Fell of Dark (22 page)

THORN

I DON'T THINK I
have a soul. It was beaten out of me. Maybe it's gone entirely. Or hovering, half alive, hovering close. Maybe it wants to come back. What if my soul wants to find a way back in? When it's safe.

That must be painful, a soul returning home. More painful than dying. The sickness. The tearing apart. Ribs and chest. Lifting the heart, unlatching it to find the little case for the soul. That much pain and sickness. The fever. The infection. The blood. All to take back the one thing that will make me better. Make me human and good.

This word:
omphalos
. Navel, belly button. In other words, the end of the umbilical. The center of us. All knotted up. No more womb food.

Is it possible to disappear into yourself through your belly button? Does light come through skin? Or is it complete darkness? Smell of blood? Something rotten?

I think, think, think, but I can't figure anything out. The holes in my brain. Something new inside of me, the Drillers.

I've lost chess to a hole in my mind. I can no longer play, and I barely remember how the pieces move. The queen in any direction, as far as she can or wants to go, and her useless husband, the king, only one square, north, south, east, or west. It's the knight, armored and heavy. He can jump over anything and owes it all to his horse. I can't remember, how does he move? How many squares? An el?

No job. No money. No school. No board games. No chess.

If I've forgotten how to play at war, does that mean I'm more peaceful?

I saw a man kill a rat in a schoolyard. The schoolyard where I waited for Mala. Where a goat made of children crushed my finger under its hoof. My schoolyard. He crushed the thing with a cinder block. A rat. The man killed himself. Didn't he? A rat killing a rat.

That man was a kid once. He might have gone to that school, too. I don't know, but he went to school somewhere. He was a child, and then he grew up into a man that kills animals in a schoolyard. A self-hating rat. He was a boy once.

He dropped the block, and I had to walk away. I felt sorry for the rat, and kind of sick, so I walked away. I couldn't stop thinking. It might as well have been a boy, a child, who killed the rat. I might've killed the rat. A killer of rats.

Then, a raccoon killed in the street. Right in front of me. Its insides splashed over five feet of road. I saw it. The driver didn't stop. He must have known what he'd done. But this crime couldn't hold its own against the driver ten seconds later. His crime? He steered into the dead coon, crushing it. Blood on the tires.

Why would anyone do this? Hate. Rage. That's a man to loathe. A man who deserves to be thrown into a pit with hungry raccoons.

I want to punish the second driver. I want to punish the man who killed the rat. I want to punish them all, the cruel and hateful. The liars. The cowards.

Go to the source.

Easy for me to say. All men and women start out as children.

“Where is everybody?”

I felt empty. Almost dead.

“Nobody here but us.” A Guardian laughed.

It all happened fast. Without my knowing.

“We slaughtered the others.”

“What does that mean? Who's left?”

“We and our Sawmen. The Drillers.”

“The Protector?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Just following orders.”

“The Architect.”

“As ever, the Architect lives.”

“There's blood and shit all over the ground.”

“War will do that.”

Something terrible and desperate, something brutal, crushes me from the inside. Stones. Laid on top of my heart and lungs. I can hardly breathe. The Architect, the Guardians, they have me under stones.

“The Architect will not kill you.” The Guardian sets another stone. “Rather, he'll only kill you once.”

Stone after stone after stone.

“Matters are resolving themselves quite nicely. Your mind crumbles little by little, a sandcastle at high tide, if you will.” Another stone. “We break you down, saws, drills, and stones.”

I'm cracking. Even so, I have to think it's less painful than if my soul were finding its way back in.

My soul: I'll never get it back.

“Why do you need your soul?” the Guardian spits. “There will only be longing and regret.”

And some peace.

“It's too late for that.”

What will I do after I'm dead?

“For a little while, you'll live.”

I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.

—Gerard Manley Hopkins