Doves and Lovelies

Dauths Meant Death

(POV: Clara)

As I stood and listened to Judy's screams, her voice grew fainter until I no longer heard her. I gripped the edge of my shirt until my knuckles went numb. The person I was yesterday would have walked away, but who I was today, could I say that I changed? The negativity that I kept deep within myself whispered, "Why should I sacrifice myself for her?" In all the stories I have been told, a Dauth attack always claimed its victim's life. Once the Rainsomore Post printed their black and white photos in the newspaper, we acted as though those people never existed. After forty-eight hours, the abductee's family wrote an obituary for the press. The morning news reported the deaths while the city ate their breakfast. Death was normal for us, but again, I witnessed an irreversible occurrence that warped my sense of right and wrong.

I knew Judy would have moved on with her life if the situation had been reversed, but the resentment I felt for her warred with my naivety. How was a person judged? I wondered what the right thing to do was. Should I save Judy or leave her to her fate? My bag felt heavier than it had before, so I tossed it down next to the edge of the alley. I found my phone a few feet behind me, and when I bent down to pick it up, I noticed my phone's screen was cracked. After pressing the home button and then restarting it, the device did not restart, so I slipped my phone into the back pocket of my jeans. Now I would not be able to call any of my family to let them know of my decision. My hands shook as the shock of the attack finally dissipated. The voice said, "How do I defeat a monster?"

The Lovelies planned and wrote all our history and courses. I was not sure that the information I had learned during my Survival 101 class was true. Dauths were the monstrous creatures that lived within the alleys. They were once Unwanted Doves, humans. The Lovelies wanted to replace extinct vultures and had intended for the Unwanted to eat rotten animal corpses. Since we burned all of our dead, our earth lacked the nutrients needed to grow food. The lower castes suffered from a lack of clean water and food. Unfortunately, the experiments failed, and the Dauths were created.

We first learned of them in 2019 when the Dauths invaded the three districts and abducted over four hundred Doves. Panic and chaos enveloped Rainsomore afterward. Our government officials could not answer what the Dauths were. How did they enter Rainsomore? Once we discovered that the Lovelies had created them, we asked why the Lovelies allowed the Dauths to live.

The kingdom placed a ban on all question-asking to control the chaos and uprising, but many feared imprisonment and banishment. The Dauths continued to plague us as they took our family and friends. Still, the Lovelies did nothing to help us. Hundreds of Doves tried to leave illegally from the city in 2019, but the wall electrocuted them. Ash nearly buried the city that year. Ten years have passed since then, and those that remained in Rainsomore taught themselves how to survive. Yet, we all knew the truth. When a Dauth struck, there wasn't any chance at survival.

As I faced the overwhelming and forbidden alley, I trudged forward to enter but hesitated at the entrance. If I did not return within forty-eight hours, they would consider me legally dead. The empty, quiet street behind me offered no hope for rescue. I was the only witness, so no one would ever know of our disappearances. I closed my mind off from the unpleasant thoughts and then stepped into the alley.

A wave of immense heat and smell overwhelmed my senses. Overturned garbage cans laid abandoned with trash and fetid, rotten food scattered along the sooty backstreet. After walking past the putrid, dead dog, flies swarmed around my ears and eyes. I swatted them away and hurried into the darkness. Sweat rolled down my face, so I used the front of my shirt to wipe the moisture away.

A piece of wood jutted out from an enormous pile of garbage that nearly filled up the narrow alleyway. I stepped over broken bottles and cardboard boxes. I reached past a burnt baby doll and a broken air purifying mask. I bent to pull the wood from between a half-melted TV and a warped dresser. It pleased me it wasn't heavy, as the wood was three inches wide and two feet long. The rough plank may have been longer at one point, for the broken end was sharp. A small rat popped out from the vacant space I had left in the garbage. I muffled a shriek and stepped back with the wood in my hands. Before it scurried off into the alley, it knocked down a human skull with a half-decomposed rat stuck within its left eye that rolled across the ground.