The Abandoned

An orphan girl takes pity on a nearly-blind street boy and lives to regret the moment she decided to help him.

It’s never sunny here. Always dark and foggy. Like the lives of its inhabitants. Barely anyone lives to be over forty. Some die fighting the man-eating gallows. Others starve. Some are beat to death by the military. I hate them. The military. They never hand out enough rations. They steal far more than they distribute. But if anyone opposes them, they’re left voiceless. 

Being an orphan has taught me many things. The best of them might be how to steal. Second best, keep out of sight when the military rolls around. Oh. And how to escape. That’s helpful too.

 Shopkeepers like to beat their frustration out on us street kids when we steal. Angel taught me a bunch of shortcuts and tricks to get away. If it weren’t for her I’d be dead. 

I sit against the roof wall, my mind soaked in the humidity of loneliness, with clouds in my soul crying tears of purposelessness when I hear a racket. A familiar one. The drumming of feet on the tired, dusty ground. The angry barks of a street vendor. Someone’s stolen something. Being up on the roof gives me the confidence to look on, to watch the game. A dull entertainment. Will the thief escape or be pummeled? I trace the chase as they approach. 

My eyes narrow as I try to make sense of what I’m seeing. The thief is blindfolded. And he’s running. I watch with fascination as he turns a corner. What is going on? Then, inevitably, he slips on the silk laid out by the treacherous land and comes crashing down on the brick-hard terrain. Ouch. I’ve been in that position several times with grated knees and elbows. Hurts. But what comes next hurts more. I see the malicious grin of the vendor as he approaches. The boy gets up and the vendor rushes towards him.

 Don’t get involved. I pick up a stone from my pile. Don’t get involved. I aim. Don’t!  I shoot it at the vendor’s head. He cries out and catches sight of me. 

“Why you little-” he grumbles, “I’ll kill you!”

“You’ll have to catch me first,” I murmur, more to myself than to him. There’s no way he’ll be able to get up here. I stuck a rod through the hatch that allows entry to the roof. No one can get up here. Well, no one that can’t climb up the wall anyway. Mission complete. Blindfold Boy is safe. The vendor yells curses to me, which I’m so accustomed to that I barely hear them. Then, like a dog with his tail between his legs, he sulks back to his stall, empty-handed and exhausted. A little while later the blindfolded kid returns to the scene. I stare down at him. 

“Are you still here?” he calls out. 

“Why are you wearing a blindfold?” I call down. Immediately his head snaps up in my direction and I feel like a mouse found out by the cat. Or a human found out by a gallow. 

“I can’t see anyway,” he explains. “Everything is blurry. I wear it so I won’t depend on my sight to get around.” I ask him how he gets around and he tells me that he uses sound. And memory. 

Then he offers me an apple, my share for the save, and won’t take no for an answer so I come down and get it. He asks me for my name. I don’t have one. I tell him my friends call me Blue, for my eyes. He tells me he’s Draven.

Night casts her veil and he has no place to stay. The man taking care of him passed away recently so he’s on his own. Don’t get involved. I ask if he wants to come with me. Why would I do that? He agrees. Why do I always do that?

I bring him back to Angel’s hideout with me. Angel, as usual, welcomes him with open arms. And before I know it, it’s been a few months. 

Angel’s assigned us as stealing partners. And we’ve grown wings. She told us to stick to the market but for a few weeks now we’ve been raiding the military’s personal stock house. We’re careful. 

At least I thought we were. 

That was before the two of us were surrounded by these soldiers, each ready to tear us apart like hungry vultures feeding on a dead animal. We’re separated and I watch, screaming and struggling as they beat Draven. They kick him. Punch him. He’s not getting up anymore. My heart stops.

 Before I know it I’m chained up in a musty, mould-filled, rat-infested, garbage dump of a dungeon. I don’t know how long I’ve been here. Don’t know if Draven’s alive. I lose count after the first three days. The guards take out their frustrations on me. Wife’s upset, let’s beat the prisoner. Friend died, let’s beat the prisoner. Can’t afford a meal, let’s beat the prisoner. 

Then he shows up. A man that makes the guards, my tormentors, stammer. A lion to the mice.

“Where’s the stray?” he asks them. They lead him to me. The stray. I guess that’s fitting. 

He makes me an offer. I turn him down instantly. He gives me the chance to reconsider. 

 A few lifetimes and beatings later, I agree. To join the people I hate.

 He has me trained. Somehow, between receiving bruises and cuts I learn to deliver them. He has me climb the rankings. I distribute food and feel like I might have been wrong about the military. Over my years with them I see their strict diets, their sacrifices, and I’ve even acquired a friend; a boy my age with these dazzling eyes that explode in gold away from the pupil before mixing with green. 

Having not seen my friend all day and thinking it unusual, I stop by his room on the way to mine. Knock. Knock. I hear sobbing inside and am alarmed.

“Hunter?” I call. The sobbing increases.

