If only I’d known the world would end in violent plagues and global warming would dry it out to a dessert. I’d have asked father to end me. On the horizon was a junk yard where sand beaten car shells blended into the brown sand, which had built up in mounds around them, obscuring them. I’d not have seen it if not for the smell of oil that blew on the soft wind. My dehydrated limbs threatened to seize and it’s true I’d fallen many times, but I made it. I crawled into a steel drum and was content in my coffin until a group of raiders manifested like specters out of the remote desert landscape. I knew their colors,the blood red and dried brown symbol of cannibals. They dragged me behind them like a dead, collared dog until we reached the low metal walls of their shanty village.

            “This one’s got no meat.” Said the toothless man.

“She’ll make a good whore.” Said the man with six or so teeth.

They left me with a girl. I couldn’t meet her eyes, so ashamed as I was for not telling her. She was a prisoner too, in tattered rags and bare dirty feet. She smiled at the men as they walked by, beckoning them to enter her tin shack. Her soul screamed for freedom, but her lips spoke of fantasies that awaited them inside, should they choose to enter her crib. Her dreadful existence was the fault of this world; that she, a veritable child, remained imprisoned was not my fault. Yet, guilt haunts and torments me because I am older, wise of the old ways, but I hadn't the will to help her. What other duty could I have then? Existence, father warned, is a responsibility. Don’t exist if you don’t desire to help the meek. Do I exist, as I did then? I wondered. Is anyone alive who is not brow-beaten by this life, this uselessness? Can I call myself living if I allow this girl to go on being raped? Forced to fabricate enjoyment?

I submitted to ravaging myself, each time lying still as death. My guilt festered inside me, and I welcomed death that would surely come soon. I was insolent. They forced drugs that didn’t get me high. They beat me. They left me stinking in an upswept room with grainy sand-covered floors. I longed for my coffin, the steel drum it had taken me weeks to find, the place where I planned to wait out eternity.

“You could fake it you know.” She said. Then added, “We all do.”

She stood in my doorway keeping a watchful eye. She was a clever child, with clever round eyes that skated down the alley, but posture that suggested she was not interested in anything or anyone. "Be small," she warned. "Make yourself small."

“Where are you from?” I asked.

She was not from here. None of the women or girls were. Everyone was from somewhere else, forced into the desert expense in search of food and water or worse running from someone or something. It wasn't a secret that shanty towns sprung up for months or years before they were buried in unrelenting sand like so many other places, cities and towns swallowed up in the dust. It kept people nomadic. Some towns were rumored to have water, crops. There were always rumors of charitable new places in need of citizens to work. She shrugged her small shoulders. "Not sure," she said. But I could read in her tender features that she was sure. She knew exactly where she came from, but had long ago given up hope of ever returning. 

“If you just lie there, they’ll kill you.” She warned. “You should do something with yourself.”

“Thought you said to be small. Besides, I don’t care if I die.”

“Not when they want you to be something. Then you be whatever size they want you to be." She said. "You don’t want to die at the hands of cannibals. You’ll become a part of them, you will. They’ll eat you up, tear the meat right from you while you’re still living, chew you up while you watch, swallow you down, and make you a part of their body forever." 

I looked at her with grave interest. She seemed to enjoy this and continued her warning theatrically, her fingers curling in the air as a witch does over a bubbling cauldron. Still her eyes remained at their corners, fixed on the alley. Ever watchful of who was marching toward our dusty cribs, a rubbish built narrow cul-de-sac where a clever child stood guard to warn her matrons when particularly dangerous men came drunk and stumbling down the alley. 

"The cannibal man takes the spirit of the body he eats, and that spirit clings forever to life inside him. Forced to view the world through the man’s eyes, forced to rape and kill with him. No heaven. Is that the eternal life you’re hoping for?”

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“I have no soul.” I said.

Her eyes widened. She didn’t understand, and that was for the best. It would keep her safe, the less she knew.

“Everyone has a soul, miss. Didn’t your mama and daddy tell you that? Your preacher?” 

“I had a father once who told me things," I said. "He said I don't have a soul, but I could make my own heaven on earth. By helping, but I don’t help anyone anymore.”

