CW: Violence, Death
I remember waking up in the sand.
I found a girl choking on weeds, bracken wrapped around her wrists, mouth drawn out in an empty scream. Was she still in there? I couldn’t quite say, but I knelt down and gave her my hand. Her finger twitched, and then another. There was still life in there, somewhere. And we weren’t the only ones. People started washing up on the banks of beaches, and no one knew where they came from, knew who they were. They themselves could not speak—tongues seemingly cut out from their throats.
I remember one man who struggled so hard to communicate, his mind in rageful tatters, and the anger spilled out of him in torrents. He was the first to act on these emotions. A tsunami of naked, suffering, tongueless folk ran towards the cities from the boardwalks. It was like the apocalypse fell on Earth, the way they ravaged the first people they encountered. They couldn’t speak, they didn’t know how to use their mouths or fists, and so they grovelled and spat at the public until the government had enough. They bombed the fuck out of these people until the beaches were littered with huge craters, boardwalks collapsing into the earth. I remember standing on the last plank of wood, watching the rest of it sink into the ground with bodies and faces in the sand.
But I still had my tongue.
I didn’t know where we came from either, but I had my wits about me. Sometimes I was questioned by the military that patrolled these beaches. I often wondered how they would react if I carved out their tongues and scrambled their brains until they couldn’t remember who they were or where they came from. I wondered how compassionate they would be once they felt the same uncertainty and hardship.
I tried to swim out into the sea, enveloped by the waves until they suffocated me, but each time I attempted to return to where I came from, the sea spat me right back out.
I sat with the girl beside me, her limp head lolling on the gritty surface, her fingers still repeatedly thrumming softly in my open hand. I should have left her there, like all the others, but sorrow crossed my heart, and I could not walk away. It’s funny how instead of trying to understand us, humanity reacted instantly with violence. This world was cold and unfamiliar to me, but these people weren’t.
She opened her eyes and blinked slowly, attempting to make sense of the world around her.
‘It’s alright,’ I whispered, wiping strands of hair from her clammy forehead. ‘Just stay quiet.’ I didn’t know how to convey to her the dangers that came with her existence, but if she ran from me, displayed erratic behaviour, she would be shot down immediately. ‘Just be still.’
Her eyes found mine, eyebrows narrowing as she took in my haggard appearance, not much better than hers. She drew back, wild-eyed, hands gripping the wet sand.
‘What are you doing?’ she hissed. It took me a split-second to react—plastering my hand over her mouth, telling her to shut up as if her life depended on it, because it truly did. My heart was thumping like a rabbit as I retracted my hand and forced her to open her mouth.
‘A tongue!’
‘A tongue?’ she snapped.
‘You’re the same as me!’ I almost cried with happiness.
But the marvel didn’t last long. She recoiled from my touch, took back her tongue, and kicked sand into my eyes. I was sent scrabbling on uneven ground as tiny shards scraped my eyes mercilessly, before reopening them to her silhouette racing down the pier. I didn’t know where she was going, but I quickly sourced the spotters on the horizon. For the first time since I woke up here, something akin to rage began to stir inside me.
The gunshot rang clear and true; the body fell soundlessly onto golden ground. Scarlet leaked into a bottle-blue sea. Her precious speech stolen by those who already had their own, screams muffled by the roaring waves.
