Tomorrow Girl

By Eason Blackwood

“Here,” says the old man, with a gummy grin, “look.” He runs his wrapped hands back and forth through the open flame. “It doesn’t hurt, see? Not if you’re quick. Not if you just do it without thinking.”

The girl shuffles closer. The flames light the edges of her plain face and give some life to the tangled tresses of her hair.

“Careful now,” says the old man. “The longer you leave it, the more it will hurt.”

She slashes her hand through the fire, weary of its tricks, but the old man spoke true. She does it again, slower, slower, testing the limits of the fire’s kindness. When the pain finally comes, it is without herald. “Ow!” she says, snapping her hand back and clutching it to her chest.

“Told you,” chuckles the old man. He reaches into his bundle and takes two tin cans and a glass bottle half-filled with a hazy, opalescent liquid. “Will you take a drink?”

The girl stares at her murky reflection in the bottle. “I don’t think so.”

“Oh, nonsense, nonsense. It’s quite safe.” He pours two cups and hands one over.

“What is it?” she says, swirling, sniffing. “It smells strong.”

“It has to be strong to kill the dust. Try it, try it. It’s quite safe. I promise.”

The girl gulps it down. It tastes of charcoal and smoke, and a distant hint of tree sap. It burns the back of her throat and makes her eyes water. It sends a jolt through her body and she lurches into a coughing fit.

“Well?” asks the old man.

She nods. “It’s pretty good.” She holds out her tin for more.

“Gods, it’s good to see you,” says the old man, leaning around the fire to refill her cup. “I’ve been running alone so long, I forgot the pleasure in talking to someone who can talk back.”

The girl looks to the grim sky. “In my Bastion, the constitution says that we’re born alone, we live alone, we die alone. But to go on living is to convince ourselves those things aren’t so.”

“Well,” says the old man. “I suppose there’s some truth in it.”

“I don’t think so.”

“People say all kinds of things. They do all kinds of things to get by. No use blaming them for it. I’ve had to kill and I’ve had to cry, but I’m still here.”

“You’ve killed other men?”

The old man turns his head from the girl so only half his shame is visible in the firelight. “And women. Maybe children too, depending on how you define them. And dogs.”

“That must have been very hard,” says the girl.

“It was and it wasn’t. You shut off from it after a while, just one foot and then the next one. There’s you, and there’s this shell on the outside that protects you and does the things that need doing. And most of the time that’s okay, but sometimes, when the cold sets in, you wonder if you’re in there at all anymore or whether it’s just the shell. But then every few years or so, you come along and you see through the sores and the scars and you look at me like I’m the man I was before, and I remember I’m still in here somewhere.”

They sit in silence, just the snapping of firewood. The girl runs her hands through the flames again while the old man reorganises the trinkets in his bundle: an old photo frame with no picture inside, a fork with only two prongs, a brass bell the size of a man’s fist, and a few other things he doesn’t let the girl see. After he returns them to his bundle, he closes his eyes and starts scraping his bare feet back and forth in the ash. More than once he opens his mouth to break the silence but seems to think better of it.

“Can I ask you something?” he blurts out, eventually.

She nods.

“I’d like to kiss you on the lips,” the old man says in a hurry. “I’d like to feel what that’s like again before I go. Would you do that?”

“No,” says the girl. “I won’t do that.”

“No, no, of course not. I shouldn’t have asked. But if not that, then maybe you could kiss me on the cheek? The good cheek, not the one with the dust sores. Would you do that?”

“No,” says the girl.

“No, no, of course. But then, maybe when we sleep tonight, you could come over to my side of the fire and lie next to me? I’d love more than anything to experience that again, the warmth of another body in the cold night. Would you do that?”

The girl shakes her head sympathetically. “No. Sorry, but I won’t do that either.”

The old man sighs and hangs his head. “No, I know. How could you? I’m a crumbling ruin, and you’re the miracle that blooms between the cracks.”

“That’s not why,” says the girl.

“You don’t need to spare my feelings.”

“It’s not because you’re old. It’s because I’m not your tomorrow. There’s a tomorrow out there for you somewhere, but it’s not me.”

“Pah! You’re young. There’s something for you, maybe, but not for me. I don’t have tomorrow anymore, if I ever had it in the first place.”

“You’ve come this far, somehow, all alone.”

“Just one foot and then the next one. There’s no rhyme to it.”

“Well,” says the girl, knocking back the last of her drink and grimacing, “I choose not to believe that.”

They talk some more — he of days gone, she of things to come — until they fall asleep, together but alone, amidst the dust and the swirling smoke.

The dying embers of the campfire rise up, spinning in playful arcs.

Share this story