Chapter 12 - Revolutionary Greens.

It took the perfect balance of moving quickly, but softly across the warn wood of the once-intact balcony. Although it was only four stories up, it felt a little bit like the death-defying tightrope walk. The kind of walk that mused stunts that, some years ago, one would see in history books describing great world fairs. The stunts by the world’s most reckless and daring, living in the heart of new cities just recently born and bustling. But this moment wasn’t quite that. This moment was just a woman, moving softly but with speed, finding the one corner of the wooden balcony that wasn’t eroded away from the destruction of the end of the world.

 

In a one, two, three hop-skip-step patter, Delilah found her spot that still supported her human weight and the weight of all her feelings. In the back-left corner, she nestled against the cement wall and the iron railing. As she balanced her weight just so, she leaned her head back against the wall, looking up at the night sky. If there was one good thing to the demise of her whole world, it was the lack of pollution to mess with the sky. The streetlights barely projected, flicking with their last solar-powered breath. She remembered a time when these streets were littered with cars, and lights, and honking, people walking through the sidewalks, heading in all directions all at once. But now it was just her and the sky, thousands of stars twinkling in all directions, all at once. The groaning sounds of decaying wood beneath her hips accompanied the soft sounds of the summer evening breeze.

 

It had been a day; but wasn’t every day just that – a day – when every day is a fight at the end of the world? It was a fight to just see the sun rise one more time. One more time, Delilah told herself, as she’d nestled into the only balcony view left of a city destroyed. She remembered the day when she stood on the balcony – when it was firmly in place – and watched the tanks roll in. She stood there, in abject horror that the world seemed to be falling apart around her. She stood there, and she told herself maybe this will all be over tomorrow, once the sun rose and people were confronted with the daylight and the ramifications of what they did in the cover of night. She convinced herself it would be over, once the sun rose again, just one more time. Repeatedly she told herself it would be short lived, it would be over, as she thumbed the locket around her neck. Feeling the grooves and corners, she imagined the faces within. She saw her family, frozen in time and smiling back at her. She closed her eyes, and she saw the picture of her and a boy she loved once before, standing in the California sunshine many years ago. She saw the pictures in her mind, the pictures she looked at thousands of times before.

 

When the world choses to end, it’s going to end, regardless of whether the sun radiates light and heat as people roll tanks through residential neighborhoods. The world will draw the curtains and attempt to take its final bow when the lights go and the sidewalks of political violence are illuminated by the twinkling lights of faraway stars, dreams – far away civilized societies. Delilah sighed, thinking on the day that marked the beginning of the end. “That’s just how the world ends,” Delilah muttered to herself.

 

By all available evidence, Delilah was the only survivor within a 10-mile radius at this moment. When the violence first erupted, Delilah stood on the balcony of her apartment and watched. At first, the violence was just between those designated for the fight. It was between the militaries of various governments; the citizens were instructed to stand by and watch. For most, it didn’t really require formal instruction to stand by, as many of them were so stunned to witness the terror unfold that they couldn’t move; couldn’t calculate what the hell they were supposed to do next.

 

But as the days transpired, so did they scope of the fight. When the designated officials fell, the next wave of fighters – the everyday citizens – were called to the front lines. It wasn’t anything official; Delilah remembered that at some point she and everyone else in her community realized that formal resistance wasn’t holding. The almighty authoritarian forces were just that: almighty in their force. Peering out from behind white curtains, she watched as the oppressors threw the bodies of those they killed into a heap, right in the middle of the road – the road she used to run down, the road she used to drive her obnoxious blue Mini Cooper on. The road that use to be so normal was now a massive grave sight of murder, suppression, and horror.

 

It was that night, maybe a few nights into the fight, and that she knew she was being called into battle. She delicately pulled the curtains back together, closing the outside view off from the sanctuary of her room, in her own small home. She pulled on her armor for the fight – a college hoodie and her finest slip on vans – and tiptoed down the stairs of the apartment complex. Moving swiftly, softly, she climbed down step by step and crossed the line from civilian observer and commentator to civilian combatant.

 

She started with a simple idea. The people of her community, her friends, family, the familiar faces she waved at every day as they rode the bus to work; they didn’t deserve to die in the middle of the road. They didn’t deserve to have their bodies lay in the middle of the streets that once carried and fulfilled their lives. They didn’t deserve to die in the middle of their communities, on full view of the people who destroyed it all. In Delilah’s simple view, if you were going to die, you deserved to die with the dignity of a person who fought for democracy – you deserved to die with decency. In the cover of night, she worked to ensure just that. In the cover of night, it began; dignity as the fuel to the common revolutionary.

