible the company has gotten. What started off as county-wide meetings of protection, shelter, and defense at one of the city halls soon petered out into residents that could be counted on one hand and a shift to a shelter with beer, coffee, and one backup generator that through pure dumb luck remained.
I kiss Buck’s nose. “I love ya, boy. I love you. Don’t you forget that.” He wags his tail excitedly. “I’m headed out again, but I’ll be back. I promise. Stay safe, alright, Buck?”
I grab Dad’s revolver from the table without checking it. It can’t truly protect me from anything, but I just do it now to sustain what sense of protection my human mind holds in the feeling of the weight of a gun. When I came home to Greeley County after being gone for years, I had walked right into the middle of whatever events were taking place. I had walked up the front porch steps dreading to see my father again, only to see his revolver instead lying beside streaks of blood on the wood and what I assumed to be human skin.
The air has taken on the putrid smell of rotten meat since the emergence of these things, and I wish that I could recall the days when it all just smelled like the earth. I start up the old truck and back out. At the end of the dirt driveway, I look back at it all, taking in the sightof the old house in the darkness. The white slats are more of a brown shade now, Great-Grandpa’s rocking chair on the porch ghostly rocks from the wind, and the dial atop the house marks the silent farm with its metal creaking. It all looks dead. I suppose it is. I suppose we all are soon to follow our memories into the ground.
The randomly lit street lights are always a bittersweet relief to see these days. Probably more bitter than sweet, like a blackberry picked too early: a hint of delight only to be overshadowed with tart pangs that make your gums sore. There’s something in the black dark that keeps you sane, because it is not like the light that makes realities known. In the dark, one can’t clearly see the horrors that surround one’s self.
I can’t recall the last time I wore a seatbelt or went the actual speed down 73 for that matter. There is nothing on the road these days except for myself and the dusty billows of dirt that churn up behind my tires. I pass by the old Methodist church on the right, noting the rotted wooden walls covered in red streaks of frantic graffiti. “This is Hell and we can’t leave” is the most prominent message that the vandal had time to spray across the side of the building. We all know we’re in hell. We don’t need to be told by painted words.
Flo’s neon diner lights shine relief into my soul as I pull in. There are only three people inside.
“For, behold, I will send serpents among you, which will not be charmed, and they shall bite you, saith the Lord!” Reverend Chase booms boldly inside the diner, clutching at his Bible like it’s the one thing holding him to the ground. He’s in his black robes, hair slicked back under his hat, with eyes harsh and empty. He had always looked dead even before his final hours were marked.I push the door open with a metal jingle notifying the inhabitants of my coming.
“The harvest is past. The summer is ended, and we are not saved. Jeremiah, chapter eight… I remember some of that from when I was a child,” I say, walking over to an empty seat at the bar counter and sitting down, “Well, the summer is not over, the harvest continues, but alas, we are indeed not saved.” I adjust my hat and motion for Queenie to get me a cup of hot coffee. “What’s your little book of wisdom say about ghosts then, Reverend?” I catch Queenie shaking her head right before she sets the mug of black liquid in front of me.
Reverend Chase keeps his tired eyes forward and clears his throat. “We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed! Death will be swallowed up in victory, dear frien--”
“You know, I like the enthusiasm. I like the lingering glitter of hope in your eyes and words. Must be the whiskey that keeps it there.”
He closes his Bible with a finger stuck in place, so he won’t lose his page of folly. “I beg your pardon, Miss Clay. I am a man of reform, same as some of us are and as some of us should be. The devil also lingers in vanity.”
“Vanity? I care not for my looks or for a mirror for that matter. I am quite ugly.”
“A life steeped in philosophy that boldly claims it in vanity does not a reformed person make.”
“What’s the point of reform when all you’ve got is maybe a few hours?” I chuckle slightly and turn my attention over to a slovenly man in dirty, baggy clothes at the back corner of the diner nursing a cigarette stub. “Ain’t that right, Darin?” Darin stares at me coldly before taking another drag. “I’d say we have Greeley’s finest right here in this diner… a reformed drunk, an escaped convict, a Pagan loony, and a poor idiot who planned a homecoming at just the right time. I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere. Whoever shall be the next to be ‘harvested’?”
