Pictonauts May 2012

So I haven't really written anything much for a long, long time now. That needed to change immediately. So here's me having a crack at Mr. Steele's world renowned Pictonauts challenge! It's in prose and everything!

The End. 

Clark listened. Nothing. After all the destruction and the accompanying chorus of shrieks, wails, sirens and crashes… nothing. Here they were, at the end of everything surrounded by calm.  Faint tinny music drifted into Clark’s consciousness from the Watcher’s headphones.  He turned away from the desert to face her. Now that they were done running from explosions and there didn’t seem to be any immediate threat, he would get some answers. The way she was calmly ignoring him didn’t fill Clark with any hope.

“What now?” He asked.

She didn’t reply, just fixed him with that same infuriating smile before letting her eyes wander lazily back to some vague spot in the desert. Clark had just about reached his limit with her aggressive serenity. In the fading light of the world’s final sunset, at the end of civilisation, the last man on Earth lost his temper. He wasn’t very good at it.

“I’m going home!” he wailed, almost failing to mask the sob creeping into his voice. “I’ve tried reading  your bloody stupid book cover to cover. I want none of it.”

He hadn’t expected to achieve anything with his tantrum, but he felt a little better for it and therefore proceeded to stomp out into the cooling sands, raising little puffs of dust that hung in the air behind him.  The Watcher’s gaze followed his progress as he wandered away from her in no particular direction. He hadn’t gone far when he came to an abrupt stop and flopped down into the dirt cross-legged.

Clark sat with his back to the Watcher. He closed his eyes and tried to collect his thoughts. What day is it?  he thought.  Let’s start there.  He needed to piece the frenzied events of recent days together and find a beginning to it all. Try as he might, he couldn’t pinpoint when he’d first set eyes on that silent witch and her damned box. Idly, he began inspecting his nails. Deprived of daily attention and care, they had already begun to grow long enough to trap dirt, and the skin around them had become cracked and weathered, brought into sharp relief by smears of dried blood. He wasn’t entirely sure all of it was his.   

He managed to supress a shudder. Not so long ago, before all of this, just the idea of not being able to wash his hands would send him into one of his episodes. Skin would be scrubbed, nails would be clipped and teeth brushed with such vigour the bristles of his toothbrush would get caught in the gaps of his teeth. Now here he was with various cuts and bruises unattended, sitting on the ground in the dirtiest place he’d ever been.  He tried not to consider how long he’d been without a change of underwear.

His eyes snapped back open with that thought. Perhaps he didn’t need to know what day it was after all. Turning to regard the watcher, still sitting calmly on the bench, Clark grudgingly realised that some small part of him had begun to appreciate her intervention. Since she arrived, he had begun to get better. 

He shuffled round in the dust so he could sit facing her. He drew up his knees to his chest and hugged them tightly as he considered her properly for the first time since their flight.

She was still gazing at the mysterious point on the horizon to her right. Sitting in that old bus station in the middle of the desert, she looked for all the world like she was actually expecting the regular service to continue.  The thought was mildly reassuring to Clark, as if her posture were offering the potential of sanity returning. She was definitely waiting for something though.

Clark got up and paced towards her. He started to dust himself down and pat away the orange grit that clung to him, but it didn’t seem important anymore.  He stepped onto the cool paving. The little oasis of concrete helped to ground him again, restoring his grasp of reality. If he faced her this way, keeping the desert out of his periphery, he could almost feel like he was back in the city.

Clark picked up the book again. He rifled through the pages hoping he’d find something he’d missed, but he knew better than to expect any sudden revelations. Endless pages of nonsensical markings. Writing beyond comprehension in languages unknown. There was no consistency in the distribution of different characters. On any given page there could be a single line of some cursive gibberish, or a solitary marking squatting in the corner of an otherwise empty sheet. Spread across twenty or more pages there would be a stream of crude pictograms and other pages seemed to be entirely blank, but hurt Clark’s eyes if he looked at them.  One particular page, he remembered seemed to use the alphabet he was familiar with, but just had the word “Fnoof” repeated over and over.

He had spent some time examining the book and had come to the conclusion that the message was the same in every language, that this was a phrase book with only one phrase:

“Your star is dying. The watcher will record this. You have been selected as the next watcher. Await instruction.”

He traced the English letters with his finger.  Await instruction. Well, she certainly was waiting for something and it was clearly not going to be a bus anymore.  He sat next to her and crossed his legs.

The colour was draining out of the world quicker now. An inky blackness was oiling over the sands, heading steadily from one horizon to the other. The sun finally dipped completely, the last pink edge of light hovered over the cusp of the world and was slowly drawn down from human sight for the last time.

The Watcher clicked the lid of the box shut and sighed. It was the biggest sigh Clark had ever seen, every part of her body seemed to be involved.

“Good luck!” she said amicably.

Clark spluttered, a thousand new questions in contest for his voice as the Watcher delicately placed the box into his lap and stood up. The light was fading fast now, unnaturally so. She walked out into the desert without saying another word. The soft music from her headphones faded away with her.

Wide eyes went from her dwindling figure, down to the box in his lap. It was humming gently and felt slightly warm.  It took some great effort to tear his eyes away from the mysterious cube, but when he succeeded, she was gone.

Darkness closed around him. He was alone.

He waited for instructions.