Girl Facing Village (Editor's Cut*)
by
Lee Alon
My name is Anna Fin and I left the city seven years ago because living there was too much for me. It nearly killed me.
I went into the Rodman Mountains to run away from the things I hated: loud noise, crowding, pressure, jobs, and that ever-lasting rat race to have more than other people had. Soon I found a tiny hovel among the hills. Didn't take much paperwork at all -- selling off all the things I'd accumulated in the city paid for the property and left enough to live on indefinitely.
Now I had my little farm, where the animals roamed free. No fences or anything like that. The chickens laid eggs when they felt like it, and my single cow gave milk when inclined. There was no pressure at my farm, on the animals and especially not on me.
There was a Marine base nearby, as things are measured in the hills -- five miles, give or take a couple. The Marines made noise, but it was rare and muffled when it did happen. The miles and miles of hills and valleys and trees that separated me from them did their job.
Five years ago commercial jets began drifting above me and the animals, inaudible save for the very occasional background rumble, that sound sometimes called civilization's soundtrack.
They didn’t bother me.
Since leaving the world behind very few things bothered me.
I had a well, deep, because the mountains were very dry. No plumbing, running this and electric that. No connections to anything save to the land and my fellow creatures. Yes, trips to the towns below were necessary from time to time, and I hiked the distance or hired people to deliver.
This was fine, and more than fine by me. I never missed the company of other humans.
Five years passed by the light of an oil-burning lamp and candles.
Reading, writing and thinking. With few distractions, these things came easily and naturally.
It was good having none of the commodities and material stuff so defining of the reality I wished to avoid, a world built on selfish desires and lack of compassion for others.
The last few years before I left the city almost killed me. No -- I wasn't the victim of some horrific crime, quite the opposite, but every day clawed at my sanity with its endless onslaught of ignorance and malice.
####
It wasn't too bad for a time, but then the city began to close in on me, especially the noise, which was slowly but incessantly becoming unbearable.
I had this one neighbor who had to have music playing in the background all the time.
I knocked on her door one weekend afternoon.
"Yeah, what do you want? Anything wrong?" she said.
"Your music's kind of loud. Could you please turn it down?"
"I don't think so. It's not that loud, and I have a right to listen to music if I feel like it."
"No, actually, I have the right to enjoy my apartment in quiet..."
"Well, just call the fucking cops, then."
"There's no need for that, if you'd only listen..."
"Get lost! I don't have to hear this from someone like you, Miss Sensitive Ears. This is an apartment building, you know, there's always gonna be noise. Move to the hills or something, bitch."
She slammed the door in my face.
####
While tending to the gathering of dinner, eggs and vegetables from my modest patch, I heard the distinct rumble of open-pipe exhaust echoed along the path leading to the ravine below my house.
This was after rainfall, and so little dust rose.
I recognized the car immediately.
Cars. Those symbols of everything their society achieved, encompassing so much and taking it twofold. I never overly liked them, even when part of the madness, but was never one of those crazies who'd refuse to ride in one.
I had a car once. Used to drive that thing day in, day out, from work to my complex...
The car belonged to Casey, a woman I knew from the city.
It was a big navy blue one, sucking at natural resources better than a Hoover on meth.
Don't get me wrong, I wasn't an environmentalist anti-technological, but cars made the connection for me with everything I ran away from.
Casey stopped in front of the hut.
She was one of a handful who knew where I was, and very gorgeous in a young, healthy way that made sure her life among them was good.
Naturally, I didn't have a phone, so there was no way for her to call in advance. But I welcomed her, hermit or not, company did feel good once in a while.
We stood there, looking at each other.
"Hello, Casey," I croaked. With nobody but the animals around, I don't talk much.
"Anna, my favorite loner in the whole world. Enjoying the cave drawings?"
"They're illustrations, hieroglyphs."
"Good old civilization, even in the Mojave it chases you, eh?"
