Traced in Air
Michael Bettendorf
Michael Bettendorf works in a high school library in Lincoln, Nebraska, and when he's not writing, he's hanging with his spouse and dog or tinkering with retro video game consoles. His short stories have appeared in Cosmic Horror Monthly, The Drabblecast, and elsewhere, and his debut black metal horror gamebook Trve Cvlt was published by Tenebrous Press last September. You can find him online at www.michaelbettendorfwrites.com or at
Bluesky@BeardedBetts.
Bluesky@BeardedBetts.
I thought he had more time, he thought he’d be dead already. Turns out we were both wrong. Whatever worked its way inside of Oscar wasn’t killing him. It was changing his identity, revealing the mutable nature of humanity.
When Oscar’s legs started bowing with inhuman geometry, we both knew it was only a matter of time. Truth always worked that way. It was confined within its contextual borders, and for Oscar, the truth wasn’t about living or dying. It was about transforming. Transitioning. Creating a new truth within an evolving set of boundaries out here on this unfamiliar planet.
“You can set me down, Doc,” he said.
“Keep calling me ‘Doc’ and I might,” I said. “I was a doctor on Earth, but not here.”
I was nothing here anymore. Nothing that mattered anyway. We’d had this conversation a handful of times already. About how he believed my accomplishments mattered. How I’d earned them and should be proud of them. Oscar would ask me about what my diploma said. I’d grumble and tell him it said ‘Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Sciences.’ It was the only lie I told to Oscar, because in truth, that slip of paper that sentenced me to this godforsaken planet said ‘Doctor of Philosophy in Plant Pathology’. Specifically, virology, epidemiology, and phytobacteriology.
“Let me ask you,” he said. “I was a farmer on Earth and when I came here, I planted crops and tended the fields. So what does that make me?”
“A fool,” I said. “An optimistic fool.” I readjusted my hold on his legs, shifting his weight so he rested more comfortably on my back.
Oscar pulled my hair. An accident. He was beginning to lose his motor functions. Whatever was inside of him was controlling him, rewiring his nervous system. Still, Oscar laughed.
“That may be true,” he said. “But I’m still a farmer and you’re still a doctor.”
We made quite the worthless pair.
***
I was sent here because something was killing the crops. This planet didn’t even have a name yet. It was only known as a string of numbers and letters. Although significantly smaller, it was identified as a potentially habitable planet with an atmosphere and natural resources similar to Earth. At least that’s what they told us. The truth lay somewhere in-between. Deep down, I think I knew better, but I took the job anyway because I thought I could help—have purpose beyond myself, only to realize it wasn’t that at all. It was selfishness. I was unable to turn down the allure of researching off-planet flora. The first to do so.
By the time I’d arrived, the plants native to Earth were either wiped out completely or had crossbred with the native flora. The colonists always talked about how beautiful the flowers had become. The hybrid Asters that glowed, the Milkweed that none of the native insects would touch because of the skunky smell. No one ever bothered to talk about the fungi, though. No one seemed to notice how the gills of the ghostly white caps undulated in exhalation. And though it was subtler and slower, the human population had also been affected.
“How are you feeling, Oscar?”
Even though I couldn’t see them, his eyes lit up when I called him by name. It was the first thing I’d noticed about him when I found him. He introduced himself as friendly and lost. I was out collecting samples and had lost contact with the comm station. Our research facility was small and had only a few active scientists still working. Still able to work. I figured being reprimanded for desertion was the least of my worries.
“I’ve been better,” Oscar said. “But I can’t complain too much.”
“Classic Midwesterner,” I said. He’d grown up farming in the United States, primarily in Nebraska. Soybeans and wheat. And when the aquifer went dry, he still managed to yield crops. I supposed that’s why he was here. “You’ll go out of your way not to be an imposition, but I’ve carried your ass on my back for days now, so sometimes a duck is a duck.” I patted his legs and continued onward to find his family.
We stopped in a small clearing of shin-high sedge grass near a creek bed. I laid Oscar down on his butt, his legs bent in an uncomfortable parabola before him.
