Dust

When I began writing this, someone very close to me made me promise to read it to them when it was complete. It took some doing, and I was really making it up as I go along. To the one who always believed in me the most, this is for you

---

The dust had come quietly, as dust is wont to do. At first he hadn’t really noticed it, a slight tinge in the air too fine to really be seen. Subtle, taking first the edges of the sunlight and the great shouts of color. He could still recall the first day he'd noticed it. His mind had been in a haze for some time but something must have clicked, and for the first time in his life he looked for the horizon and saw only a hazy line in the distance. It was as if the world had been torn in the night and the space beyond had been left somewhere on the editing room floor. 

A soft “oh” escaped his lips. The sound had reverberated, chimelike, through the air carrying the weight of some enlightenment on its wings. He didn’t understand it then it then, nor could he grasp it now, but there was something unanswerable in that syllable. In the beginning there was the word, and with nothing but the strength of that utterance all being sprang forth. Had it been a command though? Or simply a realization? As quickly as it had been spoken the word was whisked from his lips by the wind. It was the first break in the blanket stillness he could remember, and at first he welcomed the gentle play across his skin. He had tried to remember if it had ever actually stopped since that moment, if the world had ever returned to that drowsy calm, but even in his mind there seemed no corner without its restless and probing embrace.

* * *

The wind tore savagely at the fabric tied tightly across his body, burning clearly in his mind every loose edge in the armor. There was no sense in adjusting the outfit now, the wind would undo him before he’d so much as loosened the knots. No, he would just have to get used to the tattered tattoo until he could find some kind of shelter for the night. There was bound to be something soon.

Luckily the knots of his mask still held tightly, and the goggles on his face seemed secure. It was blessing enough. He remembered a time early on when he’d been careless about such things. The wind had pulled his goggles just enough and his vision turned to dust and darkness, stinging his eyes and tearing the world apart again. In a panic he’d tried to fix them back over his eyes but in his haste he’d accidentally loosened the mask over his mouth and the grit had rushed between his lips, victorious. He wasn’t sure how long he’d flailed wildly in the dirt, how long he’d fought desperately to open his lungs enough to scream. Eventually, though, even pain becomes habitual and he simply gathered up his things and began crawling. 

An eternity passed. As timeless as any void. Just the soft impact of his hands and knees on the coarse earth and the howling wind in his ears. Even now if he thought about it too hard he couldn’t convince himself fully that he wasn’t still crawling there now. The pain in his eyes had been immense, and the dirt coating his mouth and throat seemed to taste more and more like blood with every length he moved forward. It had been a comfort of sorts. At least it reminded him that, whatever the state of the world outside, there was still a thinking and feeling “I” in the midst of it. The world had shrunk its borders until it was only pain, but it had provided elegant proof of existence. Et passus ergo erat.

The first time his hand hit an object more solid than sand his heart nearly dropped out of his chest. A pure note of music after endless white noise. His mind couldn’t grasp what he had found but his hands seemed to call up from their ancient past the proper movements and before he knew it he was in the car with the door shut behind him. It wasn’t quiet, it was never really quiet anymore, but the sudden silence along his skin was nearly ecstatic. Perhaps it was the eleventh hour reprieve or just the rough dust in his eyes, but in that derelict island he wept for the first time in this dead world.

* * *

She’d always had an insistent implausibility about her. Like sunlight, she carried a weight you could only really sense when you closed your eyes and let yourself sink into it and she had this way of suddenly lifting the fog of dreams from everything she touched. He thought it was her movements he had fallen in love with first. The quiet way she had entered his life, a queen finally returned to her domain to the hushed relief of her subjects. He’d caught himself staring for minutes at a time as she made her morning coffee or brushed her hair in the evening. Her hands had always moved so surely, so delicately. Not a single movement wasted. Or her slight hesitation before she moved the flower vase from the table to the kitchen window, as if she was worried about how it would feel in its new home. Nothing was too small for her attention. 

