In My Universe

by Jeneane Vanderhoof

This story was meant for the Reedsy writing contest but, silly me, got lost in time and remembered fifty minutes after the deadline closed after all that work. Since you can’t put the stories on the site after the contest closes I thought to put it here, on Medium, having found other Reedsy writers here. Enjoy.

Prompt: Write about a character whose job is to bring water to people.

• Credit and copyright for the prompt go to ReedsyPrompt.

Warning: This story contains sensitive material and some swear words that, while not fully appearing, are still apparent to readers. Be prepared.

When I was growing up I was an avid reader. My mother actually potty trained me with my favorite book, Goodnight Moon. She loved to tell me how I had demanded she read, “over and over”, so many times I memorized the words.

“That had been your way to figure out the story,” she said, “because you couldn’t read it yourself, you were still too young. Already my mother had been mystified by me, her daughter’s, and my behavior entranced by it.

And to Andrew, in these re-tellings, he would be told about how he would drag his potty chair right next to mine and listen, quietly, as I read the story for both of us.

“Perched right on that potty chair like a queen reading Goodnight Moon,” always with tears glistening in her eyes like she was proud of us for this story she could tell, for the memory of it.

“Such an attentive little boy to your big sister. Always following after her for anything, even on the toilet.”

As I grew into an adult and read more and more I realized that in these stories I read bad things happened but the world around me was much worse. Reality much more gruesome than any fictional creation. Human nature, cruelty, more creative.

Now realizing I should have applied that theory to everything in this universe, no matter how far-fetched the tale had been. And, as we grew older this attentiveness, this bond, seemed to stretch further and further apart. But still, when Andrew and I needed one another, we always knew and we were always there for each other.

*

I first saw things about multiverses (parallel universes) and, while I knew them to be true, scientifically, that they were a real possibility, not being smart enough, (or having had enough interest in things like this) I never thought they were worthy of my interest. I never sat up at night worrying that their reality would merge with ours one day, that someone from their universe would come into ours. And I certainly didn’t think that one day we would have to fight people from another universe, that one could walk in from another.

And, for the most part, I think everyone around me thought the same. All but Andrew, who loved this kind of stuff.

Now, in the future, I wish I would have paid more attention. But life seems like this in so many ways, hindsight is never 20/20.

**

The water walkers came without notice. While there was no real difference in appearance when you looked at them and one of us, they appeared to be human, they had the same hunger, same nature about them and shared the same mannerisms (for the most part) as we did. But, after time, having gained knowledge of them, you could easily tell one apart from the humans of this universe. It had been their problem, their physicality, the very nature of how their body processed the environment around them. That was what made the brethren of this world tell us, from them.

We don’t know what in their parallel universe had made their bodies differ from ours, to create this enormous thirst in their bodies that demanded so much water that they, like a leech, (those slimy creatures that drink blood) drew it from the environment around them. Even when our scientists had captured the invaders and studied their bodies, there was no difference from ours. They just that they drew water like a magnet.

And, for some reason scientists could never answer. When captured they would not speak. We didn’t think they were capable. Not even what their bodies demanded (water), when they were tortured without, would get them to answer any questions, demands, nothing.

The first online post of one (at the time, others thought the story was made up by quacks) showed a man with light hair and eyes. He looked like an average Joe to me. He was in New York City, in the middle of a park, and the moment he had stopped walking and stood still, drops of water began to rain from his body. At least, to me, it looked that way. But, it hadn’t been his body giving water. It was his body drawing all the water from everything around him.

As the video went on I realized, shocked, that I was wrong. His body hadn’t been dispelling water but taking it in from the trees, the ground, and even the fountain near began to drain. A small stream of water that grew larger until a funnel the size of a man’s arm.

Others in the park had begun to stop and stare, then screams of, “Who is that,” “What is that’’, “Call the police,” and finally, when a shout of, “run” came, chaos ensued. And they ran. The truth was out.

***

I was now, what everyone called, a rainmaker. I always thought it was weird, the slang term, but when my commander explained it to me, I finally got the concept.

“It’s not that you make it rain,” my commander had told me, “but by catching and killing those b*****ds, you keep the water here, in our world,” he explained.

Because the water walkers had come here, to our world, we believe, having, essentially, drained theirs. As more waterwalkers appeared we realized how much water their bodies demanded and believed their planet hadn’t been able to sustain the population and the need. That they probably had exsanguinated it (looking at them like vampires). Henceforth, they needed to seek water elsewhere.

“Information, we don’t know s**t. When we capture those b*****ds they never talk, no matter what we try to give them, take from them, or do to them,” the commander shouted to our troupe on training day with a steel glint in his eye. I could only imagine what he had seen, and done, while interrogating them.

