"Children of Sons" By Cameron Green
Photo Credit: Patrick Perkins, obtained and licensed through Unsplash
A few weeks back, I decided I’d be nothing like my father. I was going to be less anxious. I would slow down. Live in the moment. That kind of thing.
Goro, my father, with his bird legs and sharp stubble, he didn’t know the word slow. He was always rushing through the kitchen, to the vactrain, to work. Like he was back on Planet. I wasn’t going to do that. I’d take things in, slowly. Count my steps. I’d take my time shaving. I’d catch every nook.
And we were different to begin with, Goro and I. He was an Original, one of a hand-picked few. A golden generation. I am of a different generation. I wasn’t born here, so I’m not technically a Martian, though I might as well be. I’ve been here longer than most. I do wish I was Martian. Their features: pale and fragile. Everyone wants to fuck a Martian, at least once. Lucid says that we’ll all be fucking Martians soon, because we’ll all be Martians. I try my best not to think about that. Slowing down and all.
Goro would go hunting with other Originals out in the Dome. He killed. Aside from Hermes, my cat, I hadn’t even seen the furred beasts they’d brought back from Planet. But Goro was always begging that I go with them. The way fathers do. I wasn’t going to do that, either.
*
“Oh fuck, Rui. Oh Jesus,” my father says. “It hurts so bad.” Goro bleeds into a synthetic bush and his blood shines perfect on symmetrical leaves. There is a too-green plastic tree and other shrubbery, all meant to make the hunting feel more real. Right now, it is working.
He’d been shot through the elbow and dropped to his knees in pain. There is a crooked red divide between the top and bottom halves of his left arm.
“We have to help him,” I say, more to myself than to Goro or Lucid, more to put the words into the air, help him, so that they are real, so that someone has to do it.
I look back at her. Lucid carries the rifle by the grip and holds it to her side like a sword. She is to my rear, off to one side, my father a few feet in front of me. In the dusty glow and fading light, she looks like a warrior.
And we were different to begin with, Goro and I. He was an Original, one of a hand-picked few. A golden generation. I am of a different generation. I wasn’t born here, so I’m not technically a Martian, though I might as well be. I’ve been here longer than most. I do wish I was Martian.
“Do something, Rui,” Goro yells, so loud I jump. From his mouth, my name is laced in blame. “It hurts so damn bad.” He can’t bend his arm, so it hangs there limp, kind of like Lucid with the gun. I kneel beside him and try ripping off my sleeve to wrap the wound like in old movies, but I’m not strong enough. The fabric doesn’t tear. There is a lot of blood, so much that I think he’s hit an artery.
“First aid, there’s got to be a kit around here, right?” I ask and look back at Lucid. From the glint of the sunrise behind her, I cannot tell whether her knees are shaking. I smell iron mixed with clay. “Do something!” I shout, not meaning to sound as much like Goro as I do. Lucid falls to her knees and cries.
*
The cities on Mars are all underground. The cities on Mars are bright and fat, and throb like a tumor under skin. The people on Mars are translucent, as thin as bones in wings. The cities on Mars will stab at the corners of your eyes. They will stick you as you blink. The cities on Mars are all underground. The people on Mars are all assholes. We all live in the cities.
Obviously, Mars sucks.
*
One time Cal told me that his dad got radiation poisoning from working at the mines up Top.
“Shit,” I say.
“Yah,” he says, then tells me about this old mine on Planet where a hundred years ago, everyone’s lungs got turned to glass. They’d spent months breathing in the fine shards of their own death like invisible smoke. He says the trees turned white from being coated with the particles, that it looked like snow or ash, but was in fact the kickings-up of a big drill digging to the Planet’s center. He couldn’t remember what for.
“Fucking trees,” I say, and try to picture it, but can’t.
*
Lucid and I have something that the Originals call complicated, but I don’t think it’s complicated at all: we fuck, and there’s nothing complicated about that. I mean, sex is on Whoever’s Hierarchy of Demands, or whatever it’s called. It’s like the first one.
