Marisol and the Tauri

I live in a world quite different from the ones depicted in the aged human transcripts.  The past seemed to be a bubble of happiness. At least there was happiness until the humans stopped trying to hold back our malicious tendencies. Instead, they started destroying each other, killing our brothers and sisters for no justifiable reason. When at last there were so few of mankind left, celestial beings, which had been watching us destroy ourselves, decided to step in. What would have taken humankind years took them mere days. The beings from another earth, who called themselves the Tauri, had stopped all the wars, all the bloodshed. Their technology was different, more effective and purposeful. According to them, they “saved” the human race, but my father said that the Tauri Enlightenment was actually the enslavement of the human race.

       My father was around when the world was a joyful place. He lived through the Wars and the Tauri Enlightenment as a young man. He lost everyone except for me. I was born during the Wars, and I grew up during the Enlightenment. My father would sing to me when I was in my mother’s stomach every morning and every night. When I was born in an underground subway, he sang my name. Hearing the voice, my little baby head instantly turned towards him, and I smiled a toothless grin. My father said that despite all of the conflict that went on the day of my birth, it was as if he stopped hearing the blasts of the bombs and could only think of how lucky he was to have made such a beautiful human with the love of his life: my mother. Two weeks later, my mother was killed in one of the last bombs before the Tauri came to our aid and stopped the Wars. My father was devastated and broken. He had to raise me in a strange and evolving world that was quickly becoming so different than the one he had grown up in. That fact alone did not terrify him as much as the thought of losing me. Since that day, I had almost never left my father’s sight.

        My father was an intellectual man, so the Tauri put him in charge of the library. The library was huge and held almost all of the alien’s texts and the remnants of the humans’ books. I grew up amongst those books, and by the time I turned 16, I knew how to read and write. This was a dangerous accomplishment, seeing that the aliens had cut off the rights to an education. They said that this was how the Wars had begun, with knowledge. My father, the ever audacious man, had started teaching me the alien language of our oppressors. He had learned it by watching them carefully and by deciphering their anomalous books.

It was on the eve on my 17th birthday that my father started losing his sight. I thought that this was odd that his sight was rapidly deteriorating, seeing that he was still relatively young and as healthy as one could get in this world. Each day it got worse and worse, and each day I grew more and more worried. He didn’t seem sick, but he started tossing our soup away as if we didn’t need it. I grew frustrated with him. As the week ended, my father started telling me that the Tauri were doing this to him. They were putting drugs in our ration of soup to stop us from reading and that was why he had been throwing it away.

“It’s them. They are angry with me for learning their language. My eyes are getting better SEE?” he said rapidly as he pulled down his magnifying glasses.

All I saw was a wild and broken gleam in his eye. At that moment, I felt for the first time that maybe my father did not survive the Wars, my mother’s death, and the Tauri Enlightenment unscathed. Maybe with each sudden change in his life, he had lost a part of his psyche, a part of his sanity. It was then that I decided to stop dreaming. I knew that I was being truthful with myself. I thought back and saw that I had ignored the signs of his slipping mentality for a while now.

“Don’t be silly father. You’re losing your sight because of old age and lack of carrots,” I replied as I took his glasses and placed them back on his head.

“No. Don’t look at me like that. I’m not crazy,” he stated firmly.

“Okay then let’s go to sleep. No use in wasting precious sleeping hours.” And with that, we went to our cots and fell asleep. I had only one dream that night, and it was of my father singing to my mother’s rotund belly.

Hours after my father and I had fallen asleep, there was a thunderous bang at the library door. I jumped and heard my father give a yell from his cot. The banging grew louder and more consistent. My father rose from his cot and went to see what the aliens wanted. My heart felt as if it were being squeezed by a giant iron hand; they never disturbed us during the night. Suddenly, I heard distant shouting and the throaty gurgle of one of the Tauri. I ran to the library door and saw my father slumped against the wall. A red stain was swiftly spreading from an immense wound on his stomach onto the floor, slowly making its way to a pile of books. The grip on my heart tightened, and my breathing hitched. I ran to him and saw that he was still alive, barely.

“What happened? Wha-how? Father!” I screamed, unable to articulate the millions of thoughts and emotions that bombarded my head.

“Come. I don’t…have much…time,” my father whispered. I got closer to his head.

“It was them. They know I have it. There is no time. Go quickly, take the book under my cot pillow and do what is says, please. I believe in you. I love you.” He whispered so quickly that I almost didn’t catch all that he said.

“I will, I swear. Just stay with me! I love you father!” I pleaded.

I promised even though I didn’t know what he was talking about. I choked back a sob and grasped his bloody hands. His body shook, and his breathing became labored.

“No, no, no! Stay with me. After everything, after all that you have seen and lived through, you can’t die, not now! FATHER!” I screamed through gritted teeth. My father squeezed my hand and took his last strenuous breath. He was gone.

I felt the iron grip on my heart go slack, leaving me with an empty deflated void where my heart had been. My father had been right about the Tauri being after him, and I hadn’t listened. Sobs racked my body, and my tears mixed with my father’s blood.

The throaty gurgle, I later realized, had been my father’s attempted cry for help.