Michael Soll - Scorched

“Freedom of speech is an illusion,” my father would say when he was intoxicated. “The more power you have, the less you can truly say. That’s the irony, Joseph. I’m the most powerful man in the city, but can I say what I want to say? No. I say what they want me to say. But Carl in Sanitation, well, he can say whatever he’d like to say. He could rant about anything because less people listen and there aren’t any consequences. His words have less merit than mine, but he can say what he truly wants to say. I can’t tell all of Newbury what I truly believe. I can’t say anything outrageous because I’d lose my job. But, everybody listens to what I say. Do you see the irony?”

I closed my eyes and my world widened, my everything expanded.

“Where’s your puppet?”

I opened my eyes, and I felt the earth all around, I felt the weight of the world.

“Where’s Spec?” Bryan snapped his fingers in front of my face.

“He isn’t feeling well.”

“Sure sure sure. I’ve been practicing my knife throwing skills all week. James wants us to meet him there. I’m gonna beat you for sure.”

We walked to our hidden spot where James had set up the dummy.

“What do you guys think about Kaolin?” he asked as casually as he could.

Bryan jumped in front of both of us and flung his knife through the air, missing the dummy and hitting the dirt. “James gotta thirst for savagebait. He wants them animal-like.”

James stood on the mark and aimed the knife at the dummy. “She’s nice and pretty.” His knife hit the dummy right in the gut. “I think I’m going to ask her to be my girlfriend.”

I examined Spec’s axe in my hand. Every groove. Every ridge, crafted so diligently. Every detail was exactly how he wanted, and it was amazing.

Bryan hurried back to the mark, running with the knife in hand. “She’s got them tiny titties. I like em big and squishy!” He thrusted multiple times.

“You’ve never seen a boob.”

“Sure have. Tracey showed me after school one day. She got them big ole titties!”

Bryan flung the knife. Once again, it missed the target and hit nothing but dirt.

“What do you think, Joey?”

I put the axe on the ground and watched it sit still, alone. “She’s okay.”

“Well I think she’s nice.” James took a step on the mark, then looked back at me. “You haven’t even gone yet.” He moved out of the way and let me go.

I held the tip of the knife firmly in my hand. It was sharper than Spec’s axe, but it wasn’t made with the same love and care and affection that gets imprinted on a work of art. I could feel it. I could feel the coldness in my hand. His axe was used for survival. The knife was to take down a rival.

I aimed at the target and I thought about Spec and Cotta and Kaolin. I thought about myself and how unfair it was I didn’t feel the same joy as Bryan and James, that I couldn’t partake in talk about breasts and girls like they could.

I took a deep breath and concentrated on the target and for a moment, I felt this intense clarity. I felt the world’s colors melt into one. I felt the rightness and the wrongness swap meanings. And then, all that mattered in this precise moment in this precise location was that I would hit the target in front of me, that I would pierce its fake skin and hit its fake heart. And so, I cocked my arm back and I heaved the metal forward.

The knife struck the dummy’s chest with unbelievable force, pushing it backwards and propelling a puff of dust into the air.

Bryan and James screamed in jubilation. Bryan yelped in disbelief, “Did you see that!? That was amazing!”

James shook me and lifted me into the air and I could almost touch the ceiling. Almost.

“Now I gotta make a new dummy,” James gleefully stated while slapping my hand.

“I’m gonna do that next!” Bryan aimed his knife and practiced his form while I walked over to the dummy.

I looked down at the lifeless entity beneath me, hole in its chest, dirt dribbling out. If the dummy could talk, would he be happy? Would he be glad his purpose in life had been fulfilled? Would he be content knowing he did his job? Could something ever be happy at its own demise, even if its end was a necessity?

Grains of dirt dribbled onto the dummy’s head, and then, I felt grains of dirt dribble onto mine.

I looked up at the ceiling and that’s when I saw her.

She looked down at me, and for a moment, our eyes connected and we connected in a way that is impossible to explain.

The girl was clinging to the ceiling. She opened her mouth and snarled and I could see the daggers jutting from her mouth, scar across her cheek. And then—

She pushed off from the ceiling and landed on top of me. Her razor sharp claws cut into my chest and I instantly coughed up blood.

I could hear James’ and Bryan’s screams. I looked over at my friends as they ran away, leaving me behind with the girl.

She raised her claw and ripped into my stomach, and I could no longer feel the world; I could no longer feel anything.

Her mouth widened. Her teeth shining.

And then, my world went dark—

It had been eight months since I last awoke next to my father in our cubby, but it felt like a lifetime ago. For so long, I had hoped for the new, but now I find myself dreaming of the old. Painting pictures with my father, excavating with Cotta, and even watching Grub’s magic show in the Grotto.

There was so much I wanted to share with him. I wanted to tell him about our harrowing escape from the hive and my near death and the large civilization that took me in. Sometimes I would lie awake and stare through the ceiling, listening to Joey as he struggled breathing in his sleep, gasping for breath. I would imagine busting through the barrier and propelling myself upward, to the past that is my future. I would walk the burnt rubble and find my father waiting for me, and he would ask what took me so long. We would walk beside enormous rivers, and I would tell him all about the wonders I had witnessed. We would discuss music, the sweet sounds and harmonies we could never imagine. We would discuss the animals and the plants in which they ate. We would discuss couples who only bred with each other and clothes and flowers and Kaolin. We would discuss everything.

I had always hoped for something different, and now that I obtained it, I still wanted more. I wasn’t content, and I was beginning to wonder if I could ever have my desires quenched. I found myself immersed in everything new, but the more I learned, the more I discovered I hadn’t known and the more I wondered what else there was to know.

In the hive, life was simple. I’d wake up and collect and survive. I had so much time that it was inevitable for me to think and yearn. Now, in Newbury, other people collected, other people worked, and my job was simply to learn. And so, I learned. I absorbed it all in and the knowledge changed my thoughts but it didn’t warp my imagination. My inventions had merely become more elaborate. Instead of imagining large insects, I dreamt of large chickens and pigs. Plants that went higher than the eye could see. Music that reverberated deep within my body and shook the very foundation that is me. Sweet scents that lifted me off of my feet and made me immune to my deficiencies. I realized anything was possible because everything was possible.

Today was supposed to be our day to patrol the borders, but Joey left me at home. It was one of the few times he let me be alone, and I couldn’t help but relish the time where I did not have to worry about another living person. I was alone for most of the time back in the hive. Sure, I’d walk to the gathering spot with Cotta, but we always worked at different plots of land. It was only now that I truly understood real isolation. Only after finding myself surrounded by so many people and being beside Joey for most of the day did I understand this feeling of lonely and cherish the moments of being alone.