Hopeless Romance

The End, by Sophia.

This is Sophia.  I’m adding a little bit to the story Michael told me over the years.  The story of his life, this book you have read.  I thought it was only right to end it with Michael’s end.

I am writing this story, hiding in my room.  The Rachiese have found us.  Bombs and dynamite are shaking the cave’s walls.  Falling dirt has made it difficult to breathe.  I feel like I am being buried alive. 

Michael was killed in the first round attack, while in a meeting yesterday.  Robert came and told me.  He is in the library now.  His lover, Amber, was also killed already.  He has nothing to live for except to protect me.  He wants me to wait here in my room.  Waiting is suffocating agony.  I could go to the Last Resort and await the end with others.  But, here in my room where Michael and I shared so much time and love, I feel him still with me, holding me in his arms on our bed.  I can almost hear his familiar heart beat under my ear.

Michael and I were together for fifteen years, loyal and committed the entire time.  Robert and Amber were together almost that long.  Besides us, we don’t know anyone who has been together so long. With one exception:  my parents were together 58 years, married young, lucky and unique enough these days to live into old age. My dad died a few years ago, a year after we lost my mom.  Everyone knew my Dad as a tough revolutionary, but without my mom’s support he just seemed to crumble in on himself.  He was mean to everyone at the end, a yelling, bitter, name calling, blaming tornado of a man that everyone tried to avoid.  I think he was helping us let him go, in his own way.  He saw our sadness at losing mom and wanted us to be angry with him so it wouldn’t hurt so badly.  Or maybe, losing mom just broke him and made him mean.

Monogamy was very rare in the REV caves, considered odd.  People in my parent’s time expected and accepted the idea that they would live with the same person for their lifetime, maybe being with one person for over fifty years. 

With a much shorter life expectancy, REV people still had a problem settling down with one person.  Robert is a real exception to the average life expectancy of someone who does rescue/recruit missions.  The average is only 5-10 years after starting missions.  It is highly dangerous.  Michael and I and a few others that don’t leave the caves much expect to live longer.  But, there were still illnesses, injuries, and accidents our one doctor and available medical supplies couldn’t always treat.  There were also occasional attacks nearby our caves, such as May’s. 

Maybe some of the promiscuous culture of our cave was because there have always been a lot of young people being rescued.  This makes our cave sort of a college town.  Some of it may be that there aren’t a lot of distractions in the caves.  You spend a lot of time with people close to you.  We might spend the same amount of time in five years together as someone in my grandparents time did in ten or twenty.  I guess people may still camp out there.  If so, think about camping.  You sit around watching the little children play, laughing at their antics.  You tell stories.  You are with people in a different, focused, high quality way.  That is the way of our cave.

There were purely unselfish reasons as well.  With our survival at stake, population growth was necessary.  Women outnumbered men five to one.   If men weren’t shared, many women would have spent their lives alone in dark cave rooms, and without opportunity to have children. 

At first chaos reigned.  Hidden affairs and lying ran rampant.  Michael and May and I experienced that Hell for ourselves.  There were even a few murders early on in our cave dwelling history.  Michael and I may have joined those numbers, been murdered by Claudia, if not for the good luck of Robert saving us.  I still sometimes have nightmares of her on the ledge above my bed, her eyes dead and filled with a hate I had never seen before.