Monochrome by H.M. Jones

on, and didn’t answer right away. His silence made her very uncomfortable; she hadn’t meant to upset him, but she seemed to be good at it. His black eyes dimmed, gloom covered his body like fog settling on a low valley.
    It seemed like a half hour before he spoke again, but it was probably only minutes. She was about to urge him to tell her more when he abruptly answered.
    “I don’t see a lot of them. A lot of them don’t make it very long here.”
    He didn’t clarify, but he didn’t have to. His tone told her all she needed to know—they’d killed themselves and Ishmael felt responsible. That’s why he got so worked up when Jim was telling him how to do his job, she thought to herself. She immediately felt stupid for assuming the fight was about her.
    “Sorry. I didn’t know,” she mumbled.
    He waved a dismissive hand. “How could you? Anyway, the man with the black hair and long nose was my third Lead. The brown-haired man sitting next to him was the one who convinced him to stay.”
    She remembered the man licking his lips at her and leering. It made her stomach churn to think he was following them. Having spent way too much time at seedy bars, she knew his type. He was a predator, and proud of it. He was just the type of person who snuggled up to lonely, naive women and bought them too many drinks. She’d been unlucky enough, as a young woman, to meet a man like him at a friend’s party. She’d never recover from that unhappy meeting, and she’d been wary and unforgiving of men since. Jason didn’t drink, and he never treated her disrespectfully.
    Abigail wondered how anyone could convince someone to stay in such a depressing, frightening place, and she listened intently as Ishmael explained.
    “The brown haired man is Eric. He’s a Snake.” Ishmael stopped walking and motioned for her to sit on a large black rock he settled on. “Let’s rest for a second.”
    She sat down. “I’ll bet. I mean, who convinces someone to stay here?”
    “No. Not a ‘snake’ as in a slimy, sneaky person, though I suppose that’s where it derives.”
    He exhaled. “I think we’ve lost them for a little while.” But he continued to scan the metallic trees behind them, and fumble in his pockets anxiously.
    He explained further. “A Snake is someone who tries to convince a Lead that Reality doesn’t want them; that they should make a place here instead of trying for the border. A Snake is paid well by Monochrome’s higher ups because they need people to stay in order to keep the place going. Reproduction doesn’t happen here. Monochrome takes life. It doesn’t create it.”
    “That’s a horrible job,” she whispered, disgusted.
    Ishmael winced at her disgust, which confused her. She wasn’t disgusted with him . “Here, it’s just another job. A way to keep the remaining good memories you have, and maybe to collect good memories from others. It’s survival. Plain and simple.”
    “No. Don’t make excuses for them, Ishmael. Everyone has a choice to do the right thing.”
    His face was dark with bitterness. “And what is the right choice? To let your own memories go until you are nothing but a sad, pathetic, empty shell? To kill yourself?”
    It was hard to believe he was defending such a slimy occupation, though she understood his need to define his own place in the cruel society of Monochrome.
    “Killing yourself is better than having someone else’s death on you.”
    “You can’t know, Abby.”
    He said it so quietly she barely heard him. He leaned against a steely tree, fighting to find the right words to convince her, but he let it go and continued with his story.
    “Anyway, my Lead, Geoff, and I were about a fourth of the way through Monochrome. We stopped at a Hotel for the night. Geoff was particularly depressed because he’d given away a very important memory in trade for food and shelter.”
    Ishmael studied his hands, rolling his lighter between them. “It was his daughter’s