Once in a Bloodless Land

This girl and her white horse, they trot back to where they began and this girl, this bloodless thing, she looks at me. Or so it appears. Really, she only looks to where I'm sat, never at me. The horse kicks out and I watch, I sketch, capturing its reared head, its shifting muscle, the poise and rapture of a real animal, as if it were flesh and bone.

My name is George. I believe I am the last man alive.

Bored, I leave the horse and the girl to their never-ending sequence. I place my pad and pencil onto the damp grass and walk to the stream. The water is rippled by rocks that form tiny waves. Slowly, I sink to my old haunches and dip my hand. I think of tiny fish, spawn, newts, invisible insects, an ecosystem, a society, washed away, this community of sentient life taken for granted, and a lonely ship moored at the bank.

If I close my eyes and listen I can hear the last heartbeat of mankind softly dripping away.

As I approach the 'village' I decided to call home (the cities are bloodless now) I see the automatons in the streets, bawdy and laughing, some of them on the rooftops, sitting in chairs and watching the sky sigh with night's first gentle blue. They live their lives in sequences of love, sex, and tragedy, just as they were programmed. It is not their fault they will never learn to make fire, or derive mathematics from the stars and planets. It is not their fault they perform the same endless routines over and over. It is not their fault I sit every night in my room, craving an organic voice, or the shriek of a newborn human baby.

The morning bleeds warm sunlight into my room once more. I sit to write my diary. There is nothing to write. Instead I order and catalogue all the objects on my desk: pen, pencil, ruler, compass, and so on, and so on. Then I move to the kitchen, bored, and count all my utensils. I have seven types of saucepan! So this is what it amounts to? All for nothing, this. This is how it dissolves. With no blood this world, this place, a kitchen, a cookery room, a square, stone, just a construction, it has no meaning. Look at these plates, a fruit bowl, spoon, forks, knives...Knives...Knives.

I see it now as keenly as the blade of this knife in my hand. I cannot live this way.

There is a place I know called Aber Mountain. It is only visible behind the brush of black forest as a ghostly ridge on the horizon. It is many days walk. On my way I pass the village green where a game of cricket is taking place. When I close my eyes and hear the laughter, the cheers as the ball thwacks off the bat, it's like a thin glass shattering in my soul. I know I can never come back.

I walk through the day and into the night, sleeping under starlight and a loose blanket of leaves. The next day I am ill with a cold. Still I push forward. Although it is buried among my other possessions, I feel the weight of the sharp kitchen knife as if it were made of stone. And on I walk, my fever worsening, living off the fruit I pick and some hardening loaves of bread, and I ask myself, 'Why not just lie down here and die?' It is so human to want to see a wonderful view once more before the end.

On the fifth day I reach the foot of Aber Mountain. Knees aching, bent over from the dull pain in my lumbar, I take baby steps up the crumbling shale slope. The moon high, I eat the last of my bread, which becomes a stale paste in my mouth when swilled with the dregs of my water. My final sleep is an uncomfortable one on a narrow ledge.

Before sunrise I reach as high up the mountain as I can go. It is a vast ledge, potted with holes, and housing the entrance to a dark cave. I sit on the ledge and watch the sun come up. I savour its warmth on my face, the gentle wind blowing against my skin, every last second in this.

I take the knife from my bag. I press the blade to my left wrist and close my eyes. My heart is beating calmly, softly pulsing the blood through my body.

Suddenly, a noise behind me, a scuffle of stones, and breathing, no, more, a deep heavy panting. I open my eyes and see something coming from the cave. It is a giant black dog, a metre tall and with a shaggy, dirt-crusted coat. I jump up, shocked. Is it real? An automaton gone astray? It comes to me, head cocked upwards, whines and then drops to the floor by my feet. I put my hand to its head, stoke it, rub under its neck, feel its pulse gently throbbing against my fingers.

It is alive. It lifts its head and licks my hand. It nuzzles into my lap. It can feel that I too am warm to the touch.

We stay for a while, become acquainted, man and dog, and then, slowly, we make our way down the mountain.

Rupert Merkin: After leaving the States a lifetime ago, Rupert has now settled in London with a quill, two dogs, and a monkey. But sadly no ink.

Email: Rupert Merkin

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