 

As the tanks of the oppressors moved on from the onslaught, Delilah waited. When the rumbling of engines and city destruction faded, Delilah moved, in a one, two, three hop-skip-step patter. Slinking out from behind her apartment building, she slowly walked to the middle of the road. On that first night, in the center of that road, she also stood in the middle of death. Standing just below the balcony of her apartment and in the center of the streets, she knew she couldn’t leave her community here. Peering around, most of the homes were destroyed. Her little room had only been spared because it was the top floor of an apartment building, up and away from the ground level fighting. Most of the stores and the bus stops, the theaters and the other homes – they were all gone. All gone, but all poised to become the mausoleums of men and women who gave everything.

 

Careful to wade through the debris of war (empty chambers and caliber shells, blood crusted knives of hand-to-hand kitchen combat), she danced the battle ballet, working to collect the souls left in her city streets. At first, it took her hours. The first night, she was only able to move two people, even though she strategically selected the smallest, lightest looking bodies in the pile of death. But even the souls she carried that seemed small, seemed lightweight, came with an unpredictable heaviness. There was a heaviness to holding the precious remains of a former life, of someone brave enough to rise up even when the act itself seemed futile and lost. Delilah was still here, because she peered behind the white curtains of her bedroom. The person she held wasn’t because they came out from hiding. The weight of that feeling, well, that’s a heavier weight than most anything a person could possibly carry.

 

When Delilah quickly surveyed her options that first night, calculating the optics of burying someone in the rubble of a local bodega, the flickering lights of the golf course grabbed her attention. She lived across the street from the community course for years now; but it was just that. It was the place where she occasionally heard the smack and whoosh of the club face making contact with the dimpled ball on many afternoons. But now the golf balls and the driving range were abandoned, unlikely to be rounded up and hit again. Delilah realized that the crafted greens of the golf course would serve a new purpose in this new world. The city’s recreational golf course could now be the city’s revolutionary green cemetery.

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For the first few weeks, it all felt temporary. Delilah felt that she was doing her part, for just this moment, until it all finally came to end. Because all things come to some sort of an end, don’t they? But her thoughts betrayed her, weeks and months into the nighttime raids. Delilah running here and there to save the souls of those who dared to stand up.

 

During the day, as the sounds of the war waged on, Delilah prepared. She quietly moved through the apartment building, through the rubble of homes and businesses in her neighborhood. She tried to take account of who might be left, tried to take stock of supplies that could aid her efforts to survive in order to save the souls of those who did not. Each day, as the sun began to set on the scene of authoritarian take over, Delilah’s preparations began in earnest. She began by collecting the tools into her pack – mismatched gardening gloves she found in an abandoned garage, and a shovel she took from a local home improvement store. Most importantly, she’d make sure she had the bag of rescued golf balls from the driving range and her marker, as they became the headstones of the souls she relocated to the golf course.

 

Delilah would next pull out the notebooks that documented her efforts. She’d review the progress, brushing off the dirt and dead grass that inevitably made its way in-between the crevices of ink and yellowing paper. It wasn’t the easiest to keep the dirt out when she was frantically burying the bodies of her brothers and sisters of her favorite city, her home. As she picked the grass away from the sentences littered with imperfect grammar, she’d review her work from the night before, documenting the souls saved in case anyone might come back and look for those loved, those lost:

 

• Plot 618 (3/4 of the way down the green on Hole #4): Male; maybe mid 30s, early 40s. Tattoos on his arms; wearing a black shirt and a silver wedding ring. Necklace with a traditional military dog tag – “Davey.” Multiple GSWs to the head.

 

• Plot 619 (3/4 of the way down the green on Hole #4, closer to the tree line): Male; teenager. Shirt with the logo from the local high school from the track and field team. Blonde hair and green eyes with a birthmark on his forehead – maybe really big freckle? GSW to the leg.

 

 

• Plot 620 (3/4 of the way down the green on Hole #4, at the tree line with the dying jacarandas): Female; 40+. Shaved head, muscular. Tan. Sports bra and combat vest. Wedding ring and a wallet that has an ID for Scarlett Shannon. Slit throat.

 

After assessing the plots from the night before, she’d peer out from behind the curtains and through the glass of the balcony door. From the fourth floor of her apartment building, she could see to the golf course; from that distance, vaguely identifying where the next plots would be organized for the souls she’d steal away that night. Just one more time, Delilah would tell herself as she prepared for another night of her own resistance. She’d quietly repeat a prayer, just one more time, and close her eyes. She’d see the faces of her family, and the face of the boy she loved, as she rubbed the exterior of the locket, muttering her prayer. Just one more time, she’d pray – she’d pray that she’d never see their faces in the pile, and their picture-perfect memories would never be replaced with the realities of death and destruction. Just one more time, and maybe this would all be over – for her, and for them, wherever they were.

