Filaria - Brent Hayward [19]
Looking back through the tiny opening was the face of an insane man, a depraved man. Lost and destitute. Disappointment yawned inside Mereziah. This encounter was most likely his last ever, and he was about to direct a lunatic back to the level he had mindlessly wandered away from. This was not the first time Mereziah had opened a pod’s window to see a drooling idiot staring vacantly back at him, or a lost child, peering up in terror, but it was sure to be the last. Would have been nice, he thought, to go out of life on a note bearing somewhat more resonance than a dull thud.
He stared, unable to finish his opening line. The passenger was naked, filthy, his hair matted in clumps and hanging to his waist. Through these hanks of hair, tiny, dark eyes were visible, ready, it seemed, to pop out of their sockets.
Mereziah saw an image of his own reflection in the window. Could he blame the client for his fear? Once Mereziah had been proud of his skin tone, his blond hair, his full lips. None of these features were left to him now. He appeared, even to himself, a wrinkled parody of a man. A ghoul.
But duty was duty. He had sworn an oath to his father that he would always remain professional, in all cases. Never discriminate.
“You are in a single lift pod,” he said, and cleared his throat again. “Headed downward. The pod has reached an impasse. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
A long pause, but finally the man inside nodded.
“Good. Are you travelling to a specific destination or have you entered this device inadvertently?”
The man started to urinate where he stood.
“Cease that behavior immediately,” Mereziah said, but really though, what did he care if passengers pissed in the pods? He never intended to clean one again. “You might ruin the machinery under the floor. Or even get a shock yourself, should you piss on something live. I’m not qualified to repair the arcane systems of man.”
The passenger stopped peeing, shook his penis dry, and reached out his grubby, damp hand. Splayed fingertips touched the window from the inside, inches from Mereziah’s nose. Mereziah stared past the whorls into those tiny, dark eyes. Somehow, he saw familiarity there, pulling him in, and he swallowed hard, managing to finally look away.
“Uh,” he said, feeling a little dizzy, holding onto the netting while his stomach lurched. “From, from where have you descended? Have other attendants helped you get this far down?”
Shockingly, sudden tears filled Mereziah’s eyes. His vision blurred. He swayed, wiping the tears away, astonished, hoping his brother would not wake up at this moment and climb up here to find him crying like a baby. What he had seen in those eyes was entropy and decay. Inevitable that all things come to pass. He had seen his own demise. He had seen the end of the world.
“Did you come for me?” he asked weakly. “Fool that I am, I thought your descending pod might arrive with news of a more pleasant nature. I even imagined a, well, a companion. One other than yourself.” A quiet sob racked his long frame. “You see, when we were young men, my brother always talked about women. Women coming from up above. It’s embarrassing to admit, but for a second . . .” He tried to smile but it would not come.
“Life, to me, seems to have been some sort of bad joke. I didn’t have many experiences as a youth and I told myself there was always time and opportunity. Adventure, travel, maybe even a family, all that anyone might dream of, without asking too much, even for a man in my position. But I’m one hundred years old today and nobody cares and the world has gone to shit.”
The man inside the pod seemed to be listening.
“My parents have been at the bottom of this shaft, waiting for me, for over eighty years. The Red Plague killed them. When my brother and I were still children. Do you know