There was a sound from the story above. The fog had begun to spill through the window behind the woman. “Come quickly,” she called again.
Soft but clear, the young man spoke from directly behind Luke, “I’m here.” It was a man’s voice, drained of air.
“Cut him free,” the woman said. Luke moaned, but didn’t struggle as they turned him about, took him between them, and forced him upstairs. He turned his head to look behind, was helpless as they muscled him up the stairs. He gave little attention to his movement but listened to the ragged breathing of the young man and was transfixed by the slivers of light, dancing with the colours of death in the room below. The chem fog would have taken his breath and the skin from his bones, but along with it, the choices he did not want to make – human, conscious choices – hard choices. Luke had never made a hard choice. Dying in service was preferable, Luke thought, to misunderstanding the direction of his life and somehow damaging Michael’s cause through misperception. It would never do to harm Michael’s vision.
The stairs faded from his view, though he strained his neck towards release, the fog would not follow them up the stairs. He imagined the chem filling his lungs, the release of the grave.
Daniel was not gentle; when they reached the top step and Luke finally snapped his sight away from the ground floor, he was pushed harshly towards a bed in the corner and told to sleep. The woman paid him no more attention. The boy was no more than twenty years old. He gasped for breath and sat heavily in a chair between the woman and Luke. Luke did not close his eyes, nor did he sleep, but remained where he was. He was unwilling to make an escape, down the unguarded stairs and into the chemical embrace. Luke could wait to die.
Instead of think, choices bombarding Luke’s mind, he chose to observe. He would not think on why he had chosen to let the woman take him, rather he reflected, he would focus on the gilded footboard not ten feet away where the woman slept, and the small wooden chair between Luke and her, where Daniel sat watching him. Rather than contemplate speaking to the man on the chair, he watched the dust drift in the air currents generated by an oil heater. It was too hot by far, but the soldier didn’t notice. Sweat dripped from Daniel’s forehead and his eyelids drooped. The windows were sealed against the chem fog, boarded with wood and made air tight with copious layers of tar. Tar didn’t cover the walls shared with the adjacent building, and areas already tight against the intruding chemicals in the air. Luke noted bright pink where survival permitted. Perhaps, he considered, the room had once belonged to a child or to a woman in her youth. Perhaps it had been painted pink by one who still enjoyed the feel of vibrant colour in her home. It didn’t look a bedroom to Luke, but he knew little of these things and just feet from him there stood a great four-poster bed. Who was he to argue but a soldier, ignorant of human things. There was a hallway he noted leading off to his left, but from where he sat at the top of the stairs Luke couldn’t see where it lead.
In truth, it was curiosity which saved Luke’s life that night. He had not yet learned the woman’s name. It was tempting he admitted to himself, to throw himself at the stairs only five feet away, to suffocate himself in the fog below. Surely the man on his chair, half asleep, could not prevent Luke diving down the stairs and either snapping his neck or burning in the chem. He didn’t know her name though, and that made the difference. Eventually, he did rest, despite himself.
When Luke woke his eyes were tight with sleep. He blinked to clear them. Daniel came into sharp focus above him holding a dry loaf and a tin cup of water. Luke took the provisions he was handed and then rose. He rocked forward and stood without use of his hands, loaf in one fist, tin cup in the other. Daniel smiled. It was not at all what Luke had expected.
“Join us at the table?” He asked, and walked down the hall and into a small kitchen beyond. The linoleum on the floors was a bright white as if new-washed; the walls were a pale blue. None of the chairs matched, the folding card table was worn and the plastic cover was ripped. The light which hung from loose wires above flickered and the paint was peeling, but that was all which detracted from the feel of the home. It was a home, and Luke discovered over his first shared meal, that the woman who had spared him the night before was named Katelyn Orange. Daniel was her son and shared her name. She was older than Luke had originally imagined, and Daniel as well, but none of this bothered him. The man asked for Luke’s last name, after he had given his first, and when Luke admitted to having none, Daniel told him to choose one. It was a simple choice, and so Luke made it.
“May I take your name?” he asked of his company, biting in to the last half of his loaf, letting crumbs spill down his chin.
