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-ENTER SCENE. THE STALKER MAGGOT SITS PROPPED UP AGAINST A BUILDING IN THE OLD TOWN IN THE CENTRE OF THE ZONE. NEXT TO HIM LIES A DESICCATED CORPSE OF AN OLDER STALKER.-
It’s quiet. It’s blissful.
Maggot lies on the smooth earth next to Giggles and sighs. The stars blur and twist in the violet sky, like fireflies dancing. It’s the kind of beauty he never knew existed before he found himself here, the kind of beauty that makes the rest of his life seem insignificant and bleak in its flat colours and matte surfaces.
He thinks of his childhood, shuffling between his parents’ hut and the jury-rigged school of the New Town. The hush-mush of Kin and Russian and how he struggled to express himself in either. The dirt and dust of the steppe sweeping into the unpaved streets before the local authorities had the money for roadworks. Math and reading and how he hated everything that wasn’t recess. He thinks of long evenings wandering the cattle pastures, and their serene eyes and long lashes - knowing things that humans never could, staring up at the night sky as he lied against their great heaving flanks before his parents inevitably went looking for him.
The sky is as pretty as in his idealized memories now, or perhaps even more. It doesn’t matter that he can feel himself wasting away. It’s been a long time already – it seems to always be night here. The stars above so bright and pretty – he can almost pluck like coins from the bottom of a fountain.
He’s spent days like this, weeks maybe.
A little voice in the back of his mind screams that this is dangerous. That he’ll starve to death. That he’ll desiccate. That he’ll end up another Giggles. And it worries him as much as it doesn’t. The thoughts bounce around in his head and shatter like glass against the calvarium of his skull – shining, shimmering shards that he has trouble parsing. Disjointed images projecting against each other, overlapping and weaving to and fro.
“It’s lovely here,” Maggot whispers, low enough that only his companion hears. Half his heart is scared, so scared. “I never want to leave,” he adds after a moment of thought. Leaving would hurt too much, he thinks. There is nothing like this anywhere else in the world, no other place as pretty. As bewitching.
He wishes he never ended up here in the first place.
No, that’s a lie. No, it’s not. His head hurts and his vision blurs, tears welling up on the horizon of his sight. He’s alone. He’s happy. He’s miserable. He feels each and every second pass over him like the sharp edge of a pendulum, and one of the times it will touch him, cut him.
“You unlucky sap,” Giggles chuckles, propping up on a bony hand to look at him with empty eye sockets. Grinning like always, teeth bared to the withered gums, “Always were a miserable thing, weren’t you, Maggot?”
The tears roll over his cheeks slowly and seep into the mask. He feels as if he’s being torn in half. If only he could go back to childhood – memorise the stars above. Maybe then the foreign beauty would feel more familiar and warmer. Maybe then he’d have the strength to leave. He feels he’s been freezing ever since he came here, despite feeling the overwhelming heat of summer seep into his clothes. Like he’s stuck half between freezing Siberian winter and a Saharan summer.
“It gets better, don’t worry,” Giggles reassures him, “Just relax into it. Let it have you. Turn off the little red light at the back of your head.”
“I can’t,” Maggot whimpers, curling up tight with his hands on the sides of his head. “Can’t turn it off. Can’t let it go. Can’t stop the fear. How do I turn it off?”
“Breathe deep, close your eyes. Focus on the way the stars bloom behind your eyelids – find peace in their dance and rotation. Their path will cut into your bones – it will only hurt for as long as it takes you to leave your body.”
A muffled sob beneath his mask – he’s too young for any of this; he doesn’t belong here – but he wants to, so bad – “I’m scared of death, my friend.”
“And you will be, until the very end. But then it gets better. Then nothing ever hurts again. Then we watch the stars side by side until the end of all time. Doesn’t that sound nice?”
“What about the others? What about the rest of the world?”
“Does it really matter?”
The silence settles thick and creamy. Maggot squeezes his eyes shut tight and watches the stars dance beneath his eyelids. The calm doesn’t come for him, not fully, not like it does for Giggles. It meshes with his fear, with his dread, with his desperation – a dizzying cocktail of horrible emotion. No space left in the bony temple of his head for himself, for the peace.
Does it really matter? He asks himself over and over again, and never really comes to a conclusion.
-ENTER AN UNKNOWN PERSON. MAGGOT HEARS THEM LONG BEFORE HE SEES THEM – THE HAUNTING, DISJOINTED AND OFF-TUNE HUMMING OF A CHILD.-
He doesn’t notice when the streets start singing, only that they sing. Echoes of a lullaby that carry all throughout the shimmer. There’s a childish quality to the mumble-and-hum of it, a carefreeness – lyrics only half-remembered, carried on a spattering of melody. Off-handed, the way someone hums along while doing a chore. A second-thought action.
It seems to wander, to circle them much like a shark, or perhaps – less maliciously – like a bumblebee around a flower.
Once or twice Maggot sees shadows flicker over the mirror-facades of the houses, distorted shapes of face and hand and foot caught flickering and then whizzing out as whatever-whoever is out there - meanders. Images caught suspended like echoes in the streets, sounds bouncing around him like rubber marbles.
And then he sees her.
Neither a child nor an adult – a spindly thing of a girl – peers at him from behind the corner. Her eyes are wide like saucers, full of curiosity and wonder. The humming has stopped, replaced now with an eerie quiet. Maggot stares back at her for lack of anything better to do.
“Are you two stalkers?” she asks shyly.
“Yes,” Maggot answers truthfully, for what good would it do to lie?
She steps out from behind cover, then. Her clothes are odd – oversized and dirty. All in the mute shades of camo. Her too-large shorts are held up by a thick belt, and she herself drowns in a large army-style jacket. Her steps are slow, but playful rather than cautious. Getting closer and closer, her eyes twinkle with keen interest. “Your friend’s dead,” she says. A statement, rather than a question.
“I know,” Maggot says. “He was dead long before we became friends.”
“I make friends with the dead too,” the girl says with a wide smile, showing off teeth that seem just a bit too sharp, “they’re great listeners.”
She’s right in front of him, now. Haggard and lively, covered in the grime of the Zone. Maggot stares at her for lack of anything to say. Questions bubble up and die in his throat.
Who is she? How did she get here? Where are her parents?
“I’m Clara,” the girl says, crouching down to eye-level. Her smile is perfectly friendly and open, and yet – and yet there’s something not quite right. She extends a thin hand towards him, her under-nails caked with black dirt.
“I’m Maggot,” he says, reaching out to shake her hand warily. Her grip is surprisingly firm, and her hand is almost uncomfortably hot to the touch, as if she were running a fever. He pulls his hand back gingerly, and her smile widens, eyes boring into him with a scary intensity.
“You’re lost, aren’t you, Maggot?” she says.
“I know where I am,” he says, a little defensive.
“But you don’t know where you want to be, and you don’t know how to get out of here,” Clara states, “Bad luck brought you to the Polyhedron, and worse luck kept you here. You’re not the first and won’t be the last. Just a name in a long line, dear stalker.”
“And you?” he asks, half dreading the answer.
“I walk freely between this realm and the Zone,” Clara says, eyes drifting to the mirror-shine ground beneath them. She watches her reflection, hand close to the surface, fingers flexing mesmerizingly. “I can take you out of here, if you want.”
“I don’t know if I want to leave,” Maggot murmurs.
