The Elm 2016-2017 2017 The Elm Literary Magazine | Page 40

WE THE CREATURES
by Jany Salinas
It has no language. It understands no words and if it once did then it does
not remember any of them anymore. It wanders the wood, unreachable
to any intelligent life left on the earth. This is not to say that the Creature
was stupid or had no sense. While its purpose was unknown to it, the ba-
sic human instinct to survive still lingers inside the husk of a being that it
was. The corruption of the earth had corrupted its inhabitants until they
became as poisoned and disfigured as the soil. Those that were unlucky
enough to be at the wrong place at the wrong time when the toxins had
reached them were reduced to this…this unrecognizable monster. Per-
haps of you squinted it might have been human once. But now it was only
a whisper and half its soul had already given up, only clinging on to the
body out of force.

Sometimes it ate. It didn’t really need to but the ceaseless wandering
had prompted something in its mind to catch to kill and to consume. This
happened only once every couple of months, not that it had any sense of
time, so its bone had protruded from its translucent skin like roots hidden
under a thin layer of dirt. That same skin was already rotten, eating itself
away, infected and dirty. White eyes peered out of the locks of tangled
and filthy hair that grew from its head, searching for nothing. Sometimes
it looked down on itself and wondered at its own existence. It lifted its
curled appendages at the end of their long arms and tried to move them
but the motion would only cause it pain and it would cry out in a piercing
voice that didn’t belong in those quiet woods. These cries, together with
the cries of the other unlucky spirits that had befallen the same fate, could
sometimes be heard within the boarders of the Safe Places. In there, the
people had yet to be touched by the disease of Bombs. Those in control
had seen to it that their citizens would be protected. Nothing came in.
Nothing left. This did not concern the creature and, in fact, never came to
mind at all.

The other voices, however, did somehow come to mind. If ever it
cried out in some sort of pain, or simply because some part of itself could
not handle the silence, the other voices would respond. There was no rea-
son to want this, as there was no reason to want much of anything but the
absence of pain, and yet the Creature had grown to depend on the pa-
thetic cries as a way to escape some crushing feeling in their soul. Some
deep loneliness they would not have been able to explain even if they
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had words to use. No, no words. Only the screeching of its fellow lost souls
for company.

Every so often, it came across another like itself. Horrid and dirty. They
would both look at each other and suddenly decide that there was no
reason for them to continue doing so. Our Creature does not quite like the
physical meetings as much as it likes the sense of community it feels when
it screams along with its kin in a massive chorus. Once, it had stumbled
upon another that had been horrendously fused with a boar. It lay kicking
feverishly and breathing heavily enough for it to be heard from at least
ten trees away. Its eyes stared up at the Creature with no true purpose but
the Creature thought that it was pleading for something. Some release.
The body was covered with foliage and moss, for it had not moved since
it had been become what it is. Creature did not like looking at it but it did
not know why. Something in it thought that it should kill the horrid thing
but it did not know why. A part of it thought that it would be a mercy…a
mercy…a mercy… but it quickly forgot and wandered past, eager to get
away from it. Maybe one day the roots of a tree would swallow it up.

The human spark sometimes flared up inside the Creature. The spark
would make them do strange things, want strange things and sometimes
it would even think things. These thoughts and actions were inexplicable
and contained no known logic to the Creature. It knows that the rain is
painful, in the same way that it knows that the sky is only ever dark or dark-
er, and yet one day it had found a large body of water and threw them-
selves into it. There was a flash of something pleasant. Something cool and
clean that they used to love but then there was only pain as soon as its
body touched the water. How could it have forgotten? It screamed and
screamed, the acid shriveling its skin. The others responded in fervor and
the cries continued for days and days in an echo of their kins’ pain.

On this day the Creature comes across the most curious thing it has
seen since it can remember. The usual gray and black woods seem…
brighter. There is a color that is not black and gray that it would not have
be able to name even if it wants to. Green…

There was another flash and it sees a picture in its head of trees that
did not collapse at the touch and leaves that did not become dust at the
slightest breeze. There are alive things here. Alive things not like the Crea-
ture or the voices that accompanied it. The disease clings to it though,
and anything it touches here soon becomes like what it has left behind. It
does not notice or does not care. The only thing it registers is that it is…dif-
ferent here. Familiar.
“Sweet Jesus, how’d that thing get through?”
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