The Long Day — A Short Story. “This is madness. Isn’t it?”
Tags: Short Story, Dystopia, Short Fiction, Science Fiction

“This is madness. Isn’t it?”

We lay still in our dust laden clothes upon the roof of an old, dilapidated ‘house’ — a structure made of what the people of the Old Time called ‘bricks’ and ‘cement’. We were here today, as we were here every day, our bellies pasted firmly on a couple of worn-out mattresses, waiting and watching.

Always waiting.

Always watching.

My rifle’s body sat stoically on its bipod stand, its butt resting comfortably against my shoulder; the comfort was more habitual than structural. Its barrel peeped through one of the many cavities that plagued the roof’s railing. The rifle sat there, waiting, watching, just like me.

I peered through its lens at the expanse before me, to which there wasn’t much to begin with. A large, brown, barren stretch of land filled the lens’s scope. A large, brown, barren stretch of land that extended to the blurry end of the horizon. A large, brown, barren stretch of land and a handful of houses that sprouted across it as unexpectedly as devil’s grass in a desert.

The silencer on the barrel’s mouth always came in the lens’s way. I hated that. But orders from the Citadel made the muzzle mandatory. And orders are orders. They’re meant to be followed. Without hesitation. Without question.

Yet he questioned it all. His question now lingered with me.

‘This is madness, isn’t it?’

I nodded lightly, knowing well that he would notice it at his sight’s edge. I drew a large breath, which, for lying upon my stomach all day, hurt my spine. It’s alright, I told myself and waited for the pain to pass. It’s for the cause.

“You know, I sometimes wonder,” he whispered again, peering through his binoculars into the distance. “Puff of dust, eleven-o-clock,” he then said abruptly.

I turned the direction of my rifle and looked. A little brown mushroom of dust had erupted and was now slowly re-joining the earth. “Puff of dust,” I concurred.

“Making a record,” he said. “Thirteen-forty hours.”

I checked the watch on my wrist. The minute and hour hands made a placid arc between eight and two. The second’s needle ran from the minute’s hand to the hour’s hand. “Affirmative,” I responded.

He wrote in his diary with a blue pen that had a white clicking top. He always did that. There were automated diaries to upload information to the Citadel immediately. Yet he held on to this scrappy little notebook. ‘You never know when those gadgets would start failing us’ he would say. He had never trusted anything that the Citadel offered.

He closed the diary with the pen in it and resumed the dust-gazing.

An itch prickled my back. “What?” I asked him and left the trigger to reach for the itch.

“What?”

“You said that you sometimes wonder…”

“Oh,” he replied. “I wonder, you know, if this is all for no reason.” I saw him looking at me from the corner of my eye.

This again. I sighed to express my disinterest.

“I mean,” he carried on anyway, “we haven’t seen one of Them in six years. Fuck, I’m sure that I would have forgotten what They looked like if not for those training demos that the Citadel keeps sending over.”

“We’re just doing our jobs, man,” I said haplessly. “The Citadel counts on us to keep the Wall safe. If we don’t do our jobs and They come, then what?”

“Yeah, yeah, I know we’re “doing our jobs” for the Citadel,” he mocked. “But don’t you ever wonder what it could mean if this… if all of this was truly over? If we didn’t have to wake up every fucking day from our beds, leave behind our families, and come and lie here, on this piece of shit rug, which if I may add delicately, is fucking my back up?”

“Delicately,” I mocked.

He scoffed.

“And what would you do then? Sit by a lake and paint a picture like one of those artist folks?”

“Wouldn’t that be nice?” he replied, ignoring the mockery in my tone. “Maybe I’ll sit and write a book about the life I spent on this fucking mattress. I’ll call it ‘Chronicles of a Broken Spine’.”

What? screamed my mind so loud that I had to turn away from my lens and look at him. It had been a while since I had moved. My back winced with the sudden rush of blood that flowed through it. But I looked at him through it all.

“Puff of dust, twelve-o-clock,” he said.

I returned to the lens. “Puff of dust.”

