SWAMPOUND CYBER-WITCHES (working title)
EPISODE I
[Authors Note: This is the beginning of a much longer and on-going episodic project of undetermined medium.]
EPHEMERA I
Ephemera. A word. Fleeting. Transitory.
Ephemera. A name. Her name. Her chosen name.
Her back rests against the moss-caked brick, mud stains peppering her bare back like lipstick-stain kisses. Idly, she watches the sewer run-off froth and steam. She lets it warm her. The tunnel shifts get chilly. She likes them anyway.
With her left hand, she rhythmically taps a shiv against the curved wall, its metallic dings chiming off the lethargy. Her right combs through her matted, kinky hair; a silver pompadour sprinkled with septic detritus. She’s young. Her colour left with the state.
The country sank. Time doesn’t matter. Swallowed half-way into the sea, all cities, plains and forests reduced to briny marsh. The rot started in the cities, where everyone could see it. It spread through tongues. It spit its salty venom until all were utterly beguiled by the mud.
Ephemera smiles. She dips her hand into the milky sluice. Above or below, it’s all equally impotable, all an epoch for amoebas. A sewer under a swamp. Rot upon rot.
Her hands look so pale under the grey water. The skin on her fingers cracks into scales, each ringed with dried red rivulets. At least she still bleeds the same colour. Her fingers are too calcified to stretch out properly. Bouts of eczema colonize her body. Dying flesh. Her skin seems almost to evaporate, becoming the mist she was forced to breathe.
Ephemera. A condition. At once for all and none but her. We all age, but most don’t decay as they live; their cracked lips don’t become cracked mouths, their chapped knuckles don’t become chapped hands. She runs her three black-glazed nails along the back of her fingers, sweeping droplets away from the rash with a waxy coolness.
An inky tendril rises from the livid broth. The gelatinous snake writhes for leverage from the depths. It tightens, thickens, coils around her finger. Squeezes it to the brink of maiming. She calmly reaches for her holster. Leather. Moist Polymer. Power.
She reels her bound hand up with searing sting, black roots dangling and whipping violently up her arm. She extends out her bound arm, curling the other awkwardly into her chest. She draws her magnum and blasts the leech-body point-blank before it squelches its way up her arm. The bullet grazes her skin, leaving a cruel, steaming trench by the inside of her elbow. The pistol kicks back into her ribs. Both her arms fall limp to her side. She reels defenselessly, pants. She’s embarrassed with how on edge she is. The creature was pulverized with no problem, after all, its worm-meat slinking off her flesh.
Malaise leeches. That’s what Mandy calls them. They thrive in unstable climates. They crawl down your throat, siphon blood from within, drain you of your voice, dull your senses. You cannot kill a malaise leech by consumption, by swallowing tried-and-true foods or medicines. It only thrives from this. You cannot starve a malaise leech. It will always starve you first. The best you can do is forget it. Forget its tendrils as they stick straws in your arteries. Forget that you were something, were someone, are entitled to be someone, other than a host for its will. All are equally victims with a malaise leech piloting their tongue. None infected would ever confess as much. They all think they’re gaming it. Getting closer to killing it. Using it to their advantage. The malaise leech doesn’t care. It’s a parasite. It has no feelings, no days off, no method but melting down your soul for its own ends. Its greatest strength is becoming you, then discarding you when you carry it somewhere livelier.
And thus, Ephemera smiles. Happy to be here, happy to have spared a distant other from such blind cruelty.
One of her many duties is leech-scouting for the compound. Today’s thesis has been proven. They’ve been sighted closer and closer to home recently. That gets the swampound girls riled up. All the girls call it the swampound. They were all girls. With one enby. They all call it the swampound. Mandy issued an arms warning, that all the swampound girls should carry ‘til we found their nest. Data is enough for today. Life ought be taken day-by-day, even in a perceived crisis. She should make contact with Viscera about the leeches and return home for the night.
She and Viscera handle the bulk of the dirty work, that is their role. The others chipped in, of course, but the two of them were the foot-soldiers. Aloof enough, rotted enough, resigned enough to handle it without hesitation. They aren’t stupid or machines doing unwilling bidding. This is their bliss post-comfort. They’d fuck later. That too. All the swampound dwellers kept each other happy. The axiomatic trade. Crisis is for the reactionaries.
Abruptly, her comms device screams out from her hip.
VISCERA I
Roaming, roam these stenched-up halls, filth labyrinth of brick-laid walls!
Viscera hums a Siouxsie and the Banshees song and frolics down sewage-slick tunnels, melodic “Hello~”’s bouncing down the halls in her hunt for bog-kin stragglers. An arsenal of submachine guns hangs from her leather-strapped legs. She hollers in tandem with the clinks of her guns.
After Mandy’s report, Viscera enthusiastically took up the task of evacuating and scouting the closer tunnels. The sewers were the most common means of travel, serving as a network for traders and travellers to pass between the few surviving communities. Their position beneath the swamp also guaranteed their stability which, along as their entry-points were sealed against the constantly rising mud, served almost as something sacred in the drowning world. When there weren’t leech infestations, that is.
