Age of Blight (10 page)

History of the World

A
man dangles from a rock jutting from the bare face of a sheer cliff. He scrambles for a foothold, finds none. There is nothing that he can use to hoist himself to safety. The top of the cliff is twenty feet away. The drop is a dizzying four hundred feet or more.

He could have gotten in that precarious position by accident or by sheer stupidity. But it does not matter at this point. He is going to die.

He has no harness, no ropes, nothing. He does not call out for help, either. He must have gone rock-climbing alone, relying on his years of experience and instinct to survive.

Four hundred feet below him are wind-beaten rocks, desert sand, exposed sections of stratified earth, fossils of long-extinct vertebrates, and remnants of civilization. And bearing down on this man and whatever lies below him is gravity, the stuff
that's supposed to keep his feet firmly planted on the ground while allowing him just enough space to stand upright and balanced on two legs.

Four hundred feet below him is the dull yellowing of arid land. Dunes and weathered canyons will open up to receive him once he lets go of the rock that he's clutching with numbing hands.

Three hundred feet away on another outcropping of sandstone, there's another man riveted by the plight of the man hanging on the cliff. It is safe to call the man with the binoculars Justin, because that's what the tiny embroidery on his windbreaker spells out. Justin's ring finger has a white section of untanned skin around which a wedding ring is supposed to reside.

Through the wide-angled eyepiece of his pricey Swarovski Optik SLC 8×42 HD, Justin observes the man clinging to a forlorn rock by the side of the cliff.

Holding his breath, Justin frantically tries his radio to call for help. Static hisses on every channel. Seconds pass. Justin debates whether to continue watching the man or go to find help. He decides on the latter and quickly prepares to climb down from his windy perch on the rock.

Justin's foot gets caught in a small crevice, the inconspicuous boundary between two sedimentary rocks that is continuously widened by weathering. He loses his footing and tumbles. In that split-second before his head hits the rock, he attempts to cushion his fall with his right hand. The gesture does not break the fall. His head hits the rocky mound. Unlike in
the movies, there is no dramatic thud, just the barely imperceptible sound of finality. Justin does not die immediately, but the blow to his head is fatal. He loses consciousness.

Minutes pass.

The man still holds fast to the rock that keeps him from plummeting down the cliff. He gets to decide when to eventually let go. He is still unwilling to let go. He still has enough strength to remain hopeful, if he is the type of person who believes that hope can change what is otherwise a calculated turn of events.

The man on the cliff holds on—for how long he can grip the rock does not matter at this point. He is going to die.

Justin's body attracts the vultures. One swoops down. Then another follows. The grisly carrion birds touch down beside the body, fold their wings as if in supplication, the unique pose of the defeated. The vultures bend their necks, bow their heads, begin to peck away at the dead, take what they can before moving on. The long, long age of blight rambles forth.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful acknowledgement is made to the editors of the following publications in which the early versions of these stories first appeared:

“The Wire Mother,” C
ONFRONTATION
M
AGAZINE
116, Fall 2014.

“Leviathan,” F
AST
F
OOD
F
ICTION
D
ELIVERY
(Anvil Publishing, Inc., 2015).

“The Ghost of Laika Encounters a Satellite” was a reworked segment of the story “The Dogs,” which first appeared in C
HARLOTTE
V
IEWPOINT
, September 2013.

“No Little Bobos” (“Chelsea and the Bobo Doll”), V
OL
. 1 B
ROOKLYN
, April 2014.

“The Playground” (“The Children”), B
OSLEY
G
RAVEL
'
S
C
AVALCADE OF
T
ERROR
, October 2010.

“Those Almost Perfect Hands,” E
XPANDED
H
ORIZONS
21, August 2010.

“Jude and the Moonman” (“Moonman”) first appeared in P
ELLUCID
L
UNACY
: A
N
A
NTHOLOGY OF
P
SYCHOLOGICAL
H
ORROR
(Written Backwards, 2010) and was reprinted in P
HANTASMACORE
, April 2012.

“Pet” first appeared in P
HILIPPINE
S
PECULATIVE
F
ICTION
7 (Kestrel Publishing/Flipside Publishing, 2012) and was reprinted in U
NCONVENTIONAL
F
ANTASY
: A C
ELEBRATION OF
F
ORTY
Y
EARS OF THE
W
ORLD
F
ANTASY
C
ONVENTION
(2014).

“Zombie Sister” (“Zombie”) first appeared in S
OUTHERN
P
ACIFIC
R
EVIEW
, November 2012 and was reprinted in U
NO
K
UDO
volume 3, October 2013.

“Beautiful Curse,” S
MOKING
M
IRRORS
(Connotation Press, 2013).

“Day of the Builders,” B
EECHER
'
S
M
AGAZINE
5, Spring 2015.

“The First Ocean,” T
HURSDAY
N
EVER
L
OOKING
B
ACK
:
AN
A
NTHOLOGY FOR THE
E
ND OF THE
W
ORLD
(the Youth & Beauty Brigade, 2012).

PHOTO CREDIT

Part I. “Animals”: Goliath the Elephant Seal, at the Vincennes Zoo, Paris (1936) by Acme Newspictures, courtesy Gift of The Age (Melbourne, Vic.) and the State Library of Victoria.

Part II. “Children”: Children's playground at Ithaca, Red Hill (1918), photographer unknown, courtesy the State Library of Queensland.

Part III. “Instead of Human”: Plate 33 from the illustrated P
RACTICAL
H
YDROTHERAPY
: A M
ANUAL FOR
S
TUDENTS AND
P
RACTITIONERS
(1909), by Dr Curran Pope, courtesy the Internet Archive.

Part IV, “The Age of Blight”: Man standing in a spiracle on a lava plain near Laxamyri, Iceland (1893), by Tempest Anderson, courtesy the Yorkshire Museum (York Museums Trust).

The illustrations accompanying story titles throughout the book are details from Fortunio Liceti's D
E
M
ONSTRIS
(1665 edition) and courtesy
publicdomainreview.org
. “It is said that I see the convergence of both Nature and art,” Liceti is quoted as saying, “because one or the other not being able to make what they want, they at least make what they can.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kristine Ong Muslim has authored several books of fiction and poetry, including the short story collections
Age of Blight
(Unnamed Press, 2016) and
The Butterfly Dream
(Snuggly Books, 2016), two forthcoming full-length poetry collections from university presses in the Philippines, as well as
We Bury the Landscape
(Queen's Ferry Press, 2012),
Grim Series
(Popcorn Press, 2012), and
A Roomful of Machines
(ELJ Publications, 2015). Her short stories and poems have appeared in such magazines as
Boston Review, Confrontation Magazine, New Welsh Review, The State
, and elsewhere. She lives in southern Philippines and serves as poetry editor of
LONTAR: The Journal of Southeast Asian Speculative Fiction
, a literary journal published by Epigram Books in Singapore.