Forgotten Dreams of Eternity: Lost Odyssey: Thousand Years of Dreams

(Short Story -VIII.) *They Live in Shells*

Forgotten Dreams of Eternity: Lost Odyssey: Thousand Years of Dreams

Copyright © 2011 Sky_Knight

(Short Story -VIII.)

*They Live in Shells*

"Stop this! Please, I beg of you! Let me go!"

A young man's screams echo through the emptiness.

No voice answers him.

Crouching in the darkness, Kaim counts the footsteps. Three men have come in. The disorderly footsteps probably belong to the young man. The other two are perfectly regular.

"Please, I'm begging you. If it's money you want, I'll get you all you could ask for on the outside. I promise. I won't forget to show my thanks to you. Please!"

The only reply of the two men who have brought the young one here is the clunk of an iron lock opening.

"No! No! Please, I'm begging you. I'll do anything you want. Anything!"

A dull thud is the sound of flesh tearing, bone wrenching. Someone collapses on the floor. A strangled scream. The clunk of an iron lock closing.

Kaim knows the young man has been thrown into the shell diagonally opposite his own. When you are locked into one of these windowless shells, your hearing becomes acutely sensitive.

"Don't do this! Let me out of here! Please! Let me out of here!"

From the sound of the voice, Kaim can imagine a young man's face with boyish traces: a small-time hoodlum hardly a step above a teenage gang member. When he was still on the streets, no doubt, he used to swagger down the sidewalk, his cunning but cowardly eyes darting every which way.

The two men who brought him here maintain their silence to the end, their footsteps moving off together. The heavy door opens and closes again.

Left alone in the darkness, the young man howls his entreaties for a time, but when her realizes they will do no good, he shouts himself hoarse, spitting out one curse after another until he begins to sob.

"Quiet down there," an old man calls out from one of the inner shells, "It won't do you any good to make a fuss, Time to give up, sonny."

This is the voice of the oldest man living in the dozen or so shells lined up in the darkness.

He was already here when Kaim was sent to this place. It is always his role to quiet and comfort the obstreperous newcomers.

"If you've got time to bawl like that, keep your eyes closed!"

"Huh?"

"Just make sure you keep sucking on your memories of the outside-like a piece of candy!"

Sounds of suppressed laugher come from the surrounding shells.

Kaim joins in with a smile and a sigh.

All the shells in the dark are supposedly full, but few of their inhabitants are laughing.

Most of them have lost the strength to laugh.

"Hey, sonny." the old man continues in his role as adviser to the newcomer, "No point making a fuss. Just calm down and accept your fate. Otherwise..." and here a note of intensity enters the old man's voice, "they'll just drag you out of here feet first."

This is exactly what happened yesterday to the former inhabitant of the young man's shell.

He had been screaming on and off for a day. Then came a day of banging his head against the shell wall. Then nothing... until he was dragged out in silence.