Viscera has a morbid interest in the bog-kin. They share a bit of blood, after all. The others try to contest this urge, for it’s hard to clear a bog-kin of leeches, especially too far along when they lose their ability to communicate. They are prone to leeches and require quite an unsustainable amount of medication to simply stabilize.
The bog-kin used to be human. They are, biologically at least, still human, though this was hard for most swamp-dwellers to admit. Unless they knew the infected before. In those cases, it was the opposite. The bog above serves as a crucible for roaming illnesses, evolving and transmitting between dozens of feral species. Bog-kin are the product of an especially pernicious cocktail of compounding illnesses. The illness starts by making one’s bones brittle, then their flesh loose, and then mutates their DNA until they self-replicate into humanoid flesh-heaps. It’s a perfectly livable condition, leaving the organs all in-tact. Given the right treatment, the illness can even be frozen, but most compromised bodies become easy prey for parasitic blossoms and malaise leeches before this point.
Viscera has the illness in her blood, yet something in her resists. The others had found her five years back in the Flora colony (the nearest city to the compound, now populated by hundreds of bog-kin infected with parasitic flowers). The disease peeled a clean seam along the center-line of her body and face, stunted her growth, but after that, it just stopped. She didn’t heal, for the disease is still ravaging her blood, but she’s completely proofed against transmission. That’s what Lagomorph said anyway, the compound’s doctor in residence. Viscera’s organs cascade out of her torso and her face, curtained with stringy black hair, eerily peels. Lagomorph, on several occasions, proposed trying to stitch it shut, even if simply cosmetic, but Viscera insisted the stitches be confined to the ribs and above. Protect her vitals and leave all else exposed. She thinks it’s “funny”, that it makes her stand out. It doesn’t hurt. She’s said a thousand times before. Most of her nervous system in the region is dulled or rotted, after all. She even wears a wardrobe of high-neck crop-tops and low-cut pants, in which her entrails can proudly spill out beneath her breasts. Until people say something about it, she seems to completely forget it isn’t normal.
Her face, she is less keen on being seen. Not for the reasons you’d think, either. All her sensory organs and orifices still dutifully fulfill their purpose, and Lagomorph did a solid job with the stitches. She’s just kinda… scared by it. Reminds her of someone she’d rather not think about. She wears a plastic mask of some hyper-feminine mahou shoujo to cover u[; a polyethylene princess! She insists on it over alternatives because, again, such a find is funny. Although she isn’t certain of the character, she’s also quite into anime, so it’s a relevant accessory. She frequently sends Theremin, the compound’s archivist, on digital crusades for increasingly obscure OVAs. The excessively erotic and gory ones are her favourites these days, if such was not obvious. Such media makes good faces.
“theres rlly no one today? w such warm weather too! lame ppl these days have NO taste (-_-) ” She slows her pace, spotting a clump of worms writhing around in the muck. “spot one worm and the whole place is haunted…” Viscera stares at the earthworms, her intestines contract and quiver with a strange hunger for noodle soup.
She clicks on her comms and screams “FEM!!1!” into the mic. “theres nothin here!! going back 4 dinner now, k?"
Ephemera crackles in a few seconds later. “Christ, V, do you just do that to scare the shit out of me?”
“yep ^U^! gotta b ready w leeches abt!!!! theres literally nothing tho (-_-), think it was bait…”
“So there isn’t. Guess the one I shot off my arm a minute ago was just my imagination. Sewer gas mirage, probably.”
“WTF? y does all the cool shit ONLY happen to u?! im jellly! did u find the nest or?”
“Just the one, I think. I’d like to head back too, though. We have the general area, so Mandy can get us some data for tomorrow, but I’ve got plans tonight.”
“ok! meet u back at entrance, cutie (◕‿◕)~♥ o srry, hope ur arm is ok!!”
“It’s fine, V, thanks.”
MANDIBLE I
“I don’t get it… the witches proofed the whole sewage network just a couple months ago. How did we get a casualty, let alone a breach. Oh, great. Now Rotcap’s having me tell the foragers guild for him to halt trade until the situation’s resolved… We haven’t even confirmed the sighting!”
Mandible slumps over the compound’s fluorescent console, holding her temples. No one calls her that, though. Everyone calls her Mandy. Or Mand. Or Commander (emphasis on the “mand”). Or Boss. Sir or sergeant if they want to annoy her. She doesn’t have any rank or power, but handles strategics and communication for the compound. The compound hosts the central database for their communication network, free for anyone in the region still lucid enough with an access point. It’s a peer-to-peer system, private, but it requires a bit of technical setup to join. There were a few hundred on the server, with almost every survivor they knew of in communication. All the survivors they found were young, the oldest network user they found is 46, almost 100 miles away. Mandy hears footsteps behind her and jumpily swivels towards the noise.
“Lagomorph, is there any coffee left?”
“Think so. Going out, though. Go get it and take a breather, Mand. You get too stressed about these things. One thing at a time.”
“Could you wait until Fem and Viscera get back? We need to keep you healthy.”