A few days ago she threw this party. Luther and Cal and Lana and Liv and I were there. All children of Originals, brought here when we were young. Some of us even remember Planet. Then there was Wren and Niko and Lucid. All Martians. Born here. Smoking hot. Something about the red dust in your blood that makes you gorgeous. We’re all pale as ice from living in the cities, but them especially. Lucid, oh man, you can see her veins right through her skin. Makes me want to go swimming in them.
The Originals all think they’re gods or something, Mighty Mars Olympus, like they’ve climbed back up the mountain to paradise. They think they’re all invincible. And as the children of gods, what does that make us? So they throw us these huge parties, each one of them trying to outdo the others. If Luther’s mom got him a tank to kick up dust in on the surface, then Niko’s dad would buy a fighter jet, roll it in through the tunnels and watch it knock over street signs and mailboxes. None of us ever used the stuff.
Goro’s parties always suck. Even the Originals think so. He’s always talking about Planet and making everyone smoke from the stash he brought from “Earth.” Sometimes, when Goro’s drunk or high, he still calls it Earth. Fucking loser. Lucid’s parents have the best parties, though. They’re all in on this Mars shit. We get dressed up in togas, and the Originals all fuck off somewhere and we go do the same. It’s the greatest gift that they could give us: no expecting eyes.
“Fucking trees,” I say, and try to picture it, but can’t.
That night at the party, I was fucking Lucid, and Wren was fucking Luther, and Niko was fucking Lana even though he was supposed to be fucking Liv, but Lana and Liv are twins, so who gives a shit? We were all topless in the bathhouse, all perfume and sweat. Our breath was rancid from spitting up liquor. Some of the girls were laid out, pretending to tan like they’d seen in old pictures. I was in the pool, water up to my chest, telling everyone how different I was going to be. How my parties would be fun. Luther said something about fun, about being trapped in the cities with no sunlight or nothing.
“What about the time Cal’s dad got us all speed bikes and we got drunk and drove them into the side of the bubble to see if we could break it?” Lucid said with her finger hooked inside my mouth.
“I broke my wrist that day,” Liv said. She was sitting outside the bath with her feet in the water. Her thighs spread flat on the linoleum.
“Shut the fuck up, Liv,” I said, and everyone laughed. Even Liv, I think.
“I thought that was Lana,” Niko said. Lana gave a mouthful-grunt that lacked confirmation or denial.
“I love it up Top,” Lucid said, her legs wrapped around my waist.
“It’s always dark out there, even with the white lights hanging from the bubble,” Luther said. Wren had moved on and was swimming over to Lana and Niko. “It sucks. Just like it sucks down here.”
I got what he meant. Because of the radiation, you couldn’t stay up there for more than a few hours. It was best to go when the sun was down, dusk to dawn the only time we could emerge from the dark tunnels of the cities. But the sunset on Mars is as red as a blister. So I decided that Luther was stupid.
“Goro’s always hunting up there,” I said. “Him and his buddies go every couple weeks.” One of the help brought a tray of rolled joints. Lucid took one and put it in her mouth. The help lit it for her.
We had learned in school about the things the Originals brought and the things they left behind.
“Like, he kills stuff?” Lucid asked. It was just us talking now, all the others only coming up for air or booze. She took a drag from the joint, then placed it between my lips.
“I guess,” I said. I took a drag. It was hard to imagine Goro killing anything. My father was neurotic. Mostly, he didn’t like to get his hands dirty. I imagined him shooting something, but I didn’t even know enough about animals to imagine what. I pictured Hermes out there lying dead, orange and white against the pale horizon. Maybe a drone would pick him up, fly him through a hole in the roof of the Dome and toss him into space.
“I want to see that,” Lucid said. “I want to come.” Suddenly, she was very serious. She held my head between her hands, as soft and thin as flowers. On my neck, her fingers had the feeling of new jewelry.
“Why–” I started, but she took the joint from me and tossed it into the water. She pressed her lips against mine, wet and cold.
“Promise me,” she said, our mouths barely separated. “And promise it’ll just be the three of us. Me, you, and Goro.” From the corner of my eye, I saw ash floating to the center of the pool.
So I promised.
