Dastrix Slogan
Bluelighter
Jeni sat at her desk in her room, scanning over her algebra homework. Every so often a few strands of rich brown hair would creep forward and tickle the side of her eye and she would have to try and sweep them back behind her ear, so strange that it was always a few little hairs on her left side that would always do this, always grow too fast for the ponytail she wore and always became a nag. Never mind though, tomorrow was French Platte Friday for her and Lillith and that would sort it out. She smiled as she thought of how her and Lillith would get to school early for French Platte Friday, and spend those first few precious hours of the morning platting each other's hair weaving it in with the colour of choice, orange for tomorrow.
She never cared much for algebra, never really saw its worth but she still diligently did her best and managed to squeeze through a C average on most of her tests. Grade 8 was no walk in the park all right! It was in the completion of doing the work that she cared for. It made her feel good that even though she never really enjoyed doing the homework, she felt pride in finishing it, and making sure she had done whatever she could do. And as Lillith said, it's the way you feel good about yourself, when you feel good about yourself, that matters most.
As Jeni put her pencil down and closed her workbook she became aware of the storm outside, she marvelled at how engrossed she had become in something so trivial as maths as to not notice the lightning outside. She got onto her bed and kneeled to lean on the windowsill and stare outside. The clouds had gathered dreamily above, it looked wonderful, the mix of colours. Grey, pink and orange sunset, a few choppy holes of blue-sky left. She gazed out along the vivid green lawn and smiled to herself. She could just imagine her dad later, leering out the window at the oncoming rain saying, "you see, I water the lawn and it rains! Everytime a coconut, it rains!". It was at this moment that the bolt of lightning struck just below the window. A bright flash, a click, a loud bang. Jeni's body was thrown violently across the room, she landed hard and slid a few inches and came to a stop just before the door. A strange metal smell hung in the air as she lost the fight with consciousness.
"Jeni"
The voice shimmered in and out as if reflected off water.
"Jeni"
The voice came closer, calm, familiar.
"Jeni"
Jeni opened her eyes, the pain was immediate, a burning, hot scolding burning across her body. Her eyes felt dry and, her room? What had happened to her room? A stale grey room with a desk and a bed with a window next to it? Where was everything, her homework, her clothes, the stuffed animals on her bed? The colour? Where was the colour? Why did everything hurt? A few feet away from her lay a small purple-brown, what, something? She looked at it with suspicion, revulsion. It reminded her of a lung. Smokers' lung. Like the ones in the movies they would show the kids at school, heard them into the communal hall and scare them out of becoming their parents using 8mm films of dead lungs and people with holes in their throats. The lung was no bigger than a small shoe however and it seemed to have arms, or veins or some long sticky things protruding from its body. (Was it a body?). She watched in horror as it began to move, roll slowly over on the floor, one vein was held up in the air and it moved as if it was pointing across the room, it stopped in Jeni's direction. She heard the wet slopping sound as it rolled itself over and the middle of the lung seemed to rip open to reveal a glassy gold eye that lolled back and forward and finally fixed itself on Jeni. Jeni screamed and lurched herself towards the door. "Jeni, NO" came the response behind her. She was weak and sore but managed to pull the door back before falling to her knees in the doorway, all the strength in the world would not have kept her standing as she sobbed dry-mouthed at the sight in front of her. And as she pushed her grey unkempt hair way from her face she saw the burns all up and down her arms. Her old wrinkled arms. She tried to scream, but she had no more breath left.
"no"
"Jeni" Came the voice in the distance behind her, as she looked out across the burnt wasteland outside her door. The sky rolled violently with thick black clouds and the lightening would photoflash the graveyard in front of her every minute or so. Buildings burnt and shattered, skeletons of brick and wire and black pieces of cars, wheels, spikes scattered over and sticking out of the dark sand. Here and there the ugly grey sand was covered in pools of shattered glass. She knew and understood that the sand had been scorched here. Scorched earth. Burnt world.
"Jeni" the voice appeared gently behind her, but she no longer cared. Her body quivered in shock and she felt trapped, like a lump of lead on the floor.
"What happened here?" She sobbed.
"War Jeni" Came the soft, sad reply.
"Is it all like this, everywhere"
"Yes Jeni"
"How many are left?"
"Only a handful Jeni"
"When did this happen?"
"Yesterday Jeni, yesterday"
Jeni shut her eyes, curled her knees up to her chest and wept silently, her old tired body shaking with each sob.
