Hurricane Heart

Arjan

I woke up early, and, lying in my uncomfortable position, I was unable to get back to sleep again. Still I was too uptight with anger, fuming all over, practically shaking with it.

I was still awake when I saw the key turn in the lock and Hurricane walked in, a shaft of comparatively bright light falling onto my face, making me squint and hold up my free hand like a defence.

‘Have a shower, get dressed, and then we’re going,’ she said abruptly, unlocking me from the rail of the bed. I was all ready to get up and hurl more abuse at her, punch her, push her, hurt her, but I didn’t. I don’t know why I didn’t, but I didn’t. Maybe it was proof of the difference between me and her.

She left a pile of neatly folded clothes on the end of the bed, slamming the door behind her so hard it made the walls shake, leaving me in darkness to grope for the light switch, which I realised later wasn’t working anyway.

I left the room, clothes in hand, to cross to the bathroom, and saw her already sitting on the far side at the computer desk, freshly washed and dressed, her hair immaculately straightened. I wasn’t particularly quick in the shower; showering was my one chance to get away from her at least for a while, but when I left, she was still sitting there.

Her face was turned towards the computer screen, but the screen was blank, evidently either off or having not been used for several minutes, her long hair hanging like a black and pink curtain down her back. I clung to the bathroom doorway, feeling the silence that sucked all the air out of the room, for I could see that this was not a normal silence, but an unusually intense one.

‘Hurricane?’ I whispered, feeling the darkness in the atmosphere. All my rage seemed to dissipate, and I was left with little more than an abyss within me. ‘I’m...ready.’

‘Ok,’ she whispered, and I could have sworn her voice was higher, more delicate, and almost seemed to crack on the second syllable.

Still she did not move, so neither did I. I felt it inappropriate to just walk across the room to get some food or turn on the TV, so I stood like stone in the doorway. I stood there for nearly a minute.

If she had not replied, I would be sure that she had not heard me. Eventually, I could bear the tension no more, and I picked up my foot to begin walking across to the kitchen, before she spoke again.

‘It’s ok, I’m ready,’ she said, still with a fragility and a sorrow in her tone that I had never heard before. She spun the swivelling chair round half way, and her large, pretty eyes fell on me, watery and glassy. The normally perfect eyeliner that framed them was smudged, and her cheeks were tinted pink.

She looked away again, embarrassed by how I was seeing her.

If I didn’t know her so well, I would have almost guessed that she had been crying.

Hurricane

We walked in silence through the now sunlit forest. Dark golden beams shot through the leaves, the dust shimmering in their glows like fairy lights. The trees were green, like trees should be, not like the black that they became at night, and I could feel no presence of evil around us.

I had been stupid to let Arjan see me so fragile and sad, and I’d tried my best to wipe it away, but his tentative moves suggested he knew there was something wrong. And, at the same time, I couldn’t bring myself to regret letting him see that I wasn’t completely heartless.

For the first time in far too long, I could feel emotion radiating all around me like something almost unbearable and suffocating. It was like a door had been opened wide, exposing me to the real world. Before, I had been living behind a veil, separate from the rest of humanity, and now it was all becoming lucid and undeniable, and I didn’t like it. The only way I had survived like this was by leaving everything behind, love and emotions included. I hadn’t let myself feel any emotion whatsoever for years. Now, that wound had been prised wide open again.

We drove through Lithuania in silence; almost too silently. This silence was abnormal, even for me and Arjan. He sat in the back, hands unbound, the sun shining through the windows not quite reaching either of us enough to make it warm. It was May now, and central Europe sat under a warm, springtime heat, but today was uncharacteristically cold.

Some time when the tension became unbearable, I switched on the customary music. I heard Arjan tut disapprovingly, but what did I care? Music was unquestionably the best means of escapism, and I was an escapist at heart. I had left behind the harsh realities of the real world in favour of an idealistic Dreamer democracy, and now I was finding it impossible to re-adjust.

It hadn’t even been that long. Less than three years ago, I was what would be considered normal by most people. I went to high school; I was clever enough to be put through to apply for college—they wanted me to study physics; my opinion was ‘no way in hell.’

And that was when everything had gone wrong.

When it all began was when I was pretty much forced to find out more about the rebels. My life was in a downward spiral; I had uncovered too many horrible truths about the world to just go back, and the rebels weren’t planning on letting me go. I began to realise that I liked my world less and less every day, and just one final event was enough to finish me off. I was slowly losing touch with what was real, running and hiding from the truth, unable to face the horrors of planet earth.

And then my life really began.