*
We had learned in school about the things the Originals brought and the things they left behind.
The things they brought: architecture, guns, mythology, plastic, metal, great minds, great inventors, animals for eating, animals for killing, animals specifically meant for keeping alive, chains, fast food, secret recipes, special sauces, marijuana, rum, tequila, fire, bombs, Hermes, the unmalleable constructions of civilization. Me.
The things they left behind: history, storms, their lessons, the scriptures, millions of souls, fashion, exotic fruits and exotic peoples. My mother.
I don’t remember her. Goro has said that her name was Emma. I was brought to Mars when I was four, and she was left behind like the rest, to suffocate in a black ball of smoke and fire or drown in the forever-rising oceans. It didn’t matter. She wasn’t special. She hadn’t done the things that Goro had, the research and the writing. When he could only bring one person, she told him to bring me. Whenever Goro gets to this part, I can tell that he is lying.
I have stories about my mother, too. But maybe I’ve forgotten them.
*
“Just shoot the damned thing already.” This was earlier, before the accident. The three of us had just arrived in the middle of the night, long after sundown. Everything past the bubble was dark, an empty blackness with nothing to be seen. Fluorescent lights illuminated the Dome, where the animals were released for hunting. The bubble goes on for miles, so you can’t see the end when you’re standing in it like it’s its own world. Out here at night, it feels like an entire universe.
Goro just wanted me to pull the trigger, but my finger wouldn’t move. The three of us shared Goro’s rifle, a matte black rod with faux walnut around the stock and handguard. There were stations already set up for us, presumably by Goro and his friends, where they’d spent their nights hiding, pretending to be hunters. Even supported by the wooden rail, the gun was heavy in my hands. My finger danced around the trigger. I was shaking.
I had never seen a real animal before. There were slender ones with legs like branches, and big fat ones with fur that I was sure could stop a bullet. Even through the scope of the rifle, they were all somehow larger than I expected. I couldn’t help but watch them, the way they moved like beasts, the way I somehow knew that this was how a beast moved.
In the darkness, time slowed. Goro’s voice was far away, like someone shouting in a dream. Two of the slender animals danced around each other, butting heads and hopping on their back legs. On occasion, one would stop, its ears would perk straight up, and I would swear that it was looking right at us. And every time, my heart fell to my stomach.
“What did I even bring you out here for?” he said. His words brought my finger to the trigger. He leaned back in the tree stand and pulled out a cigarette. I wanted to shoot just to shut him up. I wanted to hurl the gun into space. Then, I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Just give me the gun,” she said. Lucid’s lips were close to my ear, and I felt both startled and aroused.
“What?” I asked. “No.” I brought my eyes away from the scope and looked up at her. In the light, her colors were more extreme; her skin paler, her lips redder and pouted. I couldn’t let her see me like this. I felt weaker than I ever had.
“Give the lady a shot,” Goro said as he snatched the rifle from my hands. He handed it to Lucid, cig hanging from his lips, and winked at her. In her half-lit face, her eyes squinted, just barely, like she’d gotten a paper cut.
Two of the slender animals danced around each other, butting heads and hopping on their back legs. On occasion, one would stop, its ears would perk straight up, and I would swear that it was looking right at us.
She took the gun from Goro and aimed down the sight. Without the scope, the animals were stick figures in the distance, no more real than a child’s sketch. With a slow, deep breath, Lucid took the shot. I jumped. My ears rang. And in an instant, as if of its own volition, the penciled creature in the distance dropped.
*
One time, Goro took me to the building in the city where he worked. Growing up, I spent most of my time in the residences, massive estates that sat on man-made hilltops just outside the cities. This was where the Originals lived. We took the vactrain into the heart of a city named after some important man from Planet, and through the windows all the buildings were a blur of chrome and red. Occasionally, the neon of a billboard would streak by like lightning. This was how most people saw the cities: too fast and barely looking.
Outside, the building was tall and pressed between two others. It looked squeezed in, like there wasn’t an inch to spare in the whole underground. When we got to the office, Goro walked me all around and introduced me to his coworkers. He was an architect, one of the best from Planet, as was apparent by our survival. Goro and his friends had helped design the Martian cities, bringing diagrams and renderings from one sphere to the next to turn someplace uninhabitable into a dark and dusty home.
