‹ Prequel: Chasing Imagination
Sequel: Martyr's Run ›
Hurricane Heart
Living a Lie
Hurricane
‘And that’s that,’ I whispered in grim conclusion as I rounded off my story. Arjan blinked as if lifting himself from a trance—I knew even before I started that there was no way he’d expected me to go into so much detail, but at the same time once I forced myself to start talking about the Institution, it was hard to stop.
‘I’m...I don’t know what to say,’ he murmured. His dark, layered hair fell across his face and his gentle, hazel-green eyes averted to the floor, but not before I’d seen the sadness within them.
Perhaps it was good that I’d told him everything. It gave us a chance to understand each other; a fairer chance than there had been previously. Maybe if he knew why I acted how I did, he would be more generous to me, and in turn I would like him more.
Or maybe I was just using that as a cover story, and in reality I was just glad to finally tell my story to someone who did not experience similar tales on a regular basis. This was someone who would take the story like the darkest kind of nightmare, and would never forget it. The Dreamers could of course empathise much more, but they would never listen to me telling them about the darkest moments of my life in the same way. They had mostly experienced similar things to me, and would have certainly had other friends telling them the same sorts of stories, and that made them become increasingly desensitised to it all, therefore making my story insignificant.
But I could see already that this dark tale would have a lasting effect on Arjan. He could barely meet my gaze as I listened to his soft, deep breathing, sitting there, motionless on the bed as I cowered in the shadows of the window sill, leaning against the cold glass and bringing my knees up to my chest, taking in the night beyond.
I rolled up the sleeve of my right arm; the wrist on which they had injected every few days for six months. The needles themselves hadn’t been intended to leave marks, but repeated jabbing in the same place so many times over had left a scar; one solid, dark blotch, made up of so many smaller needle pinpricks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Arjan eventually whispered. He was looking at my arm, even though it was unlikely that he could see what it was from where he sat. It was unlikely he’d even noticed the marks before—to an untrained eye it was just a graze, or a spot, or a scar, but so many of the Dreamers had similar marks from the repeated injections. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘The scars of my torture,’ I said, perhaps a little melodramatically, which was unlike me, but I felt it necessary right now. He peered just a little closer before moving back again.
‘The injections?’ he asked. I nodded, shuddering at even the word. Injections were one of the few things that I would admit to being scared of. I had good reason, after all.
I looked at the clock; it was late into the night. But I knew that this talk had been incredibly worthwhile. He knew me, and that was critical if our fake ‘relationship’ was ever to progress. I didn’t want to tell him, but it was necessary. And it was worth it.
Arjan
I could not sleep. Hurricane lay in the other bed, but it was too dark to see whether she had found a few hours of escape from this cruel world. She seemed restful, but that could all be a facade.
Since we had known each other, it seemed that Hurricane had taught me more about the harsh realities of this lie we all lived than all my years of education put together. It was clear now more than ever; now that I’d learnt about Dreamers and propaganda and the Operation and Institutions and the lack of rights these people automatically possessed and poetry and music and dreams, and so much more, that this world was a lie, and it was all so incredibly wrong. Every moment that I had lived was a lie. I could never go back to it, knowing how much these people still suffered.
And now I knew more about the world we lived in, I also knew more about Hurricane. To lose her parents and have to leave everyone else must have been devastating, and suddenly I could see lucidly why she would want to, as she so often called it ‘leave everything behind,’ and become so detached from the rest of the world. And her coldness and bitterness and constant resentment were of course to do with all the torment she had faced. Overall, it just became easier to switch off; to do her job to the best ability, with virtually nothing to fear and nothing except her own life to lose. Maybe the idea of leaving everything behind was not such a bad one after all.
Of course, the fact that she refused to show any love towards anyone made her impossible to get close to, and that made me sad. Weirdly enough, I was growing to like her more and more each day, only in a strange, twisted, topsy-turvy way—as much as you could like a person who had taken you away from your family, pointed a gun in your face on numerous occasions and left you tied up and face-down on the backseat of a car for hours at a time, refusing to give you any reasons why. But she did have her reasons, and she had her rights. And I was willing to accept that, if it at least meant we were a little more understanding of each other, even if all the friendship was only coming from one direction.
Like I had suggested before: it was emotions that could destroy this world; not imagination. And Hurricane was simply the first one to figure that out.
Hurricane
The emotion was overwhelming. As I lay awake in the darkness, it was hard to tell whether Arjan had yet fallen asleep, but I most certainly had not. My mind was swelling like a tempestuous ocean with wholly unwanted emotions, and I couldn’t take it. They were threatening to drive me insane. For all this time, the part of my mind supposedly filled with emotion had been empty, but now it was filled to the brim, and I couldn’t take it, and it was making me crazy. I hated Arjan for this, but would I really change it?
On the one hand, of course I would. I didn’t want him here. Anything I felt for him was supposed to be fake, and it was...wasn’t it?
On the other hand, wasn’t it good just to feel for someone on occasion? My philosophy of leaving everything behind had perhaps made me not just emotionless, but practically an alien to human feelings.
I couldn’t take it, and somehow, despite how my mind raged and churned, a volcano erupting inside my head, I finally fell asleep.