“No you may not,” Katelyn gave back sharply, long finished her own bread and water. “You should be ashamed of yourself for asking. Choose your own name; pick something which has meaning to you.” Katelyn’s words somehow made the choice more difficult, so much so that Luke shied away from making it and gave his hosts no more answers, and no more conversation. He stood and walked away from the table, down the hall. He loped down the stairs, thought fuelled his pace, and Luke stepped into the sun resolved to avoid contemplating his situation. His clothing was worn and dirty, but he ignored the fact and looked about quickly, wanting to leave before he was called back. He found a rundown church to Michael, a blood banner hanging limply before the door, and entered unceremoniously. The priest who kept the building was dressed all in black, though the clothes were frayed and worn and blind as custom dictated. The grin with which he greeted Luke spoke to the madness his eyes couldn’t betray.
“Housing with the Katelyn woman? Staying with the oranges in their tree? The crazy oranges.” He spoke with a drunken slur, but with the speed of a meth addict. It was hard to follow and Luke stopped trying. The man rambled in the background moving dirt to and fro with a broom as sparse of bristles as the man was of hair. Luke laid down to pray, flat on his back, his neck straight and proud, his eyes closed and his breathing slow. Once or twice he heard the broom whisk past his head, but he ignored the movement and the sound. He prayed to Michael with the voice of his mind, he asked for relief and reintegration and more chem. The priest babbled in the background: “Katelyn with her child, the oldest orange picked from the tree, the baby orange on its way, and Daniel not but a sickling. Sweet blood oranges those three, to be fed to the guards, lit aflame, caught by the crows and left to their sleep. Give them to Michael I say.”
Sleep seemed a sickness to he who had scarce needed it. Luke’s eyes twitched opened. He’d dosed. The priest was still hovering about the small hovel; he was still rambling, but now no words passed his lips, only whispered sounds that hovered menacingly in the air like the hiss of a tom-cat echoing in a well. Luke was disconcerted, but maintained courtesy as he left allowing the ragged old man to kiss his forehead with a mouth empty of teeth, and bless his blood – a prick of the priest’s finger, a drop of blood dabbed as if perfume on Luke’s upturned wrists.
Luke felt no better for his prayer, the walk in the cool wind had helped more than the ramblings of the priest. Even the rest he had gained in the mad-man’s presence seemed empty. He was still weary, and weary he returned to Katelyn’s building, walking through the streets like a man in trance. He saw very little, the worrisome lean of buildings, the walls singing with graffiti, the road ruined and pitted and unfit for vehicles. Luke frowned out of his trance, snapping back to reality at the door to Katelyn’s home, an old thing that hung from a single hinge. He realized he was angry at the lack of colour, at his lack of name, at his emotions and at Katelyn who had spied him through a window at the church of Michael and watched him now from a narrow alley not far down the street. The city was all blacks and greys; the door was faded to a dull brown, and burnt black in places. The street no longer bore yellow lines to marks the lanes, and the street signs which stood sentinel despite the years had lost their coloured sheen. They seemed to smile at the decay, rusted and old. Luke’s colourless eye did nothing to improve the vision, turnin
g the grey-scale world into a blur of black-white contrast. The only colour that remained to him was the dried blood of the priest marking his wrists. As he pushed the broken door aside he licked a thumb and rubbed at one wrist and then the next to remove the irritating redness. He saw Katelyn lean out of the corner of the alcove, rifle clasped in hand.
Daniel lay asleep on the four-poster when Luke mounted the stairs and came to the second floor of the house. A moment passed in silence, Luke standing stock still and watching the rise and fall of Daniel’s breathe. The door downstairs creaked opened and banged shut noisily. Katelyn had not wished to be noticed following him, and so Daniel wouldn’t raise the subject. They sat at the table, leaving Daniel to his rest and Luke recalled the words of the priest. Sweet blood oranges those three, to be fed to the guards, lit aflame, caught by the crows and left to their sleep. Give them to Michael…. Luke would have liked nothing more, and so he started a conversation, driving questions at Katelyn like weapons. He placed the woman on the defensive as she came up the stairs. There was a cruelty in