Hurricane Heart

‘Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.’
-Edgar Allan Poe


Arjan

She was in my room when I awoke.

I was in a hotel, on my way back to my parents’ house in Amsterdam. But on the way I spent a night in Hamburg. Why Hamburg? It was way too far north for it to be the most accurate route back to Amsterdam. But it was simply the right place at the right time. It was getting late, and I was tired from driving all day. I wanted to be in a city that contained actual, proper hotels, which, nowadays, were only found in the biggest cities—and found the first hotel I could. It was nothing special; just one of those simple but perfectly comfortable giant chain hotels; the ones that had taken over all those other ones. I’d never seen a luxury hotel before. Now they were all the same, like the rest of life. That would do for tonight. All I needed was a bed.

I realised I should sleep early in order to prepare for the following day. I would need a bit of energy to get the rest of the way up to Amsterdam and then spend an afternoon with every single one of my relatives, telling them each about my life, my university course, my friends and girlfriend, and everything else that had happened to me in the last couple of months, one by one.

A sharp crack woke me up.

I had been dreaming; I knew it was illegal, but it was hardly an exciting dream, and no one could strictly stop dreams as they came with the unconscious mind. I felt pretty embarrassed, but as long as we didn’t talk about them, the government couldn’t really suppress them any more than they already did. Everyone dreamed occasionally, right?

In the dream, I was walking through a house, and I was looking for something. It was not my own house, and it was not one I recognised. It was far too big, but modern also; with what could only be described as character—not like a house I had ever been in before. I figured that, in the dream, I lived there. In the dream, I was rich; richer than most people became these days. It was a good dream, but it didn’t seem to make a lot of sense. Either way, I kept walking through this house, searching for something, but I had no idea what I was searching for; only that it was imperative that I found it.

And then there were loud noises. A few crashes and bangs, and I began to grow scared.
Only, then I wasn’t dreaming at all. I woke with a start, and it was only as I grew more awake that I was able to comprehend that the crashes and the bangs weren’t from my dream at all. They were real; here in my hotel room.

I opened my eyes wide to see a man standing by the bed. At first I was confused; he was wearing an elaborate mask from straight out of the history books, and a cape over a completely black outfit. I had never seen someone dressed so extraordinarily. He moved closer to the bed; swift like a shadow, leering down at me. It was like a person straight out of history, only so much stranger. Almost like...fantasy.

And then she was standing there. I had no idea who she was, but she had straight, black hair falling along way down her back, complete with artificial, pink bits underneath, like no hair I had ever seen before, and strange, brownish eyes flecked with green and gold, and slightly olive toned skin, and she was very pretty; only in a terrifying sort of way.

I was still too sleepy to fully realise the danger I was now potentially in, but the shock of seeing this strange girl; no older than my twenty-one year old self, thin and dressed all in black, and this man in costume clothing so close to my bed, brought me to my senses a little further. Nevertheless, it was all so surreal that I could almost still be dreaming. Whatever was going on right now could have been a figment of my forbidden imagination.

At first she didn’t take a lot of notice of me. Her eyes locked onto those beneath the mask of the strange man, and, fast as lightning, she swung round, kicking her leg up, colliding with his chin, and he staggered back, crying in pain.

I saw him reach for his pocket, ready to draw what could only be some sort of weapon, which turned out to be a gun, but he’d only half raised it when she had her own gun inches from his face.

‘Get out of here,’ she said in accented English. The man seemed to understand her. ‘Get out now.’ Still the man did not speak or flinch. She readied her gun, and I pushed myself right up against the wall, scared to be in the danger line.

Her gaze turned to me, locking onto my face, her eyes steely and cold.

‘Get down,’ she ordered. I didn’t have to be asked twice; I jumped off the far side of the bed and hid behind it. I was a coward, maybe, but I’d never used firearms before, and I’d never had one be used so close to me either. I still had no idea what was going on. She was just...here.

The gun fired. The bang lasted only a nanosecond, but it was so loud that it took over everything else in the world, and I was momentarily deafened. I heard the man collapse to the floor, the sound of his falling dwarfed by the shot that I’d just heard. Heart pumping with fear, I peered over the side of the bed. The woman’s eyes were fixed on me, as though she had never averted them in the first place.

‘Who are you? Wie heiβt du?’ I asked, first in English and then in German, my voice thick with fear, panicked too much to speak in her tongue. ‘What are you doing in my room?’