“You’ve no idea what’s done this to you?” I asked.
It was my turn for the redundant conversations.
“No,” he said. “I don’t. Beyond the obvious.” He held out his arms, which still listened to him on occasion, as if I needed it spelled out for me. “You’re the doctor.”
I walked to the creek’s edge and filled our canteens. The water on this planet was Coke-bottle blue and absent of mineral smells or taste. Incredibly pure. It was the first thing I’d noticed upon arrival, having been so used to the recycled water on Earth. Oscar was massaging his foot, staring at the sky, when I returned and sat next to him.
“Even the sunsets remind me of home,” he said. “You ever see a Nebraska sunset? I’m convinced we don’t have many trees because they’d only get in the way of the sunsets.”
Oscar’s longing for his home was palpable, but not in a pitiful way. The way he talked about Earth, the farmland in Nebraska, was like he was on his deathbed. An acceptance of the reality he faced.
***
We rested for a few hours among the restless fauna. I’d had a hard time sleeping because most species seemed to be nocturnal and I could feel them watching. I could sense their movement underground and in the trees. The avian species sang in registers that’d wake the dead. Their cries pierced the night air while the mammals scurried below. Bug species flitted by like dust motes, leaving iridescent trails in their wake. Maybe that’s why I devoted my life to plants. Dedicated to studying what was unassumingly alive.
Oscar rubbed at his foot. His skin was mossy near the hole where the seed implanted itself into his heel. Parasites. That’s what I’d originally thought. Something akin to hookworms routing around his body.
But I’d observed the hole pulse hues of green and yellow. I’d watched it weep creamy white sap—not pus—sap. I could feel it rope its way up his legs underneath his skin like vines, not necessarily destroying, but overtaking his bones and muscles and ligaments. I didn’t have proof, but it appeared to be causing rapid adaptation, not intentional destruction.
“We’re not too far off,” he said. I knelt so he could grab onto my shoulders. I hoisted him up, another tug on my hair. “I’m sorry,” he said when I winced.
“It’s okay, Oscar,” I said. “You can’t help it.” The words came out automatically, the way they always did when my mind was working. I’d studied microorganisms. Microscopic bacteria. I’d viewed thousands of slides and plant samples. Cellular structures. Enzymes and proteins and on and on. Spent so much time paying attention to what most never even thought about, that dwelling over details was beyond second nature. It was my everything.
‘Friendly and lost,’ he’d said when I found him. Lost. A fragmented truth.
“Should we keep heading northeast, Oscar?” I asked.
His muscles tensed at the sound of his name, the grip on my shoulders stronger than yesterday. Such rapid growth.
“Yes,” he said. “Follow the creek. The farm is only a few miles off now.”
Friendly and lost, I thought, as a strong breeze carried the scent of soft rains to us, and above us, an atmospheric haze that reminded me of neon sand.
I remember his eyes when I found him. A shade darker than amber, dewy and scared. Friendly, lost—confused. They no longer bore the burden of confusion. Rather, they were determined.
***
I could have dropped him along the creek bed, among the stiff sedge grass. I could have left him there to hobble along until his bones warped to the point of snapping. Left him to lay down roots elsewhere. Maybe I should have.
But I believed Oscar was an honest man trying to get back to his family. The problem was, Oscar wasn’t a man any longer. He was somewhere between plant and human. Confined between those truths.
***
A smattering of grass like black mondo covered the road to the farm. Skeletons of dead farming equipment littered the fields along the way, choked by ruthless, polychromatic vines.
“That field used to be an experimental wheat,” Oscar said, though his voice lost all softness. “Now it’s…” he tugged my hair and I felt him losing control to what grew inside of him. The gentleness returned to his voice as he apologized. “I’m sorry, mija,” he said. I didn’t comment on the endearing name. I told him it was okay. That we’re almost there. We’re almost home.
A foreign smell hit us. Something between sour body odor and blooming, resinous hedges. We walked into a grove of towering trees and Oscar began to vibrate. A faint hum resounded from his mouth. The trees replied.
