In the strait of messina

By Chase Kim

The old man loved watching tea leaves swirl in his mug. Tea bags were just not his thing, he had decided long ago. A real man such as himself plucked his own tea leaves, dried them, and shredded them up into fine bits to be steeped into a beverage. It tasted better for the work you put into it, and, as a little bonus, you got to watch the little green specks dance around in the cup like fireflies before they settled at the bottom. You got a mustache of leaves at the end, sure, but even then, you felt all grand and rugged like a soldier on a years-long campaign.

It’s the little things, the man thought. The little things in life.

In reality, the old man had grumbled just as much as the neighbors had when tea bags were reserved only for the Conquerors, as most things had been. But he had managed to convince himself that he was a handy, self-sufficient sorta guy who took great pleasure in the growing of his own tea and unsticking of leaves from his mustache. Now he had forgotten who he was before and had become that character—partly due to the desire to repress the trauma of the past years, and mostly because he suffered from a serious brain disease. The slow rotting of his brain was actually a blessing in disguise, because it allowed him to forget his past horrors and live a fairly ignorant, pleasant existence.

The old man wafted the tea’s spicy scent towards his nostrils and allowed a warm smile to spread across his face. It was nice. It really was. He moved his eyes from his cup of tea to the kitchen window.

A woman was peeking through the glass. She looked quite lovely amongst the ruins of the city, a delicate flower growing in the cracks of the sidewalk. She was young, and her skin was rosy and plump, and she clutched a red shawl around her shoulders. With a small wave, she smiled at the old man, and pointed to her right, to the front door of the home. She lifted a basket up to the window, and the old man could see that it was overflowing with fresh vegetables. How long had it been since he had eaten a fresh leaf of lettuce? A cucumber? A tomato? Who was this stranger who came bearing such gifts?

Realization came to the old man suddenly. Of course! It was his wife! His wonderful wife had been out scavenging for food, and here she had returned. The old man jumped up from his seat, his mug of tea tumbling out of his lap. It smashed into pieces and sat sadly in its own contents, but the old man was too excited to care. He flew to the front door.

So many locks, he thought. Why so many locks?

The back of the door was covered completely in a mess of gears and twisting parts, and its right edge was not so much door as a line of deadbolts that extended its entire length. But the old man’s hands were familiar with these locks, and they flew through them with a mind of their own, clasping and unclasping, twisting this way and that, punching in numbers and turning levers. If his brain had been healthy, he would have known that the locks were there to prevent anybody from undoing them all, but his brain was not healthy, and the only thing he knew was that he knew how to undo them.

The old man’s hand hovered over the final deadbolt, and he seriously considered why there were so many locks in the first place. Maybe he wouldn’t open the door…maybe it was dangerous…

But on the other hand, what was the point of a door if not to open it? Carpe diem, he thought.

“Stop!”

The old man whipped around.

“Clarence, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Clarence narrowed his eyes at his assailer. She looked older than the Conquerors, wrinkly and fat so that her face sagged like a bulldog’s. Bits of flabby flesh poked out from underneath her shirt.

“My wife,” he said. “My wife is waiting for me to open the door.”

She sighed.

“I’m here, Clarence.”

Clarence’s immediate thought was one of repulsion. Not of the woman herself, since he had gotten over her unattractiveness, but he was quite indignant that she was trying to swindle him. He wasn’t so old and fargone that he couldn’t recognize a scam when he saw one, because he knew that his wife and himself were the only two people left on the planet. That would obviously make the woman inside his home nothing more than a common. . .

Oh. So it was his wife. The realization was deflating. Clarence locked the deadbolts back into place and turned around to face her, still a bit numb. There was no lovely lady outside, nor were there lettuce, cucumber, or tomato. But he was still unable to shake a nagging sense of familiarity with the woman outside. He shot a last longing gaze through the window at her.

“Ay,” said the wrinkled disappointment by his side. “I really was beautiful once.”

“What?”

“Outside.”

“You are not her.”

“It’s a Conqueror. But it’s me.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

But Clarence saw that it was true. He saw the similarities in their ears, their noses, the color of their eyes; it could only be the work of a Conqueror. Clarence turned back to the window once more and saw the girl’s reptilian shadow slink away between the charred remains of an old alleyway. His youthful wife had been nothing more than a phantom. 

The Conquerors. Clarence spat. The cowardly bastards were shape-shifters, infiltrated homes from the inside-out. Clarence perfectly remembered that day when they had first come. The aliens had a cunning wit and a talent for trickery. They lured humans out of their homes with illusions of their deepest desires—in just a summer, humanity had fallen to a mirage of prestige and wealth and beauty. 

Well. All of humanity except for a man with a fading mind and his wife.

It was certainly depressing to be the last of your species. It was a unique burden that Clarence had once figured to be placed solely on rhinos and large flightless birds and such, except rhinos and large flightless birds and such did not have the additional burden of thought. Indeed, Clarence had once been obsessed with such an “obligation” to document his circumstance as the last remaining of his species, but he had stopped when he realized that no alien would ever be able to read his English words, much less his frantic handwriting. His large leather journals were put away in the attic forever.

Even if he could remember his philosophical past or accompanying leather tomes, Clarence was too tired to do any thinking now. The day had had such commotion, and he was drained after bringing up the locks’ combinations from the dusty archives of his memory. Clarence lied down on his old suede sofa and fell asleep immediately.