“Don’t mind that. I’ll manage a sickness the same as the rest of you if it falls on me. We’ve got good preventatives now, thanks to that Flora colony excursion you and the scouts pulled off.”
“Glad to know there’s still good I can do for you. I’m just… Iet me focus on this issue for now. We can talk when things stabilize”
“Yeah, yeah, Whatever keeps your head on, Mand.”
Lagomorph disappears, returning a few minutes later with a mug of coffee and slice of sweetbread. She rolls a chair next to Mandy, sliding the mug to her and kicking back. Lagomorph nibbles the snack while fiddling with her plush bunny.
“Thanks. Love you.”
Mandible. A name. A word. A defect. Along her jawline and up the right side of her face was a cybernetic skeleton. They marked where she’d once been attacked by a malaise leech. She had part of her jaw blown off to save her life. That was years ago. The flesh has healed, though the bones and skin remain scarred. She looks normal other than the metal and swirls of scar tissue along the edge of her face. Lagomorph once found traces of leech DNA in her system. She keeps the cybernetics on just in case and heavily self-medicates. No certain systems have ever manifested.
Mandy leans back, sinking into her varsity jacket. Her eyes linger warmly on Lagomorph through the veil of steam.
“It’s nice seeing your face in the light.”
Lagomorph usually wears a skull mask outside her room. She says it’s for protection, which is true with how much precaution she takes, but Mandy also knows what parts of her face bothered her. They all have their own little vanities. Lagomorph smiles back. Her hazel eyes beautifully contrast her dark skin, Mandy thinks for the hundredth time.
“The foragers paused trade over the leech report and the scouts are all marooned outside of their home bases.”
“Keeping the foragers alive sounds good to me. They practically run the sewers. I’ll assume you have a plan to get Gnat back from her scout?”
“You know me so well. Question is, with regards to the foragers, do we have enough medical supplies here to stall out the problem?”
“Enough workable material to keep everyone in the commune up for a good couple months. Not sure how it’ll be if we take anyone else in, but we’ll get there if we get there.” Lagomorph kisses the breadcrumbs off her fingertips.
The compound is a concrete structure with a curated, habitable microbiome around it. The five: Mandy, Lagomorph, Viscera, Ephemera and Theremin, live in the primary complex. Seven others have gathered in the surrounding commune, supplementing the dwindling capacity to raid crumbling businesses with their own domestic skills of farming, crafting and research. We’ll meet them soon.
“I really don’t want to halt rescues, but… Does that include contingencies?”
“Meaning? Mand, I’ve assured you, that DNA is totally benign.”
“You– forget it. I meant Ephemera. She’s been getting worse, you know.”
“She still refuses to take anything. Er, anything that might help her directly. We both know she’s stubborn about what’s good for her. Carmen’s given her too many ideas, but whatever. Hers is a choice we have to honour.”
Mandy sighs. “Speaking of which, looks like they’re back.”
Viscera barrels through the door with a two-hand wave, swiftly unclipping her gun-belt and dropping it to the floor.
“the leech thing was real btw!” She yells, exasperated, as she kicks her boots off and runs down the hall to Theremin’s room. Ephemera saunters in after her, locking eyes with and smirking at Mandy.
“‘Sup? Gomo.” Ephemera pats Lagomorph on the shoulder while she digs through the coat-rack.
“Hey Fem. I’m… going out now. Just to the twins, Mand.” Lagomorph brandishes a hand-scythe that was hanging from her hip. “I’ll be fine.”
“Alright.” Mandy sighs. “Fem, was Viscera serious about the leech?”
“She’s always serious. In her own way.”
“Did you find the nest or just spot one?”
“Hmph.” Ephemera smiles and holds out her forearm. Candy cane stripes of blood now trickle down to her fingers from the bruised flesh wound. “A little more than spot, but just the one. They’re in the water. Gonna be tough with just eyes.” She winks and clicks her tongue, turning to leave.
“Fem! You let it on your goddamned arm?!” Mandy sinks her face into her palms. “In your fucking condition?”
“C’mon, we’re fine. I’m here, aren’t I? Nothing to complain about.”
“But you had to shoot yourself!? Your cells don’t regenerate properly!”
“Mhm. Got a light?” Fem wiggles a hand-rolled cigarette between her fingers.
“Here. Just– I’m glad you're safe, and thank you for the intel. It’s just… you know I–” Fem cuts her off by pecking her on the lips.
“Supplies still good?”
“Yeah, there’s still plenty of dry goods from that convenience store raid.”
“Sick. I’m gonna make snack noodles. Staying the night in the greenhouse if you’re looking for me. Band practice night if you wanna listen.” She turns her back on the conversation, heading down the graffiti-coated concrete hall.
“You and Carmen… I can’t.”
“That everything covered? Cool.”
“Fem! One more thing.” Fem turns impatiently, her cracked brown face lit by the soft dregs of sunlight trickling through the opaque warehouse-style windows. Mandy notices it. The mist that surrounds her, emits from her. She feels her eyes widen. She chokes on her words. “Would you please start taking your medication? She won’t say it, but I think it’s getting to Lagomorph.”