“And neither do you know if you want to stay-” she chuckles at something she doesn’t share with him, “-but that’s the nature of this place. It shapes you, moulds you into something else. Either here, or out there, your path is a miserable one, ending with death. So – does it matter where you go?” She turns to watch him again, resting her cheek on a palm thoughtfully. When she speaks next, her tone is that of a sullen child, “And besides, I want to take you out of here - it’s such a dreary place! I can show you some really pretty things out there, in the Zone. It’s been ages since I’ve had good company.”
“I’m not good company for you, girl,” Maggot defends.
“Better than the dead,” she counters, looking pointedly at Giggles. Then her eyes flit to him again, shining, “How’d you get here, anyway? Few stalkers out there foolish enough to come around.”
And – here’s the thing – it’s all fuzzy, along now. There was the gang, then Mule leaving, then Hog’s injury, and then… They got to the centre, somehow, only to be split up by the dogs. He’s been here since then, however long a time has passed in the meantime.
“Found a few more of you stalkers today,” she goes on to say when he stays quiet, “all dead one way or the other. Those your friends as well?”
Maggot swallows down bile. Nods tentatively.
“Quite the stench,” Clara adds, “can’t smell the flowers over them.” Then, she smiles again, “One had candy on him, though – that was nice.”
He watches her, then. There’s something callous there, something unfeeling. To think that this child has seen death enough that it doesn’t bother her past the stench is… odd to think about, to say the least.
“What are you?” Maggot asks before he can think better of it.
Her eyes crinkle at the corners with obvious mirth. “If I tell you, it ruins the fun. Now, will you follow me out like a good boy, or must I drag you by the straps?”
Maggot flounders for a moment, feeling like a fish out of water. She isn’t asking anymore whether he wants to go or not; no, she’s made up her mind that she’ll take him with her for better or for worse. A cold feeling runs up his back, the wall of the building behind him biting through the jacket as he shrinks back from Clara. Somehow, despite her small stature, Maggot believes that she could drag him despite his will. But this, he feels, would bruise his pride.
Giggles, the bastard, stays completely quiet and still.
“Give me your hand, Maggot,” Clara says.
And he does. She pulls him up to his feet and starts on the way out of… what did she call it? The Polyhedron? His head hurts.
“Isn’t it dangerous for you to be out here?” he asks as he remembers to walk. One foot in front of the other, one by one. The world veers and stutters around him nauseatingly, but as long as he keeps his eyes on Clara’s back, he can focus his sight solidly.
“You’re in more danger here than I could ever be,” Clara explains without really explaining. “Haven’t you noticed? You’re as dry as a prune. Withered away like a forgotten vegetable.”
She’s right, of course. Maggot wobbles on his legs, as stable as a new-born doe. The aches of his body make themselves known now that he’s moving. Tension in his limbs, in his back. He feels weak, he feels powerless.
Clara leads him through the streets, humming again. It feels like they walk in circles, for the way is much longer than it should be. At least – much longer than Maggot remembers it being. Or is that another curiosity of this place? Stranger things have happened in the Zone.
-EXITING THE POLYHEDRONAL PART OF THE OLD TOWN MAGGOT LOSES ALL CONVICTION TO LEAVE.-
At some point, he can no longer stand the walking. Maggot digs his heels into the mirror-smooth ground, bracing against Clara’s pulling.
His head hurts something wicked, and he feels so sick. The way has done him no favours – he feels like he’s run a mile.
It – the Polyhedron - doesn’t want him to leave, digging its claws into his mind ruthlessly. Why wouldn’t it trap him physically as well? They’ve been walking for what feels like hours by now, and they appear no closer to leaving than they did when they started. It’s just circles upon circles that wind around each other like a clever spiral. The streets rise up to meet their feet jovially, laughing at the Sisyphean task of leaving.
Why wouldn’t the shimmer be another clever trap, too shiny an anomaly to be passed up by greedy stalkers? It spins and spins around him like a merry-go-round, with Maggot stuck dead within the centre, dizzy and nauseous and so sick. So terribly sick.
“Stop,” he pleads, a wave of bile just barely swallowed back down his throat. Clara looks at him over her shoulder, expression unreadable, eyes glowing like stars.
“I can’t-” he starts, loses the words. His mind feels blank, he feels like a dirty rag trapped within the washing machine just waiting for the tumble to start. “I can’t go,” he chokes out past teeth that feel numb. “I don’t – I don’t want to go.”
“No, it doesn’t want you to go. But I do,” Clara says, “It will pass, once we breech the threshold. It can’t keep us forever.”
Maggot tugs weakly at her hand, now clutching his like a vice. “Let me go. Take me back-” he struggles feebly. He doesn’t like this feeling. Like he’s being ripped in two.
“I’ll drag you if I have to,” Clara informs him, standing her ground like his struggle makes no difference. As if he were merely an ant trying to fight back a tiger.
“Don’t-” he pleads, “I don’t want to-”
She lets go of his hand, and he falls backwards on his ass. Maggot watches her stand over him, hands on her hips and an exasperated look on her face.
“Why must you be so difficult?” she asks him, as if he were a stubborn child, “Can’t you see I want what’s best for you?”
He clutches at his throbbing head, a pathetic moan at the back of his throat. He just wants to go back to his spot. To Giggles. The way back would be shorter, he knows. His body heat would still be there, picture perfect as his outline. The stars would dance brighter now, he knows, he knows.
The world explodes in a bright burst at the side of his head. Maggot falls over with the force of it, limp on his side. The throb and immediate warm trickle accompany the ringing in his ears.
With a groan, he turns onto his back, just to see two Claras drop identical shimmering bricks onto the ground.
Then they both walk towards him, grabbing one of his limp hands each. With surprising strength, they heft him up like a drunkard, each slotting against his side under his arms. Maggot’s feet drag against the ground as they begin to walk. The world tunnels down into a blur surrounded by darkness. All he sees is their feet working in confident harmony, mirror-images. The side of his head feels wetness seep into the balaclava where wound bleeds from the impact of the brick.
“We tried the nice way,” they say in unison, exasperated, their voices distorted in his ears. “Is it that you lack common sense, or just that you’re weak all-around, stalker? You’re coming out with us, like it or not.”
All Maggot can do to respond to that is groan pathetically.
-ENTER A MYSTERIOUS HOUSE IN THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, FILLED WITH ALL MANNER OF TREASURES - AND AN OMINOUS FEELING.-
Time blurs nauseatingly as the two Claras drag him across the town and through the expanse of the steppe. Maggot makes the vague noise of protest every once in a while - but he’s long since lost any idea of what direction they’re going, or how far they are from the Old Town, or what direction home or anything recognisable is. There is merely the noise of Claras’ footsteps and the sound of his own boots catching against dirt and grass. And the throbbing in his head, and the wetness to where blood stains his balaclava through the wound on the side of his skull.
The smell of the grasses is insurmountable here – it permeates his head deep and dizzy, mollifying him and enraging him at once. But he cannot think, can barely even open his eyes when the lids fall heavy. He is tired. Deadly so, unforgivably so. And yet the two Claras pull him further, further, further… their trek stretching endlessly and inconceivably. And they never tire, and at no point do they stop, and at no point do they talk to him, not after what they said back in the Polyhedron.
The Polyhedron…
It’s scary to think about now that he’s out. Now that the world is in daylight and its usual muted colour-scheme. He’d been dying in there, slowly and insidiously. Wasting away as if from consumption. Wrung out like a rag, bleeding out as if shot by a stray bullet. His fate seemed sealed the moment he set foot on that land, for the shimmer had him in its jaws and had no plans to let him go. Like a dog with a bone.
