Soft by F. Paul Wilson is a short story that deals in some of the most INTENSE of dread--a person's body collapsing in on itself, bones disintegrating into nothingness. What causes it? A VIRUS that has mutated into the collective nightmare of humanity. I don't know when it was the last time I read a story that smacks the viewer in the face with something so grisly and morbid yet does it so hauntingly, not exploitatively. No line of the dialogue and inner monologue of the protagonist, a virus-stricken single father rendered vulnerable but not yet helpless in a desolate Manhattan, is wasted. Each moment of the story pushes the action forward into new spaces of fear and terrible loss. The indescribable pain that a character must feel in this world where a virus turns the bones into powder, leaving a blob of skin and hair on the ground....wow! It is a story that really crawls under your flesh and lingers there.
The story centers around a man and his teenage daughter Judy, a former dancer whose whole lower half of her body has been rendered useless and flopping flesh by the ravages of this bone-dissolving virus. He has lost the use of his legs himself and scoots around on cloth-wrapped knees, the pitiful image of that immediately burned into the reader's mind. Manhattan is a ghost town, its residents having crumbled in on themselves a long time ago, isolation being something the father-daughter pair have gotten used to, with their only friend (and helper) being a curiously unaffected man called George. The virus has burned a path throughout the world, the story beginning with a super grisly bit of a newscaster's jaw actually breaking apart live on-air. For most, some of their limbs go first, then the other bones in their body, then it's total deterioration. It doesn't matter that the virus doesn't strike a person dead right then and there. It rapidly whittles down a life, causing multiple breaks, the body literally going "soft" until there's nothing left except loose flesh on the floor. it's the worst kind of hell a person can imagine and there's absolutely no cure for it.
Right away, reading a story about something so horrific during these very hard times of of course, an altogether different, but for numerous people, painful, dangerous and even fatal virus, caused me to look at this story with a fresh perspective. Of course the author of this magnificently creepy and disturbing tale wouldn't have been able to predict that nearly forty years later, the world would be battling a virus that is *for many* debilitating and frightening, striking them randomly, causing varying levels of suffering, but the story hits on a different, visceral level now. Soft is a look at what happens when hope is sucked out of the world, like a vacuum, and all that's left is ongoing, endless anxiety for what awaits. The future in this is not anything to look forward to but dreaded and mourned. The sounds the bones make in this tale when they're on the verge of breaking are described by the narrator as the sickening sound of rustling cellophane, all these little fragmentations that a victim of the softness can hear before their own collapse. It's one more graphic but oh so powerful detail that drives home the message of how completely doomed everybody is.
What does "doom" mean though when there's still love, devotion and the family? This is a good question I feel Soft asks with this father who is so dedicated to shielding his daughter from the pain and at the end of this story, inevitable loss, they'll likely both suffer. The virus has taken their legs, most of their mobility and independence away, but not their determination to keep living. A fragment of promise for them that's been preserved because the bone-dissolving virus has so far only struck their lower parts of their bodies and not the rest of their bone structure, like pretty nearly everyone else who he refers to as "jello". The father feels they can continue on a life of some worth, eventually looking to find other survivors of this plague and linking up with them. At the same time however, a new problem arises where the one untouched human being they know, George, has gone missing. Without him, their lives have gotten that much harder and painful to bear. The twist to this story is a gut-punch and makes you feel that there just may be no real escape for this father and daughter after all...
The desolation of this virus is also like nothing I've ever read before in an apocalyptic tale. We often take our bodies and their functions for granted. We get up in the morning, go about our day, tend to our families and occupations but we rarely ever think about what it means to have this intricately constructed system that is US. It serves our needs so perfectly, propels forward our society in a million different ways--creates offspring, constructs buildings, creates art, writes beautiful music, and so many more aspects of civilization. Where would not only the individual but society itself be if it all that was and ever will be was melted into a pile on the floor, as insignificant as a heap of moldy, leftover food? This story brings forward something deeply chilling because us as humanity, with all of our pride, hubris, accomplishments, intelligence and heart, is shown as being easily dissolved into the depths of nothing. It stays with you. It kind of haunts you and knocks around in your brain for a little bit--the mark of a brilliant writer!
I think what I liked most about Soft is how straight-forward and intensely and tightly written it was. The end of the world is so insidious here. It's not waiting on the bombs to drop, or an asteroid to smash into the earth, just a series of moments of quiet desperation. The thing about this story is it doesn't neatly wrap up anything, it doesn't offer any elaborate explanation. It doesn't necessarily preach a moral, it doesn't sermonize. There's no neat resolution either, the conclusion being this father and daughter waiting for their relative good luck to run out. It's as I mentioned, a wellspring of DREAD. Some stories are a snapshot of darkness, a peek into a nightmare. But the best of them stay with you, causing you to think about what you would do in that kind of situation. What could any person possibly do in the middle of the end of the world?
If you want a short, phenomenal apocalyptic read, definitely check out Soft by F. Paul Wilson. You might find yourself a new appreciation for the biological art that is the skeletal structure! You damn sure will be grateful.
You can read the entire story for FREE right here.
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