The Rouges

o n e

THE WIND SLAPPED my face as I looked down on the city below me. The scarce figures moving in the streets looked like ants. Their small bodies skittered through the shadows, avoiding the few street lamps that still worked. The dark meant protection, safety. Those amber pools of light meant exposing yourself, being seen, and no one wanted to be seen out in the open. Not unless they had a death wish.

Death sounded nice sometimes. It would be so… easy.

I leaned out farther from the ledge, rising on my toes to support the shifting weight. One little movement, one second of letting go and it could all be over. I wouldn’t even have to watch my impending collision. I could just close my eyes and wait for the pavement to claim me. I doubted I would even feel it. My consciousness would surely be gone before even the Scavengers found me.

I could jump.

I wouldn’t be the first to give up, to want out.

A cold gust of wind pushed the hood back from my face. I leaned backwards, letting my heels fall to meet the solid cement again. It would be easy, too easy. My mother’s last words echoed in my mind. “Be strong, survive.”

It had been six years since I watched my parents’ murders. Six years of hiding, of surviving this god-forsaken place. Six years could make people forget, lose themselves, but it only sharpened my hate, chiseling their deaths, their last words into every fiber of my being.

“Be strong, survive.”

Those three words made me get up, made me eat, and made me keep moving. And those same three words haunted me everyday.

I closed my eyes, seeing my mother’s face. She was beautiful. I always looked too much like her, but her face was soft. That softness was lost on me. I was hardened. I could still feel the iron bars of the grate pressed against my palms, see my father’s scared face as he lowered me into the storm drain, hear my mother’s voice as she slipped the backpack over my shoulders. I watched silently from the prison where my parents placed me as the Ravagers took their lives, my knuckles bleeding as I pressed them to my mouth to keep from screaming. I saw my father bleed out as he watched them rape his wife. I listened to my mother fight back before they took her life too. I fought to free myself, to save her, but the grate was too heavy and I was too weak. Later, I watched as the Scavengers came for them, stealing the clothing off my parents’ backs while their bodies were still warm.

I thought I would die in that storm drain, trapped forever, but one of the Scavengers saw me— and for reasons I still do not understand— he pulled up the grate and dragged me out. I should have screamed or fought him, but I remembered my mother’s words and instead just held his gaze. He seemed fascinated by my boldness before turning his back to me. I watched as he pulled my father’s shoes over his own stained and tattered socks.

“Life’s harsh out here kid, it’s every man for himself. But don’t say nobody never did nothing for you.” Without a second glance at me, he tossed my father’s pocketknife at my feet and left me standing alone in a dark alley.

I was eleven.

After that day I was on my own. I never trusted anyone, never sought friends. My father had left his journal in the backpack. It contained plans, ideas for surviving in the city we called Tartarus— or as the Ancient Greeks referred to it: “The dungeon of the damned.”

I scoured his notes, following them devoutly. And I survived.

I stepped down from the ledge of the building. I was a survivor, not a coward. Death would not be so easy for me. As many times as I had thought about giving up, stepping off a building or walking out into the daylight unarmed, I could never commit. As much as I wanted death, I couldn’t surrender to it. For my parents’ sake, more than mine, I had to try. I had to keep going. I owed that much to them.