“I need another reading, Reverend,” Darin says through a smoker’s cough.
“Spending your time on such nonsense will leave you dying without any of your wits about you.”
“The devil is alive in the South, and if the devil is alive, then God must surely be around here somewhere,” he says while keeping his eyes down.
“Yes, Darin, yes the Lord shall not leave behind those that believe!”
“He’s left behind four fools. What if this is all that end times storytelling come to reality? God’s taken the ones he wants. Old Revelations. How does that make you feel, Reverend? A man of your esteem?”
“Jenny and Davey’s Corolla are empty out by the county line. I saw it. Just like the rest of those poor folks tryin’ to leave. It’s a car graveyard, lining up with all of Greeley just vanished from ‘em. I told ‘em not to try to leave. I told ‘em, I did, but they not listen. None of ‘em listen, even though they see them empty cars,” Queenie interjects, as if in some strange conversation with herself.
“God isn’t behind this. Those people taken… those people were taken by something not right. Not good. Besides, old lady Hattie was taken just the other day. You’re telling me that sweet old woman who sings nothing but hymns and wears her cross every second of the day was left to endure this horror alongside the likes of us? No. No, this is not that.”
I slam my coffee mug down onto the counter. “And what do you know about what God’s behind and what he isn’t behind, Darin? God put that cleaver in your hand and then direct it into your wife’s head that day?”
Reverend Chase shakes his head fervently as if it can shake my comment away. “Never mind the past, Darin. Those that call out shall be redeemed. Confess your sins, dear friend, confess and nothing shall stand between you and paradise. Come time for us to go, we shall be together in the golden streets!”
“I saw two the other day out my window. Just watching with their vileness. I could feel them out there watchin’. They know that we know there ain’t a thing we can do ‘bout it. This place is theirs. They come to claim it. That’s what they is… they aliens. They aliens. I know they aliens.”
“Aliens?” I laugh, “For heaven’s sake, aliens… Reverend, your teachings aren’t much for anything for these impressionable folks. What’s that book of wisdom say about aliens?”
Reverend Chase sighs heavily. “Miss Clay, we are all in grave end times. Minds drift into questions at such moments of fear. Do you have an answer?”
“I didn’t know about any of this, until I saw that my father was gone the day I came home. Thank god. About time that bastard left this world.” Reverend Chase doesn’t blink. I breath out a sigh and drop my head. “No… I have no idea. Same as you, same as Darin, same as Queenie, but I will not be swept up into this nonsense. Keep preaching your empty promises to our dear lady killer over there and to this naive teenager while you sip at the devil’s drink.”
“They over yonder there now. They at that run-down Gas-N-Go. See? See ‘em? Oh god, help us… god help us, they is watching us non-stop. Their eyes, oh, their eyes are empty holes!”
“Queenie, I don’t see anything,” Darin says quietly, trying to placate her, “But we all know seeing them doesn’t much make a difference in being taken.”
“Th-- th-- though we walk through the sh--shadow of death, friends, we shall fear no… no evil.”
“I’m gonna head back to the farm before too long. Buck’s waiting on me.” I down the rest of my lukewarm coffee.
“Uh, uh… Queenie, dear girl, get me a scotch.” Reverend Chase motions with his hands towards the liquor bottles.
“I think I’ll rest here tonight. On account of I’ve run out of cigarettes at my place.” Darin closes his empty cigarette carton.
“Your place was the jail. Even with all this crap happening, I don’t know why sheriff Downes let the last of you degenerate convicts roam free instead of making y’all wait out your days locked up.”
“No… no, the bottle, girl, the bottle!”
Queen hands Reverend Chase a bottle of whiskey, and within a few gulps, he has almost half of it sitting heavily in his stomach. Darin ignores my comment and focuses his attention on something outside the window.
He sighs and chuckles slightly. “That sign out front. The ‘b’ in ‘bless’ has fallen down to the bottom of it. ‘God-less America’ I ‘spose is hitting the nail right on the head instead of what was up there before.”
