At the end of the stretch of darkness a small light shinned and reached its arm out to her. Her skin tingled with the desire to be warmed by what appeared to be a single flame that roared to the heavens, which she had wonder about so often. Crunching beneath her feet were the fallen leaves of the old maples, crisp with the early winter air, inch by inch she worked her way down the last section of railroad. Glancing up to see him standing closer then expected, she was forced to step back by the threatening large body before her. Fear striking her with a sense of home and welcoming eyes, she squinted to see who was really in front of her.
“Is this just another trick of the mind or could it possibly be true that you are right before me?” the man stepped back a few steps and motioned her to come sit down next to him by the fireside, which was already being shared by a group of men chatting about philosophy and politics. “I was sure that I would never see the day…”
A pause in all sound began to drive them all mad in their seats. Even the flame seemed to stop in its tracks, not daring to interrupt the thoughts going through the minds of the scholars or that of this new face. The deer in the forest had vanished when her presence was detected, no life form could be spotted for miles. Even the men before her seemed to be lifeless, and the man she once looked up to was speechless for the first time she could remember.
“They came you know, and stole me, my family and my mind, well they tried at least,” she said with a soft voice while gazing into the pits of fire. Her face glowed as if the sun was shinning on the still water of a frozen lake. The skin on her arms bumped up and down from the icy breeze of the tracks behind her, but she felt warmth growing deep within her body. She seemed to not know how to react to this but she kept spitting out random thoughts and bits and pieces of information.
He grabbed her shoulder and pulled her in for a great hug of an old friendship. A tear started to form under her eyes, over the last few years the softness that comforted him had become stiff and cold. Her innocence had been tampered with as had her love of the pure and free. Somewhere inside of her that girl still stood looking in the windows of her own home watching her family laugh and talk. That girl was now under a pile of rubbish and the only way to get her back was to start over, to make a freedom of life.
“Where exactly have you been since the attack, I mean I know that they took you but I had no idea that you were still alive, I’m in shock really.” He was puzzled at the thought of her actually being with him and alive. “Ever since they told me you were killed I have searched for the truth, I have discovered the light and I have longed to hear your thoughts and theories again.” In his mind she seemed to be a small part of his past, only a glimmer of hope in a sea of treachery, what was unapparent to him was that she truly loved him, even if she didn’t know it quiet at that moment.
“Where to begin? So much happened and I really haven’t thought of keeping track of time. I really don’t know much about the time I was taken but I was brought to a place that we called the Wall.”
“We?”
“Yes we, a large group too. When that secret soldier came to take my family we were separated, he said that I would be useful for finding how to alter thoughts of non-thinkers. I never found out what had happened to my family though, but I was brought to the Wall and put into a room full of screens, not a parlor, but more of a holding cell.”
“I knew that he had something to do with this, but I had no clue that he had captured you , I was told that he had killed you nothing more, just a quick end. So you never found out what happened to your family?”
“No, weren’t you paying attention?” With the loss of her innocence came a quick and short fuse. Being with him she started to realize that she had changed and that she didn’t feel the same as she did in the city, now it seemed that everybody she met was like, she was no longer unique and to him she was just another girl. “I’m sorry, but they did things to me; they tried to take my thoughts away. I couldn’t talk with anyone for they feared I would become a terrorist of words.”
Clara McGee went on describing how she was forced to watch the screens and participate in marathons of useless shows, until the system malfunctioned with the explosion of the great city. The entire grid was disabled and it seemed that it would never come back on. A few hours after sitting in darkness Clarisse found her self blinded by the lights, the back up generators must have been delayed but they didn’t quite cover the entire Wall, many spots were still dark and unresponsive.
“When the system couldn’t reboot the guards left the building with no signs of how to escape, all the cells became unlocked and they were afraid of what we might do to them. Come to find out I was one of many free thinkers locked up in that maze of white. Two years of my life in that hell chamber distorted my sight and when the door to my cell opened I tumbled down to the hard ground. I was able to look up and finally see the Wall, it towered of me by at least 451 meters high, I guessed because of one sign hanging high up that read “450 and higher.” The Wall reached up into the cloud of smoke form the city near by that apparently was the cause for my release.”
David looked at Clara with an expression of amazement and disgust. “How…” is all he could say. “How could they…”
gether and now all that is left is the memory you all knew of me and an outline of a ragdoll in the wind.” She flashed back to the Wall and disappeared from the conversation for a few minutes.
Her mind was gone and her face lifeless, she was living in two time periods but didn’t know how to tell them apart. She was floating in space as if in a science fiction movie paying in a parlor. Roaming back behind the Wall she felt herself fall again.