Ephemera cracks a predatory smile. “No one decorates a hotel room. Keeps it so there’s more to do today when tomorrow’s a choice.” She wraps her arms around Mandy and buries her face in Mandy’s neck. “Life’s good. Let’s keep it that way.”
Mandy rubs her face and storms back to the terminal. There’s enough to be flustered about.
THEREMIN I
Theremin hunches over her laptop, sitting tucked between monolithic machines. She’s kept warm by the roars of generators, the whirs of servers. Her eyes vanish behind the blue glow of her monitor, refracting off her cracked glasses. She steadies her breath, pulling the turtleneck of her wool sweater over her mouth as she stares, transfixed by the screen.
Upload complete. She yanks the USB cord from the server wall with a hushed giggle. 150 gigabytes of ZIP files sit unopened before her. She rubs her hands together with squinted eyes as they peel open one by one. Porn. Porn. Family photos. Porn. A few B-films, one of which seems to be home-made? Curious. A hosted fansite for… like, one specific Beanie Baby. You bought a server for that? Oh, hell no, what the fuck… Some really fucked-up porn. Cool, cool. Delete that shit, thank you. All from the same server, by the way.
Theremin is an archivist. An archaeologist. A cyber witch. It’s all she knows, and to her benefit, as old-world data is in hot demand. Beforehand, she was a prolific blackhat, siphoning data and bandwidth from government servers, flipping it on private storefronts to whoever sought it out. The money ceased to matter after a while once rent was covered. It was for sport. She’d disseminate state secrets through junk mail, video game chat-rooms and fan-fic websites. She felt untouchable. Building a private library of media, forbidden literature and ripped databases from the spoils. When the web fell, it didn’t matter to her. She had seen it all and backed up the best of it on her own network. How does one best fit all of human culture in 250 terabytes?
She blows her bleached bangs off her face and clicks open a few porn videos. She zones out, both hands on the keyboard, like God intended. After the swamp came, the media and widespread internet access were among the first things to go. The companies fled when ratings dropped low enough. Nothing collapsed faster than the big tech firms and telecommunications companies. The swamp had it out for them. People had forgotten how to communicate with each other.
Everyone locked themselves in, waiting for it to go away. They treated things as normal until the swamp became unignorable. They mindlessly drove between their homes, workplaces and the grocery stores in endless self-maintenance. They fought for no change, as no stimulation felt truer. It was too large for any government to bother. They told people to look away as they looked away themselves. The despondence, the stubbornness, the choice to turn a blind eye to keep yourself fat, it pissed Theremin off just thinking about it. How stupid people let themselves become. It’s what let the mud creep up, she thinks, let it swallow their souls, let the leeches flourish. The porn stunk. Incredibly straight. Incredibly rape–y. The people who bothered backing up porn always had the worst taste. She deletes it and sighs. Gone from the world forever, good riddance. Two once lustful spirits erased from this mortal coil.
She brushes chip crumbs off her skirt and walks over to her console, sending out more ping requests with a few minor tweaks. Successful link-ups had slowed recently, even as she moved more and more private servers onto the network to ping from. Averaged only a couple pairings a day recently. While exponential growth was the hope, more and more servers were being destroyed as the swamp advanced. That not backed up was lost to the aether, yet one only has so much space. It was a difficult process, choosing. Porn was usually an easy throw, though Thera keeps the cream-of-the-crop under lock and key.
Viscera bangs on the door and swings it open without waiting for a response. She strikes a pose in the doorway with a “Bonsoir, Cyberwitch!” before nosing into the 4-by-4 grid of porn videos still running on Thera’s laptop.
Thera was used to a lack of privacy. Lagomorph’s the only one who tends to knock. She keeps tinkering with the link-request code until Viscera skips over and hangs her head over Thera’s shoulder.
“didja find it, Therz? found smthn cool. look at em all going at it like that! that's a party I want 2 go to!”
Theremin shook her head. She wasn’t one for speaking.
“s’alright. still got tons of flash roms and manga scans 2 get thru!” Viscera starts practicing ballet moves as she speaks, dancing around the clumps of wires strewn about the floor. The room was incredibly dim, lit only by the monitors, blinking LEDs and two red evacuation lights over the door. Viscera trips on a snag and falls into Thera’s chest. Thera was unphased, busy loading up the newly-foraged B-movies. They skimmed through.
“Look.” She passes through what seems to be a schlocky rom-com, only for it to evolve into some half-naked girl with a robot arm and chainsaw cutting up CG vampires. Still the same server. Each one truly tells its own story. Thera’s jaw dropped beneath her collar. She turns to Viscera, who excitedly claws at Thera’s jacket.
“wtf dude… u found GOLD. lemme whip some snacks n lets fuck this up RN.”
Viscera drifts out of the room, while Theremin uploads the finishing touches to her code. She hears Viscera down the hall pleading with Ephemera to join, the words drowned out by the sound of airy snack bags crinkling around.
