The Square
I hadn't realized how far Krystal and I had drifted into the abandoned region of the city. Looking up, I saw our contract, the very reason we were on this planet…practically staring me in the face.
There it was. The Forbidden Square, looming just ahead of us. Krystal gave me a quick glance; I returned it and gave a subtle nod, and we began walking towards it. As we did no more than take our first step, already I knew that something was not right about this place. The row of buildings on both sides that led up to the Square were run-down and decrepit, from the boarded-up windows to the chipping paint and blankets of dust on the windowsills that gave away the very obvious fact that these buildings had been abandoned for some time. As we approached, it seemed as if the whole area had been engulfed by a dark cloud; there were no signs of the bright and warm sun that had graced us with its presence before we had entered this place. Now only a cold gray sheet of a sky looked down on us.
When we reached the last couple of buildings before the Square's entrance, I motioned for us to stop walking, and began to look into the Square. For reasons that I have never been able to explain, as I looked into this shadowy boulevard, a sudden feeling of immense dread came over me; it was as if something in my mind was screaming at me to turn and run away from there as fast as I could. A shiver, audible to my ears and visible to my peripheral vision, told me that Krystal was feeling the exact same thing that I was.
Momentarily breaking my concentration on the Square, I cleared my throat and stood up straighter in an attempt to make myself appear more confident. This was one of a few subtle ways that I would often try to comfort Krystal and make her feel safe in my presence. I was never very good with romance or anything like it, so it was always small things like this…never anything more. She got the message. Immediately, I felt her relax, and she exhaled quietly, so much so that I almost did not hear it. I sighed inwardly. She had been on the team for a while now, and I hadn't worked up the nerve to give her even the slightest hint of how I felt. So much time had gone by…too much time had gone by…and I had missed so many chances…too many chances. And even now, it seemed that the only way I could show her I was there for her was in a small and false display of bravado. I felt pathetic. I forgot all of this, however, when I was overcome with the same feeling of dread once again.
This time, it washed over me like a wave, much more potent in its malice than before, and I was lost in the feelings that were being impressed upon me. It seemed as if there were no escape, no outside salvation to come and snap me out of it. There were no others around for miles. There was no sound in this area at all; no bird sang, no building creaked, even the common loud noises of a bustling technological city were absent from this place. The whole area was silent and calm…like the atmosphere when a person who was struggling had finally been strangled. It seemed as if the ominous silence would last forever, with Krystal and I under the spell of the dreaded calm of the Forbidden Square. What neither of us had expected, however, was for the silence to have been broken by a voice on our right, scaring us both to death in the process.
"Remarkable, isn't it?" I jumped out of my skin and turned to see a white-furred vulpine sitting with his back to one of the buildings, staring at the Square. He had seemingly appeared from out of nowhere; at least, that is what it seemed like to me, but when under the influence of the Square, I bet that a whole army could have marched past and I would not have noticed a thing. The strange white-furred vulpine was moderately built, and was no younger than me. He stood up and stretched, but never, not once, did his gaze leave the Square.
I turned to Krystal. She had been so startled by his speaking, her tail was all bushy to the point of being three times its normal size, and the fur all over her body was standing up. Gradually, her fur receded back to lay flat, and her tail smoothed out, signifying her return to a calm demeanor, as her surprise gave way to curiosity. "What is remarkable?" She asked.
"How such an evil place could seem so peaceful." He promptly replied. He finally averted his gaze from the Square to me, piercing through me with a pair of icy blue eyes and a hollow stare. He extended a hand. "Aron Antioch."
I shook his hand and introduced us both. "I'm Fox McCloud, and this is Krystal." He shook her hand as well.
For the second time in only a minute's worth, he took me completely by surprise. In the years that I had spent as a mercenary, I had been treated with expressions of shock, awe, excitement, and ecstasy whenever I said my name. In some places, I did not even need to introduce myself. I always received what was miles beyond the celebrity treatment. Yet, unlike any other civilian I had ever met in my career, he did not react with any surprise when I told him just who he was talking to. He didn't even bat an eye. Apparently, I was showing this surprise that I was feeling, by what he spoke next.
"I know what you're thinking. Usually, your acquaintances act in the extreme, you being a hero of sorts, but I have gone through enough to have been robbed of surprise; this includes the emotionally extreme initial reaction that I am sure you are used to." He turned back to the Square.
I looked at Krystal again. She looked back at me, and I gave her a long glance. She nodded knowingly; she knew that I was telling her that I wanted her to handle this one. We had an unspoken bond; very little action from one was completely understood by the other. This was one thing that I loved about her….among many other things.
Krystal slowly stepped up to Aron and spoke slowly; I knew she was trying to choose her words carefully. "So…do you…know…anything about….?" She held her hand out and slightly pointed towards the Square in a half-hearted manner, trying to appear nonchalant. He seemed to take her question in for a while, and then began to speak.
