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Two Plus Two

Jason Hyde

His creaking feet carry him onward, his eyes droop in exhaustion and apathy.
But his spirit is stubborn, it won’t let the shell die. It pilots the body forward to the next town.
He has the gift, the spark, and he must share it. It must spread and be reborn in the mouths of men.
The town is like the others, too bright, too loud, and it’s people unsmiling and distant.
They worship mirrors and screens now, God is dead. People are dead. There is only a horde of flesh breathing and lusting.

Hey there, the traveller shouts to a stranger: Two plus two is four!
No, says the stranger: Two plus two is five.
The traveller sighs and it sounds like tin scrapping pavement. He walks on.

At the next town people are walking back and forth, cars choke the air with noise and exhaust.
The traveller passes a building with a large screen, filled with six heads moving their mouths.
The moon is a virgin, they say. The stars an illusion, they say. Two plus two equals nine, they say.
The traveller, his face battered by time, his hair thin and sparse, yells to a round, older woman.
Two plus two is four!
No, she says. It is three. Only the enemy says it’s four. What kind of person are you? She says.

A crowd gathers, smelling the blood in the water, and the rich aroma of conflict.
What’d he say, someone says. He said four, shouts another. A woman holding her baby spits at the traveller.
The traveller holds his hands up as a shield. Stop, he begs. Please, he says.
You’re one of them, someone says from the sea of hate and skin. You spread it!
No, says the traveller, I swear, two plus two is four!
Prove it, says a woman.
I can not. It simply is, says the traveller.
The crowd hisses and growls and consumes the traveller.
Fists and boots and teeth and blood and the overwhelming, exhilarating joy of hatred.

The traveller crawls and pulls himself under the mob, takes to his feet.
He turns to look at the swarm of humanity, tearing into each other at a foe not there.
Their fear turned frenzy, turned fury. They claw and bite the first thing they touch, assuming it to be the traveller. As does the person beside them, and the next, and so on.
The traveller stares for a moment at the sight, feeling something he can’t define. Then he walks away.

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