"I'm not here for that, but that's not news to you, right?"
"No. You look good. Haven't seen you in how long, a year?"
"About. Thanks." Nobody looked good next to her, I thought.
I glanced at the car, waxed and glimmering in the desert sun.
"How was the drive from the city?" I asked.
The question made her nervous, I could tell.
"Not bad, very little traffic."
I eyed her closely, and she noticed.
"What?"
"Nothing, you're probably tired and hungry, unless you had some of that food along the way."
I didn't like highway food.
####
The last time I drove a car was on an interstate, between two cities. By then, I hated highways.
It was getting late, so I pulled into one of those overly-bright, artificial oases with all the fast food in them.
Speakers were playing some song about sleepers in metropolis, which I found odd since the truck stop was in the desert.
Above me, I could see the dark silhouettes of a mountain range where the stars didn't twinkle.
I sat at the diner next to a gas station, plastic moldings glared at me from every which way.
As odors comprising equal parts Lysol and coffee wafted towards my person, I noticed the people in the next booth.
The girl was talking on a cell phone, loud and obnoxious. She was speaking to someone about partying and fucking yet another party.
I couldn't stand it. The middle of nowhere, and it was like the city had stowed away in my back seat and was breathing in my ear.
####
"No, I didn't eat on the road," Casey said. "The food in those places is getting pretty stale by now."
That made no sense to me -- the food in those places was bad, no question there, but stale? But I nodded as if I understood.
Casey said, "So you're not into researching what the desert people left behind anymore?"
She made to get closer to my hut, but I wanted to remain by the car for some reason.
"How did you keep it so clean, with the bugs and all?" I asked.
She laughed.
"There was a place not far, on the main road down there, I washed her," she said. "It's pointless when you think about it, wash and get dirty all over soon enough. Kind of like the drawings in your caves. The people who left them there, they probably knew one day what they meant would be gone, and some other people would leave behind their own meanings." She leaned against the car, which still had the name of the dealership in San Francisco on the plate bracket -- STEWART CHEVY.
"I never intended to study anything up here in the mountains," I said. "Look, it's quiet here. I came for the silence, you know that. Puttering around the historical sites in this area was just a way to keep busy for a little while." She knew all this, or should have.
Casey eyed me as she pulled out a bag from the passenger side of the car.
"What will you be leaving behind, Anna?"
"What, when I die? Nothing, if I can help it. That's what I came here to avoid".
Relics.
####
I ordered a salad and juice.
Screens were showing one of the news channels.
The international committee on societal reconstruction had another summit planned to discuss means of solving social criminality or at least reducing the incidence of disorder.
Several drastic measures were on the docket, and commentators bickered over the moral undertones inherent in implementation.
I just worried about going back to my nightmare apartment eventually.
The girl kept at her phone, louder and louder, the noise encroaching on my mind the way water creeps up over time on the mightiest of rock formations.
Two men, young then, were with her in the booth. They, too, laughed and yelped almost without rhyme or reason. Nobody else in the diner seemed to notice.
The girl caught me staring. She motioned to the others and they turned to look back at me.
"Is there a problem?" one of the men asked from across the distance between us.
I hesitated for a second.
"No, but you're too loud".
"We’re just talking, lady," he said.
"But can't you try to keep it down?" My voice sounded small again, I felt small again, too.
"Go to hell," the girl said, dismissing me.
Going to hell would have been redundant by that point.
####
Emily, my resident dog, wandered closer to Casey's car. She gave it a hooded glance and rambled on to look for something to eat. I wasn't actively feeding the animals; they were on their own for that unless they gave signs of being otherwise inclined.
Casey put down her bag, looked at the sky.
"Are you going to invite me in?"
"There isn't too much here, but you're welcome to share in what I have," I said. "What brings you here to me anyway?"
"Maybe I'm fed up, Fin, maybe I want to be like you, stare at some ancient scrolls and whatnot. Besides, I'm here to tell you your wish has been granted."
