1
The figure stands alone in the shadows. Completely alone. His baby-blue eyes shine bright in the blackness that surrounds him. He trudges slowly amongst the ruins of this damaged world. He stops, violently kicks aside a large piece of rubble, stares silently as it flies across the broken road. The bright blue eyes flit quickly back to where the blackened piece of rubble had previously lain. There, his eyes fall upon a single object, shimmering alone amongst the ugliness that was this place: a golden chain, and in the middle, hanging perfectly: a golden crucifix. His eyes stare mercilessly at the piece of jewelry as his fist clenches it tightly and it crumbles into gold-dust between his cold, lifeless fingers.
+++
I jolt awake, the sweat sweetly trickling down my pale face. That dream. That same dream with that man. That terrible man of whom has been my main haunt for quite a while now. My Aunt Kat (God rest her soul) would always say, “Often, the dreams that reoccur are the ones that shape your life.” Wisdom like that right now would be greatly appreciated.
Why must I live with everlasting loneliness in this place? This place of the cold and damp. It is as if you had been running up the stairs, too excited to care, and all of a sudden there is one less step than expected. And as your foot falls, it seems as though a rock of sudden dread and disappointment has just dropped to the pit of your stomach. That is exactly how I felt that day when they took me away. Away from the sky, away from my family, my home, and into this underground hole.
Seventeen. I am seventeen and constantly going through the motions as a lifeless robot. Just doing what is needed to survive down here. Every day, it is the same routine, the same boring old schedule. This constant normality makes me want to run into a brick wall. I hate being down here. Trapped with no way out. Most nights, right before they come and gas me to sleep, my thoughts are not filled with what the next day will hold. No, my thoughts are of my family, my mother, father, and little sister, Klaire. How they are doing, what their lives are like up there, and if they ever wonder why I am underground in some government operation. Most of all though, I wonder if they ever miss me as much as I miss them.
Of course, my thoughts are cut short. Right on time I hear the complicated locks on my door adjust themselves so that they may open for the short bald man who has had the uneventful duty of “putting all of us to sleep” for the past seven years. Lying upon the filthy, rock-hard mattress I feel the all-too-familiar mask slide onto my face as gas fills the emptiness. I look coldly into the man’s grey, unseeing eyes before letting unconsciousness take me harshly into its dark embrace.
Again I dream of those hideous blue eyes, appearing from the darkness behind me as I stroll. He then pulls out a knife with a black haze of smoke tightly wreathed around it. I want to yell, to scream, to wake up, but I am frozen to the spot: immobile. The knife flashes and I feel my own warm blood running down my neck. I fall down, forever and ever. Falling faster and faster. Then, seconds before my mangled body is finally able to hit the ground where it shall forever rest, I wake up.
“Joy Wotcher is required at the gate. I repeat, Joy Wotcher is required at the gate,” says the voice over the speakers. Wotcher? That’s me, I think. How should I know it has been all too long since I have exchanged conversation with a human being, but I get off my bunk so that I may head down to wherever it is that I need to go.
After living down here for as long as I have, I have only ever seen “the gate” once. I was ten. Ten years old, being dragged through that awful gate into this new, terrible place. Nobody wants to admit it, but once you enter through the gate, the only way you’ll be able to leave is through a body bag. I myself, had thought once of taking it that far, just to get out of here. Of course, I never went through with it; I have more to live for than that.
As I get ever closer, I think of making a run for it, to risk it all just for that sliver of hope. I realize, without noticing that I have been clenching my hand tightly around the last thing I have other than memories to remind me of my real home. It is a small, insignificant piece of jewelry given to me by my mother the day I was taken away. A golden crucifix is all that remains of my former life, the life that was worth living.
At last, I have reached the gate. The ominous metal structure looms above us all. I am held back forcefully as the gate slowly opens, the doors slightly creaking at the enormous amount of force needed to push them open. I look longingly at what is beyond the gate as it opens: a sky, the most beautiful night sky that has ever shone. The stars are shimmering brightly, tempting me to leave this place to go live under their sky instead of this artificial one. I want to do it so badly, but looking at the golden chain hidden under my uniform I realize that it would be useless. After just reaching the gate I would be shot down before ever experiencing that magnificent sky again. That is something I would not, and could not, risk.
I stand still and watch as an enormous crate is dragged inside. Oh great! I get to carry in the weekly food shipment. It is essential that the people from up above bring us supplies once a week, for without their aid, we would all die slow and awful deaths down here. I keep looking, why would they need extra people to carry the supplies? They have always managed fine before. Especially now, the shipments have had a lot less to offer, because they have had to be very conservative above ground. Apparently, the people up above are warring with each other. Making rough times for all.
Then I see why I’m here. Not too long after the crate arrived something else appeared in front of the gate. Being pulled roughly by large men in black uniforms are children. Most are still in their pajamas, taken while their parents were sleeping. They cry, scream, and kick their captors sharply in the stomach. No effect. I feel my own tears beginning to gather up in the corners of my eyes. I must not show weakness, so I straighten up abruptly and blink back the tears.