What was a nineteen year old girl suppose to do when surrounded by a singular round wall that stretched on for miles? After careful debate on which way to go Clarisse decided to move down the right hallway, eventually she would end up back where she started, well that’s what she thought anyway. 20 minutes of walking brought her to a strange sight, for the last stroll there was only giant concrete walls but who knew what may lay behind them, Clarisse found a large metal door that was twice her size in height and could fit a car through it. Just looking at it made her feel tired from all the pushing she would have to do to open it, the sight appeared to be forbidden to enter but that wouldn’t stop her. The enormous metal handle was icy, yet she managed to twist it with ease and pushed it forward. Nothing except darkness lay before her now.
A cold lifeless breeze hit her bare skin and a shiver went straight down the center of her back. She quickly grabbed the edge of her coat and pulled it across her to try and hide the skin that was very pale and snowy white. “Hello!” shouted a frightened young girl hoping for no response at all.
A light instantly flashed on and a large room became apparent. Filled to the brim with papers and books it must have been some sort of filing library. A step forward and she was in a maze all its own, stacks of random heights surrounded her now. The Wall seemed to be more comforting now, in these dark dim corners she could see dust forming, at least out in the hall one could see the sky above.
Turning in circles she caught sight of a shaking pile, an odd looking old man walked out from behind it and stared directly at her. “Are you one of the new recruits? Sending a girl, hmmm they must be looking for a new generation to keep me busy. Well missy I am sorry to inform you but I have categorized all of the papers in this library a hundred times and put them in alphabetical order.”
“I am sorry but I don’t know what you are talking about. I am just a girl that was trapped in a cage, a simple girl, that’s all. My name is Clara, I am nineteen and losing my mind.”
“Well I go by the name of Collin, although I was named George Collin by my parents, along with my coworkers, we have turned this pile of rot into a decent looking pile of confiscated books. I used to be apart of the outside world you know, I even had a plan to get all these books back into the arms of young people like yourself. I am sorry if I’m coming off to strong if just had nobody to talk to in a very long time, they took away my coworker, Stefani, a few months ago for some testing and I have been alone ever since.”
At that moment a large stack of books piled high, almost reaching the ceiling plummeted down and papers flew everywhere. Falling like ash, the documents of all sizes slowly fluttered around and tumbled in the air. The stack almost hit them both but luckily they had stepped back just in time. A fading feeling came over her and a blurry image appeared in her sight.
The light of the fire started to rise up in the still night again, she found herself back sitting with David. She turned her soft face towards him, “The fallen sheets of paper blew into an outline of my body, yet I hadn’t faded yet. I felt dead, but free at the same time. I can’t help but feeling that all of this is a dream and I truly am not with you. I want this to be real but I have missed so much and you have changed in so many ways. You are a stranger in my eyes but I know you, it’s just so crazy.”
“Clara, you have missed so much and you are free now, that is all that matters. Along these rails I have met so many scholars that actually helped me break the spell of the false happiness I suffered from. I have been able to learn and grow as a thinker, but it’s really all thanks to you. Are you Happy?”
She laughed a little, “I remember asking you that. I am sure glad you feel that way now, the government didn’t set in on all of us, and luckily we all found each other. Stefani assured me that I would be able to find you. I had found her after Collins and I walked for hours around that Wall. She was still strapped to a chair when we got to him. They were doing some kind of mind control tests.”
“What ever happened to her? I wish to find her and pick up were we left off, you know we had a plan to move on in this world, to go to different cities and try to bring back the messages in freedom. I heard that Stefani was recaptured and skinned, is that true?”
“NO, that is not anywhere near what happened. We got out of the Wall and made it to a group of other free thinkers. We all moved along the tracks until we found a group of scholars we wanted to stay with. Stefani got off in Saint Louis, something about getting a printing press. And Collin, well he found his wife’s grave a few cities back, I asked him to come with me since he was alone, but he wouldn’t leave her side.””
“Well this Collin guy seems to be a real romantic. As for that silly old woman Stefani, she knows about the railroads, you would think she would have come all the way with you and visited for some time. I suppose she wants me to go to her, we shall have to make a trip to see her.”
“It sure is nice out here, the stars and the moon that is.” Clara seemed to be jumping from subject to subject rather quickly and David was just trying to keep up with her. The clouds had started to move on and the moon was just visible, “So did you ever find that man on the moon?”
“I did,” chuckled David strongly, the roar of his laughter and the fire faded into the chilled night air. The night ended in a quick manner, David just thinking about the next day and what other surprises may come, Clara on the other hand had different thoughts on how to end the evening.
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