The World Without Flags

“It’s easier if you don’t struggle,” he explains. He looks at his watch and waits patiently as the numb feeling spreads through my body. Only my fear and horror remain undulled.

After a minute, Doctor Bragg suddenly stands up and takes my jaw in his hand. I hardly feel it as he forces my mouth open. My heart is screaming, but I can’t move. I can’t make a sound. Helplessly I watch as he lifts the sprawling, wriggling mass of worms to my mouth. I feel it fall onto my tongue and then he shuts my mouth with a clamping sound and plugs my nose. My body is beyond my ability to control, and I feel myself swallow, feel the cold, writhing eyeball slip down my throat, twisting and contorting like a living octopus. Then it passes and it is done. Doctor Bragg looks down at me.

“There now,” he says. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?”

134

This is it. There’s no use in thinking or breathing, dreaming or remembering. I sit in the cage I only escaped days ago. I imagine the worms inside me multiplying, sending out new worms to invade my brain, latch themselves into the most central part of me. I will be the Doctor’s next source of worms, his next research subject. There will be no one to care for me, no one to give me that slim chance for survival that began all this. I am slowly dying. It should take no more than twenty four hours to know what it feels like to be Eric. I will know what he has known these weeks. I will understand if he has vanished or if he still exists somewhere inside him. I will be gone or I will be there to witness what atrocities the Doctor will do to me. I have only a day before the fever begins, before it starts taking me. If I survive the fever, I will be shuffling around the cell in only a day or so, if it happens as quickly as it happened to Squint. Only a day.

There is a strange relief in knowing that it will be over, all this struggle, all this worry and anxiety, this pain and suffering. I think of Eric and Pest back in Cairo, and I think that Pest will protect him. Perhaps they escaped the outbreak that Randy caused. If they survive and Eric somehow makes it through all this, it will have been worth it. I think of the people left back at the Homestead. I wonder if they have sowed the fields. I wonder if Crystal is cooking pancakes on Sunday mornings as usual. And I think, as I haven’t had a chance to do, of our little graveyard strewn with the ashes of everyone I called friend, everyone I thought of as family. The flowers will bloom beautifully there, I know it. I wish I could be there, with them. But that is too tender, too hurtful. My mind recoils from it.

Time slows as if relishing my fear. In my cage, there is only shadows within shadows. It’s not completely dark because of windows high up in the warehouse, but the windows are filthy and they only allow a dim, oily light to pass. I am left with my mind and the horrible knowledge of my own death. My mind casts dreariness around me until my heart is so heavy, I feel like I could fall through the earth.

135

The drug is still heavy in me and sleep sometimes comes. I dream of fire. I wade in ashes, and my body is heavy and almost impossible to move. The ashes plug my nose, my mouth, and my breathing is distant. I can hardly see through the ashes that gather in my eyes. It’s like looking through mud. I sense the fire around me. I sense the flickering heat. I hear the sound of water. I smell it. I try to get to it, to find it, but there’s always something there. Someone. My parents, my real parents are always there, guiding me.

“You can do it, Birdie,” my father says.

My mother doesn’t talk. She only sings. I can feel her hair on my cheek when she holds me.

I hear Eric’s voice like thunder: Think, Birdie. THINK!

136

When I wake up, I think that I hear Eric’s voice, but it’s not Eric. It’s Randy.

“Birdie!” he calls to me from outside the bars. “Birdie!”

I open my eyes and gaze at him. I hate him, but my hatred feels distant. Soon, nothing will matter.

“Are you still there?” Randy asks.

“I’m here,” I say. I want to stand up, to be defiant. But I don’t feel defiant. I’m dying.

“Hasn’t got you yet, huh?” he asks. He smiles at me with his disgusting teeth. “You always were tough.”

I don’t say anything to that.

Randy sits down awkwardly in front of the cage, folding his long legs beneath him. He studies me in silence for a moment. “I don’t expect you to understand,” he says. “You know, it’s nothing personal. I always kind of liked you. Eric’s little black daughter.” He laughs. “God, Eric was a strange dude.”

I just glare at him.