Kzine Issue 20 by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kimota Publishing
Published: 2018-01-23T00:00:00+00:00

ALPHA AND OMEGA

by Subodhana Wijeyeratne

The dog waits for the man to disappear into the mist before it approaches the house. Liquid fire dripping from its mouth and a trail of charred spots on the dead grass in its wake. It slips through the gaping door, and after a few moments a woman screams. She screams and screams and then abruptly she falls silent. The dog emerges, bloody-muzzled and grinning, and licks its lips. It paces off into the mist. Behind it the house crumbles and wafts away into the air in ghostly trails, as if made of cobwebs.

The dog wanders over to another hut and lets itself in. More screaming, and the dog emerges and shakes itself head to tail. Blood flying off its fur in a thin red halo and the hut disintegrating behind it as it does.

It continues in this fashion from house to house until finally, gorged, it sits fat-bellied on its hind legs and surveys the land. No horizon visible through the fog. The grass losing its definition and melting into sludge and then the sludge subsiding into a greyish nothing and then there is nothing but the dog. It wags its tail and looks about it and seems well satisfied.

And then it begins to make the world, anew.

* * *

Alpha has never seen the man before, but she is certain that she does not like him. She does not like the way he barges into her shack, tramping snow all over the floor. She does not like the way he grins when she casts around for a weapon and finds none. She does not like the suspect familiarity he has with her belongings, the way he wends his massive frame with peculiar delicacy past the clutter, and finally settles on the pile of sodden cardboard and paper that is her bed.

“Get out!” she hisses, and raises her fists. “Get out!”

The man’s grin fades. “What?”

“What, what? Who the hell are you? Get out of my house!”

The man scans the room, and so does Alpha, though there is not much to see. A few fistsful of weeds and nuts crackling over a few pieces of orange charcoal, barely warm enough for her to feel. Ragged things here and there in the gloom.

“You call this a house?” the man says.

She remembers – the knife. She reaches into her pocket and her fingers close on the handle. and she whips it out an old plastic knife. Scarcely an edge to it. She waves it at the man.

“It’s mine! Get out, get out, or I’ll stab you.”

The man peers at her for a long time.

“Already?” he says, eventually.

“Already what?”

He shakes his head. “Never mind”.

He reaches down with fingers, fat and filthy, and begins to take off his shoes.

“Stop it! Get out!”

The man sits back, one boot dangling off his left foot, a naked yellow heel peeking out from beneath his trouser-hem. Skin cracked and the little crevasses choked black with grime and flakes of it peeling off like rind. He stares at her for a few moments.

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