"Jeni, let me back and I will tell you everything I know"
"Are you going to eat me?" Jeni asked, sucking in the tears between breaths but still determined not to look behind her.
"No" Came the warm reply. How could something without a mouth speak in words that could only have passed through a smile? Then all at once she knew.
"Lillith?"
"Yes Jeni, let me back and I will help you"
"I'm... I'm so scared Lillith where are you what's happening, please.."
"Don't be afraid Jeni, hold out your left arm, it will hurt for a bit, and then no longer"
Jeni slumped her left arm onto the floor, and breathing in short wheezing gasps watched as the small purple-brown thing rolled and slopped itself slowly towards her arm. With a speed matched only by the lightening outside it lunged its long thin arms into the veins in the soft spot underneath her elbow. Jeni screamed. And then everything went quiet.
White.
White light.
She was awake but couldn't see. It was all just white light. The pain had disappeared. Something pink was forming in the distance, she squinted hard and slowly in small patchy pieces her room came back into focus again. And it was all there. The bed with the pink quilt surrounded by stuffed animals, her homework on her desk. The smorgasbord of colour that formed the evening sky and garden outside the window. She rushed over to the mirror on her dressing table, and it was all as it was supposed to be. There she was. Young, smooth golden-brown skin, blue eyes and long dark brown hair tied back into a ponytail. She checked her left arm but there was nothing there, just the same young skin. A voice behind her made her spin round.
"Jeni"
There at the door stood Lillith, the strange, tall 13-year-old girl with whom she had become such good friends. Lillith's complexion was very pale and often aggravated by her light blonde hair, but she was a pretty girl. Her big dark eyes in contrast to her fair skin made her even more so.
"I am so sorry that you had to see that Jeni, the lightning struck you and separated us"
"Who are you? Really?"
"I am a being, like you but not like you. I do not come from this world Jeni"
"Why are you here?"
"We are here because of what has happened"
"There are more of you?"
"Yes, one for each person left. Only a handful Jeni"
"What is this place where I am now? What was that place that I saw, and I was different, and what were the scars and why..."
"Slowly Jeni, sit down and I will explain"
Jeni sat down on her bed, she wanted to trust Lillith but was now not sure what was real and what wasn't. She grabbed the quilt and made it knot up hard in her hand so that she could feel the stitching rough against her palm. "It feels real, is it real?"
"It is inside your head Jeni, all of this is, and what a wonderful mind you have that can store everything down to the finest detail". Lillith smiled, she looked around the room as if in awe of it. "Jeni what I am about to tell you is a sad story, but one that needn't end sad. Indeed that is why I am here, me and others like me. You are a beautiful person and I know that you have the grace to understand what I am about to say."
Lillith paused, and Jeni nodded silently.
"War came Jeni, war came yesterday. It came swift and undiscriminating. We had been watching your kind for a long time and had so hoped it would not have come to this, but it has. We vowed never to interfere as ones path in life will follow the course it needs to, no matter how many may try and steer it. This applies to a species as well as a single person. We wept together as we watched it happen, we cannot cry but the sadness that echoed along the minds of our kind is more than I am able to convey, there are no words for it, but if we were human, we would have wept. You see Jeni at the end this war was fought out of fear, and the sad irony is that after all the fighting the greatest fear of all has been realised. There are just a few of you left now Jeni, a few of you with frail bodies and even frailer minds. Those of you who are left will die Jeni. The radiation has been caught up within your planets air currents and in a few months there will be no one left. We had so hoped to help your kind, help them rebuild your world. We are psychic beings Jeni, and we do not have the power to heal you, and soon there will be no one left to inhabit this world."
Lillith looked sadly at the floor, tears were welling in her eyes.
"Jeni, my lovely friend. You have but a few hours left of your life."
Jeni sat aghast on her bed, the quilt still scrunched up in her hands. "Tell me what I saw, I was old, I was so old, and I was burnt, and why Lillith why would you lie to me and pretend to be my friend, why?"
Lillith raised her head and looked directly at Jeni, a tear had formed and was now working its way slowly down the side of her pale white face.
"This is what it comes down to Jeni, and this is where you must choose. I only wanted to help. We only wanted to help. This Jeni" Lillith said motioning to the room. "This is not real, at least it is not real now. It once was, it is stored in your mind and I have taken it and made it for you as it was the happiest time, the happiest memory I could find in your precious mind. You Jeni are not 13 anymore, you are 81 and live alone in the room you saw". Lillith wiped away another tear. "You were near the centre of one of the terrible fires that came from the sky, and so my lovely friend you and I will part ways in just a short space of hours."
