Butcherbirds

Still Small Voice Of Calm

If he tried hard enough, he could almost picture how it was Before.

Almost, but not quite.

He could see the blustering walkways, but the picture was jumpy, and the colours all wrong, like a badly mastered film.

Imagination was not his talent. That was Jed’s forte.

‘Don’t think about that.’ He scolds himself; he’ll just drink himself into a haze of bad decisions again. ‘Just don’t.’

But his feet don’t listen and he finds himself wandering a familiar path and he can’t bring himself not to walk it right to the end.

He was supposed to be doing combat training, but he had given his tutor the slip and was now wandering the various corridors of the citadel in awe. He was fascinated at the outside world and all that it held. People buying assorted goods, people travelling to and  from work.

He was also shocked. He knew that he was rich, even at his young age. He was going to rule over this place one day. But he didn’t realise the difference between him and everyone else. The further he travelled from the inner complex, the place he called home, the more pinched peoples faces became, the more ragged their clothes were. Children ran barefoot along the corridors and old men sat hunched on broken furniture smoking cheap cigarettes.

But not one person did he see looked sad.

They all smiled.

Before he could contemplate this any further, he finds himself hurtling towards the ground.

He hears a disgruntled shout before he clamps his eyes shut.

He opens his eyes seconds later, to find his cheek pressed to the cold floor. He can feel a sharp ache in his nose, as he shifts and rolls over onto his back. He’s greeted with a scowling face.

“What do you think you’re doing?” The face asks.

“Excuse me?” Seth replies, picking himself up into a sitting position. The scowling face belongs to a boy, around the same age as himself, with eyes somewhere between blue and green and a fringe that flopped almost artistically into his forehead.

Suddenly the boys face looses some of its anger and replaces it with concern.

“You’re bleeding” He points out, gesturing to Seth’s nose.

Seth puts his hand to his nose and withdraws it, crimson staining his fingers. He starts to feel the room spin a little and he clutches the floor with his other hand.

“You alright?” The boy asks, worried.

“I don’t like blood” Seth states, still looking at his fingers with horrified fascination.

The boy looks around himself, a little conflicted, before sighing and holding out his charcoal stained hand to Seth.

Seth stares up at it before taking it and letting himself be pulled to his feet. As he stands, another wave of dizziness hits and he stumbles slightly, but the boy is there to steady him.

“You really don’t like blood do you?” He comments.

Seth just looks at the floor. A piece of paper lies there, scrunched, as though someone has tripped over it. Despite its ruined state, the beginnings of a incredibly detailed picture could still be seen.

“Did I-…” Seth begins guiltily, but the boy cuts him of with a wave of his hand.

“It’s nothing, I can fix it.” The boy smiled, some what too convincingly for a person who just had their art ruined, but Seth wasn’t going to press the matter.

The started down the hall, passing people who smiled sympathetically at Seth’s bleeding nose.

“Anyway” The boy started cheerfully, “Who are you and what the hell were you doing here?”

“Seth.” He replied quietly, “I got lost.”

 “You sure did look lost back there.” The boy comments.

Seth can feel the blood trickling down from his nose and over his lips. The boy notices his discomfort.

“Pinch your nose and put your head forward a bit.” He suggests.

Seth did as he was told and wraps his fingers over his nose, trying not to think about the feeling of slowly drying blood on his fingers.

“I’m Jed, by the way.”

 

He shakes his head, as if to dispel the memory by force. Dwelling on the past won’t make it come back, he knows this, but it’s hard not to hope.

He’s not ever sure if he wants it back. Not all of it anyway. Just the parts when it didn’t matter that the world was going to crash and burn.

He walks past doors hanging off their hinges, people’s lives and their belongings gathering dust behind them,

He reaches one door, a whimper escapes his lips, and he collapses to the dusty ground, bent double.

Tears streaming down his face.