"Polar vortex got some bite to it, but it ain't no Virginia swelter," Paul mumbled as he crawled up out of viscous cerise fluid, old skin made young again, the smell of ejected bowels and honeydew sharp in the night air.
Renewal had its price. Paul accepted it as if it bore the weight of the centuries he'd endured.
Sit back in the EZ-Boy recliner. Let the new body wake up, growing pains. Paul's cloudy day eyes angled for the window, studied the icicles collecting on the rain gutter. They tortured him, brought back the days of wrestling Germans in a frozen crater. Enter the new century only to dwell on the last one.
"That's how it goes," he said to himself. He had given up on people, the comfort of society, thirty years ago. The crack epidemic. AIDS. Crumbling buildings. He'd seen it all go up, built a few things all his own, just to watch them tear it down. So Paul sat in a rundown tenement building in Trenton, isolated, just him and coffee brewing, honeydew slices on a plate and the cocoon that grew out of his navel whenever he got too old.
"Eat. Live." The alien, withered, quixotic told him as they both lay in that fetid shack in the South. A seed? Who knew? Only starvation and terror mattered then. He ate it, watched the thing he thought was from another land perish...and kept going.
"Weather come an' go. Just like me. Always fresh. What's your mood, Weather? You ain't cold. Cold can comfort, better than heat."
Tobacco fields. Endless labor. Toil. Pluck. Wrap. Dry. Eat. Sleep. Toil.
Three generations in. Five plantations. Nine wives. Eight lovers. Endless children.
Freedom after the seventh rebirth. Soldier. Banker. Investor. Lynched.
Sharecropper. Soldier. Europe. Bloody fights. Victory. Home. Segregation. Beaten at the train station by a mob.
"Lucille knew how to help me," he whispered, vacant. He saw something else out the window. Something not Trenton, New Jersey, not ice, wind and snow.
Tailor. Failed. Medicine? Made it as a doctor in New Jersey. Saved lives. Brought babies into the world, slick and gooey out the womb like he was over and over and over. Babies and Paul, so similar. With adults? Not a shred of commonality, save one.
Division.
Killed Japanese warriors. Delivered a Japanese child during a hellish storm.
Snuck into Roswell, 1947. Saw the beings, identical to the old one. Shot by the Army. Woke up in Nevada, crept out. Hid like an animal for three years.
"Or, is it Mabel? Wife number twelve or twenty?" Paul got up to get coffee, forgot about it, and sat back down to stare at ice.
Civil Rights Movement. Marched on Birmingham. Beaten like a dog. Overcame. Rose up, again. Again. Again. Raised another son, lost count of them all.
Lost.
The body made new, strong black man.
"Frost covers..."
But the mind, dust.
YOU ARE READING
SmackDown: Back to Our Roots
Science FictionOur previous two SmackDowns were both massive successes, and it's high time for another. You might remember the last one was heavy on the "game" elements, maybe even too heavy. This time we're going back to the basics and keeping it simple. It's jus...