None of us can stifle the uproarious laughter that fills the cold diner smelling of stale leftover syrup and cigarette smoke. It startles us at how jarring it is, as it’s slightly unsettling to hear, but we keep laughing and laughing, and even Reverend Chase has his Bible closed now. It’s not the kind of laughter that makes someone happy. It’s the kind that fills the empty silence of a room in an attempt to make it feel safe. It is the kind of laughter that bubbles out of someone when they are so frightened that they have no sense left in them to stop it from happening. It’s a laughter that has grown from small smiles into laughter that continues through tight gritted teeth and sweaty skin, shaking out of the body with no control. It soon stops, and the entirety of the diner returns to its silent shelter holding nothing of any solidity inside its confines. Queenie breaks the void with a clicking of her nails on the counter and a whispered incantation under her breath.
Darin clears his throat and rakes a nervous hand through his unkempt hair. “The best way to keep a prisoner from never escaping is to make sure that they never realize they’re in a prison that needs escaping. That is until the prisoners start to see a few missing, one at a time, walking that mile to never be seen again. When there are just a few prisoners left… that’s when they slowly find themselves within a cell, but they don’t get to see their captors until they see their death. No one knows of our existence except the ones wishing to take it.”
“Oh! Oh, Lord, I see ‘em. They waitin’. There’s one… there’s one… it’s gonna choose me! It wants to take me!” Queenie lets out a blood curdling scream and bangs her fists on the counter so hard that I almost wonder if she might have broken her wrists. The anger inside me has risen to an uncontrollable level and her screams match the intensity of aberration swirling about in the diner.
“Go ahead and scream. There are thousands all around us that hear you, but not a one to listen. Not a one to listen,” I say, standing from the seat.
“Give em’ one. Give em’ one, but oh, don’t give em me! Oh, god!”
“What are you talking about, dear girl?” Reverend Chase says with a grimace.
“They takin’ one! I know they takin’ one soon! I DON’T WANT TO BE TAKEN!”
“They’re not taking anyone, Queenie. Stop this. Calm down.” Darin has gotten up to help Queenie to a seat, but she yanks her arm away from him and screams that they want someone to take. All of us are darting our eyes back and forth between each other and the windows. We all look like husks of bodies, nothing but fear residing inside us to make us as white as the ceramic mugs sitting behind the counter.
“Go on, Darin. You’re the least desirable to the human race.” Darin shoots his red eyes at me, and I can see him visibly shaking. “Or, Reverend, how’s about you take the fall whilst the rest of us have a chance to hide somewhere else?”
Reverend Chase seems to be gone from his body altogether, as if he has floated away somewhere in his mind. “I’m not dying for you. Jesus did that already.”
“Oh! God, they is here! They is here, round the diner now, they is!”
“How godly of you, Reverend! You coward!”
“What? What--- I… I--- I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it, oh, I am afraid… and the Lord said do not fear…”
“You! You, Lilly! You’ve thrown around this whole thing like a joke and dying as some game of luck, so you stay behind and let us leave! What a hypocrite, you are! Playing with death like it’s nothing to you, yet here we are now and you wanna go running, just like the rest of us! You are no better than the rest of us!”
“Shut up, Darin, you scummy low-life! Wife killer! Murderer! And you, Reverend, drinking all of us under the table and then preaching your damn lies about hope! There is no hope! Shut up!”
“What problems you have with me… are only to remain on this earth until one of us leaves it.”
“Oh, God save us! They is here--- They is here!”
“Shut up, Queenie! Your incessant loony cries are ringing the damn dinner bell! Everyone shut up!” I pull out my revolver from my pocket in the fit of rage, brandishing it around the diner and aiming at each of them in sweeping, shaking movements. “Shut up.”
“Miss Clay, let us all calm down. Not only will God give us, peace but He will---”
“Get away from me, Reverend. I mean it.”