In memory she’d met the dust with a smile. Pulling back here hair and beginning to clean the off the windows. “If we can’t see when the sun is shining,” she’d explained quietly while she worked, “then we might as well live in a tomb.” And with that she went to the task like nothing in the world was changed in the slightest. An uninvited guest in her land, perhaps, but she was never one to turn away from the facts. 

At first it was small, just another minor task added to the day and she took to its tending without a second thought. He didn’t think she’d even ever asked that he help with it. No, every day instead he would wake up to the new hazy morning and the restless groan of wind to find her making that first cup of coffee. Silent, as if she was the only being in the world. Three scoops of grounds placed evenly in the filter while the pot filled in the sink beside her. She filled the coffee machine to the overflow line, quickly at first but then ever so slowly; like she didn’t want to lose a single millimetre to a sloppy hand. She wore a pair of baggy grey sweatpants she’d had since before he knew her and a t-shirt (usually a band she’d seen long ago, or a gift shop reminder from some ancient trip to somewhere or other). He didn’t think she knew she hummed while she got ready. He didn’t think he’d ever mentioned it. Still, every morning she would drink her too hot cup of bargain brand coffee and tend lovingly to her flowers on the window sill. Then, always before he was quite ready, she would set to clearing all the night's dust off the windows around the house until the whole place glowed with the soft yellow reminder of the day. It had been the first time he’d ever felt the presence of the sacred in his life.

The first time her hand had slipped it was as if the stars themselves had ground to a halt. It was only a slight tremor really, just a small shake while she poured the water into the coffee machine. But it was enough to take it just above the overfill line, sloshing water in a small pool under the base on the counter. It was cleaned up before he could even register what had happened and she quickly went about her work without the single missed note. But for him, it might as well have been the swell of the first trumpet ringing in the sky.

* * *

He’d found relics like the car before. Left over husks from some forgotten era. Once he’d seen a great skeletal building through a break in the haze, derelict across the monotone landscape. When he arrived at its base he couldn’t even remembered walking toward it. Like a magnet it had guided his steps until he was right up against its shattered facade. 

Up close he could tell he wasn’t on the ground floor. He wasn’t entirely sure how high up he was but around the entire perimeter he could find only shattered windows slowly filling with the ever swirling dust. He had stayed there maybe 3 days, though it had been hard to tell exactly where any day become another he remembered at least 3 full sleeps. At first he’d boarded up the windows on the floor above his entrance but had found the dust had risen in the night to entomb him while he slept. Even the howling wind seemed finally at rest beneath the sand. But silence meant death.

So every morning he would gather up his handful of belongings and make his way two stories higher before rebuilding what makeshift barriers he could out of the debris he'd found around him. On the second day he had not moved quickly enough upon waking. He’d watched the weight of the growing dunes outside finally buckle the slats of wood he had lodged against its invasion, and the entire world of dust poured forth like a flood. It had been enough for him to skip an extra floor up that day. He’d build it better next time. Better how? Better for what?

After three sleeps though he had run out of floors to climb. He’d woken in the dark to the wind falling silent. Even in sleep his mind had known what that sudden calm meant, and under that dark angry sky he’d made his way out of the fire escape on the roof. He hadn’t looked back, of that he was sure, but sometimes, in his dreams, he saw so clearly those last exposed pieces of the building, finally embraced the night painted dunes. He had heard only the patient grinding of the great wind in his ears, and yet it was the soft shifting of blanket dust over its smooth concrete that still woke him up in a cold dread. The first dreams had had stars, but even those were worn away in time.

He knew that soon the car would be swallowed by the sand in the same way everything would be eventually. Perhaps one day, years hence, the winds would reveal it briefly; a pebble of worn existence amongst the ever shifting landscape. Or perhaps it too would be worn down into undifferentiated dust. A final, sacrificial tribute.

