Tranquility Lost

by J. L. Doty

  Timor shook his head frantically. Phillan’s eyes continued to roll about without focusing.

  Cranoch leaned close to Mathius and said, “You have to ask me real nice-like, like a good little boy.”

  Mathius said, “Water. Please.”

  Cranoch rubbed his chin and considered Mathius thoughtfully. “That’s better, but still not good enough. For such an impolitely worded request, I shouldn’t give you any water at all. But I’m feeling generous. And in any case, it would be a shame if you died, and I do want to keep you alive for a bit.”

  While the two men continued to support Mathius, Cranoch removed Timor and Phillan’s manacles. Then to Timor he said, “Go get Mathius a cup of water.”

  Mathius breathed a sigh of relief as Timor scurried away across the grounds of the compound. While they waited Mathius couldn’t keep his eyes open, and though he tried to fight it, sleep pressed at him and his chin bobbed toward his chest. Fire lit up the side of his face as another open-handed blow rocked his head to one side, and he cried out.

  The older man said, “You’re not paying attention to your elders, Mathius, and that’s very rude.”

  Cranoch slapped him again, lighting up the other cheek with a fiery burn.

  Mathius saw Timor coming their way from across the yard, carrying a small metal cup filled to the brim with water sloshing over its sides. The boy stopped in front of Mathius and extended the cup, but Cranoch said, “Timor, did I give you permission to give the cup to Mathius?”

  Timor’s eyes widened, and he jerked the cup away from Mathius toward Cranoch, spilling some of the water. He held it up to the older man and said, “I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

  Cranoch reached out and took the cup from the boy, smiling and speaking kindheartedly. “You’re forgiven this time, Timor.” He shook a finger at the boy in a kindly, parental way. “But don’t make that mistake again.”

  The older man looked at the water in the cup and shook his head sadly. “Now that’s just too much water for our boy Mathius here. He hasn’t yet asked politely enough to get that much water.”

  Cranoch held the cup out at arm’s length, then slowly tilted it to one side. Mathius’s world centered on that cup, and as the water cleared the edge and drizzled out of it, he cried out, “No, please no.”

  The older man smiled and righted the cup, halting the stream of water. He had dripped a small puddle onto the dust of the dry ground, and Mathius watched longingly as the soil slowly absorbed it, leaving nothing but a darkened spot of dirt.

  Looking into the cup, Cranoch said, “Now that’s the right amount for our boy Mathius.”

  He extended the cup toward Mathius, who tried to reach for it, but the manacles kept his hands above his head and stopped them far short of the cup. Cranoch pressed the cup to Mathius’s lips and upended it in one quick motion. Mathius gulped and got one, small, blessed mouth-full, the rest of it splashing across his face and down his neck. He marveled at the glorious, cleansing taste of it.

  “One hour,” Cranoch said. “You get one hour to sleep. I want you rested so you can work hard for us.”

  They released Mathius from the manacles bolted to the wall, locked him in another set of cuffs, tethered him to the spike in the ground, and left him there.

  ••••

  Something crashed into Mathius’s ribs, sending a shock of pain through his chest and waking him. He cried out and sat up, squinting at the bright sun now just a bit higher on the horizon. His one hour of sleep had come and gone all too quickly.

  Cranoch and another rebel stood over him. The other fellow was younger than Cranoch, but considerably older than Mathius. He said, “He’s a pathetic piece of shit.”

  “Yah,” Cranoch said. “But he’s got a strong back, or at least he’d better have. Time for him to earn his room and board.”

  Cranoch leaned down and unlocked Mathius’s manacles, then straightened and said, “Put him to work.”

  With that, Cranoch turned and walked away, leaving the younger man in charge of Mathius. The fellow lifted a boot to kick him again, but he jumped to his feet and backed away from the man. “Follow me,” the rebel said.

  The man led Mathius across the back of the compound, handed him a pick and shovel, pointed to a spot on the ground and said, “Dig.”

  Mathius asked, “How deep, and how big?”

  “Just dig,” he said. “I’ll tell you when to stop.”

