ASUNDER (I) : tmr newt

08: I'm Smoking

 

8 Ella

There are a group of boys in muted colours, in a muted room. They are around me, but I can only seem to focus on one at a time. Otherwise, it feels like I am surrounded, and like I am being swallowed whole.

It is not an unfamiliar feeling, being swallowed whole. I am used to being on a table for dissecting, ready to be taken apart and digested. The smoke man stands in the corner of the room, writing down with his white pen on his white page. He pushes his glasses, with white frames and gridded lenses up his nose slightly, as he waits for me to act next.

Someone shakes my hand slightly, and when I look up I see their leader, who thinks his name is Alby, looking at me, with a question balancing on the tip of his tongue.

"Where do you want to go?"

I want to go back. Not back to the smoke land where I was before, but back to the place where I was before that. Not the time when I was there either, but the time before that. In the days before the sun rained down and burnt us alive, and the days before the burning in my skull began to happen.

I only know the sun rained because I saw it today, during the tour. It fell down from the sky, igniting the grass and the other girls, but no one else noticed. We were being devoured. Torn apart by the sky and the earth, and when no one screamed I realised it wasn't happening anymore.

Time is only linear because we as people experience it in a linear format. Somehow, I am the only one in our coalition to feel it all at once. It makes it hard to tell what is happening and what has happened. Maybe I am seeing what is yet to come, although I highly doubt it. Things seem unfamiliar, but that is what the present is.

It is the shock of being thrown in an ice bath every time I breathe.

"Hello?"

There are no words in me, they are stuck in the past.

"She doesn't speak much."

That is not true. I would speak all the time if the smoke man wasn't listening. Even when I don't see him, I can feel his ear compressing the Glade. I saw it in a bug today. It was listening.

"What's her name?"

"I don't remember it."

The smoke man seems angry at this, but I'm not lying. He took my name and stole it from me. This is not the first time he stole it from me either, he had already taken it from me before. Shocked me so hard I could not remember up from down, nor left from right, and all that there was, was a room.

All I remember if the sun's rain, and this man, and that room. There is more, and I'm still trying to grasp it, but it is hard with him hanging off of me like a loose thread. It is hard with any of them here.

"We all get a name."

"You are sure you don't remember it?"

I try as hard as I can, searching the clouds that have seeped into the room for it, but the smoke man continues to smile, and I want to beg him for it, but I will not bend to him again. He may be smiling, but I know I've won. He didn't want me here, but here I am anyway. If he wants to fight me, let him fight.

"They took it from me." I tell them.

I don't tell them they took it from them too, because they won't believe me. That, and they will lose hope if they know the truth.

I can hear his pen clicking against his clipboard, as he waits for me to move and react.

"Who are they?"

My mouth opens to speak, but I can't swallow air, it feels like I am suffocating, and my head is about to burst. They are stopping the truth. They should've stopped me earlier, and now I have ruined their whole game. The clock is ticking as fast as his pen is clicking, and they don't have time to mend what we have done.

They didn't account for me.

When I close my mouth, the choking stops. They can stop me from telling the truth, but they can't stop it. Truth has a funny way of always coming out, and I am nothing if not patient in the face of adversary.

"I don't know."

It is a lie, but one that is temporary. If I could get back to the Glade, I could explain it. I could tell them the truth, and they would know what is happening, and everything would be fine. For now, it isn't fine, and I am drowning. They will be drowning too, very soon. All we have to do is wait a few more minutes.

Or maybe longer, I can't really tell. I don't really know. Maybe this all was a mistake.

He takes off his grid glasses, and I know the smoke man has perfect vision. Why does he use them?

"What job do you want?"

They don't get it. The job I pick doesn't matter, because I have joined the symphony seconds before the final movement. There were only two after all, the first one and last one. The first was has been going on since Alby came to the Glade, and the second one has yet to begin. I wouldn't recognise its tune, but I know its downbeat starts with whatever comes next.

I will know what comes next when it arrives. Nobody else gets it, but I get it. All the puzzle pieces are falling into place, but I will not know what it is until it all comes together. The difference between me and the rest is that I know there is a puzzle.

Unfortunately, I am too wrapped up in a puzzle to see the people around me.

"Answer him Ella."

I would tell the smoke man I don't care about my job, but that would make him angry. He gets angry very easy, and I never have the answer he wants to hear. The truth will always be set free, and I am a part of it. It's my responsibility to help these people.

I don't care about responsibility.

"Is she even awake?"

"She was like this during the tour too."

"Will anybody just take her on so we can call this meeting to a close?"

There are face, that are foggier than the smoke man, and I want to call for help, but I can't. He watches, and he listens, but most of all he is omnipresent. There is nowhere to hide from him, not even in the clouds. I am bare for him to stare at, as of now.

"I'll have her."

Soon enough, the world will swallow us up whole again, and I will be lost in the darkness. It has been a long day, coming from a long lifetime of years and minutes all spread out on a blanket. I am swallowing them all at once, and that is not how people are supposed to experience time. If I don't slow down, I will implode on myself.

"If there is no objections, we will do the oaths. Then the Gathering will be closed. Can someone go get that ginger?"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Well, Ella knows more than she lets on. I wonder why. What do you think?

Find the truth until Wednesday.