The stuttering welling of tears began their work clearing the dust from his eyes, and without much thought he put them to work. Peeling the tattered glove off his left hand he began collecting them from off his face on his finger tip, painting them carefully along the inside of his mouth. Stopping only when a sob racked his body into a tight ball of sinew and pain. He must have been at it for hours, but eventually he had forced enough moisture into his mouth that the sounds escaping his body began to sound human again. The grit had seemed to settle into the depths of his lungs, and he wasn’t sure he’d ever truly lost that taste of spent earth out of his mouth, but with first bestial wail that had escaped his mouth his tears dried up. With a deftness he could hardly remember he fastened back the mask and goggles he’d managed to hold onto while crawling and blinked quickly to verify his sight wasn’t going to simply flee his service again. 

The car was all fully encased now in the dust, but he could still hear the wind which meant he wasn’t truly under just yet. With a breath like a bellows he balled his fist and smashed it though the covered sun-roof. A waterfall of dust began to fill the cab but as he’d thought it was only about 6 inches thick yet. Careful not to catch on the broken glass, he made his way clumsily into the winds above. The light was dim, the great curtain of dust married to a twilight beyond. Whether it was the coming morning or the settling night though he couldn’t say. He would need to find some place to sleep soon though, and that meant walking. 

As the small opening of the sunroof quietly eased below the dust he began the rhythmic drum of left foot, right foot, left. Until the tremorous heartbeat sank into the background of ceaseless wind, and even that small impression was lost in the great symphony of unmaking. 

* * *

She’d started a garden when they’d first moved in. One day she’d shown up with armfuls of Asters, Daylillies, and Echinacea. He hadn’t known their names then, that had come later, but even now he could picture them as vibrant as they were on that first morning. She said she had chosen perennials because they had a life of their own. That every year they’d bloom anew and remind them of that day. It wasn’t long after that that the entire house was awash in colors and the smell of growing things.

His favorite had been the Playful Meadow Mama. When she’d told him the name he’d nearly laughed hoarse. Who names a flower like a Led Zepplin demo song? Soon though, he’d always find himself there in that part of the garden with the soft rustle of petals playing softly in his ears. He never forgot the gentle way the white edges gave smoothly, into warm pink or the rich green leaves as they mottled the afternoon light. The scattered warmth like dew along his skin. 

She was going to grow some vegetables, she’d said one afternoon. The rich earth flowed swiftly off her hands as she rinsed them in the sink. Dark brown whirlpools steamed smoothly round the drain. She dreamed of every night sitting down to a table filled with fresh food she had tended herself, of salads in the summer and roasted squash in the winter and sweet fruits to welcome in the warm nights and cold evenings of their lives. He supposed she never got to have that part of her vision. But for a time, their home was a riot of colors and the smell of black earth and abundance filled every room he walked in.

It broke his heart to pieces when she began dusting the flowers too. By now the sun was noticeably dimmer and he began to wonder how much light flowers really needed in a day to keep going. That first morning he found her there, quietly humming to her flowerbed and patiently wiping the dust from their petals and leaves, he felt he'd give anything at all to take that task away from her. It was like the music had been stolen from the world and he hadn't even noticed it was playing. She looked so dignified, so fragile in that moment of tenderness; the the sudden spark of color she revealed struck him like a bullet in his gut. The warm pink a quiet promise made from across a dark and violent sea, and as she meticulously undressed each leaf and petal to what sun could be found he couldn’t shake a feeling of awe. They had made some lemonade that afternoon, drank it warm on the porch and talked about what was the best first pie to make when the berries came through.

The next morning the dust had settled on the world again, though it was impossible to tell if it was any thicker than the day before. He couldn't recall ever talking about their berries again.