Viscera was the youngest of the five, in her early teens before shit went down. All they’d gotten out of her about her childhood were the shows and movies she watched. She hadn’t been old enough to get a taste for anything, so every find became thrilling.
Thera had been older. Twenty maybe? Numbers stopped mattering. There’s no valour or status to it. She was living on her own in a high-rise, as off-the-grid as she could be. Never signed anything or had her income taxed, plus her parents were too negligent to keep her forms updated. Hell, she didn’t even know her legal name. Drowned in online culture, it felt like she’d been exposed to it all. The same digestible tropes peddled through algorithms. The weird shit Viscera would eat up, and her vivacity towards it all enlivened Thera’s perspective. They both made time for it every night there wasn’t an active emergency. It kept them spirited. The others honoured it for such and joined in occasionally. It was nice when they did, but they all had their own lives. No pressure.
Viscera returns, enough popcorn under her arms to satisfy a movie theater. She collapses onto Thera’s mattress, gesturing her over with both hands. They shut off the lights and crawl under the same quilt, their faces warmed by the laptops radiation. Thera lookes over at Viscera’s plastic mask, frozen in a warm smile. She smiles back under the muff of her sweater, and could only assume that, under her mask, Viscera is smiling too.
EPHEMERA II
Ephemera, a guest to this world, transitory. She passes between spaces, between blooms of muddy earth and sun-soaked concrete barricades, to her second home: the greenhouse, domain of viridian sprouts and punk music. Hell yeah.
Ephemera twirls her pair of hardwood drumsticks between her fingers, violently pounding the air to a rhythm in the trees only she could hear. She’s the meanest bitch in the swampound. She feels it in her blood. She grins.
Though her bedroom is in the compound, all within these walls was home enough, family enough for her. Found family, that is. Anywhere there’s a good fuck is home enough for her. This home is occupied by Carmen and April, two asexuals. Tragic, she thinks, though playing music together is its own flavour of sex. The two are perfect for each other in that Beauvoir flavour of love. That’s how Carmen described them, anyway. Nerd. ¾ of a philosophy degree. Swamp kept it that way forever. Carmen and April, Carmen and April. She always liked the flow. A bond fated in syllables.
Ephemera knocks on the glass, behind which Carmen delicately trims leaves off their crop of herbs. Has a meal in mind, probably. They’re a great cook, from whom Ephemera enjoys freeloading. Carmen swings the metal door open. A cigarette hung from their mouth. Should note Carmen just has a brain for a head in an almost identical case to Viscera’s exposed organs: neutralized bog-kin virus. They have a mouth, jaw, ears, most of a neck, but all exposed brain-matter above the upper lip. Honestly made them more punk than the bass-playing, tagging and pot growing already did. Also made mosquitos more fucked up. She thinks they’re blind, not having eyes and all, but with how freely they move, it’s honestly hard to tell.
“Yo! What spices you packing?”
“It’s– try it and see if you can guess.”
Ephemera plucks a thick leaf from the snippages and takes a hefty bite. Bitter, wooden, almost peppery in a way that clung to her tongue through the juices. “That’s fucking disgusting, thanks!” She spits it into her hand while laughing.
“Raw tobacco. Never’ve gone near it without fermenting it with other fragrant herbs. Glad to know I should keep it that way!”
“April around?”
“Writing poetry in the band-room, I’d bet. She finished her rounds in here a bit ago now. She’s probably in the house waiting for you.”
“We’re playing tonight, yeah?”
“Do leeches like blood? Let me finish this, mellow down a bit, then we’ll go.” They rub out their cigarette on their ash-stained black hoodie. Their whole wardrobe seems to be dull, matched-colour pairs of sweatpants and hoodies.
“Sick. Spare some of that mellow for me, yeah?”
“You know it, Fem.”
April was exactly where Carmen said she’d be, humming to herself, sketching out cursive in chalk on a black section of the room’s heavily-tagged walls. She’s rockstar-pretty, better looking and kept than any of the other losers. Wouldn’t think it, but she does more manual labour than anyone else. April’s just like that.
“Oh, hey!” she says in her dulcet tones, black bob bouncing with her nodding head. She takes off her headphones. “Was just workshopping something. Listen to this shit.” She picks up her guitar from the ground and plays this really gloomy chord that Ephemera feels her heart sink with.
“Heavy. Awfully goth, even for you.”
“Pfft. As if we’re not all already as goth as can be. You and Carmen and your “fuck dying” shit. I’m a pixie next to y’all.” April smiles and leans against the wall, folding her black-leather arms.
“Careful now. Fuck death, not dying. Dying’s chill. Can’t do much about dying. But death? Death’s power. Power over your fear, power to manipulate you, a power that you have over others.”
“Like I said: pixie. Fuck both of them in my book. Can’t play music in heaven or hell, ‘specially with a god as dead as ours. Reminds me what Carmen said once, that this swamp was God’s bowels discharging after we killed him with our bullshit.”
They high-five and lean against the wall exchanging banter until Carmen comes in.
“Here, Fem. Rest is yours while I tune up.” Carmen coughs a bit. “It’s good stuff.”
"Thanks."
