by Bō Jinn
Little Naomi quickly developed a fascination for the beautiful, emerald-eyed martial woman who came by every fourth day of the three weeks following. When the bell would chime at the front door, she would rush over to snatch a glimpse of the tall, dark pillar of female splendour standing at the brink. Her eyes would burst with wonder and then droop with a disappointed sigh again when the door would close and Celyn was gone.
Saul resisted the girl’s company for the most part. Something about her scorched like vitriol. At first he had thought it might have been the lasting effects of the neurals, but the bizarre aversion only seemed to get worse as time passed and a horrid doubt began to loom over him … She, meanwhile, seeming to feel that she should keep her distance, did everything in her power to please him. Although, the fact that she had quickly overcome her inhibition to converse openly with her unnamed, unseen friend, he supposed, must have been a symptom of her sudden isolation from everything she ever knew. He could noted her from the corner of his eye, sitting at the kitchen table, twirling around the leftovers on her plate and peering up at him from time to time.
The holoscreen showed a broadcast from the UMC First Region headquarters in New York. The blazoned words “RUSSIAN WINTER SUMMIT” floated past the bottom of the three-dimensional image. The speech had something to do with warzone proliferation, containment and some other new and wonderful legislative measures to render war a more efficient enterprise. But he was not as much concerned with the subject of the latest UMC Council Summit as he was with the woman with the sapphire eyes and chestnut hair standing at the address pulpit.
After a while, the speech faded into the background. He gazed intensely at the woman, at the chestnut hair swaying over the sapphire eyes, with almost voyeur fascination. His eyes stopped blinking and focused in on the rose lips moving. For a moment he thought he saw the lips pronounce: “Ubey menya … Ubey menya…”
“… Saul.”
He roused back with a jolt.
The girl suddenly appeared. When she saw that she had startled him, her face drooped and she bashfully stepped back.
“Ah – s-sorry.”
He sighed a half-relieved sigh.
“Are you tired?”
“Oh. Hmm…” the little face started up. “N-no,” she stuttered, “not yet.”
She lingered, looking down at the floor.
He’d noted that she had a peculiar habit of shuffling one foot over the other whenever she wanted to ask for something. He shifted his weight in his seat.
As soon as he made the slightest move, the girl seemed to take it as permission to scuttle forward without warning, then hop onto the sofa and huddle up beside him before he could say a word.
He recoiled in panic and looked down at the little head on his lap as one would after spilling a hot beverage over oneself.
There was a long and anxious silence.
Once the initial shock subsided, he assessed his passions and, much his surprise, found that they were tempered. His hand slowly lowered and settled over her.
As soon as his fingers made the slightest contact, the girl reached back over her shoulder and blanketed herself with his arm, and the warm little hands gripped tightly, imbibing the affection out of him and her little breaths shivered with a reprieve of affection.
After a very cautious while, he tried to turn his attention back to the broadcast. Every so often the girl would cuddle up just a little closer and eased into the interaction until her fingers gently laced with his. About a minute later, the silvery voice called his name:
“Saul…”
He peered down.
“Saul, who’s that?”
He looked back up at the screen. The media report had since shifted to a zoomed-out view of the Council Assembly House: the crest of the UMC hanging over the image of more than a thousand councillors seated amphitheatrically.
“Who?” he asked.
The girl let go of his hand and pointed an indicating finger.
“Him,” she said.
He followed the line of the girl’s finger, not to the image on the holoscreen, but a book, sitting on the table in front of them. The open pages were yellow with age and they showed a picture of a brawny man rolling a boulder up a steep hill.
“Him?” he asked, leaning forward and taking the book.
The girl sat up and peered over his arm at the open page.
“Who is he?” she asked
“His name is Sisyphus.”
The bright, curious eyes looked up.
“Who’s Siphisusus?”
A vague smile fissured on the sides of his mouth.
“Sisyphus… was a king.”
