Roll With It Short Stories

Day Two

Day Two

Prompt 14: Secret Dream

Word Count 11: 1500

Elizabeth 'Liddie' Martin, another beautiful girl, another ugly end. Not a day over eighteen and she had met the same gruesome fate as thirty other women in Shundour. Martin had been found swinging, bald and nude from the same clock tower with the same word taunting written across her abdomen, Wicked. To Augustus Flan it was no secret who was responsible but things were never simple in the North Kingdom. Augustus was chief Pol-man of Shundour, responsible for keeping the peace and ensuring the welfare of over ten thousand citizens. He was charged with protecting the city but lately he wondered they even wanted protection. He put the pictures of Ms. Martin into her file and leaned on it with both elbows.

From his window glared The Church, biggest one in the Kingdom, even bigger than the capital's white monolith. Shundour's church was known as 'The Church', it was monstrous and if you looked, it's tendrils were found in everything. The sun set at an angle that caused it's crystal doors to shimmer pale greens and blues into his office. The effect made the whole place look like it was underwater, as far as Augustus was concerned it might as well have been. The city, and more than likely the entire Kingdom, was drowning and it was The Church holding them down.

Upon the Station's wall and on the back of their dollars was a portrait of Lerold Katyus who took the throne of Willit,that would later become The Great North Kingdom in 1213. The Great North was forged in the same way most modern countries of the day had been, through the heat of war and conquering. One thing that made Katyus' ascent unique, however, was his support from the Church of his Grace Sodin. The faith of Sodin came from the West, where it only existed in tiny sects but had done so for thousands of years, the rest of the Continent practiced the ways of the old faiths. Many scattered versions of the same story with traditions and rituals that persist under new names. Katyus found the North ravaged and without hope under the unkind fist of the Willit Empire. With only an army of 2,000, most of them holy men, Katyus took the Willit Empire in a single fortnight, against all odds when death had been certain. His victory was seen as a miracle and he rebuilt the Empire as the North Kingdom in the name of Sodin who had given him the right to rule. It was only natural that a war torn people would turn to a God that promised Hope and Prosperity to all peoples even in death. Katyus and his descendants would expand their empire across the lands, much as Willit had but they used more palatable names for their expansion. Instead of Conquering it was Liberating, it was leading people into the grace of Sodin, so as to save them from his wrath. These wars continued off and on for centuries but the Great North was without a single rebellion and all followed the will Sodin, without paying mind to the poverty and suffering that had long returned.

Today when King Arturus Katyus spoke, the Holy Minister's words came out, that's how it worked in the Great North. With the South-Eastern Alliance at their doorstep, his Holiness' words were spoken through His Highness and repeated like a traveling echo from the mouth of every citizen. They filed out of evening mass indistinguishable form each other but he could see the tension in the shoulders of the young women, all undoubtedly wondered which one would be next?

Janus kept her eyes down and tried to nod along with what her mother was saying. She scooped another grainy mouthful of twice heated leftovers into her mouth. "Janus are you listening to me?" Her mother took her face in her bony hand. "You are not to be out of my sight do you hear me? I will be picking your brother and you up from school from now on." She released her and began shaking her frizzed curls. "There's a reason those girls were found like that. Running around after dark, what do they think is going to happen? If they had thought for one second about what they were doing to their parents," She threw her hands and eyebrows up. Janus' fork scrapped against the plate, she knew what everyone thought about the girls who died but she knew how nice Liddie and Marin had been.

Outside her bedroom window Janus could see The Church, it's fires burning the night's darkness away. In the past it had brought her comfort but this night she drew her curtains until their orange dominance was but a whispering line between them. A tear rolled down her cheek, she was afraid to close her eyes. She wished her father home away from the front lines. "I'm always protecting you." He had told her, kissing her goodbye. She was three years older but she had never been more afraid. Tomorrow she would be seventeen and all the girls died on their birthdays. She buried her anguish in her pillow, "I haven't told anyone, not a soul. Please don't punish me Sodin." The dream came again that night.

She was brought to the wall that guarded their border, Pol-men and Guards without faces walked along its top but she was above them. Below an ocean had come, the waves crashed and receded with foam made of bones. Janus could see herself staring down, taking on a blue hue as she became aware of what was behind her. This was the part she hated, she shut her eyes and balled her fists, the waves rattled like thousands of snakes. It loomed over her, dwarfed her, her body shook as it forced to turn to look at it. The Church stood its fires burned ravenously, the smoke turned to rapid pinwheels in the sky. She begged forlorn but no sounds was permitted save for the sound of stone grating as the large crystal doors began to open. Something large crouched under its arch, she knew it was far larger than The Church could allow but there it was. It stared at her from the archway. 'Don't come out,' her heart whispered. It had made all the bones behind her and she knew, it wanted her as witness. She was trapped in that silent second of dread before it began to bend down and out.

She awoke as she had the last few days, soaked in fluids and mouth dry. She hid her sheets in the closet to wash and made her way for school. There was a sickness she carried in her stomach growing since the dreams began, she could feel it now, kicking. The girls chattered in the hall about Liddie. All of them kept long morbid discussions, rumors and theories and Janus felt helpless as they tried to guess who would be next to get the dream and die. Janus thought about telling her Minister, perhaps if she confessed they could exorcise whatever had taken root in her. She had kept quiet about the dream but she feared people would see it playing in her eyes. She thought some of their gazes lingered or that she heard her name whispered. How could they know?

There was an assembly that day given by the Chief Pol-man, he told people to stick together and to never go anywhere alone. If they saw anything suspicious they should come to him. Janus thought the whole thing was a waste of time, no one would turn in their own parents. The things people said were only half as nauseating as what was left unsaid. When school was over she waited by the front stairs for her mother and brother, but as the crowd thinned she became paranoid. Looking around, she tried to hide the distress playing across her face as her eyes began to water. She saw The Church a street over, it seemed bigger than it ever had as towered over all the city, visible from anywhere. She edged around the front of the building until she was in its shade away from the street, taking one last look before running.

"We expect results, Flan." The Commander of the Guard looked down at the Chief without a trace of irony in his tone. "Resolve the situation or we will find someone who will." The door closed and moments later a ledger slammed into it, Augustus shook with rage and turned over his desk causing the wood to crack across the top. That evening Augustus Flan tendered his resignation after 24 years as a Pol-man. He'd be damned if they thought he would be a scapegoat in their sick farce and he was dead sick of playing along. He threw on his heaviest coat as the bell for evening mass began to rang. Janus Garrick had gone missing a week ago on her seventeenth birthday. She was missing but not hanging from the Clock Tower. Maybe it meant nothing and in a week she would turn up as victim thirty-one, but there was a chance. And if there was a chance, then he was going to find her first.