Hurricane Heart

Hurricane

‘Go on,’ Arjan agreed unwillingly, ‘but I’m not promising anything.’

This was a start. I may be inexperienced with emotions, and ready to lock them all back up after tonight, but I could see that I had a lot I had to do to make it up with Arjan. I owed him, big time.

After Heiko had mentioned my father already tonight; my deepest, saddest and most shameful secret that had been buried for so long; I knew it was only a matter of time before I would have to revisit it. Elize had brought that time about. That irritating bitch! I’d never liked her, even as far as the Soulless went.

‘You remember I said that when I was seventeen, my parents went to a Dreamer protest and never returned,’ I began. ‘And you know I said that they went missing, and I have never seen them since? Well, that’s not quite true.’

‘What of the things you say is?’ Arjan said, his words like a viper. The nastiness of them caught me off guard and made me hesitate just for a moment.

‘Sorry,’ he muttered, his curiosity warring with his hate.

‘Anyway,’ I continued, trying to keep the inevitable resentment out of my voice, ‘my mum did, indeed, go missing, but I happened to see my dad one more time after that. When I came out of prison and first joined the Dreamers, I was still in Vilnius; Lithuania. I was about to go on a mission to Germany, which I was then going to make my permanent posting for the time being—we needed to keep frequent contact between the two bases. However, as a newly-inducted Dreamer, our Lithuanian leader wanted to send me on a little mission to raid a nearby Soulless base with a few others first. It sounded like a simple mission. Essentially, it was. I was a pretty resentful character at that time, but I didn’t have this complete aversion to emotion that I developed so shortly afterwards.

‘I should mention now that the other thing that I had learnt about a year before my parents disappeared was that my uncle; my dad’s brother; had joined the Soulless.’ I heard Arjan give a slight gasp. ‘That’s right. He never approved of imagination. It tore my dad apart the day he found out; the two of them were very close. He lived close to us, and he was like a best friend to my brothers and me. I could always sense when my dad was upset, and I bugged him until he told me what had happened. He called my uncle an ‘emotionless, soulless man.’ From then on, the name ‘Soulless’ sort of stuck. The official name of the Soulless is the Machine, but most people know them as Marauders or Masked Ones or Dream-Killers or something. But I always nicknamed them the Soulless, and a few of my friends—Carl and Jonas, for instance—picked it up. Quite a lot of the Berlin Dreamers and the Vilnius Dreamers use the term now. I was quite proud of the nickname.

‘But, back to raiding the Soulless base, we went in, guns out, stealing, shooting, destroying, all that you’d expect. But whilst we were in there, we were cornered by several Soulless. There were more of them than us, but only two had guns, and they were pointed at Dreamers other than myself.

‘And when they saw me, there were whispers, and there were voices, and there were talks. And through the ever-growing crowds of Soulless came a man. My dad.’

‘What?’ Arjan whispered, as though checking he had heard me right.

‘My dad had joined the Soulless.’ I confirmed.

‘What?’ he repeated. ‘But you said—‘

‘I know,’ I continued calmly. ‘And he assured me, on that night, that my mum had fought and died a Dreamer—apparently she’d gone down to the Czech Republic to fight—she’s Czech, you see. I know; it’s unusual to have people from different countries marrying these days, isn’t it? It probably should have hinted to me that my parents weren't quite ordinary. But my dad got the news of her death only a few hours later. But he, on the contrary, was kidnapped and taken prisoner by the Soulless. And Lithuania’s a small world. There’s only one main Soulless base there. And that was where my uncle was.

‘I was disgusted. After everything I had been through—total insanity, being stalked by the Dreamers, loss and regret and vengeance almost too great to bear...this happened. My dad then went on to tell me how his brother had won him over. Love and family had prevailed, and my dad had joined the Soulless for the sake of his brother. My uncle was persuasive; he spoke of Dreamer terrorists; of murders; of wars; of the sins of imagination. And my dad was convinced.

‘But we were at deadlock. In short, the raid on the Soulless base came down to a battle, and most of the Soulless, cowards as they are, either fled or disappeared temporarily to go and get guns. And so it came down to three of us; three of them. The other two Dreamers held the Soulless up at gunpoint. And that left my dad for me.

‘And they shot their enemies. And I was left standing there, my dad staring down the barrel of my gun. And they told me to shoot. And what could I do? Up until this point, my dad had no idea that I had joined the Dreamers. And from every moment onwards from that point, he could be a nuclear-sized weapon to use against me. He would be my weakness.

‘I had no choice. I had to kill him. So I did. One shot, straight in the head, and he fell. Dead.’

‘You—‘ I knew what Arjan wanted to do. He wanted to call me a monster. He wanted to call me something so bad that there were no words to describe it. And I absolutely did not blame him.

‘My uncle came in at that point,’ I continued, determined to finish this secret of all secrets. ‘And I was so broken that I shot him without even a second thought. My aim was good, and he fell, a bloody mess, lying on the ground beside my father. I had murdered my two closest living relatives. And I guess you could say that that’s the true reason why I left emotion and love behind. Killing my dad and uncle, combined with losing my mum and six months in a tough asylum-like prison made me realise that I couldn’t ever love again. Any kind of emotion was too dangerous. It made me weak. So I left it all behind—no love, no friends, and no feelings—in favour of becoming a stronger person. And I was strong. I could accomplish anything I was asked to do.’

I sunk back against the tree, closing my eyes at the excruciating memory. Arjan was silent for nearly a minute.

‘You shot...your father?’

‘And regretted it every day since,’ I finished in a low monotone. ‘But I guess that pain made me stronger, because it made me realise how I needed to live my life if I was ever going to survive.’

‘But you killed him,’ Arjan said, unable to comprehend the idea. I didn’t blame him.

‘Yes!’ I snapped, only now realising how significant this revelation was. ‘And I hate myself for it. But this, right now, is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to say to anyone. I have never told anybody besides the two Dreamers that were there that night—even Carl doesn’t know what I really am. It was much, much harder than just telling you about prison or the Institution.’

‘Why?’ he asked, looking up with intrigue.

I held my hands over my face and peered through them. ‘Because I know that now, for the rest of your life, you'll think of me as a monster,’ I whispered, my voice disdainful.

His eyes met mine. ‘Then why did you tell me?’

‘I want you to trust me, Arjan,’ I said sincerely. ‘I want you to see that this is more than lies. I want you to see how sorry I am for leaving you, and how glad I am that you’ve survived these last couple of hours. I’m here to help you. And I don’t care what the Master or Casper says: if you want to become a Dreamer, then I’ll do everything in my power to help you do that.’

‘Really?’ he asked. ‘You think that?’

It killed me to say it, but I had no choice. I still needed Arjan to trust me, even if I didn’t want our so-called relationship to last. Because, yes, I had crossed the line. I was in love now, as much as I wanted to get out. I loved Arjan. I hated admitting it, but it was undeniable. It just couldn’t, and wouldn’t, stay this way beyond tonight.

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I do think that.’ I moved a step closer and, more unsure than ever as to whether I was acting or doing something real, I put my arm round his shoulder, gazing up into his eyes. ‘Trust me, Arjan. I need to go, but I’ll be back.’

And, though I could see the unwillingness in his eyes; resentment and more than a little bit of hatred and pure, straight disbelief, he agreed.

‘Alright,’ he muttered. ‘But I want to see you at the edge of the park in ten minutes.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, breaking away from him.

‘This is a mistake,’ I heard him murmur.

But it was too late. I was already gone.