"What will happen when I die?" Jeni asked. She could feel the tears start to burn in her throat.
"I will die too Jeni"
"But why? WHY? What is the point if we are all going to die? WHY?"
"We decided that if we cannot bring hope, we would bring what is known to you as love. To each person one of us is assigned, and at the time when the suffering becomes so unbearable we will join our lives with that person, and absorb the pain from their bodies. If we cannot bring a new tomorrow for mankind, the only thing we can do is let them spend their last few hours with love in the happiness of the past, at the time they were most happy. It is our gift to you, and our acknowledgement of the many wonderous things you have achieved, the kindness that has abounded in you and the love you were capable of and so readily shared with one another. May the universe see the value in one single human life, and may it be remembered such that it was worthy of two."
Lillith smiled sadly as the tears now ran down her face, and Jeni felt all the fear seep slowly out of her body.
"Jeni, your unique human minds in their dream state allow us much more time than is truly left, you and I still have a good few days together. But you must choose now. I would rather you do not remember this, rather go back to that happy time and let us play in the sun and sing songs and dream of boys and platte our hair in the crisp early mornings Jeni. For this is what really matters. Come to me Jeni, and let us not waste our precious, precious time together. I love you Jeni, let me give you this gift."
In a fit of tears Jeni sprang up off the bed and threw herself into the open arms of Lillith. Her friend. Lillith held her tightly as she sobbed, and, as she watched the tears slowly sink into Lillith's school shirt the white haze started coming back, and slowly, and surely started to patch everything out as if it was being clouded over, by warm white fluffy clouds. Then there was white light, and then there was nothing.
Jeni slowly awoke, it was morning and she was wrapped up in the quilt in her bed. Her hair had gotten loose from her ponytail and was now all over her face, she giggled as the thought how it must look. The morning sun waited warmly outside the drawn shades of her window. She never remembered what happened the previous day, but a smile came over her face as she remembered what day it was. The long strand of orange thread lay across her dressing table. French Platte Friday! Lillith! It was a silly thing to do at their age, platte their hair together, but it made them feel special. Even though it was the kind of stuff that giggling girls did when they were younger it made them feel good. It was always uniquely theirs. And as Lillith said, it's the way you feel good about yourself, when you feel good about yourself, that matters most.
She never cared much for algebra, never really saw its worth but she still diligently did her best and managed to squeeze through a C average on most of her tests. Grade 8 was no walk in the park all right! It was in the completion of doing the work that she cared for. It made her feel good that even though she never really enjoyed doing the homework, she felt pride in finishing it, and making sure she had done whatever she could do. And as Lillith said, it's the way you feel good about yourself, when you feel good about yourself, that matters most.
As Jeni put her pencil down and closed her workbook she became aware of the storm outside, she marvelled at how engrossed she had become in something so trivial as maths as to not notice the lightning outside. She got onto her bed and kneeled to lean on the windowsill and stare outside. The clouds had gathered dreamily above, it looked wonderful, the mix of colours. Grey, pink and orange sunset, a few choppy holes of blue-sky left. She gazed out along the vivid green lawn and smiled to herself. She could just imagine her dad later, leering out the window at the oncoming rain saying, "you see, I water the lawn and it rains! Everytime a coconut, it rains!". It was at this moment that the bolt of lightning struck just below the window. A bright flash, a click, a loud bang. Jeni's body was thrown violently across the room, she landed hard and slid a few inches and came to a stop just before the door. A strange metal smell hung in the air as she lost the fight with consciousness.
"Jeni"
The voice shimmered in and out as if reflected off water.
"Jeni"
The voice came closer, calm, familiar.
