I've Been Here Before

Been Here Before

A Short Story

I’ve been here before. I recognize the trees, the intricate border of twisting branches that frame the pale summer sky. It seems a strange thing to remember so vividly, but I am sure that I do. It is an unmistakable sense of deja vu.

I am not sure how I got here, but I feel good. Renewed. My nude body rests comfortably against the earth. I feel protected by the knee-high prairie grass that surrounds me. There is not even the slightest inclination of fear, nor pain. My mind borders on a dream-like euphoria. My fingers pluck blades from the ground, and the foamy wet of a spit bug squishes between my bare toes. It all feels so familiar.

This place reminds me of childhood, I realize. The warm breeze on the bare skin of my arms as I ran through the field behind my house, chasing after butterflies. I didn’t plan to hurt them. I had only longed to see them up close. I wanted to keep one in a jar in my room. I didn’t know, yet, how quickly it would die, how delicate its life truly was, in its glass cage upon my windowsill. I was only a child, after all. It wasn’t my fault. A smile forms on my lips. Just now, it is my only memory, but I’m not afraid. The amnesia comforts me like a blanket; I can sense its protection.

I sit up, my unkempt hair falls loosely on my shoulders and down my back. A dense forest surrounds the clearing. A slight sense of unease grows in the pit of my stomach. Home, I think. I need to get home.

Dizziness overcomes me as I rise; it’s as if I have been lying here for an eternity. I take a tentative step forward. Goosebumps dot my skin as I walk. The warmth that I basked in mere moments ago is gone. Suddenly, I am keenly aware of how exposed I am, without the shield of grass.

I wrap my arms around my chest. I remember the long, linen frock I always wore, buttoned modestly to just above my collarbone. Where is it now, I wonder.

The light of day is disappearing fast. Heavy, gray clouds have blown in and are now scattered through the sky. I am looking up at them when I plant my foot down hard upon a jagged rock. It slices into my flesh, deep into the soft sole. I cry out in pain and lose my balance. I land hard on the ground as I grope at the wound. Blood mixes with the dry soil, creating a red muck. I suck in a shallow breath, blowing it out hard through my lips. There is nothing to stop the blood from gushing; no bandages, no gauze, no cloth.

I must persist, so I’m up again. I balance precariously on my uninjured foot for only a moment, and my vision blurs. I lose my sense of what is up and what is down. Before I know it, I’m on the ground again. Unconscious. I dream that I’m falling.

I jolt, and my eyes flit open again. What was left of the daylight has disappeared now, and it’s replaced with inky black darkness. I can see no further than a few inches ahead of me. I need to move. The thought of staying here, in this dark, wild place, motivates me. I limp along with my hands cautiously in front of me.

A jolt of adrenaline shoots through my veins as a shrill cry pierces the night air. I spin around, searching through the dark. With held breath, I wait for it to cry out again. And it does, fainter this time, further away. I move faster, my heart racing in my chest. I pad through branches, which catch and tug at my hair.

The cry rings out again. I’m sure now that it is a baby. Strangely, the sound comes from the opposite direction than it had before. Something grabs my wrist…cold and clammy tendrils. It tugs at me, throwing me off balance again and forcing me to plant my injured foot onto the earth. A shuttered gasp escapes me.

“My baby!” A woman screams, so loud and blood-curdling that my ears ring. She pulls me to her again, tighter, closer. “Where is my baby?” Her face is so close to mine that I feel the damp warmth of her breath. Drops of spit land on my face as she screams. There is agony in her voice, desperation in its purest form.

“I don’t know…” I say breathlessly. She has stunned me. I shake my head and look at her wide-eyed. But she doesn’t let go. Her fingers only tighten like a vice around my wrist. I attempt to pry her fingers off with my opposite hand, but she holds firm.

“How could you do this to us?” She cries, squeezing so hard now I fear that my skin will break, that my bones will snap.

My attention splits from the pain in my wrist to rustling in the woods. From every direction, something approaches. The woman is staring intently at me, so she does not seem to notice. Her mouth gapes, her breath reeks of acetone. My heart races in my chest, and I yearn to run, desperate for the safety of home.

“How could you…” She moans. How could you, how could you, how could you. Her voice echoes in my mind.

Another memory floods in. With it, a wave of nausea rolls and contorts inside of me. The cameras, the manicured hands holding recording devices and microphones stretched out towards me. The podiums. The flags. The Party. The way it used to be, before…

Before… So, this must be after, I venture.

At one time, I did possess a sense of guilt, brief as it may have been. Lying became my greatest strength. With no effort at all, I could spin a story to fit any narrative. Part of me wondered how it would all turn out in the end, but the power, the fame, the money, it was all so intoxicating. I couldn’t resist it.

The clammy fingers adjust their grip around my wrist, and I’m aware once more of the present situation. “My baby…” The woman moans again. But I ignore her pleas and yank her forward. She stumbles along beside me, without question or hesitation, as if we have become one. My eyes are trained ahead, searching desperately for a way out of this. The forest has closed in even tighter than before.

My mind is playing tricks on me. In the soft light of the moon, which ebbs and flows with the movement of the clouds, the trees are bare. Earlier, they were lush with midsummer leaves. The air here is so oppressive and thick. The forest is lifeless, rotting.

