The Divine Party

Grace lives in a country run by the Divine Party, where religion is a way of life and to read or write by anyone other than Divus (God) is a sin, punishable by death.

As soon  as Grace woke up, she knew something was different. She felt different. Well, it wasn’t a mood or emotion as such, more a …sensation, or a bitter taste in her mouth.

And that beeping. What was that? She lifted her head groggily. Oh, right. The alarm.

She considered her options. Get out of her warm, comfortable bed to turn off her alarm and make a cup of tea, or stay in bed and hope it eventually switched itself off. She got out of bed. She always got out of bed. Divine law stated that prayers must be said as soon  as you awoke, to protect your soul from temptation and sin.

She’d forgotten to turn the heating on last night. The lino was chilly and slightly sticky. Grace stumbled over to the shrine, kneeled, crossed herself to symbolise the Four Powers (Earth, Wind, Water and Fire) and lit four incense sticks. The sickly fumes filled the room, the jarring scents fighting for dominance. She folded her hands and bowed her head, murmuring a quick prayer. She didn’t even have to think to say the prayer, she knew it as well as her name.

She rose, crossing herself again, and had a glass of water. The incense had put her off tea that morning, as it did every morning.

She fixed herself breakfast and got dressed. Everyone wore the same clothes, dark blue dress for women, elbow- and knee-length (the winter dress was longer, but they hadn’t switched to it yet), buttoned up to a prim collar, and the men wrist- and ankle-length dark blue top and trousers. Dark blue signified eternity, absolute, and so symbolised Divus. Everyone wore black plimsolls.

Grace brushed her hair (shoulder length, obviously) and washed her face. Make up was… not illegal, but to wear it was to show vanity, and to be vain would be ungodly, thus ruining your chances of going to Heaven after death. So no-one wore it, and no-one policed this rule.

Grace was a librarian, guarding books and files from eyes unfit to see them. Reading any material published by any other than the Temple was ungodly, and so all the printed documents and printing presses from the Dark Days before the Divine Party (DP) came to power were locked in underground vaults. As junior librarian, her job was to do grunt work for the seniors, categorising documents and keeping the place tidy. There must be other vaults, full of make up and technology and clothes, she briefly considered, but she quickly shunned that thought. Grace wore DP-enforced blinkers, shielding her from anything that didn’t concern her. She spent her days bouncing between home-Temple-vault-café-Underground-supermarket. She had few friends, even fewer enemies (if you could even call them that) and she had never given a thought before to other vaults.

She prowled round her flat, killing time. The incense went out.

Grace grabbed her satchel from the kitchen counter and left. She wasn’t good at waiting.

At the Tube station, no-one looked at each other. There were women, men and children there, but another unspoken law was never to draw judgements from someone’s appearance. So everyone ignored everyone. Grace stared at the floor, and wondered when they would start recalling summer clothes.

The Tube stations had been built during the Dark Days, but unlike all other engineering and buildings from that era they hadn’t been rebuilt or shut down. People had described the Underground as ‘The veins of London’ and Grace could see why.

The train roared in, and people nervously backed away from it, shaken by its sudden arrival. This irritated Grace a bit. The timetable says a train comes to this station at this time. Why are you so surprised to see it turn up? Then she mentally shook and physically crossed herself. That was no way to think of the other people.

Grace gave up her train seat to an angry-looking woman, swollen with six months of pregnancy, and clung onto a handlebar as the train swerved and shuddered through dark corridors.

It took seven minutes to get to 47^th Street. When DP had come into power they had changed street names to numbers. No-one was quite sure why, but to question DP was to question Divus himself.

Grace ran (everyone ran up the Tube station steps, whether to escape the gloom and noise or just out of competitiveness Grace didn’t know) out of the Underground and down the street before losing momentum. The vault was actually called 47^th Library, but there was only a single door and a wall sign to indicate its existence. It was the kind of place you only found if you were looking for and needed it.

