Inkdrinker
Scribe
Sepulcher: a stage enlived by ghosts.
Posts: 908
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Post by Inkdrinker on Jan 12, 2015 17:59:00 GMT -5
They kept me in the dark. Iamo don't deserve light, they said, it would be a waste. They said that light belonged to the surfacers, that it was their birthright. They feared darkness. They told themselves it was a kindness, that iamo prefer the dark. They were only half right. Iamo did not mind the dark, it's true. But we did deserve light. We deserved it more than they di1d. We craved it. For them it was utility, comfort, nostalgia. For us it was treasure, a thing of beauty, a sacred thing. They had so much of it up there, they did not know. They bathed in it daily, taking it for granted. They did not truly appreciate it until it was gone, taken from them. The iamo never had such abundance, we learned respect. They lived in the light their entire lives and yet feared the dark. Why? We had lived in darkness, but we never feared the light.
My tutors always liked talking to me about such things, they always said they admired my passion about the subject, that I would make a good theologian one day, if I studied well. I had hoped one day to join the church, to work in the great cathedral, the one place we always kept lit. We had kept it lit even before the surfacers came, demanding space, demanding light. We gave them what we could and more. We gave more than we thought possible and still they demanded more. Our generosity only drove their greed to new heights. We deserved the light, not them. Not them.
My father, too, was pleased by my passion, my intelligence for my age. He was pleased, but not supportive. He told me I was putting my focus in the wrong direction, that our family had been built upon the principles of the market, not the church. I made him happy when I played with numbers, but my heart was never in it. He loved me, but he wanted me to be a merchant. He did not understand why I could never be, why I did not share his love of numbers, of wealth, of legacy. I yearned for truth, not coin.
My mother understood better, she was more religious than my father. I learned a lot from her. I would wriggle under my silk sheets and she would fill my head with stories while I drifted off to sleep. True stories, historical stories, fantastical stories, parables, and folklore. I liked it more when the story was true or when there was greater meaning behind it. I could never fall asleep to those sorts of stories.
I was lying there, in the dark, on a bed-shelf of cold stone, and I wished for my mother. I wanted to hear her voice, I wanted her to distract me with stories I'd heard so often I knew every word before she said it. I wanted to sleep. But I was too filled with worry, for my parents, for myself. They must have been worried about me too. I could picture their pale faces, red eyes filled with fear and exhaustion, milky white skin clammy with panicked sweat. Mother would be crying, father would be trying to comfort her. Their only son, abducted. I wondered if they had received a ransom note yet. I assumed that's what these people wanted. More of what belonged to us.
We had the money, of course we did. I thought so, anyway, father never really told me anything. I was too young, he said, to be concerned with the financial state of our house. I argued that it was my inheritance, I wanted to know. Soon, he said. But now I worried soon would never come. These men had been desperate enough to kidnap a child, I did not know what they would do next.
One of my school friends, Dimo, had told me a story about a crazed surfacer who ate iamo flesh and painted the walls of his house with our blood. He said his father, a high ranking member of the constabulary, had brought the man in himself. The story had frightened me until I told my parents about it and they assured me it wasn't true. They sounded so sure that it was simply make believe. I could not help but wonder now, what if they were wrong? What if these men had taken me with culinary intentions?
I liked that word, culinary, it was fun to say. Father had taught it to me. He always said it was important for me to have a good vocabulary, if I was going to lead the house one day. I remembered other big words I had been taught, theologian, cathedral, scandalous, financial, delicious, industrious, ambivalent. They brought me some small comfort in my time of need. I kept repeating them, over and over in my head. They became my shield against the outside world and eventually I succumbed to sleep.
“Oi! Four fingers! Get up!” shouted a gruff silhouette in the doorway. I felt sick, robbed of the peace of sleep. The light pouring in from the doorway made my head hurt as my eyes raced to adjust. I had been in total darkness for I did not know how long. It had felt like days. A softer, calmer voice chimed in.
“Calm down, poor whitey's just a kid. Don't you think he's scared enough already?” I curled myself into a little ball and turned over on my side, away from the men.
