Lishas and hurums were fighting, morphing into an immense, deranged, self-mutilating monster. Oresh was desperately running away, but the dark wave of hatred and blood was hurtling closer and closer. It swept over, crushed and consumed him. Everything went black.
He opened his eyes. He was lain on the dusty floor of the
flat. He remembered he was trying to have an afternoon nap. He hadn’t been
sleeping well since moving to the Ekuan quarter. Every night he would hear
someone screaming, their cries for help suddenly snuffed out, followed by
silence heavy with shame. When he did manage to nod off, he would be plagued
with nightmares. For as long as he could remember, Oresh had had vividly
beautiful dreams. Every night he had always looked forward to exploring the absurd
worlds his imagination conjured up for him. But now he felt trapped between grim
reality and a dreamworld determined to mirror it.
There was no work at the docks, and Askura’s food scheme had
run out of money. Kurush doesn’t need me, he thought, I’m surplus to
requirements. There’s nothing to do but think about how everything is getting
worse and worse and worse.
Until not long ago, Oresh had believed that through people’s
natural compassion and rationality, through their seeing themselves in others,
Kurush’s flaws would be overcome and it would grow into something greater. It
could become a place free from barbarism, hierarchy and poverty, a place where lishas
and hurums could live as they did in the idyllic early days of creation, but
still benefit from the advances Kurush had made – the goods arriving from every
corner of the world, the comfortable homes, the awe-inspiring statues, the beautiful
poetry.
Circumstances can pressure people to ignore others’ needs,
but people are fundamentally good. He knew that because he had seen Kurush heal
itself after the Night of Hunger, his parents adopting Anka and Shanessa was
proof. He knew there was hope. But the reality around him was making it harder
and harder to see. “Everything will work out eventually” his mother had told
him earlier before she went out shopping, but he just couldn’t see how.
Unbidden, his mind wandered to the memories of Askura’s and
Anka’s undressed bodies. Anka was a bit thick around the middle, she might be a
bit difficult to swallow, but she looked so soft and tender and sweet and… No
no no, stop that! What would she think of me if she knew I was thinking about
her like that? Her whole family has been eaten, and here I am thinking about
how tasty she looks. I must be the worst person alive. By the Sun, I hope
mother comes back with dinner soon.
In the corner there was a stack of clay tablets of Oresh’s
favourite poems. He’d read them so many times there was hardly any point in
keeping the tablets. He pushed his mind’s eye away from lecherous thoughts and
threw himself into those stories – the tale of the lisha who sailed to where
the Sun rose out of the ocean, despite his wife begging him not to, only to burst
into flames at dawn; the tale of the hurum who climbed the highest mountain,
who reached the peak only to slip and fall to his death; the tale of the hurum
and the lisha who hated each other but became friends to slay a mountain-sized
crocodile bent on destroying the world.
There’s a strangely satisfying contradiction in stories, he
thought, on the one hand they are doorways to escape the harshness of reality,
and on the other they are mirrors you can use to better understand the world,
to better understand people. They soothe scars from the past and prepare us for
future ones. What if I wrote a story about a future Kurush where everyone is
kind and no-one goes hungry? Would that inspire people to make Kurush a better
place? Or would that just be tedious to read?
With his eyes closed Oresh replayed the old stories for
himself, as though his head was his own magical theatre. He could feel himself
sinking deeper into the stories’ warm embrace, the scenes becoming more
colourful, more detailed, more absurd. Then the couple downstairs started
shouting at each other again and he was dragged back up to reality.
Suddenly his mother hurtled through the door and crumpled
onto the floor wheezing and sobbing.
“What’s wrong? What happened?”
“There was a lisha, he had a knife, he told me to take off
all my jewellery”
“Did he hurt you?”
Gishka shook her head. Oresh shuffled over and put his arms
around her.
“I’ll be honest, I’m surprised this didn’t happen sooner.
You need to blend in more around here. But the important thing is that you’re
not hurt, right? And at least he didn’t take your nice tunic with the dancing
dolphins, although maybe you should stop wearing something so… tasteful”
“He took everything, even the gold ring your father gave me
when we were young. When are we going to get out of this horrid place? When is
everything going to be normal again?”
Oresh hugged her tight, “Don’t worry, one day we’ll move
back to our house. Everything will be just like before”
He knew that wasn’t going to happen. He didn’t have the
heart to tell her what was becoming clearer and clearer to him everyday - that
things would never go back to the way they were.
Constructive criticism welcome
© Paul Bramhall
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