Smile.

Smile, grin, smile, this is how we interact.

Smile, this is how we smile, this is how we’re friendly.

Smile, grin, smile, laugh, smile. This is how we’re normal.

Smile.

But we’re not normal.

We’re not friendly.

We don’t interact.

We don’t smile.

We walk down the dark corridor, we watch the shadows. We watch the way the sunlight doesn’t quite do the job. We watch the way the shadows move with the life hidden away in its folds. We walk alone, but we are we nonetheless.

This is the end of the world.

“Why have you brought me here?” Our lips form the words. Our lips smile, because we pretend. We smile and we pretend we are normal, because there is nothing left and we need something to cling to.

“You had to see.” We reply. “You had to see what has become of him.”

Our smile becomes a sneer, a twist and wrinkle to one side of our mouth. Our voice becomes raspy, as it does when we have these conversations, and we narrow our eyes and watch him with malicious glee. This man we once loved, once adored, once followed to the end of the world like we had promised, so long ago. We narrow our eyes and laugh at him.

But we are not both so pleased.

“Ali.” We gasp, and our weakness sickens us. We try to rush to his side, but we are not all so weak, and we hold ourselves back. We stop in our tracks and we force ourself to look at him. To look at this man we once looked up to, and now look down upon.

As it should be.

He looks up, between curtains of greasy, overgrown hair. It is black, where once it had been blond and beautiful. We sneer, and we see his face, confused and dazed. We have come here before, when we were not all awake, and we watched him. We bathed in the joy his misery offered us. We would smile and speak his name, over and over until he went to sleep.

We are another dream to him, another fantasy. We are a lie to him, a hallucination. We see the hurt and longing and fear in his eyes, and we hate him and we love him.

“Ali.” We say again, and we can no longer hold ourself back. We scramble down into the pit, drop to our knees in the sewer and the grime, and we grip his hand. His wrist is thin and the chain around it is thick and heavy. He is too weak to lift it, too weak to hold our hand. We smile kindly at him, our eyes wet with tears.

“Ali.” We say the name like a spell, whispering it like a prayer. We are afraid we will wake up and he will be gone.

“No, not again.” He groans, and we are all surprised, for we didn’t know he still had a voice. He continues on, like we are not here. Just as it had always been. “I can’t take this, not again. Not anymore. Please, just leave me alone.”

He is broken. He is filthy. He was once beautiful. Now he is repulsive.

Yet still we love him? We fail to see, to understand this feeling we have. We do not know why we wish to touch him, smell him, taste him. We do not want to know, we only want not to. This is better.

“Please, who ever you are, just leave me alone.” He almost sobs the words, reduced to this pathetic, snivelling mess.

“It’s me, Ali.” We whisper in his ear, holding his head in our hands like a bird with a broken wing. “It’s Jay. I thought you were… I had thought… Ali…”

We stop ourself from crying. We know that this is only a sign of weakness, and this is a time where the weak die. We all know, and so we do not cry, but we still hurt. We still hurt and we still love, and this is also weak.

But we do not listen.

“Jay?” He whispers, and leans in close to us. He kisses us, and it’s like electricity, but we dull it. We numb the thrill, do not allow ourself to love it – to love him.

“Ali, I’m sorry.” We say, and we cannot allow this weakness any longer, so we smother our weaker side and we sneer at him. We see the pain, the horror, the recognition in his eyes.

“You always did hang around far too close.” He snarls, lunging forward. The chains are longer than we anticipated. He has us pressed against the wall, nothing between us but his flimsy prisoner clothes and our armour. Our armour is thick, hard, unbreakable, but it is not enough. We can still feel him against us, his heart beating, his breath hot and loud. We hate him, with all our being… and yet we lean forward and we kiss him. He is surprised and angry and pulls away. He pushes us against the wall again and we hit it hard enough that our ribs crack. He is weak and starving, but he is still too strong.

His lips roll back over his teeth, his canines too long, his teeth all too sharp.

“You always did find the dirtiest muck to wallow in, Ali.” We snarl back, shoving him back. He stumbles, because of the chains around his ankles, and trips into his own filth. We stand over him and gloat, because there is nothing else to do. We do not admit our own guilt, though we hate him. Though we always hated him.

“You do not get to call me that. Only Jay can. Only Jay…” He strokes our cheek, because of our face, and he kisses us before he remembers. I am not Jay.

“Get me out of here. If you are worth anything, you insidious little worm, you will get me out of here.” He growls. I look down and there are…

I blink. I am I. Jay is gone. I am no longer we. I am alone. I grip Ali’s neck and I gasp, because I can’t remember the last time I was… just me. I lean my head into his neck and he probably mistakes this as the return of Jay, because he places his hand on my shoulder. He would wrap his arm around my shoulders, but the chains hinder him. So he kisses my cheek and keeps his hand on my shoulder.

“He’s gone. Jay is gone. It’s just me… just I.” I whisper, and he suddenly recoils. I look up and he’s horrified.