They resembled mature beech trees. Knots covered their smooth bark like watchful eyes. Oscar’s bones clacked as his body reacted to the trees around us. Demented, dark oaks growing at odd angles. A behemoth birch with bark that peeled like sunburnt flesh. Alien firs that wept opalescent sap. He slipped off my back and rolled to the ground. Sandy-colored leaves fell all around us. I picked one up and felt the life coursing through it. It was warm and velvety like newborn skin. The leaves pulsed with faint yellow-green undertones, mapped by emerald veins underneath.
Oscar could no longer speak my language, but he sang to me in vaporous notes as roots poured from the hole in his foot. The canopy of fleshy leaves echoed Oscar in harmony.
I dropped to my knees and dug a shallow hole in the dark topsoil. The nutty soil smelled of chicory and collected underneath my fingernails. It reminded me of the coffee I’d never have again. I moved Oscar into the hole, ensuring his eyes faced the sunset, and stood him up, stabilizing his transforming body until the roots took. His shirt was ripped to shreds by a new layer of skin—coarse bark—which still bore the markings of his Earthly body. Scars of his youth. A tattoo, now illegible and meaningless. His arms stretched, his fingers spread outward and open as they flourished, transforming into new limbs before my eyes.
I backed away, finally understanding.
“You are home, Oscar,” I said.
I started to walk away, without purpose. I was tired from carrying Oscar all those miles. Stunned from what I’d witnessed. A voice like static called out to me, but my understanding of the words was rudimentary, like I was learning a new language.
My senses were acutely different, overwhelming, as I felt the air in my lungs slowly dissipate like a cough in the breeze—a breeze I could feel high above me, despite being grounded. I practiced breathing exercises to recenter myself, but I knew that my sense of being—the borders of self—had shifted and I was living within a new set of boundaries.
I felt an intense, sharp pain, like my hair being pulled from the roots.
I ran my fingers through my disheveled braid and massaged my head. A hole had formed, sticky to the touch and pulpy around the edges. I tried to speak in my new language, but the result was clumsy.
I stared up at Oscar, gleaming in the expanse of peculiar trees. His new form was firm, but at ease among his family. And I felt entirely alone out here on this burnished, yet gloomy planet which was not yet my home, but one day would be. It would only be a matter of time, because the truth is not etched in stone, but traced in air, and the winds of change rustled the leaves surrounding me.
When Oscar’s legs started bowing with inhuman geometry, we both knew it was only a matter of time. Truth always worked that way. It was confined within its contextual borders, and for Oscar, the truth wasn’t about living or dying. It was about transforming. Transitioning. Creating a new truth within an evolving set of boundaries out here on this unfamiliar planet.
“You can set me down, Doc,” he said.
“Keep calling me ‘Doc’ and I might,” I said. “I was a doctor on Earth, but not here.”
I was nothing here anymore. Nothing that mattered anyway. We’d had this conversation a handful of times already. About how he believed my accomplishments mattered. How I’d earned them and should be proud of them. Oscar would ask me about what my diploma said. I’d grumble and tell him it said ‘Doctor of Philosophy in Environmental Sciences.’ It was the only lie I told to Oscar, because in truth, that slip of paper that sentenced me to this godforsaken planet said ‘Doctor of Philosophy in Plant Pathology’. Specifically, virology, epidemiology, and phytobacteriology.
“Let me ask you,” he said. “I was a farmer on Earth and when I came here, I planted crops and tended the fields. So what does that make me?”
“A fool,” I said. “An optimistic fool.” I readjusted my hold on his legs, shifting his weight so he rested more comfortably on my back.
Oscar pulled my hair. An accident. He was beginning to lose his motor functions. Whatever was inside of him was controlling him, rewiring his nervous system. Still, Oscar laughed.
“That may be true,” he said. “But I’m still a farmer and you’re still a doctor.”
We made quite the worthless pair.