“Why is he pushing the ball?”
He paused to consider how to explain the story.
“Sisyphus did many bad things,” he said. “He… killed, betrayed and deceived many people. So, the gods punished him.”
“What did they do to him?” the girl asked, her voice timid.
“The gods ordered Sisyphus to raise a large rock to the top of a mountain. But, every day, just before he would reach the top of the mountain, the rock would fall back down to the bottom, and Sisyphus would have to start all over again, and again, and again…”
“For how long?”
“Forever.”
“Forever ever?”
“Yes.”
The girl looked back at the man in the picture, eyes wide and wistful. After a brief silence, she opened her mouth to speak, but only barely managed to squeeze out the first syllable before she broke into a wide-mouthed yawn. She coughed a hoarse cough and rubbed her drooping eyes. She had fallen slightly ill during the last week.
“I think it is time you slept, little one.”
“OK…”
He stood up lowered her gently to the floor.
“Saul…” The girl looked down at her shuffling feet. “I … I don’t like to stay alone at night,” she said, her voice brittle, eyes forlorn.
He gazed at her silently.
“I … used to sleep with Mummy and Daddy.” The celestial orbs shot up with an intense stare and he flinched and looked away. “Where do you think they are?”
“I … do not know,” he said.
The wave of unfathomable dread rushed over him again. When he tried to look back up at her, he recoiled as though her eyes were suns. “Is it OK to leave the light on?” she asked. “…Saul?”
“The flame should give enough light,” he muttered.
Then, just as he was about to turn away, the girl stepped forward and put her arms around him.
His eyes flared and his limbs went rigid as rigor mortis. His breaths became a quivering hyperventilation. He withdrew from her embrace and gently held her an arm’s length away, his hand shaking over her as he receded from her stare.
“Do not … do that,” his voice shook.
The little face wilted.
“OK,” she whispered.
Without a word further, the girl climbed onto the sofa and curled up, burying her head into the bedding. He heard the sniffles peppering her quiet sobs as he walked away.
He staggered into his room, stopping himself on the brink against the door frame. His brow leaked sweat and the heat poured from him, congealing him from the inside out. He besought the morass of disembodied voices swirling and railing in his mind to stop, exhaling agitated nothings between breaths, stumbling out to the middle of the room under the beams of light from the full moon. he ran his hands over his soaking brow and when he looked down, the moonlight shone crimson over his open palms.
He bowed forward, hands on the edge of the wash-basin and lifted his hung head up to the mirror, gazing into the bloodshot eyes. The slider over the drug shelf slid back and the black neural canister sat in the middle, their procurement having been a mere formality to avert suspicion from the Commission. Now, his desperately shuddering hand reached out for the canister. His fingers fumbled when the lid came off. The silver tablets spilled all over the basin counter, the floor a
nd down the drain and he grabbed a handful from the counter and a rigid fist shook with restraint.
No! He flung them aside with a growl, pried off his clothes and stepped under the running water.
The blood would not wash off.
“Go away…” he started to mutter over and over, staring at his own quaking, curled fingers. An ache rose from deep inside his chest and locked painfully onto his throat. Visions started to flit through his mind’s eye: Nova Crimea, the writhing eyes of the dying woman – the sapphire eyes. The screams of the nightmares assailed him in unison, and all of it seemed to come full circle … back to the girl.
He formed a tight, drenched fist and beat it against the wall. Again. And again. With each bang of his fist, the tares on his knuckles opened, until his hand settled against the wall with a final bang, and his fingers quivered loose.
A stream of blood seeped from the bashed knuckles and streaked the shower wall, mingling with the water, and when he regarded his trembling hands again, the blood was washing off. The pain gave him relief sweeter than any pleasure and his mind was momentarily clearer.
A name surfaced in his thoughts:
“Vincent,” he mouthed.
That name…
“Vincent.”
Where had he heard it before?