He had quite an interesting dream. He was a massive fish of some carnivorous variety. His body was strong, and he could feel his thick tail powerfully beating the waves and propelling himself forward at a lightning pace. He swam just for the hell of it, pushing himself to go faster, faster, faster. The water blurred into neverending blue, schools of fish became scattered silver glints, the sun high above became an infinite streak of light that shimmer upon the surface of the ocean. It was a marvelous dream. But then he swam into an area he did not know. There the sun’s infinite streak stopped, and the water suddenly chilled. Though he tried to swim as fast as he could, far away from this cursed ocean, it was too late. He had become an intruder, and intruders, especially the courageous ones, were never treated kindly.

///

The old man woke with a start to the sound of thunder. It was dark out; the clear blue sky had been driven out by thunderclouds and a sudden chill, and the glorious day had been turned into a humid rain. Fat raindrops splattered against the window panes. The wind shrieked to be let in. This time, the man did not try to open his sanctuary to it; no, that privilege was reserved for demons disguised as pretty ladies.

He did watch the rain, though. He moved from his chair to the window, letting his breath frost up against the chilled glass. The rain reminded him of how much he missed the bustle of the city, the booming metropolis whose racket was amplified by a storm. Once upon a time, he would stand at the same window and watch the cars go by, their tires crashing in puddles that held the lights of the city. Clarence closed his eyes and imagined the city’s symphonic cacophony—the coos of pigeons, the shouts of peddlers, the horns of cars. He breathed deeply, imagining the wind down his throat, the wind that was separated from him forever by just a pane of glass.

Clarence opened his eyes.

His wife had returned. Her dark figure stood solemnly in the rain, hunched under the same red shaw that had saturated to a bloody scarlet. Thin trails of water leaked from the fabric’s corners and curled down her shivering leg and pooled by her feet. Then she walked slowly, suddenly, up to the window and put her nose right up to the glass in front of the old man’s paralyzed face. She looked up at him with big, pleading eyes, and he found that he couldn’t tear his stare from hers.

“Please,” she mouthed. “Let me in.”

Clarence had heard legends about the Conquerors’ draw, tantalizing and ancient like the demon of the tides. He had long harbored a fear that one day he would come face-to-face with one of these creatures and that he, too, would be unable to escape. This fear was not uncommon. But Clarence’s fear was greater, darker. He was terrified that he would be entranced to a state of pure joy, the kind that only comes with delusion. He was scared that he would voluntarily throw himself at the feet of his destroyer and beg her to continue. It was this fear that remained in his subconscious even when his consciousness had faded, that still woke him on some restless nights, his hair slick with sweat and his heart pounding in his chest.

But seeing the woman at the window, the old man forgot his fears. He forgot all of his complicated thoughts, laughed at his foolish worries, relaxed his tight stomach and shoulders. All he could focus on was her eyes, deep amber gems that sparkled with sorrow and kindness. There seemed to form a sort of delicate bridge between her pupils and his, a bridge that pulsed with life and drew him in closer. He felt a kind of happiness that he had never felt before. He flew through the locks in an instant, and the front door swung open with a magnificent squeal—it had not been opened in over forty years.

A sudden blast of cold air raced up the narrow staircase and reached his wife. Her nostrils quivered as they recognized the air’s freshness, of which they had been so long deprived. She was still half-asleep as she heaved herself out of bed to investigate this sudden relief, her head still swimming in the haze of her broken sleep. But she sobered quickly. She raced down the stairs, dread filling her with each step.

“Clarence!” she called. When she heard no response and found the front door wide open, she began to search for him deliriously.

She found him in his study, stretched out on his old suede couch with his head in the Conqueror’s lap. She was stroking his cheek, looking lovingly at his harsh face and coarse stubble with a semblance of pure admiration—so complete seemed the devotion of this demon that Clarence’s wife wondered, for a second, if she was the real imposter. The very thought enraged her. She was real, she knew. It was she who had stood by his side for fifty years as they journeyed through the stars, challenging the universe. It was she who knew the charms of his lost soul, his goodness, his morals. And it was she, and only she, who knew the real intent of the beautiful impersonator. But in her arms, he appeared happier than he had been in decades.

She threw herself at her husband with a guttural cry, taking a hold of his arm and yanking at it. But the Conqueror, for all her loveliness, was deceptively strong, and she regarded her older self with a mix of amusement and pity.

Then she suddenly stood, letting Clarence’s body slump from the couch to the floor. He had been put asleep. It wasn’t quite death, but it was close, and it was always in this state that the Conquerors disposed of humans. Clarence’s wife began to sob. One extreme emotion exchanged for another, she dropped to the floor clutching at her aching heart.

“Clarence! Clarence!” she cried. Overwhelmed with her memories, she threw herself upon his body and placed her head resolutely on his warm chest. He had been a good husband. He had been.

She felt a hand clamp on her shoulder.
“Get away!” She jerked away from the touch. She felt a sudden resolve to cling to Clarence’s forever, and she wrapped her arms around his waist and laced her fingers behind his back. Even in death, she decided, she and her husband would not be separated.

She felt another tap on her shoulder.

The man behind her was handsome in a rugged sort of way. He was lean but well-built, like a sprinter. His jaw was square and defined, and a thick mustache was plastered across his upper lip. And his eyes. She had always loved his eyes. You could see in them a tenderness past his tough exterior. They were soulful, old. She had once said she could get lost in them forever.

“I’m sorry,” the man said.

She released the body and stood.

“Do you mean that?”

“I’ve been miserable, haven’t I?”

She contemplated this for a moment, then she threw herself into his arms.

“Oh, Clarence!” she cried. “I’m glad you’re back.”

She buried her face into his chest, and he caressed her head softly. They held their golden embrace for what seemed like hours, the torrential rain drowning out the entire world but them. When she was eventually laid to sleep, it was a peaceful sleep. A wave of calm washed over her body as it crashes into the unconscious form of a sailor who has braved the Strait of Messina.