And Clara? Clara walked so freely into that trap and didn’t feel the tendrils of something dark and sinister dig deep into her skull. She pulled him out as of he were a misbehaving child throwing a tantrum. She…
Clara drops him to the ground. Maggot lands in a heap with a groan, head lolling limply against the dirt while he squeezes his eyes shut to ride out the dizzy spell. He feels week and wasted – like he’s having the worst hangover of his life along with pneumonia.
“We’re here, stalker,” Clara informs him. There’s a jangle, but Maggot can’t quite stomach to look at what the girl is doing. Up until he hears a creak and Clara grabs him by the arm again, dragging him into… a building.
She pulls Maggot to the centre of the room, and, slowly, Maggot squints at his surroundings, trying to find bearings in a world that still turns and tosses and blurs randomly around him. It’s a small room – he notices a shabby bunk by one wall. It appears surprisingly well-preserved for something within the zone. The lone window in the wall still has its glass panes. But it takes Maggot a moment to wrap his head around what he sees. Shoddy shelves all stuffed with cans and bottles – some open, some still closed. Goggles and bullet casings. Scraps of camo textile, kevlar plates and scrapped bulletproof vests. Half melted guns bent out of shape, balls of strung-together shoelaces. A half-blown helmet, a gas mask with the goggles cracked. Stalker gear – all of it. A strange and ominous collection of trinkets and failed survival, collected in one place by what Maggot is starting to suspect is more than a simple scavenger.
“You like my collection?” Clara asks him with a smile, squatting down beside him. Feebly, Maggot tries to shift back and away from her, but she just hops closer again, grabbing him by the forearm, grip tight. A laugh, light and cheerful, “What’s the matter – does it scare you?”
“Where did you get all this?” Maggot asks, voice hushed.
“Lots of dead stalkers for those who go looking, in the Zone,” Clara answers, “Not like they need any of their gear anymore. So, first come – first serve. That’s what I believe.”
Maggot looks around again, at all the junk and all the things still usable. It’s a sizeable collection to say the least. “How long have you been out here?”
“A while,” Clara answers cryptically, “Wasn’t alone either, until I was.”
Maggot thinks, head spinning. Aching where she’d bashed him with the brick. When he turns his head, he feels the tacky stick and itch of dry blood.
There’s a perch up above the bed, and Maggot spots tins and bottles. Food and water. Immediately, his stomach makes itself known to him with a sharp pang. Fuck. How long has it been since he’s eaten? How long has it been since he’s drunk anything? He’d made his way through his rations and water in the Polyhedron, but they’d run out at some point, and then he’d… well, he’d just sat there without much care, staring at the endless night sky.
Clara seems to catch his gaze. A pitying cluck of her tongue. “Oh, poor stalker, you’re hungry and thirsty. Want to share my things? Eat my food? I’ll let you, but I want something in return -” her smile is still serene, eyes crinkled at the corners, “-but I won’t tell you what it is until later. Okay?”
The thing is – she makes it sound like he has a choice, still. When they both know it isn’t so. When they both know he’s too weak and wasted to do anything but lie where she leaves him. That the Polyhedron has well and truly wrecked him and left just a husk behind where Maggot used to be.
“Please,” he begs. His voice is small, feeble. He’s so hungry it’s like an endless pit inside of him.
Clara’s smile is unflinching, “Please what, stalker?”
Maggot swallows down on nothing, and he thinks he would cry if he had the power to right now. He can beg. He has no problem begging. It still stings, though. “Please, let me have some food. Some water. I’ll do whatever you want. Whatever you need.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear,” Clara coos, and goes to retrieve some tins and a bottle of water. She helps prop him up against the side of the bunk, gives him a dirty fort to eat the can of pickled vegetables with. Maggot sobs as each mouthful travels to his shrunken belly, and a feeling of fullness eases the hunger pangs. He tries to eat slow, but the ravenous feeling has him gulping bits of carrot and zucchini down with barely any chewing. He cuts his tongue licking at the edges of the can to get the last of the juices, and swallows down the blood leaking from his tongue.
The pain barely registers over the blissful feeling of having eaten something at last. He washes down the taste of blood with water that tangs of iron.
All the while – Clara squats across from Maggot and watches.
“Better, stalker?” she asks once he sets the bottle on the ground.
“Much,” Maggot agrees. He still feels weak and pathetic, but a little more human. If he closes his eyes for a little longer than a blink, he can still watch the night-sky of the Polyhedron on the back of his eyelids, with all its twinkling stars, with all its smoky nebulae, with all its violet-blue glow. Except now, instead of wonder, he feels nausea.
“You were in there for quite a while,” Clara starts, apropos of nothing, “good luck for you that I wandered in.”
“Bad luck that I went at all,” Maggot bites back.
“It beckons, I understand,” Clara chuckles.
“Not to you.”
Her smile widens, enigmatic, “Not to me.”
A silence stretches between them like the thread of a spider – thin and sticky and shiny. The start of a web into which Maggot would find himself pulled into. He is still dizzy and pained by the throb of his head, but each hour spent outside in the real world brings more clarity to his frazzled mind. Like waking up from a particularly vivid dream.
“What are you?” Maggot whispers.
“Human, just like you,” she assures him with a mirthful glint to her eyes.
Something about the specificity of the response sounds off to Maggot, but he can’t quite realise what. It’s hard to reconcile this child – youthful and fresh and caked in all manner of filth of the Zone – with the harsh and brutal reality of what the Zone entails.
He watches her unmoving smile until he realizes something - she’d dragged him – half delirious and almost passed-out through the Zone in a straight line. And she hadn’t paused to feel out anomalies. And she hadn’t run into any mutants, despite the centre of the Zone swarming with them.
Human, just like you.
The little light at the back of his head that signals danger had never gone off while he was with her. She’d simply dragged him from one danger to the next – her den.
Maggot knows better than to trust the Zone. Knows better than to trust its children. He’s heard the tales, of course. The children of stalkers and their not-quite humanity. He’s sure there are some in the New Town as well. Perhaps he would ask someone when he got back.
If he got back – the voice at the back of his head whispers.
“You don’t seem lost,” Maggot whispers.
“I’m not. I choose to be here. To live here. It’s not as fun as the New Town, sure, but the Zone has some unique fun to be had within it, stalker. You surely know what I’m talking about.”
Maggot winces, knowing she can’t see the full expression, “Nothing fun about the Zone. It’s all work – and hard work to boot. There is a dead echo to every step.”
“You’re looking at it wrong,” Clara chides, then sighs deeply, wiping a hand over her face tiredly, “but then – you’d never get it. What else can I expect?”
“You’re too young to be here, maybe,” Maggot starts, “Too young to understand the danger. We can go to town together, I’ll help you find someone to take care of you, Clara.”
She laughs, bright and melodic, “Oh, cute. You think you can help me, stalker? You couldn’t even help yourself. I had to drag you tooth and nail out of that death trap – I hold your life in my hands now. And until I get bored of you, you’ll stay here with me. Company – a living one, at least, is hard to find here. So, I’ll keep you for all your worth, Maggot.”
Her words are like a shower of ice-water over his soul. The feeling of danger encroaches upon his beating heart. He needs to-
He needs to run.
Maggot’s legs wobble when he rises to his feet, ungainly like a new-born doe’s. The room sways for a moment before it settles, and through the haze of dizziness and fatigue Maggot staggers for the door.
He lands against it with a full-body thud, hands scrabbling for the handle, pushing it down and – And nothing. He lets go, presses again. The door remains firmly closed. The panic climbs up his throat like bile. A reedy noise slips past his lips.
He feels her warmth against his back before he sees her hands wrap around his. They’re still uncomfortably hot. Her grip is firm as it pries his hands off the handle of the door. She wraps her arms all the way around him and pulls him away, deeper into the room, and he’s too weak to resist her in any big capacity.