It was like I had opened my eyes for the first time. I was home. I was finally experiencing something real. The underground was the real world; not planet earth, that place of suffocating boredom; the place where the journey from birth to death was just that: a journey, not to be enjoyed, not to go down as an experience, but necessary; unavoidable.
And I wasn’t able to take it.

***

Latvia went past my window in a blur, and by the middle of the afternoon, we were in Estonia. I decided that, considering there were no outbuildings near to here, we were better off in the city, so, even as evening began to descend, I pushed down on the accelerator and sped towards Tallinn. And I was sick of the underground. Whatever I thought about the real world, the real world still contained sunlight, and endless horizons, and nature, and birdsong. The underground was not without its faults, however comparatively idealistic it may be.

The day had been long, and it was almost pitch black by the time I spotted a suitable hotel in the centre of Tallinn. It was a simple, bog-standard chain hotel—as they all were these days. What was the use of luxury hotels? Of course, people still went on holiday occasionally, but what was the use in staying in a city? All the cities were the same. So what if one of them contained Big Ben or the Eiffel Tower or Red Square or the ancient Colosseum; it was just another city in another place. These weren’t my thoughts; as a Dreamer I was one of the few who wanted to live, and see these sights, and experience new things. No. These were the thoughts of the rest of the world.

I looked round to Arjan. He was watching me, his expression unreadable.

‘Can I trust you?’ I’d asked him the question many times before, but it had never really helped.

‘Uh, why?’ he asked.

‘Because I want to stay in a hotel tonight,’ I said.

‘Er, ok,’ he agreed casually. Clearly, he wanted to as well. Finally we agreed on something.

I got out of the car, and he followed suit, standing a little awkwardly on the pavement, lit orange by the glow of the streetlights. Somehow, cities in their true glory could be quite magical. It was just that the only cities I’d ever seen in their true glory were in movies and photos. The cities of our world now were suppressed, stifled places, devoid of freedom and imagination.

I grabbed food and clothes for tomorrow and a wash kit, stuffing it all into my large, black bag, before hoisting that onto my shoulder and walking inside with Arjan, up to the reception desk.

‘Do you speak English?’ I asked the middle-aged lady at the desk.

‘Er, a little,’ she replied. That was good. It was for Arjan’s benefit that I wasn’t letting on about being fluent in Russian style languages. Like I kept saying, the less he knew, the better.

‘Could we book a twin room for tonight?’ I asked, making sure I emphasised the word ‘twin’ as much as possible. The last thing I needed was to be shown to a room with a double bed and no other options.

‘For...tonight?’ the woman repeated.

‘Yes,’ I said. She began tapping into her computer.

‘Ok, we have a room for you,’ the woman said, smiling at me, looking at, but not necessarily admiring my ‘eccentric’ dress sense; a dress sense that was right on the border of calling the police. If we were in England or Scandinavia, we’d be arrested by now. Thankfully, central Europe was a little—just a little—more lenient on clothes. I’d still taken off all my jewellery, though, and tucked the underneath of my hair into my jacket; pink hair never usually went down too well, and I doubted that Estonia was an exception.

‘Twin, not double,’ I confirmed.

‘Yes,’ she replied briskly, disappearing briefly and returning with a card like a credit card that was to be used as a key. ‘Room 438.’

I paid, took the card and walked towards the lift, Arjan following silently behind me across the deserted foyer. The lift appeared promptly, and we got in, smoothly ascending to the third floor. The doors clanged open, revealing a long, silent corridor, the floor wooden and the walls boring cream, probably more because of the fact that they wouldn’t have to change them so often more than it being an actually nice style. Cream or white walls were nearly always in fashion, simply because of convenience.

‘Room 438,’ I said, repeating the receptionist. Checking the signs, I gestured for Arjan to head left.

We were near the end of this main corridor, on the right hand side. I slotted the card into the door, swiping it out once the light turned green.

Inside it was a typical hotel room; minimal but comfortable. There were two twin beds on the right hand side, both with simple, cream quilts, wardrobes and tables and lamps built into the walls, all in an easy, light shade of wood, and a small, white bathroom to the right. I had to admit; I was sick of yellow tiles by now.

Arjan looked positively elated to be in such a luxurious place compared to where we’d been these past few days, and he wandered around, looking adoringly at the quilts and touch lamps and carpet as though he’d never seen such abnormalities. Seeing him so happy after so long almost made me feel happy.

I perched on the edge of the bed closer to the door, finally able to take my black, lace-up boots off and walk around, and feeling in a better mood than I had done for days.

‘This is my bed,’ I announced, almost managing to smile at the boy who had made things so much more inconvenient. ‘You can take the other one.’