“What did you do, you scum pile?” He snarls, lunging forward again and shoving me. I shake my head and crouch in the muck, in the waste made by him. I ignore the way he kicks me, screaming, the way he pushes me down. The way he tries to drown me in his own shit and piss, screaming, screaming for Jay. Screaming for the man he loves – but not me. Not me, never me.

“Coyote, you bitch, where is he? Where is he?” He screams again and I push up, snarling and biting into his arm. Biting into his neck. Biting and clawing and making him bleed, making him stop. And then we sit across from each other, glaring, glowering, hating the other. We sit and wallow until the sunlight that doesn’t quite do its job fades and all we are left with are different shades of darkness.

“I loved him too,” I whisper, “I loved him before you even knew who he was. I needed him. The way he sang and laughed and smiled. I needed his smiles.”

Ali glares because he doesn’t believe me. He doesn’t believe I’m capable of love, doesn’t believe I could love some one as pure and perfect as Jay.

“Get me out, Coyote.” He finally says, because there’s nothing left to say. I lift my eyes and meet his liquid amber ones, and they are as beautiful as he is ugly. When the world becomes dust and he becomes a memory, those eyes will still be there. They are the last testament of beauty left in an ugly world.

I get up and crawl across the shit and I lift the chains to look at them. Yes, the bite marks. But there wasn’t enough room, and he’s not that flexible. Not like me. I’m not starving in a hole, wallowing in ankle-deep sewage of my own making. I grunt, but I am not weak, I am not a pathetic human. I break the chain and grin at Ali, proud. I beg him with my eyes to say thank you, because now things in the past don’t matter. Once we both loved the same man but that man made his choice. Now, though, now I broke the chains and he’s not trapped in a stinking hole. Now the past doesn’t matter.

Ali just growls and gets to his feet. He just glares at me and climbs out of the hole. I don’t say anything, because the past doesn’t matter now, nothing matters, because this is the end of the world.

I climb out after him, and he’s shivering because he’s wet and his clothing is sparse. I take his hand, and he recoils.

“We have to get out of here, you idiot!” I snarl, grabbing his hand and leading him aggressively down the corridor. “They’ll come back, and they’ll be angry. They want their freak to poke and prod.”

He follows, because I make sense. He follows, because there’s nothing else to do. He follows, because he is tired and he can’t make decisions. He relies on me.

It’s just us now.

*

I’m tired. I’m hungry. For a moment the man I loved had returned. And then he was gone because a wily little bitch that had literally gotten inside his head sent him away. She said that she had loved him, but that is a lie. She hated him, just like she hates me. She hates everyone and everything – she had proved that during the War.

But now she’s saving me and if I don’t rely on her right now I’m likely going to die. It’s funny how things turn out. So that’s why we’re speeding down the corridor, and she’s inside Jay who’s dressed like a human soldier, with the armour and those ridiculous urban camos, all brown and grey and red – red for all the blood, everywhere. I look around and there’s still blood. I look out the windows, out through the bars, because I’m hoping there’s going to be something other than blood out there.

There’s nothing. There’s buildings and broken husks of cars and there’s a barren world with skeletons, the dead that no one had time to bury. There’s dead birds, dead animals, and these are what I see first. So many of our kind dead and so few left. We don’t adapt, not like the humans. We don’t trample and dominate until the world suits us. We die out, until there’s so few of us left to stand against the humans in their bloodlust.

We had believed ourselves so righteous, to stand amongst the Humanists in the War. We had believed there was no life worth taking, no matter the wrongs committed against us by them. But a lifetime of being beaten, starved, locked away, electrocuted, shocked, dissected, studied… a lifetime of pain and horror and lonely misery had changed my mind. I made the wrong choice in the War. I had stood by Jay and held his hand, and glowered at Coyote, who we had once called our friend as she made her choice. She made the right choice, to stand with the Purists, and we were wrong.

But it was not her choice that leaves me so bitter. It is not the way she stood proudly with those we would call our enemies. It was the betrayal, her final show of where her loyalties would lie, that truly stung.

I had always loved Jay, and I knew from the moment I met him there was no other. I had hoped he had always felt the same, but there is no knowing now. Now there is only Coyote, wearing his face, twisting that sweet mouth into a sneer. She turns his beautiful voice into a harsh croak, a growl and a bite. I had always been stupid, clumsy and lumbering. But Jay had saw in me a grace and beauty that I always missed whenever I looked in the mirror. Jay had always loved me.

I’m too tired to run, and I collapse. Coyote snaps and barks and drags me along, but realises that I will not move. So instead she manages to prop me up against a pile of debris, somewhere shadowy and out of sight. She kisses my forehead, and I can shut my eyes and pretend it is Jay, which makes it bearable, and she tells me that she’ll be back, with food and clothing.

She tells me she’ll be back.

I have nothing else to believe in, so I believe in this.

*

It’s dark now, and I can hear footsteps. Too many to be Coyote, too loud and clumsy to be anything but human. I open my eyes wide and wriggle into my hidey-hole. I listen to their voices, to their harsh speak. Their language has devolved, and they speak in quick, harsh words. They don’t form sentences, they make noises into words and communicate this way. All the beauty of their language is gone, all the flowing, beautiful, quixotic poems and speeches that made them almost bearable, and it’s all gone now. The world is a harsh and jagged place, and we have all became the same in order to fit neatly against it.

