Benedict

Benedict was silent while he toiled away with the wires and cogs. Each wire had to be
replaced carefully, and each cog had to be turned exactly 90 degrees of its current position. Such
was the ritual he performed every time he awoke, and found himself undoing every time he was
about to drift off. When the work was finally completed, he rinsed his hands of the rust
accumulated from working with the old machinery, and cleaned any cuts he may have gotten
from the piercing ends of the wires. Sighing, he inserted the long, thin needle into the eye socket
of what, to him, was once a person. Slowly the bloodshot eye of his daughter opened as the
liquid from the needle seeped into her system. Her eye scanned the room, before focussing on the
nearly dead man to her left.
"Hello Amos, do you know who I am?"
At first Benedict didn't think she would attempt to speak, but to his surprise, she replied.
"I do not know you, nor have I ever. But where is mother, uncle Roy, and Reti? Why can't I blink
my other eye?"
"They are not here sweetie, they..." Benedict at first didn't hear himself saying this, but
when he did he didn't try to stop himself. "They are dead, Amos, they have all been dead since
the accident, since I found you. I am your father Amos, why don't you remember me!? After all
this time I-"
Amos was screaming now, a high pitched metallic wail that rumbled and shook the entire
hovel, challenging the night winds in sheer volume. Benedict found his shaking hands on her
neck again, squeezing and twisting until the crack made the wail become suddenly silent, and
the machine took over the job of her breathing once more. "I am sorry Amos." He cried, adding
softly under his breath, "but why can't you remember daddy? I do things right every time, exactly
as the man said to do things. He said you would be you, why aren't you yourself anymore?"
For some time he sat next to the nightmare of pipes, cogs, and wires that held his
daughter together, weeping for the pain it caused. Eventually he got up and walked to other side
of the room. There, fumbling in the darkness, he found the latch to unlock and pull back the iron
sheet that covered the window. The outside was brown that day as well, no different from any
other day since the accident, to him, the only thing that changed was the temperature, and even
then only by a little. The cracked earth before him seemed to stretch on for hundreds of miles, no
trees, not even dead ones anymore, no bugs, or anything except him, and the expanse of the
wastes. On less humid days, days where his head felt a little clearer. He sometimes thought he
could see mountains in the distance, a giant ring encircling his little world. On those days he
thought of going out further, just to be sure, only to remember Amos was still in the hovel, and
he would turn back to the important things in his life.
Benedict turned on the sink, the hope of a drink of brown water turning to vexation as the
nothing came out of the tap. He rapped on the connecting pipe. Nothing. He turned off the sink
and checked the storage tanks. Empty. "Of course they're empty." He said to himself. "How long

has it been since I went to the well?" He knew the answer, the answer of the man, and the
accident, but he chose to push that back in his mind. "It's been too long obviously, I need that
water." He looked back at Amos, her sunken, bloodshot eye unknowingly staring at him, while
the mess of pipes, cogs, and wires worked away to keep her alive.