Chapter 1 - Knots

www.FrightenedBoy.com

1. Knots

A month later.

 

It wasn't a good day.  I had to get my Citizen Card renewed. 

If you had a job, you had a card, and if you didn't have a card, you might as well be a Stranger. I did my time diving in dumpsters and drinking from drains; I wasn't  going back.

My local neighborhood Banlo Bay City Center was a dismal building, a stout block of bureaucratic order which was slept around, pissed on, and spray painted by the hordes of disgruntled people who wanted to get cards but couldn’t. This was the gate holding back the muddied masses who desperately sought protection in America's last sanctum of civility.

I pulled open the door and was met by a warm waft of stale air that smelled like a hobo with morning breath blowing across his armpit and into my nose.  I settled in place behind several dozen other dour faces, a progression of gradually worsening moods that crescendoed with myself at the rear. 

An hour into my wait, a foot stepped onto the back of my shoe, pulling it half off my foot as I inched forward in the line.  I ignored it politely until it happened again, then  again.  I half-turned to see the offender out of my peripheral, but something I smelled sent my memory into overdrive.  It was that beautifully alien scent on my sinuses again"the scent of lilacs and lavender. 

“Excuse me,” she said.

I turned to face her.

“Haven't I seen you somewhere before?” she asked. Soft brown curls, big brown doe eyes, elegant chin, sculpted neck. Young, vibrant, and curious about each new thing. A fawn. My world used to have a place for them.

“I doubt it,” I mumbled.  I’d rather her not remember me at all than be remembered for abandoning her. But from her face, it was clear she knew exactly who I was. “Wait"maybe at the opening of the Chapel Hill Orphanage Memorial.”

“Yes, the Strangers!  I still have the bruises to show for it,” she said, smiling now and pulling back her sleeve to reveal a slender arm with a yellow bruise which looked at home beneath her skin. 

 “S**t, yeah.  I’m glad to see you got out of there.”  No thanks to me. 

“Barely,” she said.  “So, what’s your name?”

“I’m Clark Horton,” I said, extending my hand.  She took it. Oh God yes.

“I’m Erika Bronton.  You’ve got a space to fill,” she said, motioning in front of me where an opening had appeared.  I moved forward to fill it.

A few minutes passed before she spoke. “So you were at the Orphanage?” she asked. "When it burned?"

"Yeah, I was." Don't like thinking about it. "You?"

"You're next," she said politely, nodding at the line in front of me, leaving my question unanswered.

She was right. I faced the man behind the desk. He looked like someone who was practiced in pretending to be patient but was always on the verge of snapping.  It was a veneer shared by most everyone within the confines of Banlo Bay; it was the mortar that held the city together.

I handed him my card; he reviewed, then stamped it.

“You’re done,” the man said and slid my card back to me. I pocketed it.  We used to be required to wear them on our shirts, but derelicts kept running by and ripping them off.

I began walking back toward the entrance when Erika grabbed my shirt sleeve. “Hey, wait for me,” she said.  “It’s gotta be fate that we met two times like this.”

The person behind her cleared his throat with some significance.

“I’m going, all right?” She stepped up to the bureaucrat and pulled three crumpled documents from her purse, spilling them onto his desk.

“Moira Blocker,” she said.  “I need to renew.” 

The worker looked at his computer and then back at her, making no effort to hide the skepticism on his face. He repeated this activity several times.

“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he said, “but I can’t renew this.  You don’t have your ID-a, your STM-9, or your DSM.  The last time someone went to check on your situation, he reported an incorrect address.  You don't even appear to have a job. To be honest, ma’am, you shouldn’t be here in the city at all.  I think you need to see the Warden.” 

Erika took a step backwards, stepping on my toes for the tenth time since I’d met her.  This time, though, she didn’t apologize; from where I was standing I could see her hand dive into her purse and clench something there. 

“I have a new address. That’s why there's the confusion.  He can vouch for me,” Erika said, turning around and tugging at my sleeve.  “I live with him. Please, I have lived here my whole life. Please, you have to let me stay."

I raised my hands up like I could somehow block the fact I was being drawn into this. 

“Sir?” the worker asked. 

“Tell him our address,” Erika said, her eyes widening.  “It’s so embarrassing! I just moved in with him, and I don’t even have it memorized yet.”

I didn’t want to get involved.

“Sir, if she’s living with you, then you need to fill out the proper paperwork to reflect it.  Frankly, I’m getting tired of both of you, and I think I’ll let a Warden settle this.  Please step in line behind me and to my right.”

He motioned us to a much shorter line over his shoulder which led to an office door.

The Warden deported people. I'd end up on a train heading out to the wilderness where I'd be killed by bandits, soldiers, or Strangers.

A shadow began to creep across Erika’s face, a shade I was very familiar with.  It crept in the cracks of frown and frustration lines of every face in the city"the skulking specter of desperation.  The arm leading into her purse became stiff. 