"Spare me a hit, babe."
"Don't fucking babe me, haha. Here."
A few minutes later, Ephemera is sweating, pounding her soul out on the drum kit to the ebbs and flow of April’s spacey vocals. Carmen mostly plays by ear, harmonizing their dark little riffs to whatever April’s doing. They tended towards these long, droning songs that probably last a quarter an hour, jazzy in how their whims fade into each other, moving in and out of a shared mind. Ephemera’s vision blurs a few minutes in, the blaring speakers and sore whipping limbs all she could feel. The sound becomes her passion as all else fades away. Even the soreness is part of the love, part of the act, a means of entry, an assertion of herself as part of the whole. As April moves into her scream-belting thing, Ephemera couldn’t help but exert all she had into keeping up the volume and energy. She strains for lungfuls of oxygen, her limbs gritting through the sear of lactic acid, every follicle overheating with utter fucking art. Ephemera gives a dry chuckle between slams and thumps, booms and crashes. Carmen moves into a finishing movement that tickles her brain, lathering it with a dopamine hit on every note struck just right. Hell yeah, Carmen, she thinks, doing her best to keep pace through the unexpected wave of pleasure.
Ba-dum-dumph, ba-dum-dumph, ksst! Ba-dum-dumph, ba-dum-dumph, ksst! Ephemera, panting, falls off of her stool after finishing the closer.
“Shit, man... I love y’all.” she says from the floor.
“Damn right. All that noise out there that beckons us to hate it? Nah. We got this: these moments, this life. We’ve made it ours.” Carmen sits next to her and strokes her hair.
“You know, after that, I think I get it. Fuck death. Fuck fearing the rot and the leeches. What’s fear but running from this?” April kneels, keeping her skirt down. “Shit Carmen, I’m too hungry to run another right now. You prep something?”
“Yeah, spaghetti with a nice sauce. And we still have that tea blend.”
“You’re a saint, Car. Cardinal-men, angel ‘midst us wretched queers.” Ephemera says dramatically while struggling to prop herself up. Her right arm is still gloved with dried blood.
“I’ll get started on that, then.” Carmen flicks on their lighter for another smoke as they disappear into the kitchen.
“Shit, Fem. What happened to your arm? The decay didn’t get worse, did it?”
“Nah, it’s keeping steady enough. Just shot a leech today.”
“Oh… metal. We got stuff from Gomo here if you want it patched.”
“Nah. My body’s not broken enough to bleed out from a little flesh wound. Joint’s just a little sensitive.”
The three share a pasta dinner with a rich, acidic and peppery sauce. Unfortunate loss of the swamp is that dairy products are stupidly rare, yet in Carmen’s absurd genius with spice combinations, the dish still bore the creamy, nutty hints of a Parmesan. Ephemera doesn’t have the taste buds to pinpoint it with as much sodium as she dowses her tongue in. Probably a shaved bark or something, knowing them, but who the fuck cares. It’s delicious.
The three have a tradition, whenever time and season allows, of play session, meal, smoke and philosophize on top of the compound wall while the sun sets. Tonight is no different. They climb the rusty ladder and dangle their legs over the rim, meditating on the red sky and brown lake before them.
“Death’s power. Elaborate.” April says through a husky exhale, side-eyeing Carmen.
“All power’s founded on the fear of death. On mediating that. Sweetening the pot.” they respond.
“All power?” Ephemera asks.
“Well, maybe I was being uncautious. God’s the prima power, right? Daddy in the clouds. Drops us a safety ladder on death’s doorstep, or shapes the unknowability of endless suffering if we’re too naughty.”
“God would fuck our naughty asses up if he was still kicking.” April jests.
“You say that, but that exact thought’s how we got conditioned for obedience, no? How we got thirsty for the presence of power?”
“But dad left for cigarettes. Kept quiet for too long that people got antsy. That’s where you’re going?” Ephemera says, chasing it with a heavy drag.
“Seems like it. Made governments and laws to hard-code daddy’s will into the human condition. You fuck up too much, you get sent to hell on earth. You play along and get cozy with the system, you get your house, your car, your two kids and a dog. That was the idea anyway.” Carmen swats at a malformed mosquito. Bullfrogs croak and a handful of fireflies hover out of the brush as the sky grows brownish.
“Wait, shut up for a second.” April says slowly. “That’s not a clean parallel. Maybe in some countries, like the one this one was, or when things got too big. Some governments mediated people. When people tried to take power from others, their job would be to level it. You think people took advantage of others all because of death, or that the power to govern that way came from death?”
Carmen rubbed their chin, letting Ephemera answer. “Well the second part doesn’t seem much a power at all, just an impartial third party. Like a synthesis, right?” She looks to Carmen.
“Sure, but there’s still power in that choice, no? In being the authority?” they reply.
“No, I don’t think so. The power is assigned by both conflicting parties for the sake of resolution. Gomo doesn’t have power over me when I ask for her opinion. I just trust her. None of us explicitly have power over each other. We just fight and resolve it. We got leeches? Alright, someone should shoot them but choose yourself. No one has power over here. Power’s gotta be dominating someone’s will so they get something done. If that dinky governance faced real power, it would swallow them whole.”