  A covered porch had been built onto the back of the mansion at the center of the compound. The rebel left Mathius with his pick and shovel, walked to the porch and sat down in a chair in the shade. He shouted to Mathius, “I told you to dig, god damn it. So get to work.”

  Mathius sweated under the hot sun, digging holes he learned would be used to anchor fence posts for some sort of enclosure. His brief hour of sleep had reenergized him a little, but he quickly weakened and grew light-headed. Only then did his supervisor allow him the smallest amount of water, and he seemed to begrudge Mathius every drop he consumed.

  About mid-day the man fell asleep seated in his chair. Mathius snuck over to the water barrel, quickly drank his fill, and returned to the half-finished post hole he’d been working on. He sat down to rest for a moment, and fell asleep there. The rebel slapped him awake.

  At the end of the day Cranoch escorted him back to the manacles bolted high on the outer wall of the outbuilding and locked him there. That night they used a longer chain to tether Timor and Phillan to the spike in the ground. It allowed them to stand up straight and reach Mathius.

  Cranoch told the two younger boys. “When Mathius hangs there by his wrists, it looks like he slowly stops breathing. I don’t want him to die yet, so you two boys take turns making sure he doesn’t. Because if he does die, I’m going to be real unhappy with you two.”

  Mathius spent another night hanging by his wrists, leaning against the wall, hanging, leaning, hanging, leaning. At one point Timor and Phillan had a heated argument over whose turn it was to get up and wake him, and their raised voices did the job. And because he’d stolen extra water that day, that night he had to pee. With his hands locked above his head, he couldn’t think of any other way of accomplishing the task, so he simply pissed his pants.

  The next morning Cranoch again granted Mathius one hour of sleep, then turned him over to the other rebel to dig more post holes. And again he managed to steal a little extra water, and a little extra sleep, as long as he didn’t mind being slapped awake by the man supervising him.

  By the third day in the rebel compound Mathius was starving, and desperately wanted food as well as water. When he asked for some of the gruel they fed Phillan, Cranoch said, “He wants food now. That is rather presumptuous of you, Mathius. You don’t even earn the water we give you, let alone some of our precious food. What are you going to do to convince me I should give you food? Tell me that, Mathius.”

  Mathius said, “I’ll do anything, anything, please.” In that moment the realization struck him that he meant every word. He would do anything to make Cranoch happy. “Just tell me what I have to do.”

  “If we give you food,” Cranoch said, “then you have to work that much harder. And someday soon, you’re going to have to show me you can be a good boy.”

  “Anything,” Mathius said. “Anything.”

  That night Cranoch allowed Mathius to drink one small bowl of the watery gruel. Mathius thought that after starving for several days, anything would taste wonderful, but not that gruel. It truly had no taste at all, though it did fill the void in his gut, even if only just a little.

  ••••

  Each day turned into each night, and each night turned into the next day. Mathius lost count of the nights, always locked in the manacles bolted to the wall of the outbuilding, standing, leaning, hanging, standing, leaning, hanging. He learned that if he stood close to the wall, it produced a little slack in the plast tether between the manacles. When he started to drift off to sleep and fell away from the wall, the tether snap
ped tautly, waking him before he dropped completely. In that way he stood for hour after hour after hour. But even then, exhaustion always won out, and Timor or Phillan woke him, hanging from the manacles, his knees just off the ground.

  He lost count of the days digging post holes and occasionally stealing extra water when the man supervising him drifted off to sleep. He coasted through the days and nights in a semiconscious state of delirium, and no longer cared if he lived or died. He swallowed his bowl of gruel, suffered through the night manacled to the wall, and worked through the next day. He didn’t think of the days and nights ahead; in the evening his future consisted of merely that one night, and in the morning it consisted of merely that one day. He was always careful to beg for his food and water, and learned that making Cranoch happy was the only thing that mattered in his universe.

  Then one night, when he returned from digging post holes, instead of locking him in the manacles bolted into the wall, Cranoch manacled his hands in front of him.