 

Many months into her efforts, there was the night when tanks from the oppressors came back. Well into the evening, as Delilah stood in the street to assess the bodies who needed saving, she felt the rumble beneath her feet before her mind recognized the sound. She had been so focused on her plan of moving people that it all took her by surprise. The gears of the engine and authoritarian industry rumbling, ripping and damaging the streets along the way. Before she knew it, Delilah was standing as frozen as the corpse in her arms, looking into the headlines of the rolling tank.

 

“There they are!” one militia member shouted. “The body snatcher! Get them!”

 

The Body Snatcher. Delilah stood there, stunned; she wasn’t snatching anything. She was reclaiming the souls they took and discarded away. But before she could shout back, a handful of militia members were climbing down the mounted ladders on the side of the tank. “Shit,” the only response Delilah could find within herself as she dropped the body in her arms and turned to run.

 

Her normal delicate dance was lost as Delilah scrambled through the bodies and the conflict debris. Looking for a path to the golf course, Delilah miscalculated a step, stumbling on the body of a young girl. As she pushed herself up, she felt the hands of another person grabbing onto her foot, pulling her Vans shoe off of her foot. No time to get it back; frantically, she stole herself from the grips of the true body snatchers and ran as fast as she could, with only one shoe and overwhelming amount of adrenaline propelling her forward.

 

Careful to follow the cart path and not the disturb the graves of her comrades, Delilah pushed herself to sprint as far as she could. When her lungs felt like they were going to shatter with the sharpness of the pain, she found herself at the putting green of the 9th hole. Looking around, she remembered that here the jacaranda trees were still flowering just enough to where she might be able to hide. With as much coordination as a woman with one shoe can muster, she began to climb up the nearest tree. She didn’t get far – stopping midway through the lowest quarter of the branches – when she heard the sounds of the militia members chasing her. All she could do was grab hold of the nearest branch and wrap herself like a creature of the trees, hoping in the darkness and foliage she could hide.

 

“Fuck!” she heard one man yell out. “Fuck, we’ve lost her.”

 

“What is with all the fucking numbered golf balls – they can’t be bombs or anything.” Delilah identified another, distinct voice.

 

“Don’t assume anything,” she heard the commanding voice of a woman. “Don’t assume anything – she’s outlived most everyone else in this damned city.”

 

She’s outlived most everyone else in this damned city. There was her proof that most everyone she knew was gone. There was her proof when she lingered through the empty houses and shops and wondered if she truly was alone in this world. She listened on, as they charted out the golf course, estimating how far she could outrun them. Yet, there she was, listening right above them, taking shallow breaths and holding on the tree for dear life. She listened as they described the damage they had already done to her home, the damage and pain they wanted to inflict upon her. She listened as the tears of anger and sadness silently formed and fell down her face.

 

“Well fuck the snatcher, it’s not like they actually mean anything,” the first male voice blurted out.

 

“You’re an idiot, you know that?” the woman’s voice followed. “It’s not whether she actually causes damage or is some strategic military sight. She’s the fucking Body Snatcher.”

 

“Yeah, I got that,” replied the first male.

 

“No, I don’t think you actually get it, soldier. She’s the Body Snatcher. She’s not particularly stealth or strong. She’s not really a strategic threat. But she’s become a fucking symbol. Symbols sometimes carry more strength than any weapon or bomb. That’s the kind of shit that stirs up resistance – that’s the kind of shit that catches political fire, and that’s the kind fire you don’t want to be on the front lines trying to put out. While it’s a silly spark; that’s the time you want to extinguish it. Beyond that, it will burn everything to the ground – and from its ashes, new enemies and fighters are born.”

 

But she’s become a fucking symbol. Delilah didn’t understand – she didn’t know that anyone was even paying attention to her nighttime raids of the pile of bodies in the street. Her muscles were beginning to shake as she held on to the branches; she wondered if they were fatigued, or if she was generally afraid of what she was hearing from below.

 

“This is stupid; let’s fucking go.”

 

“Go check the rest of the holes – I am headed back to base command to figure out if they want us to wait her out, or if we come back another night.”

 

“Why do you keep calling the Body Snatcher a her? They wear a hoodie in the dark of night. Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think I’ve seen anything to suggest we are dealing with a woman, Captain.”