* * *

The dust had taken the borders of things first, like it was consuming the world from the outside in. The horizon was the first thing to fade away but it wasn’t that long before the hazy air made it difficult to tell depth at all, or to find the edge of a building in the distance. Colors were next to go, subtle shade distinctions melding into the soft browns and greys of the dust. Days too began to lose their distinctiveness and soon only the rhythm of waking, eating, and sleeping gave any sense of passing at all. In time the wind and the dust had worn even the edges of their emotions into a dull portrait of sameness. He saw it in the edges of her smile. Like they’d been sanded down in the night. 

He’d always though of space and time as the most resilient things in the universe but the dust had shown them to be as contingent as anything else. The world had shrunk to the size of their small home, the days to their collection of habits. Soon it was as if all of existence could be held in a thimbleful of moment and just a single drop more would send the whole thing cascading to the ground. 

Ceaselessly he padded on the shifting ground. The past was right step, the future was left. When every direction looked the same, when every moment was wind and grit, what use was there in drawing lines? The Greeks had worshiped Terminus as the sacred god of boundaries, the Hindus had set demon gods at the ends of every compass point to prevent them ever being defiled. It seemed even the gods had been weathered in the great storm of dust. Perhaps even now their remains pulled insistently at the edges of his clothing, seeking purchase against his last feeble efforts to move. Perhaps that too had always been the case.

He recalled the first time he’d forgotten the future. Who’s to say what day it was? He’d been laying quietly in the windbreak of an overturned billboard when a voice asked “Where are you going?” It had been so clear he’d all but leaped up before a gust of wind caught him and tossed him unceremoniously to the ground. It was some time before the adrenaline had left his system and that he could truly appreciate his solitude, and to recognize that it had been his own voice he’d heard. Or, at least, a voice from inside himself. He doubted if he’d actually be able to form a single given how much dust lay inside his mouth, let alone make an audible sentence. Still, how long had it been since he’d heard any words at all?

Despair set in, on the heels of his slowing heartbeat, as he realized he had no answer in him to give. Try as he might he could not seem to envision any sort of day or place he might be moving toward. The next step was real, the dust and the wind were real, but no amount of effort could make tangible a single moment outside of those three things. Even his past felt more theoretical than historical. Like a story he’d heard second hand many years ago. Colors, moments, brief piercing memories all in a kaleidoscope, a whirling dance. Coming together and apart with no rhyme or reason he could see. A book with all its pages torn out and scattered into the breeze. Perhaps above the stars continued to turn in their own endless waltz, and perhaps not, but in time the ceaseless wind wore even these thoughtsam down into smooth and harmless pebbles. Sufficient unto the moment was the evil thereof.

Eventually he awoke, fading dreams of something bright in his mind and without thought he was moving again toward a horizon he’d long ago stopped believing in.

* * *

The kitchen window had broken in the night. The sink had filled with dust, soft mounds of it shifting in the eddied wind. Outside an expanse of brown-grey dirt gave way into a hazy background of roaring air. The garden had been buried some time ago. Today was the day, he knew that as he knew when he was awake. He’d spent those first hours patiently tearing old t-shirts into small strips he diligently tied across his body. His hands moved with a practiced grace, as if he’d done this more times than he could count, and he sank into the monotonous rhythm of tear, tie, repeat. Tightness was what mattered here. He couldn’t afford to leave an inch of himself exposed to this place, no purchase for the howling wind. Soon he was completely armored, throwing a leather jacket on over the top to help prevent wear on the twisted fabric underneath. 

He’d fashioned a rudimentary mask out of some thick grey fabric he’d found at the foot of his bed that morning. Cutting and tying until he could feel no new dust entering his lips. The goggles he’d found in a drawer next to their back door. He seemed to remember them being some old swimming goggles, briefly repurposed during some ancient carpentry project that slipped his mind. Had it been a bench? Something solid meant to take the weight of a day spent he was sure, but all the details felt hazy in his thoughts. Perhaps it was for the best.