“The Citadel had warned of a lot of these today,” he said as he made the record in the diary. “Thirteen-fifty hours.”

A part of me resented his optimism. My insides cringed to see him still believe in hopes of a different life. You’re an idiot, I thought. This is it. This is all that ever will be. This is what we will survive as. Fucking idiot.

It’s not as if I didn’t hope for better times. I too sometimes wished for nothing more than a quiet day with a glass of whiskey in my hand and some fried chicken on my plate. The realist in me, however, had taught me that it’s wise to choose reason over hope. “You’ve always been a fucking moron.”

“Sure,” he hissed back. “Call me a moron. You’re not the first. And you damn well won’t be the last. But let me tell you, it’s better to be a moron than a hopeless, empty shell.”

Could he be right? It has been six years since we saw Them. Six whole years. And even six years ago, we had managed to push them away. What if they’re actually gone? What if we’re just sitting and waiting and watching for someone who doesn’t even exist?

But I knew better than to voice my thoughts in front of him. I knew it would only spur him in a direction I’d rather he wouldn’t venture into. “It’s not our job to think about the future,” I said coolly. “There are better people than you and I for that. People who can actually think about and work towards such things. Our job is to wait and watch and report what we see. Our job is to make sure that everyone and everything inside the walls is safe.”

He scoffed. “Let those better people in the Citadel dream my dreams while I just lie here in this fucking pile of old-time stones and stare at puffs of dust all day. Let them live their lives while I rot in here.”

“Twelve-o-clock,” I said, “Puff of dust.”

“Puff of dust,” he said. “Fourteen-hundred hours. Making an entry.”

“Affirmative,” I responded. I thought I saw another puff of dust elsewhere and adjusted the lens’s focus. It was nothing. A house of red coloured bricks stood alone in the line of my sight. It stood like it did every other day. It stood there while we lay here, waiting and watching.

“You’re alive, aren’t you?” I readjusted the lens by two ticks.

“You call this living?” he demanded. “We wake up every day to the same shitty binoculars and the same shitty snipers, lie upon this fucking rug for hours together, eat that fucking garbage they call “bread” three times a day.” He rotated the lens of his binoculars. “And for what? To see these puffs of dust that fly with the wind?”

“I’d say it’s still better than listening to the incessant ramblings of that wife of yours.”

“That,” he replied with an agreeing nod, “I’ll give you. But it’s still not the point.”

I felt an itch rise upon the tip of my nose. I pulled my finger away from the trigger to scratch at it. It felt good.

“Look at this,” he said, holding the diary in my face. “Look at the records it shows,” he said as he flipped through the pages. “Puff of dust. Puff of dust. Puff of dust. Fuck, I have written those three words so many times that sometimes, while sleeping, I write them on my wife’ back. Puff of dust at fourteen-hundred hours.”

“It’s our job, man,” I said. A saw speck of dust on my lens. I reached out to clean it.

“Yeah, it is,” he replied, “but for what? I’d rather They come and finish what they started and put me out of my misery.”

“Or you could just shoot yourself, you know,” I suggested. hoping in that moment that he would truly consider the option. My finger’s nail scraped delicately at the spot on the lens. “Or I could do you the favour.”

“Sure,” he agreed. “Why not? That would be an easy way out. Just get me some of that whiskey that your better people hide in the Citadel.”

“That whiskey is a rumour,” I said matter-of-factly. The speck on my lens still remained. I had in fact managed to smear it a little more than it was before. Damn, I thought. Now that will take some explaining to do. I looked away from the sniper’s lens and looked at him. “Give me that cloth to clean the lens.” I put my hand out but he didn’t move.

“What is that? Twelve-o-clock?”

I looked through the lens again. It looked a little blurry. I adjusted its focus. It was no spot. A cold wave spread through me. A frightened first drop of sweat trickled down my temple. “Get the radio,” I whispered. My words shivered for the first time. For the first time, I hoped to have lived the way he had said. “Call the Citadel. They’re here.” I looked through the lens again. The silencer came in the way of the lens. I always hated that.