 

“Of course the Body Snatcher is a woman, solider.” The commanding voice of the woman sounded so certain that even Delilah was taken with her presence. “Of course she is, solider. What she’s doing – moving the bodies and whatever else. It’s not some act of political resistance. It’s an act of radical love; it’s the only kind of love you can find in a woman. Now, don’t be an idiot – go fucking find her.”

 

*****

 

It wasn’t until hours later that the woman, the Body Snatcher – Delilah – climbed down from the jacaranda tree. Slowly she crossed the fairway, making her way back to the cart path. When it appeared that the area was clear, she began to run.

 

Initially, Delilah was propelled by fear. She wasn’t entirely sure if the militia had, in fact, vacated the area. She wasn’t sure if the journey back to the refuge of her apartment building was feasible, or safe. But as she continued to run and began to pass the cemetery of the fourth hole, she was equally filled with relief. Fear pushed her forward, along with the relief of knowing that her radical love – the bodies of the community around her – seemed untouched. The cemetery seemed just as she had created it, just as she had left it, all revolutionary and peaceful, and green.

 

And she resolved, in that very moment, that it would remain that way. It would remain so long as she remained the Body Snatcher.

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For a few days, the Body Snatcher was nowhere to be found. The milia broadcasts weren’t reporting on sightings or movement of bodies. They did, however, repeatedly share with anyone who listened that they had gotten close enough to her to take her shoe. The military broadcasters laughed, “Not even military grade equipment!” as they remarked on a single shoe – a single white, slip on Vans shoe.

 

But to anyone listening close enough, they knew fear lived behind their falsetto laughs. Anyone who was parsing through the Morse code of military bravado knew she had gotten under their skin. They knew she made them afraid. And anyone who really heard all of this knew it was because of the radical resistance and love of the Body Snatcher.

 

*****

 

Delilah didn’t dare leave the confines of her apartment for a period of days. She quietly snuck her materials back into the closed of her room and pretended she was living in another timeline, one where she didn’t know that she was one of the sole surviving members of her city. A timeline where she didn’t live alone, live quietly and in secret. She pretended that the faces she imagined over and over again were not just imaginings. Delilah was living in daily conversation with her family; Delilah wasn’t missing the boy – Robert – who existed only in her memories. They were happy together, as she was just a woman in love with a man, and they were just two common people living a simple, normal life.

 

The ruse only lasted so long. She’d sit in the corners of her apartment bedroom, a time capsule to a life she longed. Everything was perfectly in its place; the books she loved, the desk she used to work at (and now she plotted at). The sheets were perfectly white, and the bedspread made. The pictures of friends, her family, her Robert – all perfectly placed throughout the room. But in the midst of all this perfection of yesterday, the sounds of today would interrupt. The sounds of destructive tanks and the sound of human flesh and bone dropping into the middle of the street. New deaths from new cities – new souls that needing snatching and saving.

 

A few days into her ceasefire, Delilah decided it was time. It was time to get back to her efforts to lay the souls of this world she loved to their final resting place. She knew it when she awoke, and she felt the electricity of something in her body. The energy that coursed through her told her that it was time for something to begin; that something, she assumed, was the only thing she knew in this timeline. She let the energy carry her out from the bed and down to the floor of her bedroom, quietly peering through the curtains. A few days passed since she had peered out to the street in daylight. There she saw the death toll rising, quite literally, as new bodies lay with unfinished business in the middle of her street.

 

She started quietly maneuvering her materials into the bag; she counted the amount of golf balls she had left and planned that in the next few nights, she would need to make another stop at the driving range and restock. Since her encounter on the 9th hole, she hadn’t yet replaced her shoes. She went to the closet and pulled out a pair of Vans she hadn’t worn in a long time. The same white, simple slip on – just a little more threadbare. Looking them over, Delilah thought that although they were older, they could be new in the most important way. She pulled out the pen from her bag and carefully began inscribing a message on their rubber soles:

 

The Body Snatcher

 

*****

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By 10 pm, the sky began to settle into its darker shades of nighttime cover. Before she began her run to save the souls trapped in the middle of the street, in a one, two, three hop-skip-step patter, Delilah found her spot that still supported her human weight and the weight of all her feelings on the balcony. In the back-left corner, she nestled against the cement wall and the iron railing. As she balanced her weight just so, she leaned her head back against the wall, looking up at the night sky. The streetlights barely projected, flicking with their last solar-powered breath. She visualized the time, reconstructed from her memories, when the streets were made up of cars and honking, people walking through the sidewalks, heading in all directions all at once. But now it was just her and the sky, thousands of stars twinkling in all directions, all at once. The groaning sounds of decaying wood beneath her and the softness of the summer evening breeze blowing through the scenes of a single revolutionary living through a civil war.