"Jeni"
~
Jeni opened her eyes, the pain was immediate, a burning, hot scolding burning across her body. Her eyes felt dry and, her room? What had happened to her room? A stale grey room with a desk and a bed with a window next to it? Where was everything, her homework, her clothes, the stuffed animals on her bed? The colour? Where was the colour? Why did everything hurt? A few feet away from her lay a small purple-brown, what, something? She looked at it with suspicion, revulsion. It reminded her of a lung. Smokers' lung. Like the ones in the movies they would show the kids at school, heard them into the communal hall and scare them out of becoming their parents using 8mm films of dead lungs and people with holes in their throats. The lung was no bigger than a small shoe however and it seemed to have arms, or veins or some long sticky things protruding from its body. (Was it a body?). She watched in horror as it began to move, roll slowly over on the floor, one vein was held up in the air and it moved as if it was pointing across the room, it stopped in Jeni's direction. She heard the wet slopping sound as it rolled itself over and the middle of the lung seemed to rip open to reveal a glassy gold eye that lolled back and forward and finally fixed itself on Jeni. Jeni screamed and lurched herself towards the door. "Jeni, NO" came the response behind her. She was weak and sore but managed to pull the door back before falling to her knees in the doorway, all the strength in the world would not have kept her standing as she sobbed dry-mouthed at the sight in front of her. And as she pushed her grey unkempt hair way from her face she saw the burns all up and down her arms. Her old wrinkled arms. She tried to scream, but she had no more breath left.
"no"
~
"Jeni" Came the voice in the distance behind her, as she looked out across the burnt wasteland outside her door. The sky rolled violently with thick black clouds and the lightening would photoflash the graveyard in front of her every minute or so. Buildings burnt and shattered, skeletons of brick and wire and black pieces of cars, wheels, spikes scattered over and sticking out of the dark sand. Here and there the ugly grey sand was covered in pools of shattered glass. She knew and understood that the sand had been scorched here. Scorched earth. Burnt world.
"Jeni" the voice appeared gently behind her, but she no longer cared. Her body quivered in shock and she felt trapped, like a lump of lead on the floor.
"What happened here?" She sobbed.
"War Jeni" Came the soft, sad reply.
"Is it all like this, everywhere"
"Yes Jeni"
"How many are left?"
"Only a handful Jeni"
"When did this happen?"
"Yesterday Jeni, yesterday"
~
Jeni shut her eyes, curled her knees up to her chest and wept silently, her old tired body shaking with each sob.
"Jeni, let me back and I will tell you everything I know"
"Are you going to eat me?" Jeni asked, sucking in the tears between breaths but still determined not to look behind her.
"No" Came the warm reply. How could something without a mouth speak in words that could only have passed through a smile? Then all at once she knew.
"Lillith?"
"Yes Jeni, let me back and I will help you"
"I'm... I'm so scared Lillith where are you what's happening, please.."
"Don't be afraid Jeni, hold out your left arm, it will hurt for a bit, and then no longer"
Jeni slumped her left arm onto the floor, and breathing in short wheezing gasps watched as the small purple-brown thing rolled and slopped itself slowly towards her arm. With a speed matched only by the lightening outside it lunged its long thin arms into the veins in the soft spot underneath her elbow. Jeni screamed. And then everything went quiet.
White.
White light.
She was awake but couldn't see. It was all just white light. The pain had disappeared. Something pink was forming in the distance, she squinted hard and slowly in small patchy pieces her room came back into focus again. And it was all there. The bed with the pink quilt surrounded by stuffed animals, her homework on her desk. The smorgasbord of colour that formed the evening sky and garden outside the window. She rushed over to the mirror on her dressing table, and it was all as it was supposed to be. There she was. Young, smooth golden-brown skin, blue eyes and long dark brown hair tied back into a ponytail. She checked her left arm but there was nothing there, just the same young skin. A voice behind her made her spin round.
"Jeni"
There at the door stood Lillith, the strange, tall 13-year-old girl with whom she had become such good friends. Lillith's complexion was very pale and often aggravated by her light blonde hair, but she was a pretty girl. Her big dark eyes in contrast to her fair skin made her even more so.
"I am so sorry that you had to see that Jeni, the lightning struck you and separated us"
"Who are you? Really?"
"I am a being, like you but not like you. I do not come from this world Jeni"
"Why are you here?"
"We are here because of what has happened"
"There are more of you?"
"Yes, one for each person left. Only a handful Jeni"
"What is this place where I am now? What was that place that I saw, and I was different, and what were the scars and why..."
"Slowly Jeni, sit down and I will explain"
~
Jeni sat down on her bed, she wanted to trust Lillith but was now not sure what was real and what wasn't. She grabbed the quilt and made it knot up hard in her hand so that she could feel the stitching rough against her palm. "It feels real, is it real?"
