Save Them

The Sel CA train comes once a quarter. The Sel 28 train only comes once every 5 years. I feel it from my sleep level. The ground shaking under my palette. The cemented ground is hard and colder, for longer periods of time these days. The once welcoming breeze of a new season is NOW stale and mean. The new color of life is dark brown fecal matter and sewage green with the touch of a deep red death. I have repressed memories of my short-lived childhood of a warm bed, hot peppermint and lavender tea, and a cozy cedarwood fire that fragranced all 7 rooms of my home. Doesn’t do me any good anymore. To relive it. It is not good for survival. I’ve had to teach them the ways of now. Sometimes they ask Sailor and I what it was like before…the Vast Light. It pains me to hide the memories from them of the life we loved and prospered in before. But I must. We must stay together, and we must survive. I was given a mission and I am going to see it through.

The rodents scurrying into their holes as I can see the vibrations evidenced by the flickering pebbles. The Sel CA train feels differently than the 28. Not only in their engine choices but also in their purposes. The people begin to line up for tickets just before sunrise. The healthier ones start traveling to the station the night before as they can best protect themselves from the Durks and the Red Fog. The Durks don’t care about your age, health, status, family, or even sometimes their own. They are not to be controlled. The Righters have given them domain after sunset because they want to live and to be left alone. Most of the Night Guards just look the other way.

The Righters are….always ‘right’ hence their name. I recall their campaign slogan read “What’s wrong with always being right? Nothing. Make the Right decision.” Can you guess what the opposing group was called? Yep. The Skeptics. They resided on the other side of the mountain, across the Great Sea. The duty of the Righters is to write and update the laws, mostly as they pleased to what best suited them and their lifestyles. Every decision had to be brought before them in a less than civil proceedings which nearly always ended in the requests of the people being denied. They also determined when, where, and how often the Red Fog would be released. Being a Righter is a lifetime commitment. Once you are in, you are in. Resignation=Death and of course ‘they’ take care of that themselves. I guess that’s why dad fled..and for other reasons I presume.

It is best to do your business in the Polis between the hours of 6am and 6pm. Time is different now. The sun is duller, the air is heavy, and the rain feels like piercing needles penetrating through even the thickest of coverings. Work is nearly nonexistent for those who reside on the Outskirts. Two-hour journey into the Polis. The Lame rely on the charity of the Doers. We must find and sanitize gently used medical supplies and abandoned food that is edible for at least the next 2-4 days. While I enjoy working directly with the Lame, I am better with my nose. A gift I did not learn to appreciate until now. That is how I discovered the Red Fog.

3103 was the year, my stepmother had just given birth to twins. My father and my older brother, Sailor, were away at the Polis work camp and I was to stay home to help with the birth. Help meaning, waiting anxiously outside of the bedroom for what felt like days. With my face pressed against the cold tiled floor and eyes straining to see underneath the door, I followed the shadows of the nurse’s feet, floating around the bed.

There must have been three or four of them that pushed passed me and shooed me out of the room when my father rang for them. In an authoritative, curt, and raspy tone, the stout, wrinkled graying one said to me, “Wait out into the hall, child. Your eyes are far too young.” “But I’m 9 and a half and she wants me here.” I held a crumpled piece of paper in my fist with pools of salted water quickly filling my eyes. I tried to get those words out as clear as I possibly could, but she did not understand the way I spoke.

Another nurse saw the look of worry and sadness on my face and walked me out herself. Her face was kind and soft. She had a model figure but not too tall and her brunette, kinky hair was sort of shoved into her work bonnet. I immediately took notice of her well-manicured hands. Her uniform fit a little big around her waist and I recognized the fresh branding on her left wrist. She was new. “The babies are going to be okay. I’ll come and get you when they arrive,” she spoke as she lifted my chin to meet her eyes. She took my hand and unfolded the piece of paper. Then smiled. “These names are precious. I’ll make sure she gets this.” And closed the room door behind her.

I liked her and I knew she would become very important to me. She spoke my language.

Axial and Alturo were finally here. They were pink and plump like a Fall’s Harvest dinner ham and both had full heads of hair. Axial, the girl, had charcoal straight, wild hair while Alturo, had the curliest ginger ringlets I’d ever seen. Even curlier than my own. I knew, he would be my favorite.