“Shhh, easy now,” Clara shushes as if talking to a spooked horse, “Thought you might run, so I locked it. Don’t worry, stalker, I won’t hurt you without reason.”
“What do you want?” Maggot asks, voice high with fear.
“Didn’t I already tell you?” she asks in return, exasperated, “now, come, rest up, you’re weak.”
The fear doesn’t abate, but he goes with her pulling. Clara sets him back down against the side of the bunk, and he pushes weakly at her before she pulls away with a tut. Even with this small exertion, his heart is rushing, and he feels out of breath.
Maggot winces at his own foolishness. What is he thinking? He wouldn’t last a day out there, not in this state. He’s stuck with her for better or for worse. For now.
“You’re so ungrateful, stalker,” she says with a pout, “don’t I even get a thank you for helping you?”
Maggot wants to scream. Instead, he bites his tongue. Nothing good will come from him cursing her out. Nothing good will come from pissing her off. He’s in no shape to care for himself, so he has to rely on her continued kindness, and it would be good to stay on her good side for that. He grimaces, feeling something sour in the pit of his stomach. Somehow, he’s landed from one bad situation into another. What fucking luck.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” he grinds out through his teeth, “Thank you, Clara, for helping me.”
She watches him, expression unreadable, like she’s searching for something in his eyes. A hint of sincerity, perhaps. Or perhaps not, because she seems to find whatever she needs and nods with a self-satisfied little smile.
“There – was that so hard?” she asks, as she places her warm palm over the top of his head in a mockery of petting a dog.
-THE STALKER MAGGOT STAYS WITH CLARA, REGAINS HIS STRENGTH, LEARNS MORE ABOUT THE ZONE, AND THINKS ABOUT HOME.-
It’s an odd situation to be in, for sure. Not terrible – because he’s safe and fed, but there is an undercurrent of danger that comes with staying with Clara nonetheless. He stays holed up in her little bunker while she goes out to scavenge during the day. And he listens to her telling tall tales about her adventures in the evening.
When he’s alone, he thinks about home. The rundown little apartment he shares with… well, shared with Dirt. A knot in his throat at that – all his friends are dead – except Mule, who was smart enough to turn tail ahead of the bloodshed. But then, Maggot was never that close with Mule – he likes to keep to himself, likes to brood.
The apartment is just his, now. Dirt’s room is empty and waiting for him to return, except he won’t. And neither will Bottles, or Hog, or Crow. It's just him now. No more drinking together at the Broken Heart. No more expeditions with Bottle’s banter. No more Crow’s cooking, or Hog’s bad jokes that made everyone groan. No more of Dirt keeping them together, keeping them focused, keeping them safe.
No more Dirt sneaking into his bed at night and stealing kisses and hot touches. No more, no more, no more.
The loss is so great he can barely wrap his head around it. Can barely fit it in his heart, lest it rupture and bleed him out. The more he thinks about it, the more miserable the prospects of continued living seem. What does he have left? His family won’t take him back, not in a way that would help him. They’d been against him becoming a stalker to start off with, after what happened to his brother. Didn’t want to lose another son. But going back on his own seems like an empty victory.
Would anyone even miss him? Would anyone even care?
Well, there is someone who might. Though Maggot isn’t sure where he stands with Scarab, all things considered. They’ve been on reasonable terms lately, and Maggot would be lying if he said he wasn’t getting attached to that awful prick. Maggot imagines, a little foolishly, Scarab coming through that door and whisking him away to his terrible hole-in-the-wall hideout. And Maggot would go, more than happily. Because as much as Scarab scares him - better the devil you know than the one you don’t.
So, he’s stuck there – between his healing, his mourning and Clara. It’s worse when she’s away, and bad when she’s there. But at least her talking keeps him from drowning in his thoughts. So, he prefers the presence to the absence by a slight margin. There isn’t much else to it.
“So, Maggot,” Clara says one day, opening a can of food for herself. She’s in good spirits, as she usually is. “What do you know about the Zone, really?”
He watches her, a little off-put by the question. But in all honesty – what does he know about the zone? He knows there are anomalies and mutants and artefacts. He knows it came to be some thirty years ago. He knows it is spreading slowly. He knows that the centre is dangerous. But – it’s all superficial. He’s never needed to know more, isn’t interested in the science side of it. Leaves it to the fancy-suited scientists crawling about like bugs over the edges near the institute, collecting soil samples and measuring radiation. He only ever needed to know enough to keep himself alive, and that’s what he’s done. Until now.
Clara’s smile widens, a pity gleaming in her eye, “I thought so. It’s like that with all you stalkers – you have no idea what you’re messing with. You have no idea what you’re bringing back. You have no idea where it’s coming from, or why. All you know is how to take and steal and kill.”
Maggot doesn’t say anything to disagree with her. He doesn’t think it would be wise.
“Are you curious about Her?” Clara asks, “I can tell you more, if only you are open to it. I know stories about the Zone that stalkers never could – at least not you greenies.”
“I suppose I am,” Maggot mutters. It’s a weird curiosity crawling up his spine. Like seeing the shadow of something large in the water.
“To start off – what do you know about the old town?”
“What do you mean? It was- it was just a town, right? Nothing special about it.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong already. It was anything but normal. The Town was ruled by three families, and the three families each had a Mistress.”
“A Mistress?” Maggot asks.
“A connection,” Clara says as if clarifying, “To the mind, soul and heart of the World. Of the Earth.”
There, she leans in, as if about to share a secret, “It was never meant to be a dangerous wildland. This is just the inflammation of the Earth. The pus slipping out from the pressure within the wound. When it heals, it will be wonderful.”
“I don’t understand,” Maggot says.
“The Mistresses were the sacrifice that summoned the visitation. The Polyhedron is the lid of their tomb, and the manifestation of their vision – albeit unpolished and volatile, nothing at all like it should be. A twisted and dark mirror. But for the Visitation - Nina was the one who summoned it, Victoria was the one who nourished it, and Katerina willed it to stay.”
“They… made the Zone?” Maggot feels dizzy at the information. Is Clara really telling the truth? How can the Zone be something Manmade?
“And their descendants keep it alive,” Clara says with a smile, “I am one, but there are two more. I’m the only one connected to Her directly, but they are bound to Her nonetheless. They try to deny Her calling. They shy away from Her. But once they agree with what they are, they can help Her grow even further. The Zone could wrap around the world like a blanket – and bring dreams out into the clear.”
Maggot stares on in horror, “The Zone… all over the world?”
Clara rolls her eyes, “You make it sound like a bad thing, stalker. But everything about the Zone is good, believe me. You just have to accept Her.”
This, Maggot struggles to believe, “The Zone is nothing but a festering wasteland. A death-trap the likes of which the world has never seen before. Calling it good is an insult to all those who have died to its whims – the anomalies and the mutants, the radiation, the thirst, the famine.”
“Can you blame the Zone for killing those who don’t understand her?” Clara asks him, looking annoyed.
“Yes! Yes, I can!” Maggot exclaims, “It took my friends! It took my colleagues! It would take me too just as soon! We stalkers have to fight tooth and nail to stay a step ahead of its traps, and even that often isn’t enough. You’ve seen the bodies, Clara! Good? You call it good?”
“Yes,” Clara tells him, looking all the while like she’s talking to a fussy toddler, “I call it good. And I call you stalkers fools that have no idea what you’re dealing with. Would you call stalkers good? Your friends - saints? Would you call the murderer you hang out with a good man? He alone is responsible for just as many deaths as the children of the zone.”