“I can’t see the Warden,” she mumbled to me.  “You let me die once. You owe me.” 

I gripped Erika’s suspiciously tense arm with one hand and began to drag her backward to the exit.  “I have the forms at home,” I said loudly as I used my free hand to push between the tightly packed bodies that formed various lines.  I didn’t want to end up in the Case Warden’s office any more than she did. "We will sort this out and come back, sorry to waste your time."

Uniformed officers were closing in on us. The door was in view, only a dozen feet away but blocked by hundreds of pounds of milling, unhappy biomass. 

A shoulder checked my chin, and a belt buckle scraped the small of my back as I forced my way through.  My only connection to Erika was my grip on her arm, and I heard her cursing as she was crushed between bodies. 

A police officer stepped in front of the exit and pointed at us. 

I gulped.

Erika tried to jerk her arm out of her purse, and for a second, I almost let her.  I knew there was a weapon down there.

“Don’t do it,” I hissed.  “It isn’t worth dying for.” 

“In here or out there, I'm done for,” she whispered back.

“Well, thanks for taking me with you,” I said.  “Jesus, what is your problem?”

“There’s no place for me anymore.”  She tugged at her arm again, trying to pull her hand free.  I barely had the strength to stop her. 

“I have a plan,” I said.  “Trust me.  Just let go of the gun and take your hand out of your purse. Please. It isn't worth it. I will tell them you're staying with me."

I felt the muscles in her forearm go slack, and she lifted her empty hand from her bag. An officer reached through an opening in two bodies, grasping claw aiming for Erika.

I took a deep breath and tried not to think about what I was about to do. 

I gave the man nearest the cop a hard shove.  He slammed into the bodies in front of him; by the time he untangled himself from the resulting mass of angry limbs, I was gone. He shoved the man who'd been behind me, while I began squeezing through more bodies, trying to distance myself and Erika from the reaction I set into motion. 

Where one man was shoved, another turned and shoved him back.  In the crowded space, no one was innocent.  A man’s wife received an accidental elbow to the face, and her husband delivered a punch to the mouth of the offender.  Entropy begat entropy.  The thin veneer of civilization was pulled back with one simple act of aggression.

This was Banlo Bay.

I slipped around the ensuing onslaught and managed my way behind the policemen, who were now struggling in the melee. 

I slipped out the door with Erika, then pressed myself against the brick wall of the building, cold sweat forming around my face, hands shaking. “Jesus,” I said.  “Let’s go, now.” 

I gave one last look at the door that contained the growing energy within the City Center, developing from a slow roar to an explosive show of force as the engine of chaos I had ignited reached full steam.  As Erika and I walked as quickly and inconspicuously as we could away from the disaster we’d created, the door finally burst open as tumbling, tussling bodies scrambled over each other to fight or flee. 

Reviews

[Willard Schlesinger]

It's nice to see that Clark gets a chance to redeem himself for his previous cowardice. At first I wondered if this would be counter intuitive to him being in a constant state of freight, but you managed to squash that notion by letting me know that he only rescued her with simply his best interest at mind -- excellent.
I liked how you set a bureaucratic office into complete chaos.
It's interesting that you made Ericka into a crazy performance artist, who claims art is dead, but I never really see anything in this novel to back up that claim. However, I don't know if there is any importance in doing so after reading the entire novel. And I don't think her saying art is dead really has anything to do with the dystopia thing, but rather it's a way to drive home the fact that she is a little bit unbalanced. Either way, good job.

[Dinesh Sairam]

I supposed this is 'On-the-go'. Didn't quite have something that was there in the prologue.. :) Though it pushes me to read the next chapter, I'll read it later :) Kudos.

[jenniewren (J.W. Bouwma..]

“It better be a good one, or this is going to be a Pollack.”

i literally laughed at this line. i have a very twisted sense of humour, and that hit it precisely *grin*

i am so loving the building of your characters. you are taking it with a very natural timing.. not trying to get there at a marathon pace. which is awesome,. you have time to spare, and the surest way to lose a peaked interest is to give it all away in one go, just like mommas always tell their girls. something that has always been true for me, just as it is true here.

one thing - perhaps it's some weird permutation between whatever format you c/p your work from, to the WC, but i keep seeing these " pop up in the weirdest places - places i think that perhaps a dash was supposed to be? i read it thru a second & third time trying to figure out a pattern as to why they've been showing up, and near as i can tell, it seems to be where you would be using a dash. or maybe just a comma.. i'm not sure. here's a couple of examples:

You know, a performance artist"an actor.
Caution hadn’t left room for women in my life"ever.
She was too pretty, too eager"and too weird.

[Katseye]

Very interesting so far. Slightly different from my usual reading, but different can be a very good thing.

[Lightfalls]

I like this, I plan to read the rest of it later. So far though, great build up of characters, and you have a way with keeping the story moving along. Nice work.