***
I was sent here because something was killing the crops. This planet didn’t even have a name yet. It was only known as a string of numbers and letters. Although significantly smaller, it was identified as a potentially habitable planet with an atmosphere and natural resources similar to Earth. At least that’s what they told us. The truth lay somewhere in-between. Deep down, I think I knew better, but I took the job anyway because I thought I could help—have purpose beyond myself, only to realize it wasn’t that at all. It was selfishness. I was unable to turn down the allure of researching off-planet flora. The first to do so.
By the time I’d arrived, the plants native to Earth were either wiped out completely or had crossbred with the native flora. The colonists always talked about how beautiful the flowers had become. The hybrid Asters that glowed, the Milkweed that none of the native insects would touch because of the skunky smell. No one ever bothered to talk about the fungi, though. No one seemed to notice how the gills of the ghostly white caps undulated in exhalation. And though it was subtler and slower, the human population had also been affected.
“How are you feeling, Oscar?”
Even though I couldn’t see them, his eyes lit up when I called him by name. It was the first thing I’d noticed about him when I found him. He introduced himself as friendly and lost. I was out collecting samples and had lost contact with the comm station. Our research facility was small and had only a few active scientists still working. Still able to work. I figured being reprimanded for desertion was the least of my worries.
“I’ve been better,” Oscar said. “But I can’t complain too much.”
“Classic Midwesterner,” I said. He’d grown up farming in the United States, primarily in Nebraska. Soybeans and wheat. And when the aquifer went dry, he still managed to yield crops. I supposed that’s why he was here. “You’ll go out of your way not to be an imposition, but I’ve carried your ass on my back for days now, so sometimes a duck is a duck.” I patted his legs and continued onward to find his family.
We stopped in a small clearing of shin-high sedge grass near a creek bed. I laid Oscar down on his butt, his legs bent in an uncomfortable parabola before him.
“You’ve no idea what’s done this to you?” I asked.
It was my turn for the redundant conversations.
“No,” he said. “I don’t. Beyond the obvious.” He held out his arms, which still listened to him on occasion, as if I needed it spelled out for me. “You’re the doctor.”
I walked to the creek’s edge and filled our canteens. The water on this planet was Coke-bottle blue and absent of mineral smells or taste. Incredibly pure. It was the first thing I’d noticed upon arrival, having been so used to the recycled water on Earth. Oscar was massaging his foot, staring at the sky, when I returned and sat next to him.
“Even the sunsets remind me of home,” he said. “You ever see a Nebraska sunset? I’m convinced we don’t have many trees because they’d only get in the way of the sunsets.”
Oscar’s longing for his home was palpable, but not in a pitiful way. The way he talked about Earth, the farmland in Nebraska, was like he was on his deathbed. An acceptance of the reality he faced.
***
We rested for a few hours among the restless fauna. I’d had a hard time sleeping because most species seemed to be nocturnal and I could feel them watching. I could sense their movement underground and in the trees. The avian species sang in registers that’d wake the dead. Their cries pierced the night air while the mammals scurried below. Bug species flitted by like dust motes, leaving iridescent trails in their wake. Maybe that’s why I devoted my life to plants. Dedicated to studying what was unassumingly alive.
Oscar rubbed at his foot. His skin was mossy near the hole where the seed implanted itself into his heel. Parasites. That’s what I’d originally thought. Something akin to hookworms routing around his body.
But I’d observed the hole pulse hues of green and yellow. I’d watched it weep creamy white sap—not pus—sap. I could feel it rope its way up his legs underneath his skin like vines, not necessarily destroying, but overtaking his bones and muscles and ligaments. I didn’t have proof, but it appeared to be causing rapid adaptation, not intentional destruction.
“We’re not too far off,” he said. I knelt so he could grab onto my shoulders. I hoisted him up, another tug on my hair. “I’m sorry,” he said when I winced.
“It’s okay, Oscar,” I said. “You can’t help it.” The words came out automatically, the way they always did when my mind was working. I’d studied microorganisms. Microscopic bacteria. I’d viewed thousands of slides and plant samples. Cellular structures. Enzymes and proteins and on and on. Spent so much time paying attention to what most never even thought about, that dwelling over details was beyond second nature. It was my everything.