 

With her head against the wall, she closed her eyes and began to count out and visualize the steps she executed many times before. One – exiting the door and two – the weightless walk down the building stairs. When she hit step three – the soundless exit out the back gate, she found her knuckles lightly tapping the fraying wood of the balcony. Four – a head swivel to assure she was alone; knock. Five – step and step and a quiet leap into the center of the street to make a full assessment of the souls in need of saving; knock.

 

Knock.

 

And then softer, but stronger, knock, knock, and knock. The knocking increasing no longer timed with her steps of snatching souls. The knocking was now knocking Delilah out of her visualization, wondering where the sounds were coming from. Fully alert, she listened closely and traced the knocking to the front door; her heart began to race.

 

She prepared for this moment. While she took every precaution to ensure she didn’t make too much noise, didn’t show too many signs of life living within these walls, she wasn’t always sure that her civilian tactics to cover up her existence would be enough to evade military detection. As the cortisol of fight or flight kicked in, Delilah began to methodically (and as quietly as possibly) breathe in, and out. Breathe in, and out, as the knocking at the front door continued.

 

Delilah focused her ears to the sounds coming from the door. She wondered if she could focus enough to identify how many people awaited her at the door. Maybe she could take them on; but even if she did, it was likely she would not be able to stay here in the aftermath. This was it – this was her showdown for shelter; her last night at home.

 

Delilah. She swore she heard a whisper – someone whispering her name – behind the door. She wasn’t sure how they would know her name, given that merely days ago they were debating if she was even a man or a woman. But then, she heard it again, Delilah, in between soft knocks at the door. Once she confirmed she wasn’t imagining things, she quietly scaled the secure beams of the balcony and, on tip toes, quietly pattered to the front door.

 

Delilah, please – followed by two soft-knuckled knocks. And with the please, she immediately recognized the voice behind the door. That voice told her either the world was really ending, or she had died the other night on the 9th hole, and this was all a dream. Either way, in the irrational portion of her heart and mind, Delilah reasoned it was all over. No reason left to not open the fucking door. Quietly, she twisted the doorknob and open the door a few inches to peer out.

 

There he stood. He looked like the photo around her neck, but with more color and more animation, as his head looked back and forth, surveying their surroundings. He looked nearly the same as the day they stood on the free beach together for her photo, his blue eyes staring back at her. Before she could let the rest of her nervous system catch up with her mind – before she could process whether this was all real or if she was, in fact, dead – she grabbed his hand and pulled him into her apartment. Ironically, she closed the door as quietly as she good while Robert, the boy from the locket, tumbled to the floor causing a noticeable ruckus.

 

“Robert?” she looked down at the mess of long arms and legs jumbled on the floor of her apartment. Her voice was coarse from the time she spent alone, never speaking to another living soul.

 

“I can’t believe you’re still here,” Robert observed the apartment as he pulled himself up to his feet. Delilah held out her arm, helping him to his feet, always mindful of how much noise they were making.

 

“Oh Delilah – I don’t think they’re going to fuck with you,” Robert laughed. Delilah looked puzzled; she didn’t understand. “Seriously, how do you not walk around this place without more confidence? You are one of the best fighters out there.”

 

Robert slowly walked down the hallway to the kitchen. He looked around, taking in the familiar architecture. Delilah watched as the familiar etchings registered, watching his face upturn into a slight smile. It looked familiar to him, she could tell. It looked familiar to him, and he looked familiar, almost as if he belonged, in the old apartment.

 

As Robert turned back to Delilah, still standing in the doorway, it was the truly blank stare on her face that gave it away. “You really don’t know, do you? Don’t you listen to the broadcasts? All they’ve been talking about for the last week is the Body Snatcher. Depending on who you listen to, the known terrorist, or the icon of the resistance – the Body Snatcher. When they started describing what this person was doing and where it was all occurring, I just – I just had this feeling deep in my bones that it was you. When I saw all of this breaking out in California, I was fucking terrified that you were caught in the crosshairs. But I figured that there wasn’t a lot I could fucking do about it. And you, you of all people, a born fucking fighter; well while I was terrified, I also figured that if I knew anyone who was going to make it out okay, it was you. I was just waiting for a sign or something. I figured maybe you’d get in touch if you crossed a border and made it out or something.