The squelch of mud and the snapping of twigs begin again, interrupting the eerie silence. Someone, or something, is following closely. I resist the urge to stop and look. I don’t want to see, to know for sure what lurks. Painstakingly, I walk, moving steadily through the woods.

I fall into a rhythm of movement. I yank my right side, with the weight of my passenger, while at the same time, hopping forward on my uninjured foot, then limp gently on the opposite. Each step, I pray that my open wound finds smooth ground.

Out of the corner of my eye, something moves through the trees. I can feel eyes on me, watching. I swallow hard and stop in my tracks, so does she.

Another woman stands a few feet away. Her dark hair hangs loosely around her face, with a few strands dangling in front of her eyes. But her hair does nothing to dampen the intensity of her stare. I breathe in again with great effort, the air thick as sludge. My eyes scan the woods. Fear so intense runs through me as I see them. There are more women, at least twenty of them. I have their full attention. In unison, they take a step closer to me. They close in.

I whip my head around and focus once more on the path ahead of me. I try to run, but my passenger and foot prevent me from moving quickly. I hear a sob. It sounds distant, but I know it came from me.

“You did this.” My passenger says. I try to ignore her.

“You did this.” She says again, and it echoes. The echo does not come from within this time. I notice the rest of them are chanting it, along with her. “You did this. You did this.”

“It’s not my fault!” I scream into the woods.

I squeeze my eyes shut and cover my ears with my hands. I didn’t know what would happen. I didn’t know, then, what it would come down to, how it would all end. My mind races, recalling suddenly, in great detail, the last three years. All that happened leading up to those final moments. I felt so powerful in the beginning. I was on the right side, the winning side. We were changing things; fixing what needed fixing, for the love of almighty god!

“I want to believe that you did not think of us.” A new voice says, honeyed but hot with rage. I could feel her presence close behind. “But, you did think of us. That is the worst part of it all. You thought of us, but you did not care.” I push my hands tighter over my ears.

She places her hand firmly on my shoulder. Her skin is searing, and I flinch away, my body folding involuntarily forward, away from her.

“The earth is dying, the water is gone… nothing to put out the fires. The fires! You are the harbinger of death of all things!” She shouts in my ear. Tears slide down my cheeks.

“The time of your blissful ignorance, your incessant ignoring, is over. You must face what you have done.” She speaks softly again, and heat radiates off her. Her scent is metallic. It is all so overwhelming. And it makes me remember. I don’t want to remember. Please, I beg silently. Please, I don’t want to remember.

The last day, before, had been stressful, as every day had been in those last few months. My role in The Party had been diluted, slowly but undoubtedly. At first, I did not notice, but in the end, I was irrevocably expelled. Just as all the women were. Even though we had done everything they asked, we wore the clothes they expected us to wear, we spoke the way they expected us to speak, and we behaved as we were expected to behave. None of it mattered. They used us. It was all pre-determined, a calculated plan.

By the time the War Department had authorized the use of nuclear weapons, I had already been relieved of my position. But the damage was done. Protesters stood with their cardboard signs, shouting into the tinted, bulletproof car windows as I drove away from my office for the final time.

“You may not have made the call yourself,” the honeyed voice said, “but you helped to build the foundation. You were a catalyst, an accomplice. Because of your votes and your signature and your lies, they prevailed!”

“You have made your bed!” The protestors sang, “Now you must lie in it!”

I denied it all, back then. I made choices, but I was not them. There were far worse than me. I did not make the final decisions. In the end, they did not protect me. The power that had intoxicated me was a ruse. I had nowhere to go. The safety of the government bunker was ripped away from me. I knew I would die, too, just like the protesting plebeians.

The metallic scent grew ever stronger, coalescing with tendrils of wood smoke. It brings my mind back to the present. The raw pain in my foot, the vice wrapped around my wrist, the scalding hand on my bare shoulder. I grab her hand and push it away, but the skin sloughs off; only bone and traces of muscle remain, as if she were melting.

An orange glow surrounds the woods. Fire illuminates everything. I can see, now, just how many women lurk beyond. There are hundreds. Many of them call out for their children, others are so disfigured that they can not speak, limbs torn from bodies, some are so thin and frail that I don’t understand how they are walking, and more still wear an expression of contorted rage, aimed directly at me.

They close in steadily until I am within their reach. They grab me, one by one, pulling me down. They pile on top of each other to get to me. Down, down, down we all go. They crush me into the ground. I taste the earthiness of the mud, grit crunches between my teeth. I wait to die, for the earth to swallow me whole. They want to make sure that I feel it this time, the full weight of my choices bearing down on me. And I do; I feel it when my ribs crack, when the bones puncture my lungs. I taste iron as blood fills my mouth.

“You will feel this. Again, and again, and again. An eternity in this purgatory.” The honeyed voice speaks again, her face is pressed against mine, searing my skin.

It is taking a long time for everything to go dark, for life to leave me. But finally, I am surrounded by nothingness—a complete lack of sensation.

I can not say how long I have been here. Here, there is no sense of time. Perhaps it has been only a minute, or maybe a thousand years. I open my eyes again. Amnesia embraces me. I’m lying in a grassy clearing.

I’ve been here before. I recognize the trees, the intricate border of twisting branches that frame the pale summer sky. It seems a strange thing to remember so vividly, but I am sure that I do. It is an unmistakable sense of deja vu.

I’m not sure how I got here…