Inside, the building was all white walls and open floors. There were electronic screens where, in a different world, there might have been windows. There seemed to be no heat in the building, and everyone moved from one place to the next, hurrying, as to not let the cold air shake them. One of Goro’s bosses, who he never called his boss and instead called Mr. Ransom, waved us over from behind his plastic office walls.
“A little Goro,” he said when he saw me, and I told him that my name was Rui. “What a name,” he said, “And what a boy.” He put his hand on Goro’s shoulder and feigned what seemed like pride. The way they looked at each other reminded me why I hated the cities. I decided Mr. Ransom was a liar and a fool.
“Surely he’ll be working here before long. Might even take your job if you’re not careful, G.” When he called my father this, G, Goro winced.
“If he’s anything like his old man, he’ll be a natural,” Goro said. My father’s eyes were on me, but I just looked down at the floor. From outside the office, the soft buzz of electricity permeated every surface in the building. After a moment, someone barked at another worker to go and get them a coffee. A pair of feet scuttled across the floor. Outside, the vactrain zoomed by in a gust of air and magnets.
*
Sometimes, I lay in bed and draw Hermes as he ambles through my room. He purrs and rolls at my feet. I try to capture his essence; he is not beautiful. There is something wonderfully unintelligent about him: the way his eyes grow wide when I call for him, how he rubs his pointed teeth against my knuckles. I draw Hermes at his most natural, his least photogenic. I try to catch him hunched, licking his own belly until he gets sick with fur. This is the way he’d be, I think, whether anyone was here to take note of it or not.
Hermes chases the horizon, a trail of red dust behind him. Hermes tries to put his teeth to it.
Other times, I draw him as the only cat on Mars, the lone living creature, no humans or structures. No day or night. Hermes chases the horizon, a trail of red dust behind him. Hermes tries to put his teeth to it.
*
“Only big boys get to hold the gun,” Goro said, and laughed. I could still see the thing that Lucid killed, a brown speck at the separation of the horizon. Against the lights, in my late-night exhaustion, I saw something rise up from the corpse. Something like a soul. I decided that was stupid.
“It’ll be sun-up before long. Let’s take a look at the bitch,” Goro said.
For the first time since she’d shot, I pulled my eyes from the creature and looked at Lucid. She beamed, her teeth even whiter than the skin of her face. Her body gave off heat and she smelled of sweat.
Goro tossed his cig into the dirt and we all climbed down from the tree stand. I wanted to say something, to apologize, but the thought brought hot sparks to the back of my eyes. He took big strides and walked past me. I didn’t say anything.
“You know,” Goro started, “your mother could never shoot, either.” There was a satisfaction in his voice, as if he’d just solved an equation that he’d been stuck on for days. My father’s silhouette continued in the direction we were walking. His motions were methodical. Every step seemed planned, measured for efficiency and pace, like a march. I thought about my own steps, small and meek. That was when the second gunshot fired.
It was instant, again, like the very act of pulling the trigger was what had pierced my father’s skin. A splatter of blood hung in the air, then fell to the ground, rust on rust.
“Oh fuck, Rui,” he says.
*
I have one story about my mother.
The images are blurry and bright, all greens and blues and yellows. The sun seemed to be larger back then, at least in my recollection. She is kneeling in the dirt of what must have been our yard. She wears a white hat that is much larger than her head, orange and black gloves on her hands. I don’t remember what the grass smelled like.
In my memory, the flowers are like watercolors, different paints streaked across a page. I reach a hand down into the flowers and pull back a bloody finger, a thorn lodged into the pad of my index.
She holds a gardening tool, and with it, snips away the dead leaves and florets. She cuts away the things she doesn’t need. In my memory, the flowers are like watercolors, different paints streaked across a page. I reach a hand down into the flowers and pull back a bloody finger, a thorn lodged into the pad of my index.
I watch the blood as it trickles down. It makes rivers in the creases of my palm.