 

But then, there it was. These broadcasts describing some person in a simple college kid hoodie and Vans, running around these streets in the dead of night. The Vans were my first clue, but then they said all this person was doing was documenting and burying the bodies of the lives lost. And I thought to myself, fucking Delilah would do something as stupid and as compassionate as that. And my Delilah – ”

 

Robert stopped. The words my Delilah seemed so effortless and easy, but also so out of place. They hadn’t seen each other in at least fifteen years. Although they had kept in touch occasionally, reflected on the time together and opined on the mistakes they both made, that was the extent of it. Although Delilah always hoped for something more, a second chance, she was also keenly aware that Robert found a new life. And even if they messed up and they still missed each other, if he was anything, he was loyal, and he wouldn’t be going back on promises he made to someone else.

 

Robert stopped and took the image in, of the Delilah standing in his presence. He started with her eyes and slowly scanned down. His eyes assessed the black college hoodie and slowly, almost nervously, made their way down to her shoes. And there should stood, his Delilah, the Body Snatcher etched into the shoes he so vividly remembered from their youth.

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“Oh, holy fucking shit, Del – I, I was right! It’s you!”

 

“But,” Delilah started, in complete disbelief. She knew that they, the military, they had called her the Body Snatcher. She knew what she was to them. She was some localized person they failed to eradicate. She was giving them a little hell and bringing a little peace to the people she loved in this city. She was a daughter, a sister, an aunt, a friend, a lover – a former lover at that. But she wasn’t an icon; she was a far cry from anything revolutionary.

 

“But, how? How did this all . . . ?”

 

“I told you, they’ve been talking about you. The military says you’re some agitator, but the underground broadcasters, that’s different. They picked up by word of mouth what you were doing. People were quietly watching you in the dead of night and they were rooting for you as you went out there and helped people lay to rest, and in some sense, move on from this fucking hell hole. You did that and you gave a whole lot of people something to believe in, and you still do.

 

But the other night, the military got on the broadcast and they said they got into a chase with you. They said they captured you, and they had proof of it. They had your gear, your shoe – and that’s all that was left off you after they were done with you.”

 

Delilah cackled in response. She was so taken with the pure bullshit they were spewing on their broadcasts that shouldn’t contain the size of her response. “That’s fucking rich. When I was trying to get out of their grasp they grabbed on to my shoe and it came off. But I still outran their sorry assess. I made it all the way to the ninth hole and scaled a tree. I waited there for hours, and all the while they were trying to figure out who I was. They didn’t even know if I was a man or a woman. I don’t think they know even now, although one of the commanders is convinced that I am a woman.”

 

“One of the commanders was chasing you?!”

 

“Yeah, I guess. I mean I couldn’t see anything. It was just everything I heard from the tree. But one of her lower level soldiers kept saying really stupid shit and when she’d correct him she’d reference him by rank, so I think she was a commander.”

 

“Holy shit, Delilah! Do you realize what you’re doing? Do you realize you’ve lit the world on fire with just a little bit of hope that there is still some humanity left within all of us? And your blaze is so fucking on fire that you have some military commander chasing you – like, holy fucking shit, I knew you were a born little fighter, but I don’t think you even recognize what you’ve done!”

 

Robert walked down the hallway toward Delilah. He was smiling, both proud and terrified of what the love of his life had become. All Delilah could do was take all of him in, as he approached her. He chuckled in disbelief, taking her face in his hands. “My Delilah, it would only be you. Only you, and only in a fucking pair of Vans. I’m more of a Chucks guy myself.”

 

Delilah looked up at him, “Trust me, I didn’t forget.” She thought back to the younger years, debating the pros and cons of Chucks versus Vans.

 

Slowly, he placed he forehead against hers. “As soon as this all started happening, and as soon as I started hearing the stories about the Body Snatcher, I was terrified. The big feelings of pain and grief I felt already if something happened to you. And if I didn’t get a chance to see you, to say goodbye? I – I just, they described that it was happening here, and they mentioned the golf course and I thought that I couldn’t believe it, but I just had this feeling that you were back here. After everything, you were back here, at this apartment, in this city, and maybe you were back here and I could see you, just one more time. I’ve been haunted by the ghost of you all these years, and then you were kind of real, through the broadcasts of your nightly raids. I just didn’t want to be haunted or possessed by you anymore. I wanted to just . . . be with you.”

 

“I came back here a few years ago,” Delilah began. She closed her eyes, swallowing hard. “I came back here because it’s the last place I actually remember being happy. Even in the fight, I wanted to pretend that I was back to the place in my life where everything made sense; where I had you.”

 

Robert traced his thumb across her cheek as the tears began to fall. “The only person I know who looks pretty crying, kid. Only you. And the only person I know that is equally unable to face the reality of our world, and yet, is still in the fight. Whatever you do, Delilah Dawne – whatever you do, don’t you dare stop fighting. You were born for this.”

