SISTERS OF EVE
Ashley Roland
Hypocrite.
I’m not a hypocrite. I’m just scared.
Whatever this thing is in the City, I’m scared of it.
No amount of praying and believing is going to get rid of this. I can’t get rid of it, even if I am a Priestess of God.
This thing coming into the City is not from God, or from the Devil. It’s just a thing. Something from the planet itself. An animal, maybe.They say I am a hypocrite because I can’t stop it with prayer and fasting. Believe me, if I could I would! This thing, this black cloud advancing on the city, is getting closer everyday. Killing more and more people on the Outsettlements.
They are all at my door now, begging me to come out and pray with them. I’ve sequestered myself in my little bunk, telling them I was praying. I’m sitting here, terrified.
I hear the buzzing now. That means they are on the outskirts. The beating on my door is louder. Harder. They are all screaming now. I fought this thing. When the scientist first discovered it, I was the one who begged him not to
open the vault. That day changed the world.The sun was so bright that walking into the cave was like going blind. Dr. Sgina was there, standing by the old stone vault. Eagerly, he was translating the ancient letters on the walls. It was old English, from the 21st century. As a priestess, one of the qualifications of the job was that I must be able to read ancient languages. I read it before he even got the first half translated.
“Don’t open that,” I warned him.
“I must, for sciences’ sake.” He furiously scribbled words on the screen of the small data pad he carried. He wrote so quickly the stylus flipped out of his fingers and rolled to a stop before the giant stone door.
As he knelt to pick it up, he commented about a buzzing noise. I leaned close, breathing in the alkaline dust. I sneezed, and when my head cleared I heard it. The buzzing, so faint I barely made it out. Dreadful images flashed through my mind and soul, making me tremble. Visions of death and pain and fear made my soul writhe in agony.
“Please, leave it,” I begged again.
Sgina translated the last word. The message of the stone door scared me as much as the awful revelations had. Readjusting the bright halogen light, he used a thick brush to remove the dust from a panel near the floor on wall.
The black circuitry inside still looked new after two thousand years. Sgina glanced at me, curiosity and ambition gleaming in his eyes. I hated that gleam. I wanted to tear his eyes out so he couldn’t look at me like that. “Pray for
me,” he asked. Kneeling, he punched a series of numbers into a tiny keypad.I ran.
They overtook me, whatever they were. The minuscule black things, the bugs or whatever they were. There
were millions of them at once. They surrounded me. Suddenly they were not millions of individual beings but one endless being. The swarm lifted me from my feet, bearing my weight effortlessly. I took a deep breath, sucking in a
lungful of the tiny things. My chest burned and I was sure my death was upon me. My mind grew dimmer and
dimmer still, until I passed out.I awoke outside my City. Children grouped around my body, poking me and praying loudly for me. Even the
babies were so religious. Nothing I could say swayed them from their conviction that the person who prayed
the loudest was the most holy. The priest who was in the City before me had ingrained that in them. I sat up, looking around the red clay City. The people of Earth had resorted to relying completely on the once beautiful planet. Their homes came from the resilient red clay that was left in the beds of the great oceans. Their food came from naturally evolved plants that could take the harsh direct sunlight. The animals were so few and precious that instead of
eating any, they were caught and corralled to breed. The humans of Earth regretted wasting the natural resources. Existence was hard, but humans were smart.Or so they thought
The beating and the buzzing! Something primal is pumping through my veins. The beat of my heart is like the beat of jungle drums. My blood is hot in my veins. I know now, something happened to ME when the great stone door was opened. The inscription on the door was a warning, for me. Sgina didn't live long enough to figure that out.
The visions are back. The visions of death and destruction. My village, all the people, dead. Children, the poor babies I cuddled and hugged and taught Bible verses to, are scattered around, lying like rag dolls, lying at the feet of the mothers that tried to protect them.
From what?
I know. Inexorably, I know.
The mothers protect their children from me.
The pounding on my door has ceased. I see through the sand pocked window that the townspeople are gathered around my door, kneeling, staring with terrified, resigned eyes at the black cloud that is approaching, slowly but surely. The outer houses are engulfed completely.
A hand seems to clench my stomach. Why does the God I am faithful to let this happen? Those babies out
there… through the window, I see baby McKay. Sweet little girl, all smiles and giggles. She's 10 months
old and walking like a pro. Her mother holds her to her chest, her desert robe enfolding the baby girl.I feel in it my bones. I will never have children. I want McKay. This thing in me, I know something is in me, and this thing wants her too. My body moves of its own accord to the door. I deactivate the locks, reach out and snatch the baby from the startled arms of her mother. The door is slammed before the mother can even turn her head.