“Lilly, stop. We’re all afraid, just don’t do anything--”
There is a guttural piercing sound, inhuman and unable to be recounted in the descriptions of this world. I only know that the sound alone makes me want to vomit. Queenie’s loud cries fill the panicked room again, and she calls after the things all around us, damning them to hell. I blink rapidly, feeling drips of sweat fall into my eyes. When I look to the grimy diner windows, I catch sight of on one of them, and all the blood feels as if it has left my body. I would have never actually killed a soul, never touched a hair on another man’s head in harm, but at the sight of what was breathing outside waiting to take us and with the knowledge of what was to come, I would have sold a child’s soul to the devil himself if it would have saved me. Reverend Chase grabs my arm and attempts to take the gun from me, and as if I have risen above us all and watch it happen, I pull the trigger and shoot him in the gut. He collapses onto the dirty black and white diner tile. His robes begin to run dark red, and soon the blood is a small puddle pooling underneath him. His Bible lays in his own crimson blood, to which would not be the kind to save him.
“You killed him.” Darin clutches the side of the counter and holds his mouth with his other hand. Queenie keeps her frightened eyes steady on the reverend’s body.
“I’ve killed a reverend, oh I am surely damned for hell.” My whispered voice cracks and aches through my trembling mouth. There is a clawing, scratching all inside the walls around us. They are hungry.
“No… no no no no no no no!” Queenie picks up her horrible mantra again.
Darin breathes out shakily. “You killed him.”
“I didn’t mean to---”
“You didn’t mean to?”
“Wha--- well wh--- who are you to say anything, Darin?”
“You are as much a murderer as I---"
The scratching is constant and grows louder and louder. Queenie grasps the sides of her face and moans loudly. She suddenly runs passed us, almost as if absentmindedly, stepping in the large pool of blood that has accumulated on the floor and leading a trail of red footsteps to mark her exit. The twinkling of the bell on the door sounds, and within seconds she is standing under the lone street light across the road.
Darin screams for her to come back, but she looks straight up into the light above her and something descends upon her, tearing her being from her body, her screams ripped from her as well. We hear the tortured calls for help, but not a one listens to her, as much as Darin probably likes to imagine that he had tried to listen to her. She couldn’t have been saved, at least that narrative is easier to tell ourselves than that she was not saved.
We stand in the diner silently, dumbfounded and nothing more than empty vessels, as what is left of her skin hangs limply on the light pole, swaying in the nighttime wind like a surrender flag.
“Give me the gun.”
I meet Darin’s eyes heavily and shake my head.
“Give me the damn gun.”
“You going to kill me, Darin?” I raise my hands. “Take it.”
He slowly reaches forward and grabs it, opening the cartridge to see how many bullets are loaded. I don’t even know how many bullets are in it. Unfortunately, at least one had been. Darin walks to his original position at the back of the diner and sits down.
“God forgive me. Forgive me for it all. I wish to be with you.” He opens his mouth. I close my eyes tightly. A resounding ringing of the shot pervades the silent diner. The scratching has not stopped. The window behind him matches the dirty tile beside my foot. I suppose the reverend would say he was saved.
“Let the dead bury the dead… but there’s not enough time.” I keep my eyes closed as I walk to Darin’s body. I retract the revolver from him, holding back the need to throw up. I hold it in my hands for what seems like minutes before I return to my seat at the bar. The scratching and screaming inhuman sounds surround me with dizzying intensity. I open the cartridge, praying for a single bullet to still be in it.
It is empty. The last one had been the one to cut through Darin’s skull.
I close it and place the gun in front of me on the bar counter. I take a long swig from Reverend Chase’s half-drunk bottle.
“I cannot be saved. Take me, but leave my sweet Buck be.”
And Greeley County was as damned as us all.
FOR THE AUTHOR'S ANALYSIS, MORE INFORMATION ON THIS PIECE, AND A LINK TO THE STORY--INSPIRED SPOTIFY PLAYLIST, PLEASE SEE THE SEPARATE ADJACENT POST TO THIS ONE (TITLED "AN AUTHOR'S ANALYSIS: 'AND WE ARE NOT SAVED'") BELOW OR ON THE "AND WE ARE NOT SAVED" PAGE.
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