“Vincent…”
Nothing.
The water stopped running.
The gauze soaked red with blood from his ruined fist. His knuckles crunched. He laid down on the bed, gauze ends loose and unwinding underneath him and his eyes narrowed with each blink until they shut…
Just as he felt sleep about take him, his eyes opened again.
The rush of dread now transitioned to vexation, and then, incomparable fury. The longer he obsessed, the deeper the lines in his scowl furrowed: insomniac eyes bulging like squids. And all the furious obsession converged on the girl.
The girl…
Unyielding torment; the only reward for a spared life.
Nova Crimea…
The screams of the falling dead railed at him. Was perdition the only recompense of righteousness? Malachi was right. Pope was right. There is only martial order. Sanity is the foundation of order. Anything that threatened either was the enemy. The girl was the enemy.
“Enemy,” he mouthed.
He slowly rose from his bed and plodded like a sleepwalker across the room to the open door, over the threshold, into the elongated corridor. Delirious with fury, he crutched his way along the corridor walls, his withered hand hanging at his side. The space around him swirled in a tunneling vortex which narrowed right until he reached the end of the corridor and turned the corner.
There she was, sleeping. Presently, all the rawness of heart hardened away. All feeling muted. Even the pain of the shattered hand dissolved into the narrow horizons of a sole, lethal scope. The edge of the blade was cold against his back as it drew and shook in his grip. He lurked, step by slow step, looming over the little frame, lying on its side.
The blanket slipped off. The serenity of her countenance scorned him.
Gently brushing the hair from over the slim neck, careful not to wake her, he put his still and open hand over her eyes. The eyes always flare open at the verge, he thought, like a last attempt to torment the soul from the beyond. Not this time.
He felt the warm breath against the palm of his hand just before he pressed down. She was in a deep, deep sleep.
Never wake again.
The blade rose over his head, glinting in the light of the moon, and fell like a lightning bolt. He felt the head jerk and a short, sharp shriek just as the tip of the blade tore through, broke through bone, and as the blood sprayed from the fissure and blotted the dream red…
Saul woke.
He shot up, erect, gasping for air, running his palms over his face in a waking fit to wipe the blood away, then stopped, gawking at the fading visions. His face sustained the trembling gape for about a minute before he brought his legs over the side of the bed and leaned forward, convulsing with terror. The sweat dripped off his forehead.
“… Saul.”
His head lurched.
A small moonlit silhouette stood at the open door, swathed in a mantle.
Naomi jolted backward with a start, then whimpered and retreated.
“S-sorry. I heard noises…”
“No,” he pleaded with an outstretched hand. “Do not go.” The hand remained extended, as though summoning her back to life, then slowly lowered and palmed his head. She was alive. Alive… The word repeated in his mind like a mantra, quelling him. He hid his eyes from her.
“I can’t sleep,” she said
His head rose again and his eyes pierced her with their gaze
“Come,” he said, silently. “Come here, now.”
The girl slowly wobbled toward him, dragging the long mantle on the floor behind her. As soon as she came within his reach, he reached out and pulled her toward him.
He held her in a shuddering embrace, and the whispers shuddered from him: “Forgive me ,” he said. The lone tear stung; the first he could remember, and he held her in his arms as if his life depended on her touch.
“Can I stay with you?”
“Yes,” he answered with a rapid nod. “Yes.”
His arms loosened from around her.
Naomi climbed into the bed, crawled up and huddled up beside him.
He put his arm over her and the little fingers grasped his hand and squeezed. She coughed three times.
“Are you alright?”
“Yeah,” she sniffled. “I’m fine.”
She shifted around in the little alcove between him and the mattress. He waited until she fell asleep before he shut his eyes as well. Fear of being plunged into the same place from whence he had woken kept him awake long into the night. And right up until the moment sleep took him, a single thought – a single name – recurred:
Vincent…
Vincent…
C. 5: Day 587