 

“I promise you, I won’t.” Delilah looked him right in the eyes, searching for the younger man she fell so recklessly in love with many years ago. She looked into the eyes that she prayed she never saw, every night, as she moved the souls of the street to rest. She never imagined that she would seem them, alive, this close to her own. “But I carry you, wherever I go. I, I don’t really know how to say this except to say that you’re the biggest reason why I am doing this. You told me go get in the fight because this is what I signed up for, and so, I did.”

 

“No – Delilah. You didn’t sign up for it. You’re a fighter. It’s WHO you are. Through and through. Take credit for that. You weren’t going to stay on the sidelines . . . ever. Never, ever. I did mean it because I know who you are. I knew it the moment they described it on the radio broadcast; and I knew I had to find you and see you. I knew it – Body Snatcher – my Delilah.”

 

“I carry you, wherever I go,” Delilah whispered, as she pulled out the locket from her shirt. Robert gently pulled away from her, taking the locket into the palm of his hand.

 

“Same here, Delilah. We are on the same page with what we carry. I know it, and you know it, too.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Delilah jumped to him and kissed him. The world was ending, and without intention, she had become the number one enemy of the force that stood to crush everything and everyone in her life. But that didn’t matter now, not in the moment of recognition that they both carried each other through their own streets of their respective brave, new worlds.

 

******

 

For a few hours, they were not political revolutionaries, or rebels hiding under the radar of an authoritarian force. For a few hours, they were friends, and then lovers – everything, nothing, and everything again. As the sounds of groaning military weaponry became white noise, they laid together, Robert tracing the outlines of her tattoos, and Delilah taking in the scent she didn’t know how desperately she missed until this moment.

 

“I missed these sheets,” Robert lazily muttered, tracing the curves of a quote about the constitution on her thigh.

 

“These sheets?”

 

“Yeah,” he sheepishly laughed. “To the point about who we carry – I go through these cycles with you. Sometimes I don’t think about you for a couple of weeks, maybe a couple of months if I am lucky. But then, something always brings me back to you. It’s the fucking universe; even when it seems like it’s all ending. It’s like a smell, or a color, or a song, and immediately, I am taken back to you. And of the memories, I can still feel the sheets of this room, and this bed, in this apartment. It’s a moment, a thick cloud of memory, and I am back here and I meeting you again, falling in love with you again and again. I feel it all.”

 

Delilah let the weight of his confession land squarely in her chest. She knew they were something special, and she knew it was the kind of love with chemistry that, good or bad, left a scarring chemical burn that would be there forever, and would hurt forever. She always wondered if the equation was always a little heavier on her end, and not his. But these confessions, the simplicity of missing these sheets – it seemed the volatility of their chemical equation was actually perfectly balanced between the two of them. She nestled herself closer into Robert’s chest, wrapping her arms a little tighter.

 

“Don’t leave me this time,” she pleaded. He kissed the top of her head.

 

As he kissed her, the lights of the street below flickered their last dying breath. Falling asleep together, holding each other in the nighttime – they were lost again.

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Delilah vaguely remembered the hours before, still coming to terms with the fact that Robert traveled all that way just to confirm that she was who she promised she would always be; his Delilah, the fighter, the Body Snatcher. At the consuming feeling of being loved by him, she felt herself slowly waking up. Fumbling around, awaking, searching for his hands in the dark, she stretched her arm across the soft and silken sheets, only to discover she was alone.

 

Like an electric shock to the heart, Delilah bolted upright. She was alone in the bed, when she could have sworn the hours preceding were real. They were so real – so real that she looked and discovered she was still naked, still reeling and feeling the night she had shared with him. She knew this was all real, but she was all alone. She reached for her shirt next to the bed, preparing to piece together what the heck happened. As she pulled her shirt from the bottom of the bed, she heard something roll and hit the floor. Delilah jumped from bed to chase it, discovering a golf ball rolling around. She picked it up, wondering how the heck one of the balls made it from her bag to her bed.

 

She held the ball in her hand, blinking the sleep from her eyes as she recognized his penmanship written across the its dimpled face:

 

Fight

Always.

 

Immediately the response to kick in her sense of fight in overdrive flooded through her mind, her body. She dropped the ball on the floor, turning to see if there was any evidence of Robert left in her room, in this apartment. After a quick run up and down, not a trace was left. In that moment, she knew if she was lucky enough, she had a matter of seconds left to save him.