I hate what we have forced ourselves to become.

I hide away from their heavy steps and their ugly speech. I close my eyes and imagine Jay instead. But their harsh words pervert my dreams, and their cruel laughter which fills my nightmares replaces his voice. I open my eyes and I feel my rage as a cold lump in my stomach. I feel it reaching out, racing through my system like poison, numbing my body. For all they had done to me, I hated them. For locking me away, for hurting me, for looking down upon me in such a disgusting way, for thinking me a freak and monster. Me! They were the monsters, destroying the world that had loved them as its children! I feel the rage curl my fists and draw my lips back over my teeth.

The Changing has never hurt so much or felt as powerful as it does in this moment. My cries bring them to me, close enough that there is no escaping my jaws as I lunge out at them. I tear them to pieces, let their blood run like rivers down my throat. They taste bitter, but their death is a sweetness that makes them swallowable. I eat them all, though there is plenty to be left over, and though their taste makes me sick, I was hungry and angry enough that it didn’t matter enough. When I am done I lay with my belly down in their blood staining the concrete floor, and I let the warmth of their juices heat my cold body. I don’t care who comes – if it is more humans, then I will kill and eat them too. I will bask in the warmth of their cooling corpses as I had once basked in the sun by the river’s edge.

I grin and do it well, for none can grin quite like an alligator.

*

I came quickly, loudly, but that didn’t matter. There were humans everywhere, and I had almost been caught twice. My heart would beat fast as I slowed my pace to something inconspicuous when I passed through their camps. They looked at me and saw a man – pretty but male. They were not so desperate yet. Had I been as I once was, even my strength would not save me against them. Their gaze would slide on by, however, and I would walk on, the bag slung over my shoulder.

When I found him he had Changed. I cannot remember the last time I had seen one of our own shed of the human disguise. He was ugly and beautiful and horrific with the blood of humans all over. All that was left of us were the survivors. The predators and the hunters, the killers with teeth and claws and the instinct of blood. He basked in their spilt blood, and had never looked so glorious. I wanted to shed this form, to run wild as I once had, but I couldn’t. I could never Change again. That had been the price of Jay’s immortality. When all of his own was lost, he would live on, because my kind would never die.

We always adapted.

“Change, get dressed, hurry up.” I snapped at him, throwing down his clothes. He turned his head towards me, slowly, ponderously. He opened his mouth wide and his tongue pulsed, bright red with blood. It was his way of being smug.

I turned and heard the cracking and whispering as his bones rearranged themselves and his scales softened into skin. I wanted to look at him, look at his naked form as he changed into the uniform I had gathered. I wanted to see his bruises and his scars. I wanted to see how he had been hurt, how he had been beaten. But it was not for me. For Jay, perhaps. This private viewing, this secret moment. But I was an outsider, an object of hatred. He would never invite me in.

“All right.” He grunted, and I turned. I smiled, because he looked good in a uniform. He had pushed his hair back, and it had stayed back with grease and muck to anchor it. He was ugly and sharp and looked utterly belligerent, and in that moment I almost understood why Jay had loved him. Not me, but him, this ugly reptile.

“I,” I began, and then swallowed and started again, “I had loved him. I had loved him and he had chosen you. I had adored him, because he smiled and laughed and sang, and he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen, and he chose you.” I scowled at him, my old hatred flooding back. “You, who were ugly and slow and stupid, you were never good enough for him. I hated you and I hated him for choosing you, and so when I made the choice, I knew already what they would make me do.”

I swallow, because this is hard. This I me admitting I was wrong. I can’t go on. He looks at me though, and for a moment he sees Jay, and in his eyes I see the love I refused to witness, and then I can go on.

“I made the wrong choice. I mean…” I spat, glaring at the bloody mess he had made, and I feel a rush of affection for him. “I chose the right side, for all that they have done. But back then I shouldn’t have chosen to stand against you. I shouldn’t have chosen the side that would make me hurt you – both of you. But I had loved him.” I had hated him for making me need to cry, but already the tears where running pale lines over my dirt-caked cheeks and I felt pathetic. “I had loved him and he had chosen some one else.”

He holds me then, even though I’m not him, the man we both loved. He holds me as I cry, and I can hear his heart beating in his chest. It’s slow and steady and more than I could have hoped. It’s the drumbeat of the universe, the steady marching rhythm of our inevitable demise, and it’s more than I could have hoped for. It’s a promise of the end of the world, and it holds me up and stops my tears.

“I had loved him and then hated him and then hated you.” I continue, because I have to. “But that was before the War, and now I’ve broken your chains and brought you clothes.”

I whisper the words, hopeful. Because I don’t want to share, but I don’t want to be alone. Not again. Not ever again.

“Now it’s just us.”

He kisses me on the forehead, and perhaps he closes his eyes and pretends it’s Jay, which makes it bearable, but I don’t mind, because he whispers back into my ear.

“Now it’s just us.”