“And wear their face, I bet. Wear their smile as they pick favourites,” April smiled.
“Good. So power comes from forgetting the grooves. From deciding one side’s right, one’s wrong? Not from being asked for its opinion, but its opinion already just being there with nothing we can do about it?” Carmen smiles.
“Seems like it,” Ephemera replies.
“And it’s gotta start killing or disempowering when it stops making sense? It’s gotta sort into bins in a way that creates explicit links between action and punishment that aren’t founded on anything but itself?”
“Fucking fascists...” April says. “You’re just makin’ your argument again, Car.”
“Shit, sorry. I meant it like so long as those oppressive powers exist, the non-oppressive ones are bound to fall to it. They can’t defend themselves without matching that power, demanding more, louder and bloodier than the other. We here’d get ruined in seconds if God wanted to fuck with us, if some guy in a tank came by yelling about his private property.”
Ephemera laughs. “Well that’s fucking bleak.”
“Yet the magic of it,” Carmen says wistfully, “Is that we continue to avoid such among ourselves. Is that communities will keep being made without power. Is that we can act, and resolve deont– er, without stepping on each other.”
“You sound like a liberal, Car,” April teases them. “But people keep comin’ along to communities wanting power, and we will inevitably lose to them. The leeches will eat us, the bog-kin will infect us, an outsider will wish to loot us that can’t be reckoned with. We gotta exert power sometime in this fucked up place.”
“Exert power by judging them worthy of death, or have power taken from us by being killed. Even if, like with the leeches, that death is more spiritual, symbolic. Power is the terrifying ability we have to bring death upon anyone, a terrifying, devastating force that, in the case of God, we were only really resigning to life itself. ‘Thus was the will of God’, they said. The fact we can be killed either means we hold death over others to manipulate their will or have death held over us.” Carmen taps the ashes off on the outside of the wall before throwing the filter into the water.
“And you’re just content with that?” April yells disappointedly, getting too invested. “That there’s no solution that isn’t blood or chains?”
“I think they spelled out the solution perfectly, actually,” Ephemera jumps in, head resting on her knee. “We fight to keep living, and nothing more. We’ll get whittled down, but we never need chains, know why? Cus then, you resign yourself to death. Nothing to be lost once the pill’s been swallowed.”
LAGOMORPH I
Lagomorph adjusts her mask, her eyes shifting as she knocks lightly on the tattered door. The evening breeze strums her neck, tickles her fingertips. She tightens her grip on the scythe and knocks again. Her braided hair jostle, writhe, with a gust of wind. She closes her eyes. Breathe in, breathe out. Her hands itch from sweat-drowned pores, from the crumbs of soil kicked up by her step.
The door clunks and creaks. Vivian, face cascaded with dark locks, looks through a crack in the door with a dead, baggy eye.
"Bunny."
"Viv." A pink bubble inflates from Vivian's lips as she unbolts and hip-checks the door open.
“Letty’s waitin’ for you.”
“So I’ve heard. Can I have a piece?”
“Not a fresh one. Letty’s been lacing them. Has me guess how off the side effects.”
Lagomorph smiles. “We all interpret experimental medicine differently, I suppose. How do you feel?”
“Back of my brain feels numb. It’s a good feeling. Kinda. Feel a little itchy.” She rustles her fingers around her scalp and sways a bit.
“A stimulant. Probably a minor poison." She pinches the bridge of her nose. "Glad to see your sister treating you well.”
“Doc Bunny, Doc Bunny, the logic to our wicked schemes!” Violet hollers from the other room with a sing-song cadence. She appears in the doorframe cradling a mortar-and-pestle full of beige powder, her hair tied in pigtails. She coats her lips in the powder and kisses Lagomorph on the neck. “Want a hit?”
“Not if it’s what you gave Viv. What is it?”
“It's not, it ain't! Scouts honour! It's a crazy upper the scouts found a bit back that we were scared to touch. Try it. I was gonna pack it in bubblegum and get all the foragers hopped up on it so they get around faster and also, like, give it to you guys when there’s like a fight going on. It’s… explosive, plus we got the seeds, so-”
“I see you’ve had your fun with it. Without knowing its properties, best one of us stays clean while working.”
“Oh, yessiree madam, that’s why you’re the doc and we’re just witches left to our wiles!”
While the compound members all colloquially called themselves witches, for the twins, there was no better title. Alchemists with a yearning for the chaotic? No, ‘witches’ is more apt. As the youngest members of the compound, they had matured almost entirely within the world as it now is. While not usually so brash, their rejection of old-world knowledge led them to adapt their own pagan canon of science. Blank page, all moved back into doubt. It’s for this quality Lagomorph insisted they be taken in.
“I’m no doctor, Violet. It’s nice thinking I could have been.”
“A doctor’s anyone that keeps the world healthy.” Vivian butted in. “If you ain’t a doctor, s’not a soul left who is.” She coughs through her nose, and wipes up the damage with her baggy sleeves.