He had originally covered himself with every pocket he could find. Cargo pants and jacket pockets filled to the brim with small tools and even a can of tuna he’d found while digging through the sand. Somehow though the pockets always seemed to be filled with more dust whenever he’d reach into them, whatever small treasure they contained buried fast in its tiny earthen tomb. Even the zippered pockets on his jacket were not immune to the invasion and after some time he abandoned the idea all together. It was better to keep everything bound tight anyway. Fewer chances for the dust to get in or to weigh him down.

It was the book he’d found right before leaving that truly gave him pause. Some ancient debris from a bygone day about love and life. The title seemed to have been worn off but the prose felt victorian in his mind. He had the clearest image of a woman reading peacefully in a brightly lit garden, “The perfect blend of sensibility and romance.” he heard from nowhere in particular. 

In the pages he’d found a single flower pressed carefully between the ending of the third chapter and the opening of the next. Even dried and crushed it held a soft pink hue somehow untouched by the wind and dust. Protected here between sensibility and romance. With incredible delicacy he had placed that small book across his heart and bound it securely with t-shirt scraps. There was something in that flower he just could not bear to leave here in this quietly dissolving house. It made it a little hard to move, he thought, but somehow the weight felt good against his chest. Like the reassuring hand of someone truly there. 

And with that he was out of the door. The wind hadn’t shifted, not that he could tell, but it felt hungrier as it pulled at his new layers. Impatient, but persistent. He didn’t look back at all, at least not in memory, but he did remember locking the door before dropping the key to be swallowed by the ever moving dunes making way against the side of the house. It wouldn't be long before Here would be just like everywhere else.

* * *

The wind beat against his thoughts as he trudged ever onward. Nothing could prove to him that it had grown any stronger than before. In fact he was sure that it had maintained the same monotonous intensity since it first picked up all those ages ago. Still, he felt somehow smaller against it. As if he had begun his journey as a boulder but had been worn to a pebble while he hadn't been looking. 

All around the great dust swirled and strove. Slowly taking any object larger than itself until it too had been worn into a fine ash and was fully part of that great pre-cosmogonic storm. The sand that grazed across his body might be the remnants of some bygone creation of nature or man. The pieces of their being now just another small part in the ever growing gale of sameness. The world had once been filled with...things... hadn’t it? Places and creatures and dreams all decaying and growing in a great cyclical dance? He supposed they were all still here, now finally one in the great equalizing dust of the present. It was not the wind or the dust that worried at his edges so, but the ghosts of long dead forevers asking why he chose to persist. 

His body was beginning to feel raw too. Worn, where his legs and arms rubbed skin on skin in the never ending march toward the following step. He supposed he was wearing down as well. He could feel it in his bones, like a spring slowly losing its tension or a record player winding down. He was a pattern, recreating itself moment to moment, carried on an inertia even he couldn’t really understand. But as dutifully as his cells continued to push back against the onslaught he could tell that even they were nearing their expiration. Soon, his song too would fade into the white noise of the wind and the end. It was strange what things endured. Each breath stolen from a world that no longer suffered his need to breathe. 

He stumbled, and fell sprawled across the sand. It was not a graceful fall. He didn’t even try to catch himself or slow down as he tumbled down the side of a dune he hadn’t even known he was atop of. He must have just missed the step, there was nothing so solid to catch his foot. He wasn’t sure why but that small misstep seemed more foreboding than any gap in his armor ever had. His eyes stared skyward. It was night now. There was no way to know that for sure but something in his bones said it was true. He was also sure that he had rent entirely his scrap armor during the fall. He could feel the first tentative caresses of dust against his skin. 

The mask must have come off too in his descent, but try as he might he couldn’t see an ounce of difference across the great dust mound to indicate where it might be. Somehow though, it didn’t feel all that important there at the bottom of the world. For the first time in all of time he couldn’t feel the wind clawing against his body. He could still see it high above him of course, clawing the top of the dune violently only to build it again in some distant place he couldn’t bring himself to imagine. At least, here, he felt some measure of peace. 