I don’t cry, at least not in the memory. But my mother comforts me anyway, pulls me close to her, takes my head against her chest. There is sunlight on my cheek, my hands, the back of my neck. It is the last time I feel warm.
*
“We should call for help,” I say. I don’t know how bleeding out works. I don’t know how any of this works. I know that if we’re out here for much longer, when the sun sits high atop the sky, that the bubble will not protect us from the radiation. It will seep into our skin, slowly at first, then disintegrate us from the inside out.
“What if we didn’t?” Lucid says. I look up at her. She kneels down beside me and says it again: What if we didn’t call for help? What if we left him here? I blink hard. My head shakes millimetrically like I’m trying to rewind it all.
“We can’t leave him here,” I say. “Why would we leave him here?” Lucid’s hand touches my cheek. Whether from the heat of the gun or her own internal temperature, her palm is hot against my skin.
“Why not?” she says, “If we leave him here, it’s all yours. No more useless rides into the city, no more shit weed and expectations. No more Goro. Just us.”
“Rui,” my father says. For some reason, this surprises me. “You can’t. You won’t.” He is barely conscious, fading in and out from shock or blood loss.
“If we bring him back, he’ll tell everyone I shot him. He’s an Original, Rui. I’ll be dead. I’m dead if we bring him back.” Her face is clear, almost emotionless, except for the quiver in her lips. My insides are on fire. I am burning and drowning at the same time.
“What the fuck did you do?” I cry. Spit flies from my mouth and is drunk by the thirsty clay.
“It’s too late, Rui. We have to leave him.” At this, Goro tries rising, places his good hand on his knee and pushes up. He gets to his feet, takes a few steps, then falls.
“They’ll find him,” I say. “They’ll find him anyway. They’ll know.”
“Rui,” my father says. For some reason, this surprises me. “You can’t. You won’t.”
“We’ll say it was an animal,” Lucid says. “The horns, or the teeth. He’ll be so burnt up by the time anyone gets here, they’ll never know. Rui. No one will ever know.”
I take one breath, then another. I slow down. I think about what Lucid is saying. Is this not what we learned from history? That it is written by the survivors, even if darkly and silently so? That we are the children of sons, the product of the generations before us? The cycle goes on. Like Zeus who slew the Titans.
Lucid must see that I am thinking, eyes wide, mouth open. She wraps her slender arms around my neck, pulls me close to her. I see my father one last time, face down in the dirt. His limbs twitch. Lucid holds me to her chest. Soon, the sun will rise.
*
I’d heard people say before that a loved one’s death made them religious, even if they had never felt that way before. They’d said that they could feel something watching over them, guiding their actions, or judging them. With Goro, I felt nothing. Maybe that was my fault. Maybe dying from radiation was too much, too cruel. Maybe his soul burnt up with the rest of him. I don’t know. I try not to think about it.
I suppose some of the Originals have suspicions about what happened. Fortunately for us, Goro was not very popular with his own kind. I have slid into his place, socially speaking. A young patriarch. Lucid has moved into the estate with me. We do what we want, exactly as we want to. We throw parties and everyone comes. They are fun. We pay the help with my inheritance. It is no meager thing, the money that Goro has left for me, but it is not as much as some of the others will leave to their children when they die. I know I will have to find work. Otherwise, we will run out of the booze and drugs and life we have here, that we’ve made for ourselves. I’ll take my place with the Originals, a pup among wolves. I’ll get a job, maybe drawing or building, like Goro did. I don’t know. I try not to think about it.
Or maybe, by the time that the money runs out, there will be no Originals left. They will have all died off, naturally or otherwise, leaving only the things they’ve built behind. The cities. The domes. The animals will run free, or they’ll die with them. Maybe by the time the money runs out, we will all be Martians. A new race. Skin of ice. Dust inside our veins.
Cameron Green is a 27 year old writer based out of Appalachia. His work has appeared in publications such as Into the Void, The Anthology of Appalachian Writers Volume XII, Expressions Magazine, WILDNESS Journal, and more. He also received the Bill Hallberg Award in Creative Writing.