I would find out soon enough, those things I didn’t want to know. All those memories made every bump in the night, every nightmare, for the rest of my life.

Later on some of the troops were gathered and ushered into a small auditorium. We were all shown a video of a waterwalker being tortured. He was in a metal room without anything else, huddled in a corner. As time passed, minutes, hours, then days, (though the video progressed quicker, it showed the time passed) the body began to dry, crackle, and then, like a vacuum sucking out all the air, the skin seemed to collapse into the waterwalker.

The rare mummification of a body in well under a week. It was a sight to behold, a true terror to watch.

****

It hadn’t taken the water walkers long to begin to drain our water supply. Since they looked human, appeared the same as us, they had been unnoticed for so long. Even with the odd events that happened around them, as water drew to them from the environment around them, it still took us too long to respond and there had been so many.

No one had believed the sightings or tales, at first, and I had always thought they had a tactical plan to keep out of sight, to have gone unnoticed for so long. But, I had never shared this idea with anyone. I was very shy about my ideas though others were always musing. I never wanted to be here, a rainmaker, to begin with.

We had all been conscripted, by the military, one defender per household. My brother had not wanted to be the one. Technically, I was the oldest even though we had the same birthday. And Andrew had never been the fighter, I the stronger one.

My parents had agreed, the favored one, that he will always be. Younger, less coordinated and terribly skinny. Always needing security and protection. And, there was his constant, whiney nature. That struck a fearful thought in the heads of my parents (one they never shared but once) that his own kind would turn on him one day as, at times, he made life so utterly trying, impossible, in so many instances.

So I, the older sister, was a member in the military as a defender of our county’s water, which was now dwindling and rationed. As time went on those rations got less and less until the time came when the rations had stopped altogether, our government no longer having a plan. Chaos ensued. The water walkers were no longer the only problem.

It wasn’t just thieves, vandals, bad people you had to watch out for. Now, neighbors had to fear neighbors. If a household had water and it was known, it could mean the death of a person or family. They had turned us into killers of our own kind.

The hardest part of fighting the water walkers was they never attacked a human from our universe, they never fought a person once caught. They had come without gear, weapons, nothing to war with to this universe. Only themselves. Over time engaging with the water walkers it felt as if, at times, in desperation, they had fled here.

Our government and military never knew if it was the way in which they got to our universe, how they were transported here, which disallowed any carrying of weaponry, of anything but their bodies and the clothes they were wearing.

But they were our demise themselves, their very bodies and the insatiable thirst that took us to the point where we turned on each other.

*****

We were out on noon patrol having had reports of water walkers and vandals in the area. The vandals were people of our world seeking water. Since they were heavily armed, they did the most damage.

I had taken a break from our group of six to find a tree, crouch down and take a leak. (Excuse my language, but the military changes a lot, i.e.vocabulary). We weren’t supposed to go anywhere alone but when you gotta pee, it’s not like I was going to take a buddy.

As I unbuckled my belt, pulled down my camo pants (the granny panties, embarrassing, but, military issued) and crouched down I let out a slow sign of relief.

Don’t get it on your pant, I thought, and, watch the shoes. So many times I had to abandon pants or shoes after an emergency outside (before the military there hadn’t been many, outdoor leaks, that is). I still hadn’t gotten good at going to the bathroom outdoors and was a little embarrassed at myself for being in the military and not having the hang of it yet. It seemed like it should be so easy but, for a woman, it’s not. At least, not for me.

Oddly, the thing that made me notice him was the water under me (my own water) coming back up from the ground, brushing my underside.

At first thinking I had peed on myself, then thinking it a splash back, there was him, so close I should have noticed. How does someone get so distracted by bathroom thoughts?

A shadow passed over me and there was clarity as I slowly raised my eyes to the figure that now hovered over my crouched form. As I got a clear look at him there was nothing more shocking, his face, his body. I was looking at my own brother, my twin. I could feel the heat turn up in my body, the color drained from my face. How could this be? My brother, my Andrew, was at home, not in the midst of the dry, far, west.

Knowing my brother well, I knew he’d never be out here, even to look for me.

This was not my Andrew, I thought, shocked. It was a goshdarn waterwalker!!

I had never been so close to one and since this was my brother, yet, not my brother, it was disarming, to say the least. It was further confirmed as the water seeped out of the environment around us and into his body. From the ground, the trees, every bit of dew, moisture, leached out of every place that contained it all around us.