“Hey Wotcher I have a little roommate for you,” says a large man gruffly as he forces a small child into my grip. I look down into her tear-filled eyes; she can’t be any older than eight. So small, so alone, and so frightened. I softly grab her arm while bending down to gently say, “Hey kid, what’s your name?”
“N-Nicole,” she mutters out through another round of sobbing.
“Listen, Nicole. It’s not so bad here; you have me to look after you no matter what. I’m your family now, and I’ve got your back. By the way, my name is Joy, but you can call me Jo.” I offer her my hand but she slams her face into me and embraces me tightly.
“I want my mother though, I miss her,” she squeaks out softly into my stomach.
“I know,” I say as I return her embrace, “Me too.”
+++
By mid-evening Nicole and I are back in our cell. I ask her how she was taken and what had happened, but she just sits upright on her mattress silently. I decide that will be a conversation to have in the future, so I settle into my own mattress and relax for a few hours until I have to try to fall asleep so that I don’t have to experience the unpleasantness of having that poor man do it for me. I mean, it’s the kid’s first night here. She had better be left alone for a while so that she can figure things out for herself. She also needs to get over the immediate grief of the knowledge that she will never see her family again.
I awaken slowly from yet another troubling, mysterious dream. I look lazily up at the bunk above me, where undoubtedly Nicole is sleeping away her sudden shock. I really don’t want to wake the kid up, so I slowly swing my long legs over the side of my bunk carefully setting them down onto the freezing cement floor.
It still comes as quite a shock to me as my feet touch down onto the burning cold cement. It is as if, somehow, a bolt of lightning has come up from the floor in through my feet and up through my spine. It’s that cold.
+++
It’s wrong. It’s so wrong. The way they lock us in here like animals, giving us these ridiculous monkey-suits that we have to wear every day of our life. To take us away from the people who really love us, and most of all: giving us false hopes and dreams of escaping. We all know we will be here forever, and what can we do? We’re just children. Mere, insignificant kids.
After my second year here, I had already figured out how to pick the locks on my door. The hard part was remaining virtually invisible after sneaking out. Then again, they haven’t caught me yet on any of my early morning escapades, now have they?
I slide with my back against the wall of the dark corridor to stay out of any light that there is. Remaining unseen is vital. I have no destination; I guess I just put my life on the line for some level of excitement to break the tedium of this boring life. Sometimes it’s a food raid. Sometimes it’s seeing how far I can get until security gets too heavy. My favorite of course is sneaking to one tiny skylight I spied near the gate. It is possibly the most dangerous, but it’s more than worth it to see what most people down here may never see: the sunrise.
That beautiful majestic sunrise is the only thing that keeps me going down here. The hope of standing in a peaceful meadow watching the golden rays racing across the vast blue sky. Chasing away the darkness to bring forth the light anew. That is what I dream of. That is what I believe to be the meaning of life, even though I know deep down inside that the only time I will ever be able to experience its godlike radiance is through the smallest skylight, looking up from under the ground.
I am blinded. Immediately I shield my eyes from whatever it is that is causing this, but when I look up, it is nothing but that great ball of fire, the sun. I just sit there for a while. Just to enjoy this rarity of being somewhat happy. It is then that I realize that my birthplace, New York City, is not too far from this awful place.
“New York,” I mumble softly. The city I recall now ever so slightly, the city in which I was raised as child. I know that my family is probably in our cozy three-roomed apartment. Probably talking about the news and other trivial things. They probably don’t even remember they ever had a daughter, and if they did, why didn’t they come for me?
I want to yell, to scream out, so that someone, anyone would hear me. Of course, I do not; that little yell could get me noticed, and I could end up dead. Why must I be trapped down here? Why couldn’t someone else suffer this lifetime sentence of seclusion? And why was the last thing I said to my family “I hate you,” before I stormed off into my room. For now I know I will never be able to apologize or see them again.
I ask these questions almost every day now. I turn around quickly after I hear what I believe to be the hurried shuffling of feet. I stare with an angry gleam, ready to fight to the death. It is the faded blue uniform of another prisoner that stops me from just about gauging their eyes out.
“Geez, don’t be so jumpy. You know if you attract too much attention you’ll get shot around here,” says the stranger.
Ignoring her snide comment completely I say softly, “Who are you?”
“It’s me,” she says.
“Me who?” I say with a humored smile inching across the corners of my mouth.
“You’re quite the joker aren’t you, Jo? But I don’t feel the current obligation to tell you my name.”
“Well that’s just unfair,” I say, “because you seem to be quite the expert on all things ‘me’.”
“Life’s unfair,” she says with a smirk as she skips lightly away. “You gotta learn to deal with it.”
As her light footsteps fade away into the blackness, I realize how fatal the possibilities would be if she ever told anyone about seeing me. Fantastic. I’ve been discovered.
+++
I walk into the small room that Nicole and I share drowsily.
“Well, finally! What took you so long? I was worried that I didn’t have a roommate anymore,” Nicole says somewhat jokingly.
“Just ran into an unexpected obstacle,” I say simply, not really wanting to give away the fact that I had just been discovered. Nicole opens her mouth slightly as if she wishes to say something, but she thinks better of it and turns to go back to sleep. I eventually settle back in, almost in vain, to fall asleep.
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