“Stray.” His voice is so soft I barely hear it. “See what they’ve done to me.”

I hesitate. What does he mean? Wrapping my hand tightly around the knob, I stare at my white knuckles as I turn and push. He’s crawled up in a ball at the leg of his bed. 

“Hunter, you’re scaring me.” 

His lip trembles as he removes his hands from his eyes. My heart jumps to my throat as my eyes widen. My chest hurts, my lungs constrict. I stare into two bloody, empty eye sockets.

“They took them.” His voice trembles. “For him.” Then he breaks down crying again and I shuffle beside him, staying there all night. The question never leaves my mind but I don’t dare ask it. Who’s him?

A month later, I still visit Hunter at the small house he was given as compensation. It sickens me but it’s better than nothing. He’s grateful for my friendship. I don’t know why.

“Blue?”

I look up from the rations, surprised to hear that old name again. She’s older but I recognize her immediately.

“Angel.” I smile. She doesn’t. She’s upset. Angry. She thinks I betrayed her by joining the oh-so-cruel military. She doesn’t understand. Only creates a scene. The soldiers hold her back, but despite that, she gets a punch in. Maybe I deserved that. I ask them to let her go. They do. She leaves. There’s a bond broken between us. Snapped. Irreparable.

I’m sorry. 

But I’m also not.

Some time later I’m invited to attend a celebration for the military’s best soldier. Wonder what he’ll be like.

“Remember me?” 

I can’t imagine why he’d think I would. The military’s best. I don’t even know his real name. Number One is what they call him. Yet he expects me to remember him. Never seen him before. But his eyes I have. They have an eerie resemblance to the gold-green eyes spooned out of Hunter’s sockets years ago. 

“Rain,” he adds. My eyes pop open. Rain. And suddenly I’m back to a blindfolded boy lying on a rooftop telling me I remind him of…

“Draven?” He grins. He can see. His eyes. He showed them to me once. They used to be brown. I feel sick as I realize it. And sicker still when he reveals his plans to me. He’s so excited. Thinks he’s so smart. He’s using the orphans and homeless as bait for the gallows, luring them in. Attack at once. Bam. Dead. 

That was his trick when he killed the two gallows, the reason for this celebration. One of the people used for bait, he mentions, was Angel. She was causing trouble, stealing. He thinks he did her a favor. What value did her miserable existence have anyway? I feel a heat rising within me. It bubbles and sizzles with every word he says.

I know I can’t let him sacrifice those people. I was one of them once. He was too. He’s forgotten that. I try reminding him, but it doesn’t work. I can’t recognize him anymore. He’s the boy that wouldn’t take favors, the one that stole and shared his gains, the one that never complained about the beatings when he was caught. What is he now? I ask him about the eyes. He thinks it was great. Medical advancements are incredible nowadays. The sacrifice was worth it, he thought, because he was a much better fighter than whoever his eyes used to belong to.

He’ll reveal his big plan tomorrow. That’s all the time I have to stop him. And stop him I will. No matter the price.

I’ll kill him if I have to. 

But I have to try talking to him first. He agrees to meet me after the celebration. 

Negotiation doesn’t work. He thinks I’m crazy. I’ve lost conviction, lost sight of what we’re fighting for. The bigger picture. I thought the bigger picture was protecting this place. To him that’s a primitive way of thinking. Naive. 

So what? I’ll take being naïve over being a mass murderer. Where’s the boy I used to know? I guess being put in a position of power can corrupt the purest of souls. He thinks he’s invincible. He’ll dangle children and other helpless rags out to the demons. 

I can’t let him do that. He laughs. Pulls out a knife. Try and stop me, is his challenge. He started it, that’s my excuse. I’m not stronger. But I am faster.

 We both take damage. I have a knife too. I’m a fountain of blood by the end of it, my red mixing with the brown of the land. He’s hysterical with laughter. Can barely stand straight, watching me bleed out. Fun. Entertaining. Enjoyable. That was this fight to him. My blurry vision sends me into memories of the past. He had blurry vision once. Before he found eyes. Used to rely on sound. Not anymore. 

Not anymore. I grab a fistful of dirt. The same dirt he slipped on when we first met. The day I decided to save him. The day I decided to introduce him to Angel. The day I became his friend. His laughs drown out my slow and wave-like rise. I call his name. He turns to me, eyes wide. He abandoned his blindfold. That was his choice. I fling the dirt into his eyes and he screams. 

Then he’s silent as my silver slides through his flesh, puncturing his heart. 

The man that saved me from the dungeon becomes the man that also saved me from execution. I lose military status. That’s fine. 

Desperate to drown in despair, to redeem myself for tragedies I feel responsible for, I spend the rest of my life alongside Hunter. My blind friend. 

And for some reason, he’s thankful.

Author's Note

Gallows = fictitious man-eating creatures
The sentence fragments were to emphasize her voice.
Any kind of feedback is appreciated. Like it? Hate it? What's bad? What's good? What can be improved? Anything at all.