####
At the diner, the two men laughed at me. They mocked my weakness, I could tell.
The girl with them? She was on her phone, telling the other side about some crazy woman who has the nerve to ask for a peaceful meal.
Like a possessed being, I grabbed the silver knife they gave me for the salad, thinking you don't need a knife for salad, but what the hey, and got up.
In a dream state, I went over to their booth, the two men staring at me, unsure, and began stabbing the woman as she talked. The force in my arm was uncanny, and even though the knife wasn't sharp, it broke skin time and again, piercing her left, exposed shoulder.
One of the men got up to stop me, so I turned and kicked him in the groin, and he doubled over. The other one looked on, flabbergasted, and didn't do anything. He was weaker than me.
Sensing this, I pulled the girl towards me and sank the knife in her left eye.
####
"The noise isn't there anymore, Fin, at least not the noise you ran from, not the angry noise of the city, like when you went on trial."
"I know I owe you for that," I added.
Casey made a dismissive gesture as we started for my hovel: it was nothing.
The hut -- calling it a cabin would have been an exaggeration -- only had two windows, and they were dark. I needed to light the oil lamp. It was getting towards twilight.
"What I did was my job," Casey said, "But it wasn't enough. Like your cave scribbles, it won't matter in the long run."
Casey was a Reference, part of the new legal system, evaluating cases on their social order merit. This was late in the fray, after the debate on goodness was well established.
She was the deciding vote in the jury of References who handled my case, certifying me and my actions at the diner as good.
My case was projected around the country and by extension the world, one of several thousand instances forming the advanced stages of Social Cleansing.
"Regardless, I think you could have gone either way," I said. "Instead of finding this place, I could have been... Anyway, you know how I feel about us meeting. It was for a good reason." I looked at her and she seemed uneasy again.
She was looking at Emily, who came after us.
"The meek shall inherit, eh? When can we go out to the caves? I'd like to see what they were talking about."
"We can do it later this week, if you want. Why the sudden interest?"
"Why did you stop being interested?" Casey asked.
"Because I realized that even studying something that old tied me to civilization. It was one more bridge that needed to be burned if I was to ever recover. I wasn't meant to be part of that."
"That's great, 'cause you know what, you're not a part of it anymore."
"What do you mean?" Once again, she had said something that I couldn’t figure out.
####
Of course they arrested me, and the state police, who claimed jurisdiction, even tried to keep me out of the new courts.
But by then California had signed the Societal Order convention, and I went on trial to determine whether my actions had been justified by the rude and intrusive attitude of the girl and her friends.
The other side -- not 'the prosecution', since the question of who had committed a crime against whom had yet to be determined -- said that killing the girl had been excessive and unauthorized vigilante action.
But the prosecution established my genetic makeup was sound, and that I stood for society's best interest.
The jury of References interviewed me in detail, almost half not buying me at all. I could see that they were inclined to write me off as antisocial, at least as guilty as the dead girl.
But Casey took extra time with me, and we bonded. She voted in my favor, and the case was decided.
When they announced the two guys would be sent to processing for guilt by association, I was almost lynched coming out of the court house, but Casey was there to shield me.
We had remained close ever since.
It was soon after the trial that I packed the few things I couldn't part with, sold the rest, and headed for the hills. For the longest time, I kept imagining my neighbor and the girl following me to the mountains, waiting there with noise and hate to haunt me forever.
As it turned out, there were only the Marines, training to keep order and make sure processing went on undisturbed. Then the planes started.
Casey visited me once in a while, and that was really good.
####
"You have to start being honest with yourself, Anna," she said as I turned to light the lamp.
It was really cool inside, and I didn't know why she looked rather flushed. "Would this life seem so nice if you knew there was nothing to run away from?"
"You have to stop speaking in riddles and just say what you want to say," I said. "I don't even think about that world anymore. Even if they did get to all the bad ones, it doesn't matter -- I'm not going back."