McKay puckers her perfect bow-shaped lips. I kiss her forehead and whisper she's okay. She recognizes me, and favors me with a dimpled smile.
“Gah?” she asks.
I smile back and listen to the pounding in my door. It’s started again. McKay wiggles out of my arms and slaps our side of the door with her hands, giggling. She knows, I see it in her baby eyes. Her mother looks in the window, screaming. Doesn't she know I am saving her daughter? With me, she won't die. In fact, she'll live. Me and her, we'll both live.
I know what the door said.
I dream.
“Your assignment is Clam City,” Rector March told me. I nodded, elated. My first assignment! I was a newly ordained as a minister of God. I was getting Clam City! Isolated by a hundred miles on any given side, the City was located exactly in the center of the Atlantic ocean, evenly between Europe and the USA.
Or what had been those continents. Now they were sun-baked mountains and plateaus. Humanity only survived in the ocean beds, as far away from the sun as you could get.
Clam City. I went to bed that night, more excited than I had ever been before. I read the former priest's reports. The citizens accepted the Good News eagerly. They all had great faith, although it was a little superstitious. Clam City. The transport to the City was an adventure. I had never been outside of the self-contained community before. The community was 20 miles square, underground with it's own water and food supplies. The perfect habitat for what was left of humanity. There were three communities on Earth. Newdango, Kildare, and Folidge. Each supported hundreds of thousands of people.
I was glad to get away. It was chaos inside Newdango. It was overcrowded with no room for ambition and creativity. I had dreamed of escaping to an outpost for years. Life was hard out there, but life was too easy inside.
I wake up, feeling McKay patting my face with her soft moist hands. I love the way baby hands feel. She's whining, probably hungry.
The thing inside me whispers a woman's instincts. I new tingling sensation makes my breasts burn. Soon,
my tunic is damp. I strip it off, panicked. Is the thing inside me hurting me?!Milk! It’s not possible! McKay is whining and pulling up on my leg. She's staring at my naked chest hungrily. I sit and pull her into my arms. She adjusts herself and begins to nurse!
The sensation is unusual, almost unbearable, for the first few moments. Little McKay shudders suddenly, and when she opens her sky-black eyes, I see the thing in her too. She's mine now, totally mine. Following instincts I never knew I possessed, I switch her to the other breast, let her finish, the close my damp tunic. McKay smiles and nuzzles her head against my shoulder. She sleeps.
She and I are the only ones. The buzzing is so loud now, only now it is not buzzing. Chanting. It’s chanting the prophecy.
The black could is at my door now. The townspeople have fled to the back of my house now. The back door
is not as strong as the front one. The cloud outside is whispering secrets to me. McKay listens too, occasionally looking up at me. She is clinging on to my shirt with tight fists. She won't let me put her down.Someone gets smart outside and they find an ax. Three strokes and they are able to kick the door down.
They believe I caused all this!
I hold tightly to McKay. Her mother forces her way to me. She tries to take the baby, but when she sees the child's eyes, she screams and abandons the effort.
My house is the strongest in the City. The men grab me and carry me out of the house. I’m safe outside,
too, but they don't know that. McKay is taken from me. I feel a moment of fear, but then she is not-so-gently deposited into my lap. She squeals and clings to me again.We sit, the red sands of Clam City blowing around us.
The black cloud tells me all its secrets. From the first time a woman was scorned, it has grown. Eve's sisters have joined it every day since the moment of Adam's blame.
Every day, the sisters have vowed to avenge Eve and all the unfairness women have had to endure. Every time a man hit a woman, another sister was born. Whenever a woman was blamed for an attack on herself, a sister was born. When the countless other injustices occurred, a sister was born.
The townspeople fled from my house. They didn't get far. I covered McKay’s eyes. I had to close my own.
It takes five minutes for the City to become populated by only McKay and me. The black cloud lifts us, carries us toward the community. Kildare is the first one. Soon, it will only be those who follow the Sister's of Eve, or just McKay and I will be the Earth's only populace.
As the sun-baked mound covering Kildare becomes visible, I wonder why I was afraid of the Sisters in the first place.
Background by Donna's Groovy Art