The Prize of Dysprosium

Chapter XI: The Red Parts of My Soul

For most of the day I sit glued to the screen with the rest of the Cave. The tv stations have different people coming in to be interviewed – experts, eyewitnesses, luminaries. Alle pops up, for once without her accessory. Ridder might be lying in a ditch somewhere, puking out his guts at the horror and accusations. The thought makes me smile.

Alle plays innocent of course, almost breaks down on live tv and begs for the truth to come out because 'secrets are a vile pest'. It's all I can do not to burst out into laughter when she says it. Of course, the celebrities can't anything but publicly support the state, but that's not nearly the case with the lower class.

Within an hour, the streets are mulling over with people yelling at each other or getting into public fighting. Barooba bans us all from going outside until she gives the go-ahead, and she's right to do so. It becomes so bad that extraordinarily ordered Pacifiers have to step in to mollify the population. Then later that afternoon, somebody (cough cough, the rebels) hack channel fourteen which everyone is watching anyway. They send out their own interviews, dropping in and out every ten seconds like a puzzle the viewers have to put together themselves. Apparently, there are some disturbances in the middle class and the upper class is confused as to what to do. What can they do? Support a bestial Government or go against the only leaders they have ever known and risk losing everything? Then comes montages of different cities where Pacifiers are plowing down demonstrating civilians. There is a man who gets his skull bashed in so his brain splatters on the screen. There is a woman who's brutally torn away from her daughter while she's screaming her lungs raw. There's a young couple who's blown up by a grenade, both trying to protect each other till the end.

Carrie-Ann begins crying again and nobody blames her. A lot of my colleagues have tears in their eyes. Garmen cries too, but she's too angry to let me comfort her. The only happy news is, that Alivia doesn't have herpes, just unclean skin, which means I'm STD-free too.

We're all still sitting in front of the tv, trying not to mind the sounds from the streets outside, when Barooba comes out of her office. She walks to the door and takes one look outside. Then she puts up a sign. I know the sign reads 'Closed until further notice'. It was up the night after Smeet was killed too.

I let out a deep sigh and fold my hands behind my neck. Plans, plans, I have to make plans, but all I can think about is the drugs upstairs. And Garmen is angry at me. She blames me and I understand her, but I can't leave before we're okay.

Everybody go to bed either crying or angry or elated that evening, but I can't feel anything but numbness. I do a small line, deciding in one of my stronger moments to cut down, and then I go to bed and try to think of something other than Gunnar's mix in my closet.

I have some weird dream about white eyes with slits for pupils chasing me down, and then Alle and Garmen calling out to me from opposite directions. Then Hannah appears, laughing cruelly underneath a tree where my dead sister hangs. What is up with all the women in my life? Barooba is about the only stable one I know, and she's a murderer. The only one who doesn't haunt me this particular night is ironically Father George.

When I wake up, I wake up in sweat and immediately take the last of Gunnar's mix to calm my trembling hands and ragged breath. Then I dig my fingernails into my own skin until it breaks and I can lick off the blood.

"Mornin'," Sammie greets me as I come downstairs, my head spinning from the weird night. She sends me a smile, her wound already fading.

"Morning," I greet in return and go to get some breakfast. Hannah nearly walks into me with an omelet on her plate. She gives me the elevator stare with scrunched brows.

"You look like wrut product," she says.

"You are wrut product," I say.

"Hah, you'd get along well with my mother," she grins and walks around me. As the others start to wake the refractory table is steadily filled. I don't exactly talk to anyone except to give off a few grunts. In my opinion, you can deal with a lot as long as you sleep well, but I haven't slept well in what feels like years.