“The man I- who the hell are you talking about?”
“The stalker in the black mask. The loner who lives in the Zone.”
“…Scarab?”
“Is that his name? I’ve been calling him shithead,” her face twists in distaste, “He tried to kill me too, you know. Obviously, he failed, but it wasn’t very nice of him.”
Maggot feels an awkwardness settle over him – so easy to forget the other man’s less likeable sides. He doesn’t know that to say. “Oh… I’m sorry. He’s quite - ah - rough around the edges.”
Clara huffs, “Don’t you dare apologise for him. I know full and well what he’s like, and he’d never apologise. The only reason he hasn’t tried again is that he knows it won’t work.”
Maggot stays quiet. There’s entirely too much going around in his head. The thoughts and the memories. The ideas and the questions. Is everything he knew about the Zone wrong? Is he looking at it from a bad angle? Just what knowledge does Clara hold that no one else is privy to?
Can it be good? Can it be safe?
Judging by what Clara has said, it can. But not yet, perhaps not for decades more. But eventually, as the ‘inflammation’ dies down…
He still doesn’t understand. The idea that the Zone would continue to grow scares something deep inside him. The idea that it would swallow up the New Town as well, that there would eventually be nowhere to hide from it.
“But it must be nice, to have someone,” Clara eventually says.
“Nice to have someone left,” Maggot bites out bitterly, “My team is all dead. You know this – you looted their bodies.”
She rolls her eyes, “Oh, you’re still so hung up on that. Let it go – they belong to the Zone now. Just be glad She’s spared you so far.”
“Glad that-?” he sputters, “How can you say that? Are you even human?”
“I don’t know – am I? Are you? Is anyone? What does it mean to be human? How does one be a human?” she asks.
“What – you don’t know?” he asks back, stupefied.
“Do you? Do you really? Beyond a vague notion of something that should be. It’s not at all as clear-cut as you think, Maggot. Your name is more apt than you realise – you writhe in the mud of existence, neither an egg nor a beetle. Fodder for the birds that circle high up above,” Clara says, “And what’s worse – you don’t mind it. You like living like you do. Is that human? Is it?”
He opens his mouth, only to close it again. A mind-game, no doubt, turning him around from what he knows to be true. Except – again that doubt that comes so easily along with her words. It finds leverage in the divots of his mind, it clings on like thistle to a cloth.
“Thought so,” Clara preens a moment later.
“Human is…” Maggot tries, but his throat is tight. He feels like he’s grasping at straws, “it can’t be put into words. You’re right that it’s not clear cut – it can’t be. It’s what binds us, it’s subjective. Take loneliness for one – that’s our connection, Clara. We have both lost.”
“I’ll take you on that, stalker,” Clara nods, a sombreness to her expression suddenly, “There was a girl, almost a sister to me. We would roam together – until she disappeared. Stalkers took her, I think. To the New Town, probably.”
“Maybe you should join her there,” Maggot chances, “It’s less lonely there. People all around.”
“It isn’t people that take away the loneliness, but relationships. Don’t tell me you’ve never felt alone among others. Corpses are people too – should I be less lonely surrounded by them?”
“No,” Maggot says, frowning, “That’s not-”
“It’s never so clear-cut. Never linear. Just like wading the Zone properly. The Zone is more human than people to me sometimes, I think.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Of course. Your relationship with Her is different.”
“What makes you so special?” Maggot asks, finally. The question has been sitting at the back of his throat since the first day they met.
“Does it matter?” she asks, “You can’t have it, you don’t want it. Why ask at all?”
He sighs, “Do you ever speak plainly?”
She smiles, impish, “Sometimes.”
He groans, fed up with the conversation. He lies down and turns so his back is to her. “I’m done talking to you,” he mutters, “You’ve given me a headache again.”
“Oh, poor stalker,” she coos without a hint of pity. But leaves him be. He hears her bustling about the hut – moving things, and then settling somewhere quietly. Maggot closes his eyes and tries to sleep, on that warm, hard floor.
-AN UNSPOKEN TREATY IS BROKEN.-
Maggot crouches by the door to Clara’s hideout.
He shouldn’t feel bad.
Not when she’s been all but keeping him a prisoner. Refusing to let him out despite his strength returning, despite his please to return to the New Town.
He’s a way to pass the time to her, something to talk in circles around – he gets it. Not the first time someone’s done that with him. His older brother would talk in riddles too, and laugh when Maggot got fed up with them. It must be nice to have someone like that around, he muses, but he doesn’t much like being left the fool.
He shouldn’t feel bad. Sure, the girl saved him, and fed him, and gave him safety to recuperate, but she’s said herself that it was all purely selfish in reasoning. That he’s a pet project of rehabilitating a stalker into whatever she is.
But as he wiggles the bent wire in the lock, he can’t help but feel a pang of sadness, of regret. She’s a lone kid in the Zone. A creepily smart and scary kid, but a kid nonetheless. She should be with her peers, with people. She should go to school, and talk to other teens, and make mistakes and friends. She deserves that. Not this.
He’ll come back for her. With Mule, maybe. Convince her to come to the New Town. Convince her to live a normal life – or become a stalker, if she can’t let the Zone go. Growing up alone here can’t be good for anyone, no matter how special.
With these thoughts, the lock clicks and turns. He pushes down on the handle and opens the door. There’s a creak as the hingers scream, and there’s freedom. Freedom.
Except – when the door opens all the way, Clara is there. A pistol in her hand – Maggot’s own – lazily pointed to the ground, but a threat, nonetheless.
“I find it sad,” she says, “that I predicted this so exactly. Everything I’ve said, everything I’ve tried to teach you – and none of it has stuck? Are you thick? Are you deaf, or blind? Why don’t you get it?”
“Please, Clara,” he pleads, arms raised placatingly. His heart is in his throat as he watches the barrel of the gun. Knowing her, she won’t hesitate to shoot. “We can talk about this. I just – I want to go home. I want to-” he swallows, “I want to take you with me. It can be different from this, I swear.”
“There’s no one waiting for you there,” she scoffs, derisive, “and nothing for me either, no matter what you think. You think I’m stuck here, but you’re wrong. The Zone is what’s best for me. It will heal, and then you’ll see true beauty. You outsiders don’t get it yet, but you – you can stay. I’ll take care of you. I can still teach you. You’ll understand, eventually, even if you don’t have the gift. You’ll see Her heal, and be wonderful.”
“Clara, please,” Maggot pleads, not daring a step forwards or backwards at all, “That’s not your choice to make.”
“Then it is my choice to delay,” she answers, raises the gun - and shoots.
Maggot goes down with a yelp. He writhes in the dry dirt, clutching his thigh where the bullet struck.
“Why do stalkers never understand it the nice way?” Clara asks, coming closer. Her face is twisted up miserably. “Why am I always the bad guy with you people? The Zone is good! It can be safe! Why are you running away when I’m willing to take you under my wing and show you?”
Maggot whimpers, his hands bloody, as he slithers backwards until his back hits the steps to the door. He looks at her with a mix of betrayal and fear.
“You were supposed to be different,” Clara says sadly once she steps right in front of him. Her shoes scuff the rivulets of his blood in the sand. It runs red.
-CLARA MUST ATTEND TO BUSINESS IN THE ZONE. MAGGOT FOLLOWS CLARA LIKE A MISERABLE DOG THROUGH THE EXPANSE OF THE STEPPE, FOR HIS OWN SAFEKEEPING.-
“Are you still angry?” Clara asks some days later.
Maggot refuses to give her the pleasure of a response, only looking at her with a withering glare.