"First, it was a minimum-security prison and asylum, but that didn't last very long, due to bad location. It closed, and a few years later, it was re-opened as a private school, a couple of years before I was born. It was at this school that my parents first met." He slightly grinned for a moment. "Ironic, how so many kids think that school is like a prison. All time boundaries aside, this school was a prison." His smile faded and he continued. "The year after my parents graduated, the school's structural integrity was called into question by a municipal health organization. As it turned out, neglect of the buildings during the interim from prison to school caused the whole grounds to fall into "irreparable disrepair," as the health organization put it. It was immediately closed and, once again, abandoned. For nearly twenty-three years, this place was abandoned. The Square was closed off to anything vehicular, but the people in these surrounding houses…" He gestured to all of the buildings surrounding the Square, "…they let their kids play inside the Square, providing they didn't go into the Plaza in the middle. It was a popular playground; it has the only level ground in this whole entire area. And so, it was a cheerful place…until it all ended abruptly, only seven months ago." He sighed deeply, and from his pocket drew forth a worn and crinkled photograph. When he looked at the picture, his eyes misted over and he brought it closer to his face for a better look. For a considerable amount of time, he stared at it with an expression of forlorn longing.
After what had seemed like ages, he finally came back to reality and turned the front of the picture towards us so we could see. In the photograph stood a family of white-furred foxes. The parents were standing at the back, smiling happily. Standing directly in front of them were two very pretty teenage vixens. Both were wearing bright smiles, and it appeared that one of them was not related to the others. The definite scene-stealer was at the very front, being by far the shortest. A todd, around six to seven years of age, was giving a massive gap-toothed grin and making a great deal of showing off his imaginary muscles. Then I noticed that I had overlooked someone. Standing on the father's right was another white vulpine, whom I immediately identified as Aron. Something, however, was off about the vulpine in this picture. I couldn't place my finger on it, until I took my eyes off of the picture and looked up at him again.
It was then that I realized why the pictorial version of him looked strange by comparison. The Aron Antioch was cheerful, with a smile that betrayed a profound inner joy that would cheer up even the most depressed of all people; someone of a more emotional and philosophical mind would have even considered this bright countenance he wore a bringer of warmth and light from cold darkness, like the welcome sight of the morning sun after a dark and stormy night.
The Aron Antioch that stood before me could not have been called even a mere fraction of his pictorial self. His cheerful smile was now a tersely deep frown; the twinkle in his eyes had vanished. Once, his blue eyes may have been called a remarkable sky blue color, full of emotion and passion, but now they were two dull and piercing chips of ice. The bright aura of peace and tranquility that had surrounded him was long gone; all that I could feel emanating from him now was a wave of sorrow, regret, and anguish.
Aron began naming the people in the picture, pointing to them as he indicated each one. "Those in the back are my parents, Adam and Amy Antioch. There's me, of course, and in the very front is my little brother, Andrew." He paused and looked up at us with an expression of mock despair. "Both of my parents were Literature majors. Hence the assonant tendencies in all of the names of their children. This one here is Aermio, my sister, obviously, and….." He stopped when he reached the other vixen, who was standing in front of him in the picture; the one that did not look as if she was related to the others. "Maya, my sister's best friend…" he closed his eyes tight. "…and my fiancée," he quietly added. By the look on his face, I was now expecting him to break down crying at any second, but remarkably, he stayed completely dry-eyed. After a few minutes of silence, he began to speak again.
"It began seven months ago last Tuesday. The day began normally, like any other. It was in the middle hours of the morning, when the children were starting to come out to play. My mother was watching Andrew, who had just begun to play with several of his friends. They were not on level ground, so naturally, the ball with which they were playing got away from them and rolled into the Square…over that line." He pointed at a large white line that ran horizontally across the road between the walls on each side of the entrance to the Square. Measuring the full length of the road across, and at least four feet wide, it was apparently painted there as a crosswalk.
Aron pointed at the Square. "You see that?" I looked over to see that absolutely nothing about the Square had changed. It was the exact same as it had been the last time I looked at it, quiet, calm, and haunting. He jabbed his finger at it in aggravation. "Like that. It was always just like that. There was nothing odd about it at all. We would be outside, and it would be just like that. We would go inside, and it would be just like that. That all changed the moment that Andrew crossed that line to get the ball. The moment he stepped over it into the Square…" His expression softened. "A blaster shot rang out. No one ever saw where the shot came from. With the exception of that one loud shot, nothing about the Square had changed. But it rang out, and Andrew fell to the ground. My mother immediately ran to him, crossing the line herself. The moment she did, another shot rang out. Just like that, my mother and little brother were gone."