Glitch (The Write Awards 2013 Winner)

Glitch - Chapter 12

The stillness in the air felt stifling as it wound itself around Freya and tainted every breath with a shudder; marking each intake as a cautious announcement of her comfortable safety. Mat’s arms enclosed her in an embrace of protection. Her back rested against the pushing and retreating of his steady breaths that echoed in time with hers.

Lying in the darkness and purposefully tuning into the constant rush of shared inhalation seemed to magnify the sound. Soon it began to feel as if the entire room shook with each breath that buzzed tauntingly in her ears. In growing agitation her breathing adopted an unnatural urgency that rasped against her throat with each draw. This prompted the white noise of stolen breaths to reach an impossible to ignore peak that etched blame into the trembling corners of her mind. A needling whine unfurled across her skin and instilled demands of movement from her limbs.

Freya gave in with an abrupt kick of her legs and a shift to face Mat. His eyes, too dark to properly distinguish in the daze of night, found hers. She could have lingered in that limbo; left herself to tumble down into the rising question that silences with Mat presented. But her mind would not settle into the serenity required of the situation. Her limbs still itched to move. Her mind still had whispers of the name on a broken repeat. Wren.

The silence began to stretch against the abrupt surface of her concern. Shatter lines danced a path along the quiet and facilitated the break. Hand on the trigger she took one more of those shuddering breaths before it became all too much.

“I shouldn’t just be lying here, doing nothing. While she’s out there…”

“Don’t… don’t do this to yourself. There is nothing you could have done. There is nothing you can do but wait for her to return.” Even just the trace of calm to his voice fell uncomfortably on her ears. A curious voice in the back of her mind kept offering the suggestion to scream until the weight of Wren’s suffering slipped away. The tactic grew to appear more reasonable by the moment.

“I can’t just sit here and do nothing.” A sharp click behind her tone announced the threat of an outbreak of argument.

“Alright… so we’ll talk.” Mat spoke in the release of a sigh. There was a quiet whisper of sense somewhere in the unexplored distance expressing sympathy with Mat’s frustrations. Taking a step back she allowed the voice a prominent stage to voice its objections. The repetition of her temper had not passed Freya’s attentions unnoticed. The frustration of his sigh was something she couldn’t blame him for. He raised a hand to brush away a strand of hair and the small gesture of affection allowed Freya to whittle away her temper to a mere sigh of her own.

“Fine. Tell me about your life before here.”

“There is not much to tell. Single child. A mother. A father. Happily married; apparently. I had friends in school. I was happy, or what I considered happiness to be back then. I was only thirteen and that’s too young to form an identity. Everything I know is here. There is not much to tell at all.” He immediately denied eye contact by shifting onto his back and resigning his gaze to the ceiling. Perhaps it was a natural search for comfort and nothing more. But Freya couldn’t help detect the hint of intention in the movement. She spoke the question without waiting for the censorship of consideration.

“I feel like I don’t know you.”

“You wouldn’t be the first to say that...”

“I feel like you don’t know me either. But there is a reason behind that. Nobody knows me because I don’t even know me anymore. But you… You’ve been here since you were thirteen years old. That is plenty of time to work out just who you are. I find it hard to believe that you keep yourself hidden because you don’t know what else to do. So why?”

She traced the outline of a frown that darkened his expression as his eyes burned a hole in the ceiling. He considered the question for quite a while. But Freya was not going to award him with the satisfaction of letting the topic slip away. He suggested that they talk and she was going to ensure her questions received answers.

“It’s just the way I am,” he eventually said.

“The way you are? Or the way you’ve been made?” Freya’s response fell soon after the end of his reply; hungrily filling in the silence and pressing with insisting curiosity. Evidently too quick for Mat, as his only response was a confused stumble.

“What?”

“People in this place, they deal with things differently. Andie marches through with robotic precision. Some throw themselves into their work. People like Bryn… and Wren…” A stab of guilt flooded through her at just the mention of the name. A sudden dryness of the throat caused a momentary pause before she was able to pass onto the next words of her sentence. “…They keep optimism somehow. And then there’s you. You shut yourself off. You are constantly cynical. You find strength in loneliness. That is how you cope. And out of all the paths I can only see yours. I am going to become you. I’m not sure I want that.”

“That’s your problem sunshine. You think too hard. You try too hard. If you stopped panicking about how little you understand and how little you belong, maybe you would find the solution.” The darkness exacerbated his point. With nothing to turn her attention to she was left listening to the words repeat in a ringing echo of her mind. There was nowhere to hide. She had to accept the obvious truth in his words. But Mat did not stop there. He pressed on.

“Maybe there’s not a solution. There are no paths here Freya. Every option is open. That is what you do not understand. This isn’t a prison. This isn’t a curse. This is as free as you have ever been in your life. Tomorrow we are going to break out of here. And we will be freer still. You can do whatever you want sunshine…” Now he turned to look at her. The speeded tempo of his words, the animation burning behind his eyes. Freya felt herself getting swept away by the exhilaration Mat offered. It seemed as though he didn’t live unless there was a point to be made. But when that point came it triggered a detonation that scattered a vibrant trail of gleaming effervescence that pushed the darkness of the room out of prominence.

When his hand glided across her hip she recognised the sensation across her skin. It was the same burn that shivered down her spine the night she was released from the operation. Her mind clouded with anticipation as it desperately stumbled and searched for something, anything, to say. She didn’t need words. They had become obsolete. His lips had no trouble finding hers in the darkness. The urgency in his words had found a release in a silent language that required little thinking. The only thought occurring in her mind was the need to be closer to him. After every kiss an insisting acknowledgement of being unfulfilled required her to grapple for another. She was completely occupied in the moment. But in a pause to draw breath her mind became disentangled long enough for the distance to flicker into a noticeable proximity. Wren.

“Mat…” she said as she placed a restricting hand against his chest.

“What?”

“We can’t. Not when Wren is out there…”

“Wren made a choice. We are free to make ours. Our choices are tied to no one else’s. We are free…” Too far. His theory made sense when it did not impact on the real world. It was a nice theory, an idea to make life more tolerable. But it was not something to live by.

“How can you say that?”

“I’ve had eleven years to think about it and nothing else makes sense.” And there it was. The final admission. Underneath it all Mat was just as lost as her. She couldn’t piece back together two broken shards. The vulnerability panicked her. Selfish words left a bad taste in her mouth. But she had no other way of coping with the sudden change of events.

“I think you should go.”

“Fine. That’s fine.”  It wasn’t until the door clicked to a close that Freya located the plentiful collection of words she should have said. Instead she was left to discover that loneliness sets in quicker in the dark.