  “I’m being nice to you,” Cranoch said. “Hands cuffed in front so you can eat and hold your dick when you piss; god knows you stink like piss. But step out of line, and that’ll change. Now sit down.”

  Mathius lowered himself to the ground next to the two boys, and like them sat with his legs crossed.

  Cranoch leaned over him and pointed a finger at his nose. “Don’t move until I tell you to. In fact, don’t even think about moving, because I’ll know what you’re thinking even before you think it.”

  That night the guard looped the chain through the manacled arms of all three boys, then locked both ends of it to the metal spike driven into the ground. Mathius tried to count the days since he’d been kidnapped by the rebels; certainly more than one tenday, probably less than two, but he couldn’t be certain.

  He slept on the ground next to Timor and Phillan. The air had a light chill to it, so they huddled closely to keep warm, though Phillan did object a bit to the smell of urine that permeated Mathius’s clothing. Relieved that his ordeal had come to an end, Mathius fell asleep quickly, vowing he would make Cranoch happy.

  3

  Never Forget

  CRANOCH AWOKE THEM in the morning, and for the first time in a long time, Mathius could again think with a little clarity. The older man removed their manacles, and another rebel led Timor and Phillan away. Standing there alone with Mathius, Cranoch said, “Now we start your training, kid.”

  Mathius had no desire to learn to be a rebel, but knew he had no choice. “Okay,” he said, “what do we do?”

  “This,” Cranoch said, and without warning, the fellow punched Mathius in the nose.

  A lance of pain brought tears to Mathius’s eyes. He cried out and staggered back as blood streamed out of his nose and dripped from his chin. “Why did you do that? I didn’t do anything.”

  “Training,” Cranoch said. “And you didn’t go down. That’s good. Phillan laid on the ground and cried like a baby when I started his training.”

  Cranoch drew his fist back, Mathius cringed and covered his face with his hands, so Cranoch hit him in the gut.

  Mathius doubled over as the air rushed out of his lungs.

  “Don’t fall over,” Cranoch said. “Show me how long you can stay on your feet.” Cranoch raised his fists. “And show me you can fight.”

  Mathius raised his fists.

  Cranoch danced lightly on the balls of his feet, then stepped in for a jab. Mathius tried to block it, but Cranoch dropped into a crouch, spun, swung his leg out and swept Mathius’s feet out from beneath him. Mathius hit the ground hard on his back and again the air whooshed out of his lungs.

  While he lay there trying to breathe, Cranoch stood over him and shook his head sadly. “And don’t ever fight fair.” Cranoch kicked him in the ribs. “Remember, only cheaters win.”

  Cranoch stepped back a pace and said, “Now get on your feet and raise your fists, because the longer you stay down, the harder I’m going to be on you.”

  Still gasping and trying to catch his breath, Mathius struggled to his feet and raised his fists. Cranoch danced around him and hit him again and again. Mathius staggered about trying to block the blows, but the older man seemed to anticipate each move he made, and all the punches connected painfully. Cranoch beat him until he fell to his knees, his head spinning, and tears streaming down his cheeks.

  “And I don’t like slobbering and crying,” the older man said, then cuffed Mathius in the side of the head, knocking him down onto his shoulder.

  “When you cry like some baby, you get even worse.”

  Cranoch kicked him in the ribs a few times. Mathius lay there, clutching at his sides, hoping the kicking had stopped, wishing the man would be more explicit about what he needed to do to make him happy.

  “Get up,” Cranoch said, a hard, angry edge to his voice. “If you don’t get up now, I’ll continue kicking you until you do, or until you’re dead. I got no problem kicking you to death, you little turd.”

  Mathius struggled to his feet and could barely stand. The rebel who had supervised him while he dug post holes joined Cranoch and stood beside him shaking his head sadly. He grinned and said, “He’s still a pathetic piece of shit.”

  That day they put him to work unloading crates from a truck. He spotted a young girl on a balcony on the second floor of the mansion, and he thought he’d seen her before. He paused for a moment and struggled to recall where and when, and he might not have been able to do so had he not remembered the look in her eyes. More than anything, the vacant, empty desolation through which she viewed her surroundings brought the memory back to him. She had stood on that same balcony that first time he’d walked onto the grounds of the compound. The look on her face had not changed since that day.

