Silence (3 page)

He shivered at the knowledge what he’d
just survived. Goosebumps tingled up his neck, carrying with them a
sense of destiny. Sheikoh couldn’t believe he’d evaded death again.
He believed that he had made his peace with dying, what he imagined
as the final retirement. A back way world free from the ravages of
hatred and pain. Some nights, when his body ached with exhaustion,
he’d lie in bed with the secret wish he didn’t have to wake up the
next morning. He knew Dorothi needed him, and he’d do anything for
that sweet little girl. She was his only family left in all the
world.

Nevertheless, every moment of
unrelenting action wore him down a little more, and every encounter
with danger seemed more surreal. He could see Death looking at him
with its inevitable, welcoming smile. He’d quickly learned to smile
back. He’d learned to love what he hated, distrust even himself,
and view murder as a gift rather than a crime. Sheikoh had accepted
the unacceptable and he looked back at the rest of the world
through the veil of dark enlightenment.

And, paradoxically, it made living
worth so much more. The stark contrast of two infinite entities
weaved together was both heartrendingly beautiful, as well as
utterly alienating. Each of his breaths was the first gasping cry
of a newborn. He learned to welcome the cold trickle of fear;
inherent in dread’s discomfort was the promise of relief. And
without fear, there was no such thing as trust, just like without
hate, love could never come to be. Shadows were the medium that
added clarity and depth to formless, white light.

Sheikoh thought through it all as he
pushed open the wooden door to his serene, little paradise. He sat
against the plank wall and stared at the roses and vermilions
blooming around his boots. A sparrowhawk flitted on the branches of
a tree by the light of the full moon. His eyes traced the green ivy
creeping towards the black sky open above with sudden approval.
Sheikoh stared up at the stars for a moment and then closed his
eyes and lifted his face to the night’s cool air. He slowly
breathed it in.

His head swirled around in
a maelstrom of numb shock. He didn’t understand how he’d survived
every single impossible moment of his short life, yet it happened
so consistently he no longer questioned it. He felt dark and
terrible and, above all,
powerful
. He had proven himself to
all of Interium. As he gazed up at the midnight sky, he shuddered.
Violence pulsated at the edge of everything he knew about himself.
Sheikoh reveled in the simple action of breathing the air as a
killer rather than a child.

He knew his mask went far deeper than
the skin of his face. Sheikoh and Silence were one and the same.
Light can’t exist without shadow. There was no use lying to himself
about who he was anymore. His blood was alive and he was Silence.
He finally accepted it.

He was the shadow under every bed, the
ominous, protracted pause of a phone call before rending
disconnection, the executioner of all the words ever choked off in
fear. He was a part of the sporadic criminal elite now. He resolved
to try and learn the pleasure of bloodlust. He’d already seen it in
so many other pairs of eyes, what was stopping him? It would make
his life a lot easier if he enjoyed spilling blood. He was good at
it. Maybe someday he’d find that missing piece, the one that’d make
it all worth the pain. He could be free, but only as a killer. He
could finally walk through the streets unchained, living the life
of lies and blood. As Silence he could have anything he’d ever
wanted.

“
Your
name is
Sheikoh
…” whispered his mind, cutting off his thoughts.

A vein of shock pierced his
chest.

That voice…

Emili?

His body shook despite the summer’s
warmth. It’d been so long since he’d heard her voice. It was both
familiar and as impossibly distant as the gulf between oceans,
swirling with frustrated waves.

Thoughts of dark potential and that
wild, skewed happiness dissolved. Sheikoh’s fading smile twisted
into an introspective frown. His forehead crinkled thoughtfully. He
felt as though he’d somehow been preserved within time. Like he’d
fallen asleep for a thousand years and then woken up to the ruins
of everything he’d ever known.

“
Emili…” Sheikoh whispered
softly. “I’m not sure I can remember who I am anymore…”

Lances of bittersweet memory scored
his chest, and he cried out. He wasn’t ready for the reminders of
trust and hope. He’d spent so long denying their touch. So many
nights. Scabs came open in places that felt long-dead.

