WIPE (A Post-Apocalyptic Story) by Joseph Turkot Page A

tries to console me, as if she suddenly understands how much it hurts. And all I want to do is slap her hand away, off of my cheek where a tear rolls down and into my mouth. But I keep everything bottled inside. Because there is no way that lashing out at her will help the situation. It cuts through me every second that I have to figure something out. Something that I can say to Father Gold that will change the judgment. Because there’s no way I can let this happen. Maze can’t become a Saint. It would be worse than death for her.
                The explanation of Sainthood rolls through my imagination and I can’t help but visualize it: a removal of self-will, as the Fathers name it, that Maze and I both know is some kind of chemical drug that causes retardation. That according to the lies of the sermons, opens one up to God’s will when the self-will has proven unable to correct itself. The complete and purest incarnation of a simple follower of God, they say. For minds that, because they are constitutionally incapable of reform, will be stemmed of sinful thought by a miracle of the Fatherhood, and renewed with child-like openness and hope. The utter annihilation of personality.
                I play along with my mother, pretending like I’ve accepted the judgment so she’ll leave me alone and head to bed. I keep every emotion under control, every sign that I plan to help Maze, and then I escape to my bedroom. The four walls taunt me with dark swirls that climb the oak. I watch the window, the high line of trees and the dusky knot of clouds blocking the stars. And all at once, a million schemes run through my head. How to break her out, how to get her free from the chapel before Father Gold sends her off to Sainthood. Each one of my ideas seems crazier than the next, and every plan revolves around first heading into the forest, finding the knives buried in the hollow tree where Maze planted them, and then returning to Father Gold’s chamber to slit his throat while he sleeps. But each time I visualize the action, it dawns on me that I’m too much of a coward to pull anything off. That there’s absolutely nothing I can do. The only idea that seems to make sense is to plead with Father Gold in the morning, to tell him I touched the metal, that I put Maze up to it, and she was just trying to save me, so she lied.
                I hear the last rustling in the next room die down, and I know that mother has gone to sleep at last. I lie down on the bed and wrestle with my thoughts, my hopelessness, and the future version of Maze, a Saint, devoid of any real power of conversation. All of her brilliant wit, and sharp criticisms of the Fatherhood, washed away. Each conspiracy theory dissolved forever from her mind. She’ll be a drone whose potential has been absorbed by the illusions of the Fatherhood. The end of the personality I’ve come to love. The end of the times we’ll share together commiserating as self-decided outcasts. And just when the paranoia settles down enough that I think I might be able to doze off, the truth erupts again as it has all night—that I have to do something and I have to do it right away. I start to accept that I won’t get any sleep tonight, and that’s when the knock comes. Softly and gently on the glass at the window.
                At first I’m so startled that I roll off the bed and freeze, but then I know it has to be Maze, and I hope that the noise didn’t wake my mother up. And feeling afraid all of the sudden in my own room, like it could be some kind of demon in the yard, I back up to the far corner of my room and peer out the window from an angle I think will keep me hidden. When there’s nothing there, I start to wonder if I dreamed the noise. But then I see a hand. Slowly, it rises up. And then, ever so softly, it starts to knock again.
        “Wills? Are you okay?” barks my mom from the other room.
        “Sorry, I’m fine.