She tested the door, found it already unlocked, and slipped inside and immediately down flights of concrete stairs, through a pair of oak doors and into the vault.

After the busy streets and thundering Underground the quiet of the vault was unnerving. It made you double-take and say something aloud just to check you hadn’t gone deaf. Lots of people quit their job as Librarian because of the quiet in their first week, so no matter how many employment drives the Library did they always ended with roughly the same amount of employees that they’d started with. Sometimes less.

Once you got past it, though, the vault was actually quite nice. It was basically a huge concrete chamber, with side rooms and store cupboards, but fitted out as a traditional library used to look, with thick carpets and wooden shelving and warm colours.

“Gloria in excelsis, Grace,” Trilled someone, and Grace turned to find Sophia had crept up behind her. Sophia was a very Senior Librarian " she could remember when the vault had opened " and has inexhaustible amounts of energy. She was constantly cheerful, optimistic and generous. Grace pretended to be glad to see her.

“Laus deo,” She replied, and was about to make an excuse to hurry off when Sophia said “My dear, I am so sorry, but my Lauren’s youngest is ill again, and I said I would look after him. I’m not sure if Hansel’s coming in today, you know what he’s like. Will you be okay here on your own?”  Sophia did that apologetic smile some people do that looks eerily similar to a triumphant smirk.

“Sure, I’ll be fine,” Grace automatically answered.

“Lovely! Domine, dirige nos.”

“Domine, dirige nos.” Grace repeated, and Sophia smiled and left.

Grace heard the front door cough shut. She was alone.

She went to the front desk and began to sort the new deliveries. Even though the Dark Days had passed some people still printed documents. Those people were punished (how was beyond Grace’s blinkers) and the documents sent here. They were already entombed in metal cases so the handler wouldn’t be tempted, and labelled with a number. The books were numerically sorted and shelved as a title could be enough to make you sin, apparently.

Grace spent a happy hour wandering through the isles homing the deliveries and recording them in the vault files.

She was about to do a quick run-around with the Hoover when someone knocked on the oak doors. Grace froze. People didn’t come to the vault unless they were Librarians, cleaners, delivery men, or that Government Inspector who sometimes came unexpectedly to make sure they were running it properly. It wasn’t Hansel, because although he sometimes forgot his front door keys he knew the oak doors weren’t locked. So who?

She swallowed. “Hello? Who’s there?” Her voice quavered and died in the burial chamber of books.

A male voice, faintly Scottish, answered “Hello? Is this door unlocked?” Grace, drawing strength from his soft accent, “Who’s asking?”

“That’ll be a yes, then.” And one of the doors opened, and a thin, scrawny man walked in. His sharp gaze leapt on Grace, and he spoke quickly: “How many people are here?”

“Just me,” Grace’s eyes widened as she realised what she’d just said. “No, wait, there’s, uh, Hansel-“

“Liar. You are alone here. How old are you? And don’t get cocky, your life depends on it.”

“Eighteen.”

He mused over this. “Eighteen. In two years you will be paired with and married off to a complete stranger via the Temple.”

Grace frowned. “I know-“

“The stranger is me.”

He walked over to the nearest shelf, and flicked through the cases in a bored manner.

Grace tried to get her bearings.

“You shouldn’t be here,” She started.

“That will be my epitaph,” Said the man, not looking at her.

“How do you know we’ll be paired?”

He snorted, but didn’t look up.

“They’re planned years in advance. I got into the Temple system and looked my name up. Yours was paired with it. Thought I’d pay a visit.”

“Why are you here?”

“You mean I can’t see my betrothed?” His voice was mocking. “I’m here, Grace,” Her name jumped out of that sentence and slapped her in the face, “To help you.”

“I don’t need help.”

He was still searching through the books.

“Yes, you do.”

“No, I- and look at me!” His disinterest in her had been surprisingly insulting, despite spending her whole life avidly not looking at people.

He dragged his gaze up, exasperated.

“Thank you,” Said Grace, abashed.

He walked off.