Sheikoh had never felt as terrified he
did at this moment.

He wanted scream, but his throat
wouldn’t cooperate. He retreated back into himself, erecting hasty
barriers between himself and raw feeling. Memories and loss kept
hammering at him, but he refused their terms of surrender. Their
onslaught grew weaker and weaker. And then finally, it faded
away.

Numb, Sheikoh gazed up at the
twinkling stars. Memory of the falling crate crunched through his
thoughts. The gangsters’ bodies danced through his head. He blinked
up at the night sky.

“
Glad
that’s over… that’s a great
weight
off the chest.” Sheikoh
whispered half-heartedly. After a minute he started giggling
softly. He held it in his mouth, but his lips kept twitching up. It
was
wrong
to
laugh after all the people he’d killed. He knew that
much.

But the more he tried to dam the
feelings the more that hysterical laughter began building up in his
chest. More and more until Sheikoh fell on his knees and let it
explode out of him like vomit. Only it wasn’t laughter like he
thought, but gasping, wracking sobs. Tears streamed pearl streaks
down his face as he lay in the grass shivering violently. Sheikoh
didn’t blame the teardrops for leaving him. He’d wanted out of
himself since the moment he’d known that Emili was dying her slow,
intentional death, and there was nothing he could do to save
her.

Part 1: The Knife’s Edge
of Danger

Chapter 1 - West Sider
Story

(3 years later)

“
Sheikoh!” Dorothi
complained, squirming beneath the older boy. “Your face is
uncomfortable!”

Sheikoh grunted and picked up his
head. He waited just long enough for her to uncross her legs and
spread them out over the floor. Then he let his head fall back onto
Dorothi’s soft, worn jeans.

Sheikoh was operating on
about six hours of sleep. Last night, Friday night, he'd told
himself to get himself home, just like he did every other Friday
night. And just like every other Friday night, he hadn’t listened
to himself. The streets always seemed to carry him away.

“
You know, it’d be more
comfortable if we turned the couch back right-side up,” Dorothi
suggested conversationally.

Just five more
minutes…

Sheikoh clenched his eyes. Dorothi
didn’t take the hint.

“
It’s just, none of my
friends in school sit on their couches like this,” Dorothi went
on.

“
Yeah...” Sheikoh muttered
tiredly. “Isn’t it awesome?”

He had turned the couch upside-down to
mess with a shifty-eyed client... almost half a year ago now... He
had never gotten around to turning it back upright.

“
Well, the other day that
one girl Jeanne…” Dorothi plunged into a long story about how
Jeanne won some dance combination, and then, the very next day,
shown up to class as Little Miss Popular and made some other girl
cry over another eleven-year-old boy and on and on and
on.

Sheikoh ignored her. He
made a point not to keep up with what was happening at Dorothi’s
“school”, which roughly translated to a glorified daycare center.
Dorothi was so far beyond the required curriculum, she could’ve
taught her teachers more than they taught her. Their studies were
carefully tilted at factory knowledge and Skyrei propaganda; though
the west half of Interium was encircled in the wall, the honest
citizens still had to work.
Sheikoh knew
Dorothi knew he wasn’t listening, but he also knew she knew he knew
that he got the message.

Time to wake up.

Sheikoh groaned again and wormed
around grumpily. Finally, he picked himself up, stretching and
yawning. He let his bleary vision rest on their battered plasma
screen TV, and spread his lanky legs out besides Dorothi’s, who
immediately stopped rambling and turned her attention to her
cartoon. It was going to be a bit before Sheikoh could
talk.

Once his eyes had focused, Sheikoh
recognized the bright cartoons dancing across the screen, a Klyde
the Cat re-run. Sheikoh reached for the remote, but Dorothi grasped
his hand the way most eleven-year-old girls probably did with their
brothers. It wasn’t exactly what he’d been after, but Sheikoh just
decided to go with it. He didn’t want to hurt Dorothi’s feelings or
whatever.

