The Gentle Man

The emptiness of the library was as unsettling as always. Most of the books lining the shelves around her had been written by academic men, a seemingly extinct breed. She made her way through the aisles moving as quietly as she could, but her presence had already been detected. 

 A man was waiting for her near the entrance. She pulled her knife from its sheath as soon as she saw him standing in her way. He raised his open hands with his palms out towards her, a peaceful gesture she hadn't seen from a member of the enemy sex in a very long time.

 "I'm not like the others."

 He had spoken to her calmly, another unexpected occurrence. She hadn't heard any of them talk since before the change, she'd only seen them communicate through grunts and roars. The general assumption was that they'd lost the ability to speak, just as they'd lost the ability to control their lustful urges. 

 She kept the knife aimed in the man's direction. He kept his hands raised. His eyes seemed to show kindness, but that wasn't 

enough.     

 "I promise, I don't want to harm you. I just want to talk."

 The man looked to be around her age, somewhere in his 20's. His skin and hair were dark, his face and physique lean. The clothes he was wearing were stylish too, more so than any of the others she'd seen men wearing in recent years. He seemed to still care 

about his appearance. 

 "Why are you different?" She still wasn't convinced that he was, but she wanted to see how he'd respond.

 "I don't know." he said. "When they all changed, I stayed the same. I don't know what happened to them and I don't know why it didn't happen to me."

 She needed to get out of there. For all she knew, he could have been trying to stall her. Other men might have been on the way.

 "Move." She said, her knife still poised for business.

 He did as she asked, another anomaly. 

 "Be careful when you leave.” he said. “There are some out on the street."

 "How many?" She asked as she moved by, her eyes not leaving the man's face.

 "I don't know, maybe five or so."

 She looked out the window. Sure enough, there were men outside. 

 "But you can walk among them? You can blend in?"

 The man moved closer, sensing that he was gaining trust. She raised her knife in his direction once more. 

 "I can walk among them but I can't speak with them. When they changed I tried talking with them but they get violent when they hear me speak. I have to stay quiet, otherwise they attack." 

 “Are there others like you?”

 The man took his pack off and sat down against the wall.  

 “None that I know of.”

 “What about other women? Do you have any friends? Companions? Family?”

 A look of sadness passed over the man’s face. She hadn’t seen such an expression on a member of the opposite sex in a very long time. 

 “Most of the women I’ve tried to communicate with since the change have either run off or tried to attack me. There have been some children who trusted me. I travelled around with a boy for a while, a kid I knew in my old neighbourhood, but then one day he changed and became like the others. One minute he was ok, the next he was a monster.”

 A growl came from outside, followed by another and then another. 

She moved to the window and peered through the dusty pane. The men were on the move once more, running down the road towards prey she couldn’t see.   

 “Probably best to leave while they’re distracted.” said the man, getting back up to his feet.

 She looked over at him. “What are you going to do?”

 The man shrugged. “Keep on traveling, look for food and water.” 

 She smiled, something she hadn’t done in front of a man in a very long time. It was a small smile and it didn’t last for 

long, but it was enough to make the man’s own smile grow wider.

 “Well it was nice meeting you.” he said, moving towards the 

entrance. “Let me go out first and check that the coast is clear. If I don’t come back in five or so minutes, you’ll know it’s probably ok.”                                              

 The man left the building. She watched from the window as he walked out into the open, scanning his environment for any signs of other males. There didn’t seem to be any around so he kept on walking, heading in the opposite direction to the one in which the herd of men had just gone.         

 It could have all just been one big, elaborate trap, a mysterious ploy to gain her trust for some unknown, nefarious reason. Her intuition told her that this wasn’t the case though. The man had seemed genuinely decent, and as far as she could tell she didn’t just think this because she wanted it to be so. Her gut feeling was that he would be a safe companion to travel with. 

 She moved out of the building and headed in the direction that the man had gone. He needed to be observed secretly from a distance for a little while longer before she could truly trust him. If she saw that his behaviour towards other women was as civil as it had been towards her, and if he didn’t do anything that seemed too strange, she would approach him once more. But first she needed to make sure.

About the Author

Michael Casey is a 38-year old author from Melbourne, Australia. He’s a freelance content writer and the author of articles for pop culture sites such as Cracked.com, Nerdbot, and Poplurker.

Find more of Michael’s work on Amazon.