"They were killed by the cannibals. Roasted on spit and eaten. My mama wasn’t enough pretty, but she told me to carry on because I was. She told me if I’m good and pray nightly, I will go to heaven and God willing she will turn to poison in the bodies of bad men. She's like a cancer in there I bet. My daddy told me to help no one, but myself. But, he said I’d go to heaven too. I guess if I do get eaten, at least I'd be with them again.” 

Heaven. If such a place existed, the little one would surely end up there. How heroic she was to advise me. To offer me protection, to wait with her foot against a shaky beam. Ready to rattle off a warning if need be. Her attempts to console me were the goodness father talked about. I turned away from her. I could sense her posture stiffen, a wave of coolness waft from her. I did not turn back. "Go away little girl. Go keep your watch elsewhere." I said. Did I do right by her family to ignore her, to spare her the trouble that was sure to come if she was caught talking to me? Or, I was tired of her childishness. Longing for a dark steel drum to wait out eternity in.

“Alright then.” She said defiantly. “Go ahead and die then. But, if you don’t want to die, come and find me. I can teach you to live. It’s not much of a life, but goodness will come in the next I assure you. I can teach you to talk to God, and God can help you get though it. I pray during it.”

The men came in droves every night. They beat me with their fists and drove their smallish members into my orifices. I didn’t pray. I didn’t pretend to enjoy it. I remained limp and lifeless. I fantasized about the steel drum coffin.

“This one wants to be dinner.” Said the one with teeth.

“Too bad because she’s a pretty one.” Said another with a scraggly beard.

“Meats running low.” Said the one with no teeth.

“Fine. Let the bitch have it her way.” Said the one with teeth.

The girl hung her head as I was drug passed her. I did not walk or struggle. I went limp and forced them to roll me onto a tarp for dragging to the pyre. The girl was consoled by women careful not to test the patience of their captors. They urged her to not look too sad. I was grateful that she'd be looked after.

“Cook her.” Men shouted. “A feast for kings.”

I wept for their captors. Father would be so disappointed, I thought. What could I do? I’d not bothered to give a moment’s thought to what I could do. What had I done before? Provided advice mostly. Provided information. Predicted the weather. Rains hardly came. People died of thirst. My predictions failed. I was useless to them.

The men leaned me over the wood framing. They strapped my wrists and ankles to the wood with bailing wire. They leaned the structure, with me strapped to it, to the side, at an angle, so I could cooked evenly. The brave little girl could not be subdued by her compatriots. She hid toward the back of their group and watched as they strapped me up and then jeered my pathetic existence. I saw her there. Tears in her doe eyes. As the first flames melted the skin from my feet, her eyes went wider. The men noticed too. The wiring shot flames and sparked as the fire burned also my legs and middle to expose more circuitry and metal limbs. It occurred to me then what I could do, to help her, to help all the women. I could set fire to my fusion powered core before I shut down completely. I wiggled against the binding and arched my chest above the flames. 

I turned my eye inward and accessed the main terminal. The code was simple, not that I could forget anything. I certainly couldn’t forget the years of humanity’s suffrage in this acrid bitter and unforgiving landscape. The men began to scream as I disabled my failsafes.

“Get some water.” The one with teeth said.

“We ain’t got no water.” The toothless one said.

“Throw sand on it.” The bearded one said.

“Get back.” I shouted to the girl. And, she did.

The others were too close. There wasn’t time for the men to save themselves. The flames rounded my chest, and then engulfed the tiny glowing nuclear ball. Their screams were the last thing I heard before I woke up in the tin hut. I wondered, was it all a dream? The little girl entered. She was smiling, looked bigger. She picked me up from the floor. I realized I was no more than a head, and I smiled too. My body lie burned in a corner of the hut.

“Come on, hero.” She said. “You have got to see this.”

Outside the shack, the women were making merry in the shanty village. They were singing and dancing. They called me hero, and I showed them the junk yard. They collected the oil. I tell them when the rain will come, and they collect the rainwater. They grow their food in sun-scorched soil. Some people still starve and die, but no one gets eaten. People show up to work. To till. I teach them to survive. I guided them to build their walls taller, to protect from raiders and sandstorms. I help them choose which people to let in and which to keep out because I know the colors. I no longer want to die because Father was right all along. Heaven is helping.