For a while, he zoned out,
absentmindedly playing with hand like it was a bit of clay he’d
forgotten he had been carrying. Dorothi ignored him, long used to
his eccentricities.

Klyde’s overly energetic voice began
to grate on Sheikoh’s nerves, and he let his eyes wander around the
room. Just beside the bare light bulb, a solid silver chandelier
crookedly hung from the ceiling, Sheikoh’s prize possession. A few
of its bars ended in warped, black stumps from a few of the harder
times. On the side wall was a deer’s head, with long, pointy
antlers branching out like poisonous roots. Countless torn band and
Tri-ball posters of the broodingly handsome Jace Darek,
yellow-tape, drawings, and even a few pictures of people that
Sheikoh had never met served the purpose of covering up the
peeling, dingy-grey wallpaper beneath.

A single, crusted window
overlooked the dirt road and a pair of concrete sidewalks. Outside,
groups of hunched people walked towards weekend shifts at one of
the many factories. It was hard work, but on the west side you took
what you could find. Behind them, the street’s three-room, concrete
houses leaned against one another despondently. He finally grabbed
the remote and clicked Klyde the Cat off.

“
I’m bored, Do-do,” Sheikoh
muttered, hiding a yawn.

“
You’re always bored,
Sheek,” Dorothi observed with a smile.

Sheikoh’s mouth flashed answering one
back at her.

“
Well you’re sort of cute.”
He flicked the tip of her nose with a fingernail. “You know
that?”

Dorothi’s eyes narrowed and her mouth
puckered.

“
I am
not
cute
,”
Dorothi growled angrily.

Sheikoh turned and looked at Dorothi,
training a pair of wide, seemingly-innocent eyes on hers. His
expression smoothed into mock remorse, a version of one of his many
I’m-just-a-poor-kid-don’t-lock-me-in-the-Solitarium
looks.

“
I’m so
sorry, Do-do, I forgot how big and tough you are. Please
please
please
forgive me,” Sheikoh begged her desperately.

“
I don’t know if I can,”
she smirked.

“
’
You don’t know if you
can
,’
huh
?”
Sheikoh asked incredulously.

He popped his neck, and his grin was
edged with a wicked gleam. Dorothi giggled nervously, crawling
backwards now. She knew what was going to happen next.

“
No! Please!” she gasped,
but Sheikoh was already on her.

He tickled every exposed inch of her
skin. Writhing and kicking, Dorothi screamed with laughter. Alive
in the blur of the moment, they rolled over the floor and fought
for the upper hand. Finally, Sheikoh rolled onto his back,
pretending Dorothi had forced him down. She got him back, tickling
him in gleeful retribution until tears streamed down his
face.

The television went on with its
program, unaware that it was being ignored.

“
Stop! Stop! Uncle! You
win!” Sheikoh gasped finally. Dorothi finally stopped, apparently
deciding that he’d had enough. But as Sheikoh gasped a breath in,
Dorothi’s fingers streaked back at him for the second
round.

Sheikoh's razor instincts caught
Dorothi’s fingers and twisted her underneath him in one fluid
motion, fast as lightning. A second later, Dorothi was staring up
at him with a trembling lower lip and fearful, wide eyes. Sheikoh
pulled back, disgusted with himself. He wanted to tell her that he
wasn’t going to hurt her, that it was all right, but remorse wired
his jaw immobile.

As fast as blinking, he stumbled to
his feet and was halfway across the room, panting slightly. Sheikoh
leaned against dingy grey wallpaper, held up by a single, trembling
arm. He kept his back to Dorothi.

“
Sorry, Lovebug,” He said
in a controlled voice. “You okay?”

“
No fair, Sheek! I coulda
taken you any day!” Dorothi exclaimed with an out of breath
laugh.

Sheikoh chanced a glance her way.
Dorothi's curly brown hair was frizzy, and she stated up at him
with a pair of blazing pale-blue eyes. Her hands were curled into
fists and her freckled face was splotchy with challenge and
excitement.