The woman turned to me, her eyes still unmoving. She was dressed in mostly black; a leather sort of jacket, leggings, boots, and a t-shirt. Initially, it seemed reasonable enough, considering black was currently being sold in all the shops, but I was pretty sure I’d never seen anyone wear leather anywhere other than on their feet in my entire life. And as for her t-shirt...well, it was covered in patterns.

I was frightened. I was confused. I had no idea who she was.

‘What is your name?’ she asked me, her voice cold and abrupt. She spoke in English, but with a foreign European accent that I couldn’t place.

I decided to answer her in English. I was good at English; or better at it than I was at German, anyway. I had come to Germany to study foreign languages; basically English and German; because the school had said that I was good at languages, and therefore I had to study it at university. They also said that, as German was now the official business language in Europe, I would benefit hugely from studying in a country that spoke it natively. But my home was in Holland. Dutch was my first language, but not enough people spoke that around the world for me to bother addressing her in my home tongue.

‘Arjan van Berkel,’ I said. I had been taught never to lie. Lying was a criminal offence, and right now I was too scared to risk more trouble. But what harm could a name do?

‘Arr-yan,’ she said, trying out the pronunciation of my name, moving closer. ‘Good.’ Instinctively, I flinched backwards.

‘Who are you?’ I asked for the second time. Still she didn’t answer me.

‘Now, Arjan, we can do this the easy way or the hard way,’ she told me coolly, a threatening undertone hidden within.

‘Do what?’ I whispered, growing more fearful as she continued.

‘You need to come with me,’ she insisted.

‘Where?’ I asked, growing defensive. ‘Why should I?’

Her

I had to make a snap decision. Maybe this would work; maybe it wouldn’t. One thing I knew, though, was that he wasn’t going to come easily. Whatever I had hoped was highly idealistic. I was going to have to bring it down to power. Thankfully, I had a lot of that.

I raised the gun, pointing it right in his face. He froze with fear. It was only a stunning gun; none of us believed in unnecessary killing, especially not of anyone weak and defenceless, but he didn’t have to know that.

‘Arjan,’ I repeated. ‘You’re going to need to come with me. Stand up.’

Slowly, quivering with fear, Arjan got to his feet. Still he stayed leaning against the bed, not daring to move an inch forward.

‘Please tell me what you’re doing,’ he begged, all the defence and determination gone from his expression.

‘All will be explained,’ I said coolly. I had to stay detached. That’s what I’d always said. Stay detached. It was the best way of getting through life.

I lowered the gun. Guns didn’t have to be everything.

Without warning, I shot forward and grabbed him. He cried out, struggling and writhing, shouting and yelling, but I had him in my grasp before he could even understand what was going on.

‘Listen,’ I hissed viciously into his ear, my iron grasp never relaxing on his arms and waist. ‘You will walk out of the building in silence. You will say nothing and you will go nowhere other than where I instruct you. There’s no point in calling for help. I have ways of disappearing; ways you would never believe. If you disobey me, I’ll make sure you wish you’d never been born. Understand?’

He nodded his head, trying to turn it from where I held him securely to look at me, but he couldn’t ever quite see.

We marched out of the building, one arm around his, making it look natural. In reality, I had to make sure he wouldn’t run away; not that it would take long to catch him, of course. He'd never seen a gun before, therefore he was terrified of it. The gun would control him. It was just unnecessary effort.

As it was, the precautions didn’t need to be taken. The foyer was dark, as it had been when I had come in. No one sat at the reception desk or in the office, and all the lights and computers were off. There were no signs of life anywhere.

I dragged Arjan a little, something he clearly didn’t appreciate, but was also far too frightened to properly rebel against, and pushed him out the front doors.

I clicked open the car that sat right in front of us; large and black with slightly dark windows. At the sight of a car, Arjan began to get scared. I understood; I’d been kidnapped once. Kind of.

He began to pull against me, tugging and writhing; not caring about the gun. I reckoned he’d realised that if I needed him so badly I wasn’t about to shoot him. Fair play to him.

‘Get off of me!’ he cried suddenly. ‘Let me go! What do you want with me?’

There was no one around, but any shouts were bound to raise suspicions from inside the hotel and anywhere else nearby. I had no choice.

I swung open the car doors and grabbed the rope with one hand, still holding him with the other. At the sight of these, he really began to fight. He was good, admittedly, but I was better.