“Fuck off, Garrett. He's iamo, not like they have feelings, anyway.” He did not know how wrong he was. I wanted to educate him, to break his misconception, but I knew he would not listen to me. Not even other iamo listened to me. I was always being told I was too young. Not old enough to have an opinion, apparently. I resented the sentiment. When I was their age and I had children of my own, I would listen to them, treat them with the same respect as anyone else. I promised myself this.
“If he doesn't have feelings, then he's not going to be intimidated by your shouting. So do me a favor and shut the fuck up, alright?” The shouty man did not seem to like that, grumbling as he was. Were all humans like this? How could they get anything done if they were so prone to conflict? I shivered, feeling a curious mixture of hot and cold. The shouty man muttered something offensive and then departed, leaving me with the one called Garrett. He approached me, slowly, cautiously. Garrett spoke softly. “You alright kid? Roll over, let me see you.”
I did as he said, keeping my arms close to my chest and shivering again. I was still wearing the same light blue kurta I had been wearing when I was abducted. The silk felt good against my skin. My father did a lot of trading in silks, he had taken me to tour a farm he was buying from, once. I didn't want to go at first, but I had enjoyed it in the end.
“You don't look so good, kid. But then again, I never can tell with your kind.” He spoke to me like one would speak to something valuable, but inanimate. “How do you feel?” I spoke their language much better than most of my kind. I was raised bilingual, my father a merchant, my mother in politics, both working with humans often. When the surfacers came down, they brought with them many languages, but most of them were forgotten now. They were all sort of mixed up, each region having its own special blend of new and old. People called this language common, but common was always different wherever you went.
“Hot,” I said, “and cold.” My voice, like my body, was slick and quivering.
“Shit,” Garrett said. “Fever?” It had not occurred to me that I might actually be sick, but his words clicked, it sounded correct.
“Yes,” I said, “I think so.”
“Lie still,” he said, “and don't be afraid.” He took a deep breath and placed his hand on my forehead. Surfacers usually avoided touching us, if they could. We looked too alien, mother had said. We did not meet their standards of beauty. We had no hair, for instance, and baldness was usually perceived to mean age or frailty in their culture. Our heads were too bulbous for their tastes, the slits of our nose and ears were off-putting. To top it all off, I was sticky with sweat.
“I'd say you felt normal, but you lot usually run a bit colder, so... Shit. I'll see if I can find any medicine. Have you eaten?” I shook my head. I had not eaten since I'd been taken. I should have been very hungry, but I wasn't. The fever was robbing me of my appetite. “Fucking amateurs...” Garrett looked angry, but not at me. “Alright, kid. This is nothing personal, you know, at least not to me. I'll see that you're treated better. At the very least, I'll keep Ben away from you. Sit tight.”
Garrett walked out of the room, the door creaking shut behind him and locking. He was my captor, but strangely I did not want him to leave. He had made me feel safer, advocating on my behalf, standing up to the shouty man. Perhaps surfacers weren't all bad, after all.
I rolled over again, to face the wall. I felt small. I quivered and I whined and I wanted to go home. At least I wanted someone to take this fever away, or someone to talk to, or something to play with. Something besides darkness and rough stone walls. I'd be with my parents again soon, these men just wanted money, after all. Right? Right? Part of me was not convinced. I balled my slender fingers into fists and tried to think of more words I liked. Spiraling, momentous, aggressive. They did not help. I could not stop fidgeting, thrusting my legs out or twitching my shoulders. My body wanted movement, but it also wanted rest, it was hot, but it was also cold. A contradiction.
Now I was scared, more so than before. I began to panic, to thrash around and call out. I threw my tiny fist against the wall and it bounced off, leaving me with a sharp, then throbbing pain. I settled down, cradling my injured knuckles. I did not know when I had started crying. Someone banged on the door and told me to shut up, then threatened that if I did not, they would come in and give me something proper to cry about. I suspected it had been the shouty man. Was that Ben? Needless to say, I shut up. I even held my breath for a few moments. I was still, I was silent. I was crying.
