The Death Dealer Diaries

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Book excerpt

October 25, 3077

My mother told me once that the world did not end as expected. It did not burn down around our ears or crumble beneath the onslaught of a new ice age. She told me that the time of Humans ended because all Humans believed in an idea; one that turned out to be a lie.

Humans, she said, believed there was no such thing as life on other planets. The whole world believed that if there were such creatures that survived in the universe, they would come in slow, grand space ships if at all. She said that in the end, the Humans thought they would have a fighting chance at peace or war. She said that they ardently believed in this lie with all their hearts; a lie that they created for themselves, and one that thus was their downfall.

She never told me the story of how the Human world's time had come to an end though, until we came to the edge of a great city; one of the few with buildings still left standing. We were huddled together against the cold winter air in the depths of what she had called, a drainage ditch outside the great city.

I was in the middle of my tenth winter and had just learned how to snare rabbits. It was cold and I was tired from a long day of searching for food, but I can still remember the dying rays of the sun glowing off the side of her face as she whispered the tale to me. Her dark eyes darted around us nervously as she spoke about the day all the people began to vanish. Her story sounded like the fairy tale my father had often told me as a very small child before he vanished with the others. The fairy tale was about a great Guardian and the struggles of a people long forgotten. He had always made me stay awake while He told me the fairy tale, refusing to let me miss a word no matter how tired I was. This new story that my mother told, though, seemed even more strange to me as I lay there listening to her terrifying tale that night.

When she had finished telling me her story, her arms tightened around me just as I began to fall asleep. I remember her heart pounding in her chest against my cheek as my mind went adrift with sleep. Somewhere in the darkness of that night, I can remember that she whispered to my closed eyes. She said that she just needed to go get something from inside the city and that she would be back as soon as she could.

When I awoke that next day, my mother was gone... and she never came back.

October 29, 3077

It was the summer after my mother left me that I came across Zephora's veggie patch. It wasn't much back then. It seemed to be growing more weeds than food, but I was starving and hadn't eaten in days. Before I knew it, I was being hauled by my hair, with a mouth full of fresh carrot, before a woman that looked old enough to be my grandmother. She carried a walking staff as thick as my ankle and had a scowl that said she knew how to use it.

When she asked me what I had to say for myself, I told her the only thing that I could think of; that she needed to plant her carrots deeper. Her two young grandsons, Ephram and Garhet, the ones who had caught me, started snickering. Before I knew it, people hidden in the trees above us were laughing all around. Zephora didn't laugh, but the anger in her eyes faded.

Some days after Zephora took me in, I discovered that not all people in the group were Zephora's own blood kin. Some were like me, nomads that had no blood kin of their own left. Aleena was one of those.

I first met Aleena two days after I was accepted into the camp. I had been taken into Zephora's tent as part of a cleansing ritual, and was sitting alone in cold soapy water when I first saw her. She was being hauled into the tent by a long haired woman I later learned was called, Hashella.

Aleena screamed and fought so ardently with Hashella that I feared for what the long haired woman's intentions were. I slipped out of the small wooden barrel of soapy water and hid naked behind it to watch. Hashella, with her back to me, pulled a pair of long shears from a heavy wood table in the corner. As she yelled at Aleena, she dragged her down over her knee by some pine benches, and began cutting crude gobs of Aleena's hair off. Great tears rolled down Aleena's cheeks. Her pleas for mercy fell without impression upon the long haired woman's willfully deaf ears.

After listening for a time, I began to feel very bad for Aleena. It seemed to me that Hashella was gaining more satisfaction than was rightly just from the situation. It made me angry to watch this long haired woman being so cruel. As quietly as I could, I crept across the room. Hashella, whom was so happily transfixed by the torment she was visiting upon the poor girl, did not see or hear me take the other pair of shears off of the table from behind them. Nor did she feel or hear when I began cutting two feet of her hair off in the exact same ugly fashion as she was visiting upon Aleena.

It was only when Zephora came into the tent to check on me that Hashella found me behind her. However, I did manage to slice off the last strands of her long hair right before her eyes. That was the first and last time I ever heard Zephora laugh, and Hashella cry.

Later, I learned the importance of long hair to the group. Zephora doesn't believe in punishment through pain, she believes in punishment through shame. She once told me, “What makes a stronger memory? The one that lasts but a moment, or the one that lasts a few months or even years?” Her belief is that hair takes longer to grow back than a beating does to be forgotten. Thereby, the longer your hair is, the more respect you have earned from the group over time. A quality that others can use to both give privilege and deny it. Zephora's silver hair flows down to the lower part of her back, as is the same with all the distinguished men and women of the family. This is also possibly why Hashella cried so hard when I sliced all of hers off.

Aleena and I, however, have been closer than sisters ever since that day. Through good times and bad, we've spent the past five summers letting our hair grow shorter and shorter.

October 31, 3077

Zephora is angry with us… again. I can tell because she has the same look in her eyes as she did the first day I got caught pulling carrots from her family's garden. Aleena and I are to have our hair cut another inch shorter tomorrow as punishment for straying beyond the bounds of our camp again. The other family members look down upon us more so now because we get our hair cut almost every other week. At this point, my black hair is almost cropped to the nape of my neck. The length of my hair, though, really isn't the issue I'm worried about; Aleena's irrational behavior is a deeper concern for me.

She is convinced that the camp should break apart and move away from each other. She ardently believes that we are endangering ourselves by staying together. Zephora believes that we must grow our numbers as quickly as possible to re-establish the human hold over Earth. The arguments between the two only get worse by the day. Sometimes I swear Aleena's face turns redder than her short hair when Zephora dismisses her notions.

After one of their fights last night, we set out to the North to scout out some new terrain. When we passed the boundary line of our camp, I asked Aleena why she was so desperate to break apart the family. Her glare was set to the North, and all she said to me was that she knew what would happen to us all if we waited too long in one area. She added after a moment of hesitation that our numbers were growing too large; that soon, we would be noticed.

Then, when I didn't say anything, her eyes found mine. A soft sadness filled them, and she said that there would come a time when I would have to make a choice as well; a choice between my life with Zephora's family and my friendship with her.