"It is inside your head Jeni, all of this is, and what a wonderful mind you have that can store everything down to the finest detail". Lillith smiled, she looked around the room as if in awe of it. "Jeni what I am about to tell you is a sad story, but one that needn't end sad. Indeed that is why I am here, me and others like me. You are a beautiful person and I know that you have the grace to understand what I am about to say."
Lillith paused, and Jeni nodded silently.
"War came Jeni, war came yesterday. It came swift and undiscriminating. We had been watching your kind for a long time and had so hoped it would not have come to this, but it has. We vowed never to interfere as ones path in life will follow the course it needs to, no matter how many may try and steer it. This applies to a species as well as a single person. We wept together as we watched it happen, we cannot cry but the sadness that echoed along the minds of our kind is more than I am able to convey, there are no words for it, but if we were human, we would have wept. You see Jeni at the end this war was fought out of fear, and the sad irony is that after all the fighting the greatest fear of all has been realised. There are just a few of you left now Jeni, a few of you with frail bodies and even frailer minds. Those of you who are left will die Jeni. The radiation has been caught up within your planets air currents and in a few months there will be no one left. We had so hoped to help your kind, help them rebuild your world. We are psychic beings Jeni, and we do not have the power to heal you, and soon there will be no one left to inhabit this world."
Lillith looked sadly at the floor, tears were welling in her eyes.
"Jeni, my lovely friend. You have but a few hours left of your life."
Jeni sat aghast on her bed, the quilt still scrunched up in her hands. "Tell me what I saw, I was old, I was so old, and I was burnt, and why Lillith why would you lie to me and pretend to be my friend, why?"
Lillith raised her head and looked directly at Jeni, a tear had formed and was now working its way slowly down the side of her pale white face.
"This is what it comes down to Jeni, and this is where you must choose. I only wanted to help. We only wanted to help. This Jeni" Lillith said motioning to the room. "This is not real, at least it is not real now. It once was, it is stored in your mind and I have taken it and made it for you as it was the happiest time, the happiest memory I could find in your precious mind. You Jeni are not 13 anymore, you are 81 and live alone in the room you saw". Lillith wiped away another tear. "You were near the centre of one of the terrible fires that came from the sky, and so my lovely friend you and I will part ways in just a short space of hours."
"What will happen when I die?" Jeni asked. She could feel the tears start to burn in her throat.
"I will die too Jeni"
"But why? WHY? What is the point if we are all going to die? WHY?"
"We decided that if we cannot bring hope, we would bring what is known to you as love. To each person one of us is assigned, and at the time when the suffering becomes so unbearable we will join our lives with that person, and absorb the pain from their bodies. If we cannot bring a new tomorrow for mankind, the only thing we can do is let them spend their last few hours with love in the happiness of the past, at the time they were most happy. It is our gift to you, and our acknowledgement of the many wonderous things you have achieved, the kindness that has abounded in you and the love you were capable of and so readily shared with one another. May the universe see the value in one single human life, and may it be remembered such that it was worthy of two."
Lillith smiled sadly as the tears now ran down her face, and Jeni felt all the fear seep slowly out of her body.
"Jeni, your unique human minds in their dream state allow us much more time than is truly left, you and I still have a good few days together. But you must choose now. I would rather you do not remember this, rather go back to that happy time and let us play in the sun and sing songs and dream of boys and platte our hair in the crisp early mornings Jeni. For this is what really matters. Come to me Jeni, and let us not waste our precious, precious time together. I love you Jeni, let me give you this gift."
In a fit of tears Jeni sprang up off the bed and threw herself into the open arms of Lillith. Her friend. Lillith held her tightly as she sobbed, and, as she watched the tears slowly sink into Lillith's school shirt the white haze started coming back, and slowly, and surely started to patch everything out as if it was being clouded over, by warm white fluffy clouds. Then there was white light, and then there was nothing.
~
Jeni slowly awoke, it was morning and she was wrapped up in the quilt in her bed. Her hair had gotten loose from her ponytail and was now all over her face, she giggled as the thought how it must look. The morning sun waited warmly outside the drawn shades of her window. She never remembered what happened the previous day, but a smile came over her face as she remembered what day it was. The long strand of orange thread lay across her dressing table. French Platte Friday! Lillith! It was a silly thing to do at their age, platte their hair together, but it made them feel special. Even though it was the kind of stuff that giggling girls did when they were younger it made them feel good. It was always uniquely theirs. And as Lillith said, it's the way you feel good about yourself, when you feel good about yourself, that matters most.