‘Friendly and lost,’ he’d said when I found him. Lost. A fragmented truth.
“Should we keep heading northeast, Oscar?” I asked.
His muscles tensed at the sound of his name, the grip on my shoulders stronger than yesterday. Such rapid growth.
“Yes,” he said. “Follow the creek. The farm is only a few miles off now.”
Friendly and lost, I thought, as a strong breeze carried the scent of soft rains to us, and above us, an atmospheric haze that reminded me of neon sand.
I remember his eyes when I found him. A shade darker than amber, dewy and scared. Friendly, lost—confused. They no longer bore the burden of confusion. Rather, they were determined.
***
I could have dropped him along the creek bed, among the stiff sedge grass. I could have left him there to hobble along until his bones warped to the point of snapping. Left him to lay down roots elsewhere. Maybe I should have.
But I believed Oscar was an honest man trying to get back to his family. The problem was, Oscar wasn’t a man any longer. He was somewhere between plant and human. Confined between those truths.
***
A smattering of grass like black mondo covered the road to the farm. Skeletons of dead farming equipment littered the fields along the way, choked by ruthless, polychromatic vines.
“That field used to be an experimental wheat,” Oscar said, though his voice lost all softness. “Now it’s…” he tugged my hair and I felt him losing control to what grew inside of him. The gentleness returned to his voice as he apologized. “I’m sorry, mija,” he said. I didn’t comment on the endearing name. I told him it was okay. That we’re almost there. We’re almost home.
A foreign smell hit us. Something between sour body odor and blooming, resinous hedges. We walked into a grove of towering trees and Oscar began to vibrate. A faint hum resounded from his mouth. The trees replied.
They resembled mature beech trees. Knots covered their smooth bark like watchful eyes. Oscar’s bones clacked as his body reacted to the trees around us. Demented, dark oaks growing at odd angles. A behemoth birch with bark that peeled like sunburnt flesh. Alien firs that wept opalescent sap. He slipped off my back and rolled to the ground. Sandy-colored leaves fell all around us. I picked one up and felt the life coursing through it. It was warm and velvety like newborn skin. The leaves pulsed with faint yellow-green undertones, mapped by emerald veins underneath.
Oscar could no longer speak my language, but he sang to me in vaporous notes as roots poured from the hole in his foot. The canopy of fleshy leaves echoed Oscar in harmony.
I dropped to my knees and dug a shallow hole in the dark topsoil. The nutty soil smelled of chicory and collected underneath my fingernails. It reminded me of the coffee I’d never have again. I moved Oscar into the hole, ensuring his eyes faced the sunset, and stood him up, stabilizing his transforming body until the roots took. His shirt was ripped to shreds by a new layer of skin—coarse bark—which still bore the markings of his Earthly body. Scars of his youth. A tattoo, now illegible and meaningless. His arms stretched, his fingers spread outward and open as they flourished, transforming into new limbs before my eyes.
I backed away, finally understanding.
“You are home, Oscar,” I said.
I started to walk away, without purpose. I was tired from carrying Oscar all those miles. Stunned from what I’d witnessed. A voice like static called out to me, but my understanding of the words was rudimentary, like I was learning a new language.
My senses were acutely different, overwhelming, as I felt the air in my lungs slowly dissipate like a cough in the breeze—a breeze I could feel high above me, despite being grounded. I practiced breathing exercises to recenter myself, but I knew that my sense of being—the borders of self—had shifted and I was living within a new set of boundaries.
I felt an intense, sharp pain, like my hair being pulled from the roots.
I ran my fingers through my disheveled braid and massaged my head. A hole had formed, sticky to the touch and pulpy around the edges. I tried to speak in my new language, but the result was clumsy.
I stared up at Oscar, gleaming in the expanse of peculiar trees. His new form was firm, but at ease among his family. And I felt entirely alone out here on this burnished, yet gloomy planet which was not yet my home, but one day would be. It would only be a matter of time, because the truth is not etched in stone, but traced in air, and the winds of change rustled the leaves surrounding me.