When I opened my eyes again Garrett was with me. The door was shut, but he had brought a lantern with him and it glowed warmly, filling the room with soft, amber light. Garrett was sitting in a wooden chair in the middle of the room, facing me. In his lap was a wooden bowl, filled with a steaming and viscous brown mixture, and a wooden spoon. It wasn't real wood, of course, but surfacers liked to pretend it was. Mother had said I wasn't to correct them, that it was rude, that I should let them delude themselves. It was a harmless lie, she said. What difference did it make whether it had come from a surface tree or the flesh of a cicitern mushroom?
“Eat,” he said, placing the bowl and spoon on the floor in front of the shelf I was lying on. “There are some mushrooms in there that should help with your fever. They don't taste very good, but you probably won't notice them, mixed in with all the others like they are.” I whimpered as I sat up and swung my legs over the side of the stone bed. My feet did not touch the ground. I reached for the stew halfheartedly, knowing that if my feet were not touching the floor, there was no way my hands could. But I made the gesture anyway, with a quiet high-pitched whine. I could think of nothing better to do. I was very hungry at this point, even through the fever, which I suspected had gotten worse.
“Oh, um, sorry,” muttered Garrett. He walked back over and picked the bowl up, putting it into my waiting hands. Garrett sat back in his chair, slouching and crossing his arms. He was watching me, but he didn't look very interested. I began to shovel spoonful after spoonful of the hot mushroom stew into my mouth, but it was slow work with shaking hands. Garrett looked a little disturbed, he must have never seen an iamo eat before. Surfacers didn't like the way our mouths opened.
Instead of just two sections, we had three: a top and two smaller, roughly triangular bottom sections, creating a T shaped seam. We also had three tongues: one like the surfacers; big and flat and anchored in the back of our mouths, and two smaller, thinner, more wiry tongues sprouting symmetrically and 'backwards' facing from the inner center of the triangular bottom sections. The bottom two sections usually worked in sync, but they didn't have to.
I was surprised at how much I ate, devouring everything in the bowl and then licking it clean with my flat tongue. Garrett tried to look stoic, bored even, but he could not completely hide his disgust.
“Thank you,” I said. I was nothing if not polite, thanks to my parents. I made them so happy with so little effort. To just not behave badly was apparently a great achievement, if you were a child. There had been times when I acted out, of course, but usually it was just easier to keep people happy. They liked to show me off to other parents. Look how he isn't breaking anything on that shelf.
“Yup,” said Garrett, clearing his throat. He got up and took the bowl and spoon from me, looking at me a little bit different than he had before. I did not like this new look. Before, Garrett had made me feel safe. Now, he only made me worry more.
“Can you... Leave the lantern?” I looked at him the way I had learned to to get what I wanted: with big, wet eyes. Garrett shook his head, swirling his tongue around the inside of his mouth.
“You know I can't do that,” he said, sounding somewhat sympathetic. “You can have it for as long as it takes me to put these dishes away.” With that he walked off, the door swinging open when he knocked. I treasured those few moments. That time alone with the light. I was praying. I prayed that I would see my family and friends again. I prayed I would live to see the birth of my first sibling, for my mother had been with child when I was taken. I prayed these men would not abuse or eat me. Mostly I prayed for freedom.
I was losing my grasp on time, not being able to hear the church bells ring every hour. I slept, I woke, I ate, I started to feel better. My fever was almost gone and strangely, part of me missed it. It had kept me relatively sedentary, not happy, but content enough to lie around in a dark room and do nothing. Now I was no longer shackled by illness, I wanted to move, to run around. It was unusual among my people to experience claustrophobia, but I couldn't help but feel the walls closing in a little bit more every time I blinked. I wanted out.
I ran around the room in tiny, little circles until I could run no longer, then I slumped down against the bed and pulled my knees close to my body, sobbing. Restless, exhausted, confined. Garrett would come to check on me from time to time, but there was always a lot of arguing from the other side of the door when he came or went. The other men apparently did not like him visiting me.