‘And that’s that,’ I whispered in grim conclusion as I rounded off my story. Arjan blinked as if lifting himself from a trance—I knew even before I started that there was no way he’d expected me to go into so much detail, but at the same time once I forced myself to start talking about the Institution, it was hard to stop.
‘I’m...I don’t know what to say,’ he murmured. His dark, layered hair fell across his face and his gentle, hazel-green eyes averted to the floor, but not before I’d seen the sadness within them.
Perhaps it was good that I’d told him everything. It gave us a chance to understand each other; a fairer chance than there had been previously. Maybe if he knew why I acted how I did, he would be more generous to me, and in turn I would like him more.
Or maybe I was just using that as a cover story, and in reality I was just glad to finally tell my story to someone who did not experience similar tales on a regular basis. This was someone who would take the story like the darkest kind of nightmare, and would never forget it. The Dreamers could of course empathise much more, but they would never listen to me telling them about the darkest moments of my life in the same way. They had mostly experienced similar things to me, and would have certainly had other friends telling them the same sorts of stories, and that made them become increasingly desensitised to it all, therefore making my story insignificant.
But I could see already that this dark tale would have a lasting effect on Arjan. He could barely meet my gaze as I listened to his soft, deep breathing, sitting there, motionless on the bed as I cowered in the shadows of the window sill, leaning against the cold glass and bringing my knees up to my chest, taking in the night beyond.
I rolled up the sleeve of my right arm; the wrist on which they had injected every few days for six months. The needles themselves hadn’t been intended to leave marks, but repeated jabbing in the same place so many times over had left a scar; one solid, dark blotch, made up of so many smaller needle pinpricks.
‘I’m sorry,’ Arjan eventually whispered. He was looking at my arm, even though it was unlikely that he could see what it was from where he sat. It was unlikely he’d even noticed the marks before—to an untrained eye it was just a graze, or a spot, or a scar, but so many of the Dreamers had similar marks from the repeated injections. ‘What are you looking at?’
‘The scars of my torture,’ I said, perhaps a little melodramatically, which was unlike me, but I felt it necessary right now. He peered just a little closer before moving back again.
‘The injections?’ he asked. I nodded, shuddering at even the word. Injections were one of the few things that I would admit to being scared of. I had good reason, after all.
I looked at the clock; it was late into the night. But I knew that this talk had been incredibly worthwhile. He knew me, and that was critical if our fake ‘relationship’ was ever to progress. I didn’t want to tell him, but it was necessary. And it was worth it.
Arjan
I could not sleep. Hurricane lay in the other bed, but it was too dark to see whether she had found a few hours of escape from this cruel world. She seemed restful, but that could all be a facade.
Since we had known each other, it seemed that Hurricane had taught me more about the harsh realities of this lie we all lived than all my years of education put together. It was clear now more than ever; now that I’d learnt about Dreamers and propaganda and the Operation and Institutions and the lack of rights these people automatically possessed and poetry and music and dreams, and so much more, that this world was a lie, and it was all so incredibly wrong. Every moment that I had lived was a lie. I could never go back to it, knowing how much these people still suffered.
And now I knew more about the world we lived in, I also knew more about Hurricane. To lose her parents and have to leave everyone else must have been devastating, and suddenly I could see lucidly why she would want to, as she so often called it ‘leave everything behind,’ and become so detached from the rest of the world. And her coldness and bitterness and constant resentment were of course to do with all the torment she had faced. Overall, it just became easier to switch off; to do her job to the best ability, with virtually nothing to fear and nothing except her own life to lose. Maybe the idea of leaving everything behind was not such a bad one after all.
Of course, the fact that she refused to show any love towards anyone made her impossible to get close to, and that made me sad. Weirdly enough, I was growing to like her more and more each day, only in a strange, twisted, topsy-turvy way—as much as you could like a person who had taken you away from your family, pointed a gun in your face on numerous occasions and left you tied up and face-down on the backseat of a car for hours at a time, refusing to give you any reasons why. But she did have her reasons, and she had her rights. And I was willing to accept that, if it at least meant we were a little more understanding of each other, even if all the friendship was only coming from one direction.
Like I had suggested before: it was emotions that could destroy this world; not imagination. And Hurricane was simply the first one to figure that out.
Hurricane
The emotion was overwhelming. As I lay awake in the darkness, it was hard to tell whether Arjan had yet fallen asleep, but I most certainly had not. My mind was swelling like a tempestuous ocean with wholly unwanted emotions, and I couldn’t take it. They were threatening to drive me insane. For all this time, the part of my mind supposedly filled with emotion had been empty, but now it was filled to the brim, and I couldn’t take it, and it was making me crazy. I hated Arjan for this, but would I really change it?
On the one hand, of course I would. I didn’t want him here. Anything I felt for him was supposed to be fake, and it was...wasn’t it?
On the other hand, wasn’t it good just to feel for someone on occasion? My philosophy of leaving everything behind had perhaps made me not just emotionless, but practically an alien to human feelings.
I couldn’t take it, and somehow, despite how my mind raged and churned, a volcano erupting inside my head, I finally fell asleep.
♠ ♠ ♠
Sorry it's a fairly short chapter.