 

She pulled on her clothes, the hoodie and Vans included. She went to grab her bag when she heard the shouts outside the balcony. Without any hesitation, she immediately threw open the curtains to discover the scene below. There stood a woman with military decoration adorning her fatigues, a few other male junior soldiers standing around her. Two of them were restraining the body of a man she recognized from four floors above. He didn’t fight back, as his body lay limp and his legs extended on the ground below. On the soles of those Chucks he preferred to Vans, she saw in his penmanship, The Body Snatcher.

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His chest was still moving up and down; he was breathing. She thought she saw blood trickling down the side of his face. She knew what he had done. He had created the necessary diversion for her to continue living here, and doing her work – he came all this way to confirm it was her, to tell her he would always love her, and to give her the gift of time for the gift he always recognized within her. The gift of time for her gift of putting up a damn good fight.

 

As soon as she pieced it all together, clearly seeing his motive now, she bolted. She threw open the drawers of her desk so forcefully that the pictures of her family, her Robert, fell and broke. She grabbed the pistol she saved for only emergencies and threw it into the waistband of her jeans.  She threw open the door to the apartment and pummeled down the stairs. She tried to suppress the thoughts of the Revolutionary Greens – the cemetery of the people – that would now have a plot dedicated to the love of her life:

 

• Plot 621 (beneath the flowering Jacaranda tree of the 9th hole): male, 40 years old. Born in the month of April and died in the month of June. A tattoo dedicated to his father on his arm, a pair of red Chucks with an imposter’s signature of the Body Snatcher. A complicated heart, beautiful eyes – a man who belonged to Delilah Dawne, the true Body Snatcher.

 

“No!” she shouted to herself. She would not dig his grave and lay his soul to rest. His imposter soles did not have to damn their souls to further broken memories and longing. She would never forgive him for this, if they both survived it. She would never forgive him, but she would never stop loving him either.

 

Tearing out the back gate of the apartment complex, she heard the commanding voice of the woman, “Get the broadcast up! We are letting this stupid world know this is over!” Ripping the pistol from the back of her jeans, she ran as hard as she could towards Robert and the military tank in the middle of the street. Staring squarely in its headlights, there was no fear or surprise or shock this time. This time there was only a killer instinct to fight.

 

“Robert!” she screamed, and his eyes opened at the sound of her voice. He smiled his one dimpled grin. Weakly, he mouthed, “I love you, Delilah Dawne.”

 

“NO!” it was a shrill scream, something guttural she had never heard escape from her body before. It compelled the Captain and the junior militia to turn in her direction.

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It all happened so fast and seemingly in slow motion. As Delilah sprinted, weapon drawn and conviction on full display, the Captain recognized who she was. Before she could tell the members of her team to halt fire, the backfire blast of a single bullet ricocheted off of the corners of the abandoned shops, the tiles of the fourth floor of Delilah’s apartment building. In the milliseconds it took for the bullet to enter and exit through Robert’s head, the Captain knew that the Body Snatcher – both the imposter and the woman she always suspected – was dead. The look of terror registered clearly as she recognized the penmanship from the golf balls in the cemetery on the soles of Delilah’s shoes. She knew it; she was now at war with the woman who was once the true Body Snatcher.

 

Before the militia had time to reload and aim, the shots fired from Delilah’s pistol. Robert’s body fell the street as the junior officers turned to flee from the scene. But the Captain stood, awaiting what was coming next. Because she knew one thing was certain. There was nothing as radical as love, as revolutionary as a passionate woman with nothing left to lose. The Captain knew that in that moment, the spark of a single radical actor was now lit ablaze; their whole operation would go down in flames.

 

Because now this was some act of political resistance and an act of radical love. It’s the only kind of love you can find in a woman and a fighter.

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RESISTANCE BROADCAST – JUNE 22.

LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA.

 

IT IS REPORTED THAT A BODY SNATCHER COPYCAT WAS DETAINED AND KILLED BY THE AUTHORITARIAN REGIME. IN RESPONSE, THE TRUE BODY SNATCHER SINGELHANDEDLY AMBUSHED AN ARMED MILITIA GROUP OF FIVE AUTHORITARIAN OPPRESSORS, INCLUDING A MILITIA CAPTAIN. THE BODY SNATCHER, A WOMAN, KILLED ALL FIVE, AND WAS SEEN WALKING TO THE REVOLUTIONARY GREENS WITH THE BODY OF THE COPYCAT FOR BURIAL.

 

WE SEND OUR LOVE AND DEEP APPRECIATION TO THE BODY SNATCHER, A RADICAL REVOLUTIONARY OF LOVE. A TRUE FIGHTER.

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