Unable to take my hands out of my pockets, I threw my shoulder against the door. My elbows were frozen, and I had long given up hope on my fingers. The fragile splinters of the wooden door scattered around. Passing through the corridor, I entered the room where the heat concentrated, approaching the stove, waiting to warm up even a little. I extended my hands toward the stove’s glowing red pipe, which stretched toward the ceiling with a makeshift clumsiness. The clumps of snow that had fallen off me as I entered had already melted; silence was reflecting from the small puddles.
The aluminum teapot atop the stove whistled a song unknown to me. The children’s underwear and diapers were fastened to clotheslines tied to the pipe, swaying toward my face along with the smell of dampness. At the round floor-table beside the stove, the Feelers family—consisting of three young boys and their parents—was having breakfast.
The Feelers neither hear, see, nor speak… Yet, you cannot keep anything secret from them. Their way of perceiving the events unfolding around them is different from ours. We had been deployed here to protect the scientific team that came to study the lives of the Feelers. I was a sergeant in this well-equipped and well-trained military unit, and to be honest, I didn’t care about the scientific research at all. I just wanted to return home as soon as possible. To Earth…
They are just like us. Objects made of the same elements, the same primitive precautions against the cold. I couldn’t say much other than that they are about a century behind us technologically. Perhaps more, perhaps less. I suppose the scientists could state that much more clearly. I am a soldier; I may have personal observations and opinions, but I don’t think they carry any value. For breakfast, they drink a tea made from tree roots. It keeps them warm. Or so we interpreted it.
I loosened my scarf. I took off the heated goggles we used to protect our eyes from freezing and other adverse conditions. I slipped the strap of the rifle on my shoulder over my head. I was warm now, and I didn’t want to sweat.
I had caught the attention of the deaf, mute, and blind family having breakfast at the floor-table the moment I stepped through the door. They all brought the whites of their eyes together toward the stove. I deliberately stood a bit further to the left. Rather, I tried not to enter the space where they directed their gaze. I hadn’t been able to get used to these white eyes and their meaningful emptiness. In our species, what gives meaning to a gaze is the color of the pupils; even the dilation and contraction of the irises speak volumes. Yet, in all the time I spent here, I could swear I had never seen a more meaningful white gaze, a more meaningfully seeing blindness.
Finally, those white eyes found me. The children shifted around, clearing a space for me too. They are peaceful. Or perhaps, because they are primitive, our equipment forces them to be peaceful. Or so we interpreted it.
The woman of the house stood up and closed the broken door as best as it could be shut. She returned to her spot and squatted back down at the table. They might have understood my arrival because they were cold, or from the flexing of the wooden floorboards crushed beneath my boots, or even from my scent. They were naked. They were naked just like this so they could feel every vibration and every change on this freezing planet that surrounded them. Or so we interpreted it.
The youngest child, getting up from the floor-table, came up to me. He fixed his white eyes upon me. He brought his nose close to my clothes. I stroked his hair. It wasn’t just their eyes that were stark white; their skin and hair were too… Though we could find them easily, they had evolved this way to camouflage better against the snow, to protect themselves from enemies worse than us, or whatever else. Or so we interpreted it.
The child caught the scent of the rifle leaning next to the stove. As he gently ran his fingers over the metal, the rifle—which I had left unsecured—slipped from the wall it leaned against and discharged with a loud bang. As the rifle fell, the bullet tore a hole through the child’s chest and the stove before embedding itself in the wall. Although this negligence would have been a massive problem for me back on Earth, the Feelers—whom we were supposedly on this planet to know and understand—had turned into a chore for all of us. We no longer knew whether we were trapped on this planet with them, or they with us.
The child collapsed, bleeding. The blood pooling at my feet grew even redder with the reflection of the fire. Having nothing better come to mind, I picked up the twitching child in my arms and carried him outside. I laid him down on the snow. When I turned around, the entire family was standing at the door. Following me, their feet stained with the blood of their child and brother, the family left crimson footprints on the snow.
The man and woman came up to me. Their faces wore an expression showing immense suffering. No tears flowed from their white eyes; perhaps grief was not a reason for crying to them. Or so we interpreted it.
The rest of the family found me with their hands. The woman touched my face. Taking my head between her hands, she gently turned it toward the child lying in the snow. She knew I could see him; she wanted me to feel guilty, or perhaps just to feel. The man knelt down and sniffed his little offspring. Running his fingers through the child’s wound, he rubbed the blood onto the corners of his eyes. He kissed my boots.
A moment later, the doors in the village opened one by one. Naked people emerged from the houses. The village population of about forty people came to our side, indifferent to the blizzard. They all bent down, dipped their fingers into the wound of the child lying on the ground, rubbed it onto the corners of their eyes, and then kissed my boots. This showed their respect for pain and the creator of pain. Or so we interpreted it.
They felt that we could see and hear. We were different from them. In our own world, and in other worlds, we were different from everything. Or so we interpreted it.
Believing we were demigods, the reflections of God in the universe, we never encountered the slightest resistance; instead, we were rewarded with respect under any circumstance. Some soldiers in my unit recounted raping the women of the Feelers, but because they met no resistance, they derived no pleasure from it. Those who got bored on watch would occasionally shoot at the Feelers just for the sake of it. Even as they rested the rifle against their shoulders and took aim, the Feelers would turn their heads toward the barrel, yet they wouldn’t run. The bullets would shatter their heads and pass through; they would die, and the others would come to collect their dead.
The woman pulled her hand away from my face. She bent down, dipped her fingers into her child’s wound, smeared his blood onto the corners of her own eyes, then dipped her fingers into the wound again. I had watched this ritual dozens of times. No one had ever dipped their fingers into the same wound a second time. She stood up, slowly bringing her fingers to my eye level. I was watching her. Blood had been smeared from my eyes down to the sides of my lips. Her husband caught the woman’s wrist, lowering it gently, suppressing this rebellion.
Who knows how many murders this made in this snow desert. I derived no pleasure when I killed them, nor did I feel any pain. Doing morally problematic actions that meant absolutely nothing out of pure boredom, and then acting as if we hadn’t done them afterward, was peculiar to us. To the reflections of God in the universe… Despite all these murders, blood had splattered onto me for the first time. What’s more, their bloody mourning makeup was now on my face. For the first time!
The blizzard intensified. As we stood there by the corpse, snow hyenas arrived. I aimed my weapon at the hyenas. The mother lowered the barrel. Before the child’s body could even freeze, it was torn apart between the teeth of the hyenas.
They entered the house. I followed them inside. The door was left open. One of the snow hyenas entered behind us, licked clean the blood that was beginning to dry on the floor, and left the house. The family gathered around the breakfast table once more. The father gestured toward the spot left vacant by the little boy. I sat down. The woman handed me the child’s glass. In the reflection of my face on the glass, my eyes caught my attention. My pupils…
They were gone!!!
In their place were stark white voids, and inside me, a strange, searing parental grief that scorched my heart…
The mother hadn’t even poured the tea yet.
Or so we interpreted it.
Yazan: Chaotica
ANARCHISTALES 