As the waterwalker, Andrew, but, not my Andrew, looked down on me the droplets only increased in their quantity, and size, drawing more of the water as he stood in place, unmoving. And, as we stared at one another I knew he recognized me. I saw the look on his face, recognized the look. The look when Andrew sees me, acknowledges my presence, our connection.

A gutteral rumbling, sounding much like a cough with a lot of mucus in a person’s throat ensued, coming from Andrew, the waterwalker, and he opened his mouth as if to speak.

“Dara,” he said, my brother’s voice in a small way but alien in so many others. It sounded as if his voice was bogged down by something in his throat, whether mucus, water, I didn’t know. It sounded like he didn’t speak well, or much.

I was stricken silent, for the moment, he, this thing not my brother, having called my name. Also, the fact that the waterwalker talked to me, the first and only thing any one of them had ever said was my name.

Wasn’t anything else more important than that, I thought perplexed by this new development. The whole situation had threw me off the rails completely. No one had ever said something like THIS could happen.

How did he know my name, I thought, this thing not my brother? Maybe it was that I knew this, the shock of knowing taking so long to register, knowing what I knew, I knew; realizing in his universe there was a Dara, just like me, as this thing that stood before me that was so very like my brother.

“Andrew,” I asked, my voice shaking. It wasn’t that I thought the creature would hurt me, I knew they weren’t violent. There was never much trouble in capturing one, the water walkers, unless they ran. Usually we used net guns or rubber bullets to stop them.

That had been the quandary, made everything worse, what to do with them? We didn’t know how to send them back and, if caught and released, we didn’t think they would leave. We didn’t even know if they could understand us or follow directions. When captured and commanded they did nothing but making desperate sucking sounds, what we believed was their plea to us for water.

If told to return to their universe we didn’t know if they even knew a way to get back. After all, we had searched for anyway they could get here and never discovered how.

In the end, everyone seemed to agree that they would only drain our resources and we didn’t have enough water for them and the people of this world. We never had enough water for the water walkers.

So, they had to be done away with in some way. We all knew this and had accepted it. For the sake of our world, our people, we had become killers.

It was easy to rationalize because they weren’t us, they weren’t our kind.

But, as I stood before my brother, not my brother, all those thoughts swirled around my mind, not making sense anymore now that this body stood before me.

God damn him, I thought, why had he come to me, secretly thinking God had been playing some horrible trick. Did He hate me so much? What had I done to Him?

And then my thoughts switched to those metal rooms, those metal boxes, we had made for the water walkers. How, after three days passed, their time in our universe, every universe done, their bodies completely collapsed in upon itself, mummified, as if it could blow away with one strong breeze.

Suddenly, from behind me I heard shouts. Turning I heard a loud pop and a thwck, then a thunk. I knew what all those sounds meant and didn’t want to turn around. The pop was the shot of a gun, the thwck, the body’s acceptance of a bullet, and the thunk, that was the body falling down. I knew that meant we would be taking him, my brother, but, not my brother, to the metal room. This is where we would leave him to die. He would mummify himself as the Egyptians did, until he quickly faded away.

I didn’t know what I thought about all this anymore. I didn’t want to be here.

******

They had given him to me, my brother, yet, not my brother, to take to one of the metal rooms where his body would find no water. Nothing could get in those rooms. There were no windows, no vents, the rooms were made to keep out every drop of anything. There were even fans to suck out the body’s moisture, his moisture, to make the killings even quicker. Our little thank you for coming to our universe, to take our water, having created this chaos.

Every time I felt it deserved. Everytime justified. Until this time. With my brother, yet, not my brother.

“He’s not your brother!” my head seemed to cry out, inside, to no one else but herself. I didn’t know why this one time made all the other’s feel so different now and this time, this time was the worst of them all. Everything was so confusing, nothing made sense anymore.

I waited, hoping, praying, he would say something. Something that would make this stop, give me some kind of explanation. He never said a word, this brother but, not, my brother, my Andrew, but, not, mine. Not as I showed him to his tomb, not as he entered the place but as I looked upon him last and shut the door I heard him try to speak and stopped for a moment, still, he said nothing.

Did that make it easier? That there were no pleas?

As I slammed the door shut I jumped, winced at the feeling that went up my spine and turned to walk away. I think he tried to say my name. But, already I wanted to forget. One day I had to go home and he would be there. My brother.

I never went back those three days he was in that room, I never went back one. I always wondered if that made me a bad person. Deep down, I knew that made me a bad person.

And, when it was time for me to go home, my tour of duty done, I decided to go elsewhere. Anywhere else but home was my destination. I could never admit to myself why I had a hard time facing home. But, deep down, I knew. I knew. There would be Andrew and there would be his shadow.

I had nightmares that the shadow looked like a mummy.