My stepmother’s facial expression was that of exhaustion and relief. Her long dark hair was soaked with perspiration and her eyes were dreary. She grasped my hands and kissed them, and she placed her fingers near her lips to thank me. I held the babies one at a time. Alturo smiled and nuzzled into my chest. His bare skin weirdly reminded me of my father’s hairless arms and his eyes were the color of sun kissed caramel. Axial was fussy but she soon settled in with my humming. I assumed she was able to hear me. Her eyes matched mine, her hair like her mother’s and her nose like that of my fathers. I was grateful for that. For while my stepmother was uniquely beautiful in all her ways, her nose was just an unfortunate shape. She once told me it was from an accident playing Hockey Ball at higher learning.

The nurses were just outside the bedroom, into the hall and I could tell by their posture and circle formation, that they were whispering. The stout nurse glanced at me a few times and the nicer one held her head down in what appeared to be in disappointment. The warm face and understanding eyes I met just hours earlier were now lost and cold. Another nurse gave her one of those ‘reassuring rubs’ on the shoulders and the new nurse nodded, not in understanding, but in defeat.

I looked over at my stepmother who seemed to have also noticed the change in the nurse’s moods. She has always been very good at keeping her composure in intense situations, although this time, she struggled to steady her breathing. She grabbed my hands with urgency to pull me in closer.

She shakily placed her own hands around the heart shaped locket hanging from her neck, unclasped it and placed into my hands. I looked at her in confusion and down at the locket in my hand and mouthed the engraved name on it. ‘Cimi.’ It was mine. Short for Cimrie ( Sim-mree). More confusion and a plethora of questions found me. My stepmother has worn that locket since before she married my father and has never once taken it off. I suppose that’s the reason I never knew my name was on it. But why??

I could sense there was no time for my inquiries and simply asked my stepmother what she needed me to do. Two of the nurses left downstairs, one stayed on the outside of the door and the new nurse came to my mothers’ beside. She looked on the twins with hopeful adoration as they laid asleep in their baskets.

The nurse gently grazed my siblings cheeks with her fingers and my stepmother took that moment to connect eyes with her. She let out a deep, heavy sigh, touched the nurse’s sleeve and pled with her in silence. My stepmother’s deep brown eyes seemed to be making an appeal through the sapphire eyes of the nurse who almost neglected to remember her purpose for being back in the room. The nurse made no attempt to make eye contact with me and for a moment I felt forgotten. The nurse on the outside squinted her eyes and pursed her lips as a reminder to the new nurse to ‘hurry things along.’

The new nurse placed a grey and ivory colored candle on the nightstand next to my stepmother’s bedside and before lighting it, she kneeled to my level, placed her hand gently on my shoulder, glanced at the locket I now wore around my own neck and mouthed the words “Hide them.”

The nurse lit the candle, placed a white cotton handkerchief over her nose and mouth and expeditiously made her way out of the room. The door was shut. I knew what I had to do. I kissed my stepmother on her damp forehead made wet by my tears, picked up my brother and sister and made my way into the secret passage below the floor under my stepmother’s beloved wardrobe.

I am now 28 and will never forget the smell of that candle or what it produced. The smell of rotting animal flesh but with a hint of a familiar almond and rose water scent to make you breathe it in deeper. The surrounding air was tainted with the color of blood. I did not know it then. The Righters call it the Red Fog and in short it controls the weak population. Now it is filtered through the Polis air system and is used for all population control. It kills slowly and is internally painful. No one knows when they release it or what exactly prompts the release. Special masks were developed by the Doers and the Righters are not pleased.

I have been able to see the Red Fog as clear as the dark clouds above my head and smell its scent as soon as it travels through the pipes since the day I last saw my stepmother alive. They have not stopped hunting me in 18 and half years and I will continue to be a ghost until the Sel 28 returns.

I often think back to that day when the twins arrived. Especially around this time of year when the train rumbles in past the Outskirts and into the Polis. My stepmother must have heard them say something that day...she must have. Or she already knew what was coming for her. My father must have known too. He wanted me to stay home and help my stepmother. How did he know I would be capable? I was only 9. 9 and a half…

I gear up, placing my now thin, frozen hand on the doorknob to leave and can feel the thunder of footsteps coming in my direction. They speed up as they near my door. I step back and instinctively reach for my locket. My hands are back on the door, I close my eyes and listen for the code. It is Sailor and the twins.

“It’s coming in 3 days and dads on it” Alturo signs to me.