He’s been giving her the silent treatment for lack of any better way to show his displeasure at getting shot. It fucking hurts, still, and there’s no painkillers or booze to be had around here – so the throb is constant and biting, and keeps him up at night. The wound is ugly and big, puckering awkwardly under the bandages. Ugly fucking thing, and she’d made him dig the bullet out himself to bood. Days in and it’s still hot and tender to the touch. He can feel it pulse whenever he moves his leg a bit too much, and the pain that shoots up his thigh is nothing short of scream-worthy.
“I just- I didn’t want you to leave! Everyone always leaves me!” Clara exclaims, a genuine vein of upset in her voice. She appears sad at Maggot’s standoffishness, so at least that is working in showing her he doesn’t appreciate the stunt she pulled in the least.
Still, she’s been bringing him antibiotic pills of fuck-knows what origins and helping him change the bandages every day despite his protests. She also continues to give him food and water, which he is, of course, thankful for. Except that she shot him to keep him here.
Clara saved his life once, and now seems to think it is hers to play games with. Well, Maggot refuses to be an easy pawn to mess with.
She crouches right beside him, face pulled into an impressively sorry pout, “Please talk to me? I won’t shoot you again, I promise.”
He musters a glare and looks at her over his hunched shoulder. He’s coiled tight, all but wrapping around his wounded leg that’s stretched out on the floor in front of him. He hasn’t moved much from this position in days now, except to hobble around the room when Clara’s gone, and it’s starting to hurt his tailbone quite bad. “What.” Maggot grinds out lowly after a moment of stifling eye contact.
“Can you give me another chance? I know how to make you see,” Clara says, still with her eyes wide and pleading. A childish expression on her if he ever saw one.
He raises an eyebrow.
“I know some people-” she says, “- living out in the Zone, like me. They have a way to see like I do. I can give it to you, then you’ll get it. Then you’ll see.”
“It won’t harm me?” Maggot asks, wary. He doesn’t like the nature of her offer. The ambiguity.
“It won’t, I promise,” Clara utters vehemently, “It’s safe – they use it from time to time when long runs into the Zone are necessary.”
Perhaps he’s soft. Perhaps it’s the fact that Clara is pleading. Perhaps it’s the long days getting to him, or the hope slowly rotting in him from the constant pain. But he nods – curt and short, but an agreement either way.
“Thank you, thank you,” Clara squeaks and wraps her arms around his shoulders, “you won’t regret it!”
He has a hard time believing that, but even so he cracks half a friendly smile at her enthusiasm. If nothing else, she’s still a child, as proven by her excitements and fixations. The things she’s done to him aside, he wants to be kind to her. Begrudgingly, at least.
“Will you come with me?” she asks, suddenly, “It isn’t far.”
“With my bad leg?”
“It’s much better now than it was,” she reasons.
He hems on the thought for a moment, but then sighs, “As long as you lead me around the anomalies and keep the mutants at bay, Zoneling.”
“Of corse, stalker,” she agrees with a bright grin.
They pack lightly, but Clara shoulders the bag herself despite Maggot’s protests. He’s left with a broken rifle as a crutch and light shoulders.
Clara’s walk is purposeful, despite the way her path meanders seemingly illogically – but Maggot knows she’s walking around the anomalies. It is bone-chillingly scary to watch her walk this way, without as much as a bolt thrown at any time. His fingers itch despite himself, and once or twice he almost shouts when he catches the shimmer of something invisible in the air just in front of Clara that she walks around carelessly.
His own pace is what slows them down – the weight on his shot leg is no good no matter how short the trek might be according to Clara. He finds himself thinking he shouldn’t have agreed to come; he should’ve stayed at the hut and waited like a dog instead. His cheeks burn under his balaclava whenever Clara stops in her tracks and turns around to wait for him to catch up to her. He feels pitiful. And worse yet, like Clara pities him.
“Just a bit more,” she promises once he’s just about a metre away, “You can see it now, over the hill.”
And there is something indeed. A large and looming thing, crumbling concrete and grey lichen. It appears to be a train-end, or perhaps a giant cellar. It doesn’t make sense – why would it be out here? But then, in the Zone, stranger things are possible, like vortexes that rend a man limb from limb within the span of a blink. Thus – Maggot eyes the construction balefully, but makes no particular protest against its appearance.
A shiver passes down his back at the mouth of the entrance. A bad sign, every stalker knows. An omen that makes him pause just on the cusp. I shouldn’t go here, he thinks. But Clara, several steps in, turns around and looks at him with such a trustworthy expression, “Why’d you stop?”
How does one explain the instincts of a stalker to someone who doesn’t need them? How does one convey that bone-deep terror that stops a man in his tracks? “I don’t like this,” he says simply.
“Trust me,” Clara says, a smile on her face, hand reaching out towards him from the half-shadow of the tunnel, “Take my hand, if it makes you feel better.”
And he does. And they go. And it grows darker and darker still in the tunnel, and there is no light to be had. Clara leads him by the hand as one would lead a particularly scared dog by the leash. And Maggot cannot help but think, I’ve made a mistake. Though he doesn’t think when it occurred, or what the nature of his folly is; he simply knows that it exists somewhere between Clara’s hut and here.
In the pitch-blackness of the tunnel, where the mouth of it remains a pinprick of white in the far-off distance, Clara lets go of his hand, and Maggot stumbles blindly.
“Are we here?” he asks, fearfully.
There is a sound of quiet walking – Clara circles him – or walks an arc around him. Maggot finds his unease growing exponentially. It occurs to him that Clara might be able to see in the dark, unlike him.
This does nothing to ease his sudden, growing worry.
“We are here,” she says behind him.
And as Maggot turns around to face her, she pushes him. Maggot stumbles back one step, two – and his footing gives way.
The fall is painful and unexpected. He lands on his back, having just barely curled forward to spare his head, the air knocked out of him. He chokes, trying to pull air into his lungs, but finds them seizing up. His bad leg screams at the jolt of his landing. The darkness spins around him in a whirl.
“I’m sorry,” Clara says, her voice tiny somewhere above him, “I simply could not trust you after you tried to leave. I’ll come back for you, I promise, I’ll get you out. Just – just trust me. I’ll show you the true nature of the Zone.”
Maggot tries to speak, but can only gasp, “You-! Why-!”
“It’s for your own good,” and she sounds distressed, and sad, like he’s pushed her hand, and isn’t that just the worst of it?
The darkness looms.
“This place is safe, I promise,” Clara goes on to say, “So close to mother’s vein that no anomalies and no mutants will hurt you. Just – don’t try to dig, lest you want to drown.”
“What-?”
There is a thud beside him – the backpack thrown into the pit.
“There’s food and medicine for you. I’ll come back, I promise, I promise.”
The shiver makes sense now. The feeling of having made a mistake makes sense now. She’ll leave him here – in the dark. Will she really come back to get him once she gets whatever she needs? What if something happens to her on the way? Is this how he dies? Is this the end?
“Please, don’t,” he pleads, scrambling up and forwards, blindly hitting the wall of the pit. Soft, supple dirt under his hands. He reaches up to feel for the edge of the pit, but it’s too high. He tries to jump, and cannot reach it that way either. The landing is harsh on his wounded leg, and he crumples to the ground in a blinding pain. The throb and stab of it are merciless.
“I had to,” Clara says, and there is something of an accusation in her voice, and guilt too – the guilt of a child lying to an adult’s face, “But it’ll be over soon, okay? Just a few days – then I’ll be back.”
-THE PIT AND ALL MANNER OF ITS HORRORS.-
The less is said about Maggot’s time in that horrible pit, the better. Even so, we must not look away from the horrors that he witnesses there.