Some time later I was trying and failing to sleep, my body pressed against the cold stone bed-shelf, when I heard the door's usual creak. I did not turn to look who was there, it was Garrett, it had to be. No one else ever visited me. He said nothing and I did not feel compelled to break the silence. He crept closer, perhaps he had brought food. I was not hungry. Then his hands were upon me and I knew I had misjudged him. This was not Garrett, this was someone else. Someone who was trying to strangle me. I struggled against him as best I could, but he was bigger, older, stronger.
“Fuckin' bug-eyed little creep,” he said, “not worth the air you breathe.” It was the shouty man, the man called Ben. “Stop squirming.”
Fear gripped my mind, I was going to die, I knew it. I was going to die without seeing my parents again. They probably wouldn't even see my body until it was long unrecognizable from decay. I gasped for air, tried to scream or shout or make any noticeable noise at all.
“What the fuck?!” shouted a familiar voice. Ben did not manage more than the G consonant before Garrett struck him in the face. Ben relaxed his grip on me as Garrett pummeled him into submission. Blood dripped onto my kurta, teeth fell to the floor. Garrett gripped Ben by the few wispy hairs on his head and slammed his face into the edge of the stone bed. I did not think Ben would be getting up again.
I drew panicked, raspy, pathetic little breaths between sobs.
“Screw the money,” said Garrett, “I'm getting you out of here.”
He scooped me up and leaned my shaking body upright against him, supported by his right arm, his left against my back. I wrapped my arms around his neck and buried my head in his shoulder. When we walked out of the room, into the light, voices cried out. Men and woman, confused, outraged.
“What are you doing?!”
“What happened to Ben?!”
“That kid's worth a fortune!”
“He's ours, not yours!”
Garrett shouted back at them, his voice rough and scratchy, primal and enraged. He scared everyone, even me, but I did not let go. The other bandits backed down. They did not wish us well, but they backed down, unwilling to stand against him after he described what he had done to Ben.
Once we were outside I could finally hear the bells of the cathedral ringing out. Four times, it was early morning. Garrett was moving in the direction of hightown, I suspected he knew exactly where I lived. He was bringing me home. My prayers had been answered.
Garrett crept into my family manor silently, with practiced ease. He knew exactly where my room was. I suspected he was the who had snatched me up in the first place. I didn't really care anymore.
He slowly pushed open the door to my room, surprised to find it light inside. My mother and father were kneeling on the ground by the foot of my bed, comforting each other and muttering prayers by candlelight. There were hundreds of little candles scattered over every surface in the room, glittering and glowing.
My parents turned when they heard the door open. Garrett stood slack-jawed with me in his arms.
“Akaj...” said my mother, unable to believe her own words. It was good to hear her voice again, to hear my name.
“I'm sorry,” said Garrett, “so sorry.”
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Post by Kaez on Feb 2, 2015 9:47:25 GMT -5
They lived in the light their entire lives and yet feared the dark. Why? We had lived in darkness, but we never feared the light. Already, I'm sympathetic to the protagonist. This opening section was -really- successful. You built your story up slowly and every time you introduced a new element, you took the time to explain what you were talking about and how it was relevant to the protagonist and the situation at hand. Everything I read just now had a purpose to the progression of the story and its characters. Which is so refreshing. I like how you tell the reader about the Iamo by pointing out the things he doesn't understand about humans. It's super intuitive and natural. Garrett's a cool secondary character. This isn't a black-and-white story and that makes me care about reading it further. I don't know how it's going to end. Hahahaha. Haha. This kind of complexity is awesome. It adds a realism that simply can't be had without it and I don't see it nearly often enough. It's believable and comprehensible and makes the story more interesting. Nicely done. So I've only got two complaints about this story. The first is that I think the bit about the mouth and tongues could have been left out. "They didn't like the way our mouths opened," is enough to help complete the image. Instead, I've got a super-detailed view of the protagonist's mouth... but a much vaguer visualization of everything else, which feels off. But primarily, the ending feels so rushed. You could've expanded his journey outside, his seeing his home and parents again, to -so much- more depth than you did. Feels like you just kind of got sick of writing it and wrapped it up really quickly and I wish you hadn't. Go back to the end of this one and flesh it out with a paragraph or two and you'll end up with a genuinely really good story on your hands. Even if Taed had written, you may still have won. This story's genuinely very good. |
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