DON’T FEEL GUILT.
IT WAS NECESSARY.
SO NEVER APOLOGIZE.
“Sightings have increased recently,” the speakers blared tinnily. “Remember, it is imperative, as always, that you do not feel guilt.”
I shivered in the cold winter air; there was a chill wind blowing, and the pines swayed slightly. It was dark at this time of year, dark when it was daytime, and darker at night, when the pines seemed to wail in pain in memory of what had happened, way back in 2009. It had been three years since then, but they still wailed as if it was yesterday. Perhaps they had wailed before then, but now the screaming of the wind through the forests on the outskirts of town took on an accusatory tone, as if it was angry. Or perhaps it was simply full of an extreme and painful disappointment, as if I had betrayed them. But I hadn’t done anything to the trees.
I hadn’t done anything to anyone else, either. I was innocent.
Poking up from the tops of the scraggly pines is a warning tower that had warned no-one. It had once had a siren before it had been torn out like a throat that wouldn’t stop screaming, and a light that like an eye had been ripped away but still looked at you in a hollow way, like there was still life in it, in an eerily familiar way. The tower stood tall and lanky still, like an unbidden memory when all other thoughts sink away, and even when I turn my back on it I still think of it. I’ve often fantasized of burning it, but I’ve never been able to light a fire ever since 2009, though I suppose that it would have been better if I had acquired this phobia in 2008. Not that I’m guilty, of course, I’m just mildly regretful. It was necessary, and even then, I had little to do with it.
We live alone now. A whole town, isolated. The outside world wouldn’t understand what we had to do, what was necessary. People outside don’t know how to deal with necessity, and feel guilty for things that weren’t their fault; that’s what the speakers blare out in the evenings when we get to thinking about the past. The past is the past, and what was necessary then is necessary still.
In the nighttime the speakers play classical music, softly. The townsfolk all find it soothing, except for my neighbor, an old man who says it reminds him of his wife. I see the things around his house more often than around the others.
Today we are having soup. I’m fine with soup, but what we are having now is hardly soup, just water with the bare minimum of food in it. It’s not fair. We deserve better.
We round ourselves up, stirring ourselves to actually eat instead of staring into the woods and feeling guilty. Which I don’t do. Why should I? All I do is boil the water when we make the soup in the city hall, the one large town building that isn’t ashes. It would have been nice to still have the church, since that was larger, but I don’t know if we could stand it, the accusing eyes of statues and the stained glass windows.
There’s something beautiful about seeing a stained glass window explode outwards in a fine spray of shards as something is thrown through it, and firelight adds to the effect. That’s one memory from that time that I still allow myself, even though I have to stop before my focus shifts from the beauty of the broken glass to the sound to the fire to the sound of all the-
Sometimes I scald myself on the soup, but today I guard my mouth from the burnt feeling one gets from something hot going into your mouth, which is not nearly as bad as the burnt feeling one gets from being locked in a building and-
That’s not all that happened, of course. There were things that were necessary other than that, and I did hardly anything, I just lit a match, that’s not something to feel guilty over? Is it? Is it? I hope not, and besides, the state they were in, it was probably a good thing, doing that, necessary.
Thank goodness it was necessary and not unnecessary. Sometimes when I lie awake at night and the pines fall silent- when I am my only accuser (not that I have anything to feel guilty about)- I quake in fear that it was unnecessary, but that is a nightmare, a terror operating on nothing but dream logic and fear itself, which is the only thing we have to fear, other than guilt. Scratch that, all that we have to fear is guilt.
Sometimes I wonder if the things that we in the town see are even real. Sometimes I wonder if the people were even real. Sometimes I wonder if I died at that time too, but still feel guilty about it.
We hoped that we would never die, but now we fear that is true.
Even worse than feeling guilt is apologizing, as the speakers make sure to remind us. Thank goodness that the mayor rigged them up with the scheduling and all that before he fell into guilt. Guilt shouldn’t happen, shouldn’t come to a blameless man like him. It shouldn’t come to any of us, with the things that were necessary and what was made by necessity coming back to haunt us, and why should they haunt us? It’s not like they benefit. It’s not like it is necessary.
But maybe it is, and every day they wonder if it was necessary.
I hope they feel guilt and get dragged away by us. I hope they apologize to us guiltless and then we can pull them away and maybe I could drown one? I have a tub and maybe I could fill it with water if the plumbing still works. I wouldn’t know, I haven’t used it in a while.
The soup is cold now. Do I remember how many people were taken away by them? Maybe I just shelved them away into those who, sadly enough, were not as important as what was necessary. Or maybe the opposite, and those who were selected have become those who were dragged away? What’s a better way to go? It doesn’t matter, it was necessary, I just wish that they felt the same way.
Ever since that night I’ve been living in a haze, like smoke- no, no, no, anything but smoke acrid with the smell of- but what if I cast it off? Heavy is my burden and heavier the weights that-
I can’t take it any more.
I’m sorry. I’m sorry! I’m saying it! I’m finally saying it! I APOLOGIZE!
No no no no no nononononono NO I’m innocent I’m innocent I’m