words by Evan Thorn, art by Claire Zhang
Come back.
The words are not words at all. They come up from deep in his throat and linger at the very end of his tongue. Here they stay, seeking soundlessly a love who no longer hears them.
He stumbles through the tallgrass, often falling to all fours. When this happens he ignores how the reeds probe at his skin. He propels himself forward on hands that feel broken until his body, unable to endure this punishment any longer, corrects itself. It bears him upright, straining to keep him just above the prairie’s lustful fingers.
It is not will that sustains him, but soft words spoken in adolescence. They were small and untested, but unwavering they remained within his heart for years to come. They remained within her as well, and as he runs they remain within him now: the pieces of a promise they made meant to last until death.
A promise they had always sworn would last beyond it.
His steps are uneven, wild, as he staggers madly toward the horizon. The sun in its setting seeks to blind him—to burn him—with its light. The onset of dusk is red and harsh. It is as if layers of the sky have been peeled back to show something raw, young. In the heat, he can feel his mind slipping. He clings to it tighter.
None of these are capable of slowing him. This is not because he is a strong man; he is thin and sunken in all the wrong places, his silhouette nothing but a tangled mess of edges. It is because no matter the way the grass, the wind, the mosquitos press and burrow against his flesh, he is too far beyond reality to care. He continues his pace, even as the prairie moves its hands along his neck, slowly closing around his throat. It wants only to reclaim what it has lost.
It is impossible to say what he exists as now, but once he was certainly called a man. If any semblance of that expired life lives on in him now, it is in the burdensome longing that resides in his chest. It lives in the soundless words which he forces to the very brink of existence.
Come back.
Far but not so far above him circles a group of crows. They are greedy, mercenary animals, and they have followed the man from the moment that he tore himself from the earth. One among them lurches, so swift that its fellows do not notice its departure until it is gliding far below them. They do not follow it, but instead glare down with an envy they cannot explain.
They watch as it descends upon the once-man. The crow plants its feet briefly into the thing’s shoulder. Unable to find perch while the once-man runs, it takes to the air once more. Its claws come away bloodless.
“Fascinating…” The crow’s eyes gleam as it makes another pass, delighting in the cleanness of the cut it leaves behind. “Fascinating…”
The once-man stumbles over a dip in the grassland. He does not think about how his body catches and rights itself, only what waits for him beneath the setting sun. When once he would lie awake sullen at night, her laugh and her smile were enough to revive him. Now as pain works its way across his nerves, these things blessedly make him numb.
“I think Mother Nature may have taken it too far with you,” the crow says, trying and failing once more to perch atop his shoulder. “Some things are best left to expire. Better they decay when their time is up then be made to sustain more life than they are owed.”
The once-man gives no sign of hearing this, and knowing that its prey has not come to rest yet, the crow retreats to join its fellows. The once-man bears onward.
When the light of a fire blooms kindly into view, he knows his journey is almost at an end. As the space between himself and the light grows smaller, the world makes one final attempt to right itself. But the grass cannot find hold around his ankles, and the night is not dark enough to trap him in its embrace.
The wagon is parked along a thin stream whose voice is drowned out by the sharp crackling of a campfire. There is a small grouping of trees along the far side, short and insignificant. A single tent is pitched in a place where the fire’s light can reach it.
He can see her outline standing before the flames; he would recognize her even had the crows pecked out his eyes. He stops only before entering the ring of light, where the grass is still long enough to cloak his figure. By this point she has turned around. She has heard him and taken a timid step backward, but she does not know yet, and what a surprise it will be!
Baring rigid teeth and forming what once was a smile. He steps into the light.
With her back to the fire she looks ghostly and beautiful, lit from behind in tones orange and red. It is painful for him to stand so near the heat, but he ignores this. Her hair moves while the rest of her is still, as though it hopes to flee on the wind. Her eyes are wide open, blinking rapidly.
They are clear and perfect.
She does not move—perhaps she cannot. He makes several slow steps forward, bringing her near until he can see the way her small frame trembles. All he wants is to whisper to her. He wants to swear that it will all be well. They are together again.
He is so very close to her. All of her body is shaking in place. He tries to speak but finds he cannot. His mouth moves in ragged, empty motions. He can hear her whimpering.
It is no matter, for words are only meant to fill the space that actions cannot bridge. He closes the distance between them. His arms, white and slender and seeking, wrap themselves tightly around her body.
That is when she begins to scream.
They are harsh, terrible sounds that rend the night. But he has heard her cry many times before, and he knows he must only comfort her. He presses her tighter to him, stroking her hair with clammy fingers. With these motions he reiterates his promise.
Till death do us apart.
Her screams become louder, and so he guides her head into the crook of his neck. He tilts his face downward, feeling how it is to hold her and thinking it not so different from when they were young. Whole once more, he presses flaking lips to the top of her head.
“Get away from her!”
At the sound of the small voice, she begins to sob, choking out a name that some piece of him recognizes. He slowly pulls his head back.
“Get away, I said!”
The figure standing on the opposite side of the fire is short, soft. His smooth, dark hair shines in the light, falling across his eyes in wayward locks. He aims a shotgun that is too big for his miniature hands. He is just a boy.
His boy.
The child’s words lend the woman a desperate strength, and she tears herself from the once-man’s arms. They give easily, and she tumbles to the ground. She is wracked with convulsions, tears drawing watery scars along her face. She crawls toward the boy. She is shouting something.
The once-man does not listen. For just a moment he forgets her. He sees only the child’s fear, which he cannot understand for all that he tries. He does not know how to console him, and even if he did, he lacks the human elements to do so. All he can see are the child’s tears, and all he knows is his duty to wipe them from the boy’s cheeks.
He steps forward.
When the shot rips through his hollow chest, he does not feel it. Dimly he can sense himself falling back against the earth. He wills his body to move, but it will not. It is spent at long last.
Up above, the moon makes its way across the sky. He can hear the distant sounds of crying. The light of the fire is extinguished, or perhaps that is just his hold on the world gradually loosening. He thinks he can hear a wagon growing distant, but that too he is unsure about.
For a time he struggles, but yearning it seems is no longer enough to bear his rotted bones. After a while, he settles. Every muscle in his body unravels, the tension bleeding from them as he surrenders to the prairie. He lets what remains of his senses slip away, until all that is left is his longing—a thing that cannot seem to die.
Yet eventually he recalls the sound of crying, and soon even his longing is let to fade. It is the last piece of him, and without it there is little reason for him to exist at all.
That is when the crows come.