Grace stayed stood behind the desk, wondering why she hadn’t called the Temple. The Temple dealt directly with criminals, as all crime was a sin. But she didn’t call the Temple, and after about ten minutes the man reappeared.

“I don’t even know your name,” Grace said semi-defensively, stepping away from the desk.

“Damien Mackenzie,” He replied, tossing a case from hand to hand.

Her training kicked in. “Put that back now!”

Damien looked at Grace and laughed. “No.”

She was outraged. How dare he?

He pulled a knife out of his pocket (Grace hastily stumbled backwards) and ran it along the case. It fell open. He dipped his hand inside and pulled out a small pale blue pamphlet. He proffered it to Grace. “Take it.”

“No.” She was shaking.

Damien stuffed it into her hand, dropped the case onto her desk, and walked out.

Grace listened to him laugh as he walked up the stairs and out of the vault.

 

She read the pamphlet. Her life changed in a million little ways.

 

After what seemed hours (to brutally honest, it had been a little over ninety minutes)

Grace awoke from a kind of stupor. She got up, leaning heavily on the desk " her legs were shaky " and trembling, stuffed the pamphlet into her bag. She couldn’t return it, as it looked as if it had been handled, which was not disallowed by an unspoken rule, but by DP law. Two years ago Grace had heard a story about a librarian who’d read something in his care. A few days later, on his way home he’d taken a different route and jumped off a bridge. And no-one had said anything. The Temple had decided he’d been so overcome with guilt and sin he had taken his own life. That night, Grace said a prayer for both his family and herself. In the Dark Days, if you said you were a Librarian people would've thought nothing of it. It had been considered a soft occupation. Now, however, it was tinged with danger, a self-inflicted danger, as whenever a Librarian died young it was always suicide. Grace had asked Divus to save her from temptation and the books. The Librarians called it the Vault Prayer, asking Divus every night to save them from their job, from the dangerous papers they looked after, from themselves.

Grace stuffed the pamphlet’s empty case into one of the storage cupboards. It didn’t matter where; she wouldn’t be coming back. Not her problem.

She tidied her things into her bag and locked her desk drawers, but left the keys. She debated leaving a note; but went against it. Too dramatic, too showy. She wanted a clean break. Instead she filled in a resignation form (the stack of them by the door said a lot about how the vault was run) and put it on her desk.

She switched off the lights and went. She didn’t bother locking the door not her problem now. She wasn’t used to leaving work so early and so froze in the noon sun, disorientated. Then she glanced at the skyline and saw the overbearing Temple spire, and she righted herself.

The Underground was quieter than she was used to, but even then she took the last seat on the train. The pregnant woman limped on, but Grace didn’t move, like she had this morning. The woman moaned and stamped her feet, but Grace didn’t give her seat. Eventually a grey-faced man in spectacles did. The temperature in the carriage dropped as the man now clung onto the safety bar and swayed. But Grace was too busy plotting to notice.

Cancelling bills, that was the first thing to do, she decided. Then switch off the electricity and unplug everything. She would leave an envelope with that month’s rent in and the spare key. She would leave the other key by the door so the…Police? Council? Could let themselves in.

And then pack. That thought made Grace feel happy and relaxed, like she was floating away.

She fought the urge to get the pamphlet out again " that would be plain stupid, and anyway, she knew it just about off by heart.

She got off the train and walked to her flat. Everything seemed amplified, her steps ground-shaking thuds and peoples’ shouts like sirens. She hurried to her block, desperate to pack up and leave, to make this not her problem anymore.

She glanced around. Surely someone was suspicious? Maybe they knew about the pamphlet. She felt euphoria and fear. They might be on her side, they might not. No-one knows, keep walking, keep your head down, no-one knows, act casual, no-one knows-

She felt something drop out of her bag. There was a rustling noise at her feet.

And the world went black. 

Author's Note

Constructive criticism, and please - does it make sense? That's always been a bit of a stumbling block in my writing, so please tell me what you think and if you enjoyed it.