With a movement that looked almost nonchalant he unfastened the knots bound tightly across the left side of his chest, feeling the familiar weight release with a pang of loss he couldn't quite place. His own body had worn the back cover down to almost nothing but somehow it had retained its binding through it all. As he opened it however he could tell just how brittle the pages had become. Even with his body as a shield the world had taken it down to almost nothing. He thumbed quickly through the still vibrant words. Meaningless, they found no purchase in his mind and yet he felt suddenly swept by a wave of color and warmth. If he hadn’t known any better he might have thought he was humming to himself.

At the close of the third chapter his heart sank. Nothing there. All that remained was a slow stream of dust flowing listlessly from the valley between the open pages. Hadn’t there been something here, he thought to himself. Something held dear against all the taking and decay? It danced just at the limits of his thought. As soon as he thought he’d found the path though it would slowly dissolve away into a haze until he’d find himself staring mutely into the open pages of a book, stalled permanently between one chapter and the next. Hadn’t he hidden the world in here?

“No” he thought, he screamed, but the wind had long ago made his screams its own. “This is the last thing you will take I swear it.” If he hadn’t kept it safe in the book then he must have hidden it even deeper. He threw his mind against the great walls and endless gales within him, grasping blindly for any purchase. At first there seemed nothing to be found, feeling in his grip only dust and air. An age passed unnoticed in the night.

Without warning he was stuck suddenly by an image of pink and white so vibrant he briefly suspected he had finally passed out of the world. Not the veil, no, it was something else. A flower. A bright and gossamer bloom of pinks and whites that filled the limits of existence. He remembered, but still no words came to him. Here, at the feet of the holy of holies, god would brook no commentary.

Hadn’t there been a name? Some sound, musical, that had accompanied this vision when there was still time? Try as he might he couldn’t seem to make the thoughts line up properly. Sometimes a tone or laughter would come to him, yet always it slipped his net before he could really get a look at it. But he was sure. His body had begun to feel cold and stiff, a dull ache had settled deep into his being somewhere; but he knew that if he looked to that then this perfect vision would fade unanswered into the great swirl of dust it defied. There had been a name, he knew it, he just had to try harder. 

He had carried the world in his heart, he thought, because he knew it was the last place the dust would wipe away. He could almost smell it, an earthy tone of life and water and promise that suffused the air with wonder. If ever heaven had had a smell, he knew, it would be just like this. Perhaps he had passed on after all, he mused. But no, even in that place he could feel the soft trembling in his limbs, somewhere on the edge of forever. No, no rest yet, not until he’d done his last great labor. Still, the vibrant mandala before him would not be known and he could feel his will to do so slowly fading away. Who exactly was he trying so hard for?

A new scent came to him. So fleeting he might have simply imagined it he was suddenly awash in the smell of dark coffee grounds. Perhaps some had been trapped ages ago in the crease of the book only to be released by his furious searching. Though even he had to question this theory, as the dust had filled him up so completely by now he doubted he would have truly smelled anything else if he’d been buried up to his eyeballs in it. Still, its demand was undeniable and he felt himself cast mightily back into...something. A moment of reverence he couldn’t quite place. It was bright though, in a way he'd forgotten was possible with his waking eyes. And there she was, radiant against the rising dawn as she quietly went about her morning. He wanted to say something, anything, but it felt as if his mouth had been sealed shut ages ago. He wanted to reach out and yet his limbs refused his call. She must have sensed something though because she glanced up. And there it was. The name he’d been digging for so furiously came roaring through his mind. He would have laughed to weeping had he been able to do anything at all. As the corners of her mouth pulled up and her lips parted around a warm and toothy grin, he met it with the first of his own in what felt like centuries. 

It was a flower, magnificent in pinks and whites and crowned with robes of the deepest green. And as he watched it open slowly before him he heard its name, so clear he wondered if they were the final words spoken in the wastes. It was a flower. Playful Meadow Smile.