“What’d you put in the gum, Violet?”
“You jus’ want all the secrets, Bunny! Have a piece and guess up yourself! Come on, it’s got a great flavour!”
“Alright, whisper it to me then.”
Violet gets in close, breathily “whispering” to Lagomorph “Nightshade and Poppy. Cool, right?”. Lagomorph was more occupied by the warm moisture now in her ear.
“Viv, advice from the resident ‘doctor’: you might want to spit that out.”
Violet scoffs. “No fun, at all, you are. Look how dizzy she’s gettin’. Cute, ain’t it?”
“I’m sure the heavy sleep and diarrhea later will be just as cute.”
Lagomorph had been a medical school student before the swamp swelled. She hadn’t earned her doctorate, despite the twins’ pet name. Much of her research was on documenting pre-colonial medicine and healing practices, and from that creating accessible home remedies for long-term illness. She considered herself more of a historian, though had been allocated to the doctor role by compound necessity.
“I’m assuming you wanted to talk about the harvest?”
“I mean, mainly just cuz you're smart and elegant and handsome and stuff, but yeah, loadsa cool stuff from the greenhouse. Lotsa new bubblegum flavours to get Vivi high on.”
“Don’t even joke about that! We’re strictly scientific witches!” said Vivian, still chewing the gum. She had goaded a bat to latch onto her sleeve. Quite a few came in-and-out of the house usually, though the hut had been on lockdown due to the leech alarm. The twins had collectively agreed to give them different names ending in -bert, tentatively able to tell them apart.
“Careful, Viv! Herbert’s the guano magnate! Our bat treatments won’t be able to help him if you let him near the stuff! Take him out! You know Bunny doesn’t like him.”
“Yeah yeah, got it, sis.”
Competitive pharmaceutical practices and privatization of remedies in the pre-swamp world left those without the cash for it to fend for themselves. Average lifespan varied by more than a decade across class lines. This is the medical world Lagomorph was asked to inherit. Vaccines were privatized, herd immunity collapsed, half the labour force was hardly in a position to work if not for the sheer necessity of every dime. With the increased necessity of insurance firms, their prices, too, were allowed to soar with less and less returns. Growing herbs and home remedies was the only path left to equity in Lagomorph’s eyes. Her last effort before the change in climate was seeing whether certain East African and South Asian medicinal crops could be naturalized to the American climate. She worked in a lab with a couple dozen others, gathering what variants they could across the diaspora for genetic diversity.
“Oh, Bunny, about the bark you wanted for Femmy, we found blight in the bark when we peeled it open. It might be workable, but the tree is probably done for, totally kaput next cycle. Not mature enough for seeds either. Should we…”
Lagomorph sighs. “It’s not like she even takes what we’ve made already. I don’t get her. They’re just for activating stem cell growth. Just jacked-up supplements is all.”
“Well that’s her choice, I guess! What’s the bark do again? Is it a super-jacked-up supplement?”
“Excites collagen production. Boring but healthy, as the best drugs sadly are.” Lagomorph lowers her head and shutters, visualizing Ephemera’s wounds. Violet begins to talk, but Lagomorph is too zoned out to hear her.
The rest of her lab were infected soon after the swamp rose, became flora bog-kin due to the number of high-risk crops they grew in their lab. Lagomorph was a hypochondriac before, the conditions of which have only worsened with the years. Healing Ephemera and Viscera… it was just as much for her own health as it was theirs. Each held a step forward in curing thousands, would they permit her treatments.
“You know what the worst of it is?” Lagomorph cuts off whatever Violet was saying. “The smoking, the poor diet, the recklessness in field work… it’s… and maybe I’ll never get it as one so built around the idea of saving lives. S-sometimes I ask myself if she wants to die… if people, with how obsessed we are with fearing death, can genuinely desire to not exist or wish an alleviation of their suffering. Makes me wonder what one even lives for if they’d run it out so freely. I get not wanting to age, get living however feels free, but the girl’s younger than I am, Violet! I’ve seen her change so quickly! Does that-”
She didn’t say any of that. She wished she did. It wasn’t worth sharing. The level-headed one, Lagomorph was. Good health and spirits are her social axioms. Everyone already had their own thoughts on Ephemera. Nothing worth preaching about. It’s by virtue that their lives remained joyful, by the hopes they’d all found in their little stations. That’s what Lagomorph thought, for there’s no role she’d rather have than hers.
“Did you grind up the bark, Violet?”
“You bet your sweet bats I did!”
“I’ll do what I can with what you gathered. Mind if I stay the night here?”
“Wha-! A surprise sleepover with Doc Buns! Yes, yes, yes, ma’am! We’ll talk adult stuff ‘til the sun rises, mix all sorts of fun cocktails! Oh, Bunny, there’s so much on the agenda! What can I do to get this work done quickly?!” Violet hopped up and down, the beige spice leaping up onto her gown, her ponytails wagging. Girls the same age as she was on the brink of her doctorate acting like pre-teens. That’s life without social pressure and hard ass parents, she guesses. Lagomorph couldn’t help but smile.