  Every morning Cranoch started Mathius’s training with a beating. Mathius suspected the older man pulled his punches to some degree, and not because of any kindness or sympathy; they needed Mathius fit and able to work through the day. He dug holes, scrubbed floors, and sweated over a tub of water to launder the clothing of whoever lived in the mansion. One day they had him unload heavy crates of supplies from a truck. The boxes were marked with words in some foreign language that he couldn’t read, but he recognized a graphic symbol stamped on each as the mark of the Kelk Supremacy. On another day he unloaded crates that bore the starburst insignia of the Commonwealth, and those he could read. The Commonwealth supplied them with food and medicine, while the Kelk supplied them with something else.

  Mathius had never seen a Kelk, but as a child had heard stories of strange beings with dark-blue skin and demonic red eyes. The tales told of blue-skinned monsters with forked tongues and scaled lizard tails. They stole children in the night, and cooked them for dinner. But as he had grown older, before the unrest on Novalis III had begun and he was still attending school, he had read that they were actually a different race of human.

  Mathius recalled the days he’d spent in class with some fondness. His teachers had told him that the Kelk had been isolated on a single planet during an interstellar contraction, and some sort of disaster had produced societal and technological deterioration. Then five hundred years later they reemerged as an interstellar civilization. But centuries of insulated evolution had produced a race adapted to the local planetary and climatological conditions. The Kelk were human, not a separate species, and could interbreed with other races of humankind. But they exhibited exceedingly pale white skin that had a slightly bluish cast to it, salt-and-pepper gray hair, and bright red irises. Mathius had seen a few pictures, and now knew that their eyes did not appear demonic, as the childhood stories had portrayed them, though he didn’t know which other parts of the stories to believe.

  At random intervals Cranoch marched the three boys down to the river, and made them wade into the water fully dressed to clean their clothes and their bodies at the same time. They were then forced to wear their clothing while it dried out, and on cold days that meant a lot of shivering and chattering teeth.
Occasionally, Mathius spotted the young girl on one of the second floor balconies of the mansion, usually in the company of one or more scantily clad women. The women talked with each other, laughed and smoked tobac sticks. The girl just stood at the balcony rail and stared out over the city with those vacant eyes. The days turned into tendays of mind-numbing toil, and each night he returned to the chain to drink his gruel and sleep.

  Slowly, through trial and error, each morning during the beating administered by Cranoch, Mathius learned to block many of the older man’s punches, but not all of them. Then one day he blocked a punch, and out of sheer frustration he threw a punch of his own. Cranoch side stepped it easily and hit Mathius in the gut. As his abdominal muscles spasmed, Mathius fell to his knees gasping.

  “Good,” Cranoch said. “Good. You’re learning. It took you a while, but at least you finally figured it out.”

  Mathius didn’t understand what was good about that, but that night his bowl of gruel contained a few bits of meat. He savored them, and to make them last as long as he could he tried to chew them slowly. When he finished, hunger still gnawed at his gut.

  One day, after his morning beating, the guard overseeing him marched him to the mansion and into the front door. The man showed him to a room where three men were busy at some sort of construction, then he led Mathius to a pile of lumber behind the mansion. Mathius spent the day carrying the lumber to the room under construction and piling it there. He could only lift three or four boards at a time, so the stack of lumber in the back yard dwindled slowly as the day wore on.

  On one trip, after he dumped his load of boards in the room, when he stepped into the yard behind the house, he found the young girl standing near the pile of lumber. She stood unmoving and staring at it with her vacant, empty eyes. But as he approached she looked his way, and a tiny spark of life appeared in her face. She had pretty gray eyes, light-brown hair that hung past her shoulders, and he smelled some sort of sweet perfume in the air. She wore that sheer gown he’d seen that first day when entering the compound, and he tried not to stare at her small breasts and the dark shadows of her nipples.