First and foremost, there is the horror of the dark. He screams himself raw, pleading with Clara long after the echoes of her footsteps have vanished into the distance. The light doesn’t reach into the pit, not even enough to make out shapes once he’s used to the darkness. The pitch-black is oppressive and all but tangible – thick and gauzy against his skin, a shrowd cast over his eyes. He cannot rely on vision, but he can rely on touch. Maggot walks the parameter of the pit and finds that he cannot make out its circumference – it feels as if he is walking in a straight line, and not in a circle, though he always comes across in ten paces when the walks across the pit, rather than along its edge.
This alone makes him uneasy – many mysteries in the zone are oblique, visible only from a certain angle, like the bubbling of air above a vortex, or the way a spring-trap shimmers just slightly like a rainbow when you look at it through glass. The way the wind doesn’t carry the smell of blood-clots, but they can be felt only as you grow near them – raw and organic and metal. Has Clara put him in for safe keeping in an anomaly? Will he trigger it to kill him somehow if he behaves unwisely? What manner of death will it be?
Maggot whimpers, and scuttles blindly along the floor of the pit until he finds the backpack Clara threw down for him. The fabric is oddly damp, musty. Perhaps some manner of bottle within it broke?
He wishes Clara told him a more concrete window of waiting. A number of days, or a number of hours. He’s already lost track of time, because he doesn’t know how long he spent panicking, but it would be nice to pretend. They left Clara’s hideout in the morning. It shouldn’t be evening yet. His throat still hurts from screaming, and he doesn’t need to piss yet. It couldn’t have been too long. A couple hours at most. He’s spent longer bouts of time in bandit captivity. He can fare well here. Just needs to ration his resources and wait. And wait.
He’s always hated waiting. More of impulses and less of pragmatic decisions. He’d get edgy out in the Zone, in the nights, always rising first and walking tracks along the outer edges of their camp until the others woke. Dirt would pull him down by the arm and make him sit still for breakfast, would remind him to calm down.
Maggot feels a knot in his throat again. Dirt. Hog. Bottles. Crow. Gone. The tears rise in his eyes unbidden, and here and now, he finds himself alive and trapped by the Zone not for the first time, but the second already. Fuck. How long has this expedition already turned out to be? Will he ever make it back? Will Clara ever let him go?
He walks an anxious spiral into the soft dirt of the pit, packing it with his boots, until the pain in his leg forces him to a stop, and he goes to sit, tucked tight against the wall. The very uncomfortably warm wall. Soft and sandy, and nothing like it should be, though he can’t tell what exactly feels off about it. He sits there, alone, in the dark and in pain, until the throbbing ebbs and he drifts off into a dazed sleep.
He digs at the walls, trying to build a ramp for himself to crawl up, but stops once the dirt starts leaking something hot and sticky, something that reeks just like blood-clot and scalds his hands. He wipes them off best as he can, but the feeling of that liquid heat stays on him for hours and hours afterwards.
He wakes and starts and drifts again. There isn’t much to do in the pit but sleep, wake to drink and eat and piss and shit, and then go back to sleep, lest the panic consume him again.
Time passes at a crawl, or at a lightning pace, he doesn’t know, he doesn’t know. He dreams and forgets what he dreamed of, but it tastes in his mouth like he’s been eating raw meat and dirt at once. It becomes hard to tell when he’s awake and when he’s asleep. He hears things, feels things. Bugs crawling all over him and the ground moving in soft, rhythmic thumps.
He sinks, once. Right through the bottom of the pit like its quicksand. Sinks and falls into an endless abyss that spins wildly around him, voices speaking to him in a language he only rudimentarily knows and recognizes but cannot parse when it’s whispered and screamed and sung like this. He feels like crying, like begging for forgiveness, and like he’s come home, to his mother, to the cow pasture, to his childhood when his older brother was still alive.
Then he is swallowed. Not into sand, not into dirt, not into water. Into hot, wet clay. He cannot see it, but it beats like a heart. Right there, under him, as it eats him whole. And he isn’t afraid even as terror sharp and cold like icicles blooms within his heart. He knows it is right, he knows all end up here sooner or later, he knows all comes from here at one point. He knows the heart is sick and feverish, he knows it will heal. Sooner or later, for better or for worse, it will heal and beat strong like before, like anew.
And then he is back in the pit, in the dark, having woken up due to moving in his sleep and bother his leg wound. Warm and metal surround him, the soft dirt enveloping him like a thick moss.
Sometimes he thinks he hears steps approaching and he yells himself raw, trying to attract the attention of whoever is walking there. Sometimes he hears water dripping, or the distant calls of mutant dogs. Sometimes he hears whispers at the back of his head, in that same language his mother used to sing in. The language his brother knew much better than Maggot ever did. The language his father refused to entertain in the house. He recognizes words, but the meaning always slips away from him.
He feels like he’s being chipped away at, like he’s a burning candle being melted with a flame. He feels like a dune in the desert being moved by the wind one grain of sand at a time.
And still, the pit is inexorable. It keeps him cradled in its warmth and the sweet smell of metal. In its pitch blackness. In its loving, claylike embrace.
-EXIT THE PIT. CLARA SHOWS MAGGOT THE TRUTH OF THE ZONE.-
He thinks it a hallucination at first. The approaching footsteps he’s heard so many times that he doesn’t even bother yelling anymore. Maggot stares quite blankly at where he thinks the edge of the pit is, towards the exit. He’s all turned around here, down at the bottom. The days have blurred and time hardly matters anymore. All he knows is he’s out of food and out of water, but not of antiseptic cream – despite having no fresh bandages – for his wound.
“Stalker?” Clara’s voice is unmistakable. It cuts through the dreadful quiet of the tunnel. Maggot laughs bitterly at the sound. “Are you alright?” she asks.
“You left me here,” Maggot retorts hoarsely. His voice manages to carry very little emotion for how much he feels right at that moment. The betrayal is still fresh, and so is the anger, and desolation, and grief, and sadness. Everything is too much, and thus he feels very little. Numb. Plus, he’s not entirely sure this Clara isn’t of his imagination.
“You look terrible.”
“You can see down there?”
Clara doesn’t answer, but Maggot hears a rustling.
“What are you doing?” he asks, squinting uselessly at where the sound comes from.
“Did you have enough food and water?” Clara asks instead, ignoring his question again.
“Ehh,” Maggot intones. He’s not much hungry between the waking and sleeping dreams, and the feeling of being enveloped by the soft dirt. Something about this hole feels entirely too visceral.
“I’ll let you out,” Clara says, “Will you do as I say?”
Maggot is tired. Bone weary. “Do I have much of a choice?”
“No,” Clara sighs. She doesn’t sound happy about the predicament either. Like this is wearing her down the same way it is Maggot.
He hopes whatever this all is comes to an end soon.
“Come to my voice, stalker,” Clara says after a moment, “I’ll toss you a rope.”
Maggot isn’t sure how the scrawny thing of a girl holds his weight as he climbs up, boots digging into the wall as if the pit itself is crying out for him to stay. But then – Clara also dragged him all the way from the Polyhedron to her hideout without problem, so maybe she’s stronger than she seems.
He sighs wearily once back on stable ground. He can barely see the mouth of the tunnel – it’s a pinprick of white in the utter pitch blackness.
He’s so sick of the dark. He’s so sick of the dirt. Oh, the things he’d give to lie down in his own bed back in the New Town…
“Did you dig?” Clara asks carefully, “you reek of blood.”