She shook her beautiful head.
"That's not what I'm saying. The city, it's like the drawings now. Just a message, a reminder, maybe, I don't know. That's why I want to go to the caves, to see if it's really just like that," she said. Her hands clutched at her bag as if it was very heavy and she was afraid it might slip out of her grasp.
"Wanna put that down somewhere out of the way?" I offered.
"No, it's all I have left," she said.
I saw death on her face, like a skull pushing its way through her beautiful skin. It was the first time I saw death. The girl in the diner, I was too busy feeling good to notice.
####
My case was one of the first and last to draw angry mobs. As the Societal Order conventions became more widely accepted, the question of the rightness of its ideals faded away. In its place...
The world, most of it anyway, became divided in two. Those who favored order and civility and those who favored 'freedom' clashed everywhere, each denouncing the other as Antisocial. DNA testing should have settled things, except that no one could agree on what constituted 'good' genes (aside from insisting that their own genes were just fine, thank you).
It was ironic that an idea centered on politeness and consideration for others (whether achieved through self-restraint, or imposed from above) led to such chaos. I was up in the mountains, though, and as safe as anyone could be. But from the little I saw and heard when I visited town, so-called vigilante action had become common. The odds, however, had shifted -- instead of one person acting against a crowd, you were more likely to see a crowd bringing down an uncooperative individual. It was a very good time to be a hermit.
####
The distant rumble and roar of the Marines' vehicles and airplanes was a constant around my farm, but when we went up to the caves, Casey and me, the sounds were strangely absent.
"Can you hear any noise from outside?" I asked her.
She ignored me, pointing at the drawings, which had stood there, lonesome and forgotten, probably thousands of years.
There was still some light from outside, enough for Casey to make out the figures inscribed by people so long dead that even the Rodman Mountains had probably forgotten them.
"This one," she indicated, "this one shows a woman facing horses. They look like they're running away from her. Have you seen it before?"
"Seen all of them, Casey," I answered. "Check out the one with the hamlet."
"Hamlet?"
"Yes, hamlet, like a little village. Over there." I showed her, down ten paces into the cave.
With less light to go on, Casey had to squint, which made her look funny.
"Don't laugh, glasses are in the car. It'll be hard getting them replaced now, so I couldn't risk bringing them down here," she said.
"Again with the riddles. What do you see?"
"Huh, I think it's more or less the same lady, right? The horses changed color, they're brownish-red now, still facing the same way, but she's facing the village. There's nobody else in the tents."
"Yep. And I still think it's a hamlet."
"What do you make of it?"
"No clue. Some of the others are even creepier," I added.
"What I wanted to find isn't here. Let's go out." Casey moved past me into the bluish evening.
We stood there.
I looked up at the Rodmans. Silence pervaded everywhere, and the stars began to glisten. There wasn't a sound or smell to lead us one way or the other. Emily had taken off again, probably chasing a late snack; she was a total princess when it came to discipline.
"Damn, it's quiet, even for this place," I said. "This time of day, there should be planes overhead. Was the weather bad in the city or something?"
"No."
"And I haven't heard the Marines in a while, either. Maybe they're busy."
"Maybe not," said Casey, getting ready to light a cigarette.
"What do you mean?"
And with that, she started to cough.
THE END
© 2006 by Lee Alon
(*Editor's Note: The edits in this version were too extensive for Lee to accept. However, having put significant effort into it, I am keeping this version online, with a link ONLY from the author's version...)
Bio: "Lee is now formally addicted to gaming and believes it is the answer to life, everything, the fish and even 42. yes, that was the question. oh, this gaming here has nothing to do with slot machines or little cards with royalty on 'em.
Lee resides all over the world and thus thinks we only have each other for comfort, so keep reading this space." His most recent appearance in Aphelion was It'll All end Sobbing in the Dark (January 2006).
E-mail: Lee Alon
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