The World Without Flags

Randy watches me for a second. He sniffs. “I was thinking of something more like a last meal or a note to give to someone.” I don’t say anything, can’t even look at him. “Thing is,” he continues, “by the time the Doctor is done with you, I’m not sure how much of you will be left.” I don’t respond. I don’t look up. I’ve said as much as I’m going to say to this pig. I hear him get up and then stand quietly for a second. “Yeah, all right,” he says finally. “I’ll see what I can do.” I think he’s waiting for a thank you. I feel him standing looking at me, but I won’t look up. It was hard enough asking the filthy murderer for something, let alone thanking him for it.

Wordlessly and silently, Randy leaves me alone finally. I hear the steel door shut and the echo reverberate through the warehouse. I make sure he’s gone a long time before I start to cry as quietly as I can, with my head buried deep in my arms.

137

Drained by tears, sleep begins to take me. Knowing that I might never awake, I struggle against on the edge of sleep, thinking desperately of Eric, of Pest, of all the people at the Homestead I will never see again. I think of the feeling of a warm breeze against my skin, the taste of sweet cider on a brisk autumn night, the softness of a bed, the fields glimmering with fireflies in the summer, the sound of the ckickadees in the forest. My heart is lacerated by the knowledge that I will never know it again. I will never awake. I fight to stay conscious, to meet my end fully aware, to feel the fever of the Worm take me, to even enjoy these, the last sensations that I will ever know. It is all precious, even the pain. But the last of the drug and the exhaustion and despair combine to push me into what might be my last night of dreaming, my last night of existing in this world. The soft obscurity of dreaming accepts me into the last hours of my life.

138

I’m walking down a road. A dark road. Fires flicker like candles at the tips of the pine trees. The forest is all in flames, but it somehow burns gently, even peacefully. I am overcome with thirst and the thought of water consumes me. Beside me, as usual, my father and mother walk, guiding me forward. We walk through a tunnel of smoke, flame, and fire, my mother humming, my father’s quiet presence comforting beside me.

At the end of the tunnel, Eric is waiting for me. His eyes are full of worms, all undulating toward me, but he stands the way he used to stand, strong and steady, aware and himself. When we get to him, he turns away and waves us to follow him. All four of us walk through the smoke and fire. Then we stop. All of them turn to me, their eyes dripping white worms that drop to their feet where they turn to wisps of smoke. They stare at me as if waiting.

“Think, Birdie,” Eric says, his eyes a wriggling mass of white.

“You can do it, honey,” my father tells me in his low voice.

I look down at my feet. Worms fall to the ground. I watch as they swirl into smoke until I am standing knee deep in a fog of smoke.

139

When I wake up, I blink for a moment in disbelief. I rub my eyes and check my hands. No blood. I feel my head. No fever. I blink, searching myself for signs of weakness, dizziness, nausea. Nothing! It’s been enough time. I swallowed a ball of worms the size of a peach! I should be taken by the Worm by now. I should be infected! Above me the skylight is bright with morning. My heart stops and then races ahead. I’m still alive! I’m still me! I leap to my feet and almost cry out in joy. Instead I make a little squeal of delight and jump in place.

The elation doesn’t last long. Maybe the fever will start a little later. Maybe I’ll be dead in just another few hours. I check my forehead again. Nothing. I feel fine. In truth, I feel great—alive , energetic, healthy. But I should be…gone. I should be wherever it is that Eric has vanished, deep within himself, if he’s there at all.

Think, Birdie.

I remember resuscitating Eric when he dived into the river, the black liquid he vomited into my mouth. How wasn’t I infected by that? How wasn’t I infected when Eric coughed up on me? After all the contact I’ve had with Eric, after all the times I’ve wiped him clean, shouldn’t some little drop have infected me? Some people are infected by the smallest scratch, the lightest cut by a ragged, infected fingernail. How have I avoided it all this time? How am I not infected?

In my dreams, my mother is always holding me, her eyes bleeding. My father’s eyes are bleeding. But I made it, I was safe. I think of all my dreams, how thirsty I always am, how I see through fog and smoke, as if through a layer of mud.

Or a layer of worms, I think suddenly.