“I didn’t notice,” Maggot says, bringing up a hand to sniff at. There is a soft metallic tang there, an undertone – but he must have gotten too used to the smell to be able to tell.
“I got the tincture,” Clara says suddenly, sounding eager. Something clinks – glass – a bottle? “I can show you.”
Maggot isn’t sure he wants to see. His most burning wish currently is to go home – or someplace safe – and be enveloped in someone’s arms. Scarab? Sasha? Even Mule would do, if he’s made it back safe. He’d even hang off Andrey’s neck if that’s what it took. He wants to sleep. He wants to feel safe.
‘As if I have much choice,’ he thinks again, but doesn’t say out loud. Not like it could possibly be worse than left in a pitch dark pit for several days. Clara did seem genuinely contrite for what she had to do to him – he recognizes a childlike desperation in her. A need to be heard, to be understood. Can he blame her? No one else has lived a life like her, has seen the things she has – how could they understand. But here she is, trying to prove herself to someone as inconsequential as Maggot.
He pities her, in a way.
As they walk, the light that is the mouth of the tunnel grows larger, making Maggot squint to see what lies outside. He can’t come into the light soon enough. He’s sick to death of the dark. Clara walks beside him, a spring in her step that mildly irritates him.
And then, they reach the patch of light at the mouth of the tunnel. The view of the steppe grows wide around them, and Maggot winces as his eyes adjust to the visibility.
“Wow, you look even worse than it looked down there,” Clara says.
Maggot looks at his hands and for a moment fear claws up his spine. His hands look bloodstained, with a near-black residue collected under his nails. He pulls off his balaclava and finds it similarly smeared with red and dried brown.
“I told you not to dig!” Clara chides, “It hurts her.”
“Huh? Who?”
“Nevermind now, you’ll understand soon enough,” Clara says, flapping her hand. Then, she pulls out a flask and holds it out towards him. Her cheeks ruddy with excitement, bouncing a little on her heels. Her wide, shiny eyes trained on him so expectantly.
The glass is warm against his hand, glinting in the sunlight. He swallows – an ominous feeling settling in his gut. The same kind that every stalker has, a sixth sense that tells you to stop and think things through.
Maggot looks at Clara, and she gestures, urging him to drink. Somehow, he doesn’t doubt that she has ways of forcing it down his throat should he refuse, so he might as well keep some dignity. What little he has left after being held hostage by a child, at least.
The taste is bitter and herbal, thick like compot and sticky at the back of his throat. He fights back a gag on the swallow, grimacing as he feels it go down.
“All of it!” Clara exclaims, her voice cheerful.
Hesitantly, he obliges. It burns in his stomach like booze. And he feels a light-headedness come over him almost immediately. It occurs to him that he should have asked what the liquid is before he drank it. It also occurs to him that it might have been poison.
“Good job, stalker,” Clara beams, “soon enough, you should be able to see.”
“See what?” Maggot asks. His vision feels like it’s tunneling, the periphery growing fuzzy. Clara seems dramatically sharp and in contrast, in comparison. Almost unreal in her edges and coils.
“The Zone. Her,” Clara answers. The ground at her feet moves like the heaving breath of some large thing. The grass shudders and shifts like the fur of a cat. A red tinge adds to the light, and the bloodlike residue on his hands is tingling.
“What’s happening?” he asks, feeling genuine fear. Something strange and dreamlike is settling over him like a swan settles over water. His limbs feel weak, and Maggot falls on all fours. The dirt under his hands is soft and warm. So warm.
“You’re feeling her now, I can tell,” Clara says, “don’t be afraid, stalker, it’s just the inflammation – under that she loves you. Let her in. She’s all around us. She was there, in your dreams too.”
“It hurts,” Maggot chokes out. But it’s not his pain, no – it’s something coming from all around. It’s on the breeze like the rales de la mort. It’s in the fever-hot ground. It’s in the bloodlike clay. It’s all around, clawing to get in. Crying to be heard.
He places his hands over his ears like that would help, squeezes his eyes shut like it would erase what he’s seen, closes his mouth to hold back a scream. He feels nauseous with the liquid burning up his guts like absinthe on an empty stomach. Perhaps it was poison after all – perhaps Clara just wanted to torture him a little before she finally killed him.
Her warm hand on the back of his head. Pushing down, down – until his forehead meets the ground.
“Don’t struggle,” she says – like it’s easy. Like he doesn’t feel like he’s being knocked over by the tide. “She wants you to accept her, Sakhir.”
At this, Maggot sobs into the dirt in front of his face. How does she know that name? No one has called him that since… since…
There’s fresh blood under his nose. Maggot rears back as if burned, eyes wild. How did a Blood clot spring up here! He needs to get away, before -
“You’ve hit a vein!” Clara exclaims. She kneels beside the clot and swipes dirt over the anomaly, trying to bury it – awkward, twitchy, inefficient.
But Maggot isn’t paying attention to that anymore. In the far distance, he hears the drum of a blind dog packs’ paws hitting the ground as they run. The grasses hiss and the clouds above him loom like they’re about to fall from the sky. To his right, some ways off, an electro crackles and fizzes like miniature lightning strikes. Behind him someplace – an iridescent spring-trap glitters rainbow clear as day where the light hits it right down the centre, splitting it into a million tesselations.
All the anomalies – right there, on the palm of his hand. Right there, on her heaving flank, right… right there…
“Make it stop,” Maggot sobs, curling up into a ball on the dirt, in the grass, between the ribs, above the clay, under the eye, beside the mistress. He doesn’t understand – and he doesn’t want to.
He knows this isn’t his to know. It isn’t his. No matter that it calls out, no matter that it knows his name, no matter! He doesn’t want it! Doesn’t want this!
He wants back to the town, wants the warmth of other bodies beside his. He needs flesh and skin, not clay and grass.
“Don’t fight!” Clara says again, and she doesn’t sound happy anymore. Rather, her voice betrays the fear of a child who doesn’t know how to react to something. She grabs his shoulders and shakes, voice trembling, “Don’t fight!”
Maggot swings his head to and fro, as if trying to fling everything the tincture has given him off, “It’s not mine!” he whimpers much like a kicked dog. Tries to close his eyes to everything Clara is showing him.
In the back of his mind – he’s sorry to not be the one to get her. To betray whatever manner of trust she held for him. But his blood is screaming at him, his head feels like it’s being crushed on an anvil with a forge hammer. He can’t do this. Can’t be what she needs.
“Why can’t you accept it!?” Clara’s voice is desperate now, all four of her hands gripping him tightly. “Be one of mine, be one of mine!”
“I can’t, I’m not yours, and that’s not a choice I made myself!” he wails, trying to crawl backwards from her now. The ground rattles and the air crackles around the hissing breath of the upset mistress, and yet her rage and pain cannot change anything.
And then, it stops – not the heaving earth, but Clara’s rage. It shatters into the sad child that she is – still longing to be understood, still reaching out, but finding all backs turned to her.
“I’m sorry,” Maggot whispers towards her red form and glowing eyes. He tries to ignore the way the air pops and whirls around her, now that he can see the eddies and the lines of it. It’s mesmerizing and distracting – and not his to see.
Clara sighs, with all the weight of a world on her shoulders, with all the weariness of someone too old for their body, “It’s not your fault.”
“When will it end?”
“When it ends.”
“Will you let me go?”
“You are not mine to keep. I can see that now.”
Maggot laughs half-heartedly and lies back, spine to the meat between the ribs, to the grass. Eyes turned up at the sky, where the blue-green iris and the near-black pupil stare down back at him.
And then he waits for the horror of the Zone’s true face to end.