I chose to leave Omelas the summer I was ten. Our parents decided that my brother and I were old enough to know the secret of the city. We should have suspected it wasn't the grand thing we thought it would be; the older children, the ones who already knew, never told the younger ones.
I'll never forget that day, not as long as I live. The sun was shining on a warm afternoon, and there was a cool breeze blowing in from the bay. It was about a week after the Festival of Summer. Bright laughter cut off abruptly when the door to the home was closed. Five of us were led down to the basement of an average, unassuming home, over to a padlocked door.
A high keening sound emanated from the closet when the padlock was jangled, and we all stepped back involuntarily. It wasn't until that moment that I considered believing what our parents had told us. As the lock was removed we all stepped forward again. The curiosity to see what was in that locked room was insurmountable.
When the door swung open, it first appeared that the room was empty. There was no light inside, only what fell between the floorboards above and through the open doorway. A stale smell, sickening enough that my stomach lurched immediately when it hit me in the face, wafted through the open doorway. The wailing started again. I had been standing towards the back of the group, all five of us crowding in to see through the small doorway. Those at the front, my brother among them, stopped. They stood limp and slack-jawed in the doorway, not moving or saying a word. I pushed my way through, and they just stepped back, their eyes vacant and glazed. One girl put her hands over her face and sobbed, just once.
I stepped forward and put my head into the doorway. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness something in the far corner moved. The man who had led us down to the basement grabbed a mop from inside the room and swept it into the back corner. Whatever cowered there squealed, the fear in the sound utterly palpable. The man swept as one might sweep away a cob web; no emotion in the movement or on his face, not even a flicker in his eyes.
That was when I caught sight of what was in the closet. I felt my face go slack as I had seen the other children's faces do as I realized that everything they had told us, everything they had explained before sending us down there, it was all true.
The child was almost our age, perhaps a bit younger. It crept on all fours, trying to get away from the mop being swept at it and trying to avoid the light pouring through the doorway. It gibbered nonsensically to itself, lost speech and half-remembered words blending together in a high-pitched squalling cacophony. I couldn't tell what color the hair was; the long unkempt mane was too filthy and matted to make it out. Maggots squirmed among the knots. A smell of rot and decay followed the spidery movements of the child, emanating from oozing festering wounds that covered its body. Excrement was splashed over its legs and arms in streaks and spots.
The other children had all backed away, overcome with horror, but I couldn't move. I stood transfixed, staring at it, when it looked up at me. I saw the bluest eyes I'd ever seen, the color of the clear summer sky, looking back at me, filled with terror, confusion and pain. Our eyes met, and I reached forward just as the door swung shut again. An anguished howl rose from behind it and ended in abrupt silence. The man gave me a disapproving look, almost nervous, before leading us back upstairs and back out of the house.
My brother and I walked home that night in silence. Our parents wanted to talk; my brother eventually participated but I sat in numb silence. Their reasons, excuses, were persuasive yet infuriatingly inadequate. There was a choice, one each person in the city consciously made. I couldn't get that face, those eyes, out of my mind. Neither of us ate dinner that night, but we stayed up nearly until dawn, talking. By the time we ran out of words it was clear that my brother had rationalized the situation away, just as our parents had taught us to. It was just as clear, to me at least, that I never would. I waited until my brother was sound asleep, and then I left.
I looked back only once, as I passed through the city gate. The sun was just rising over the bay, shimmering across the surface of the deep blue water and splashing its bright rays over the roofs. The city was just beginning to awaken. Once upon a time I would have been utterly taken with the sight, with the beauty of it. Now, though, now I saw the veneer for what it was; a pretty coating covering up a hideous underbelly of evil and decay. I turned away and kept walking, one step at a time, into the mountains. There was no place for me in Omelas.
Life outside of the city was difficult; I missed the pleasantries, the kindness that had seemed to be so pervasive in Omelas. But I thrived on the authenticity that was outside. Inside Omelas, there was no cruelty, because it was kept hidden. Anything negative, or wrong, was kept secreted away, as though it didn't exist, left to fester and rot in the shadows… At least out here it stayed in the open, unafraid and unconcealed.
Time passed. I adapted, and eventually married another who had chosen to walk away from Omelas when that terrible secret was revealed. We didn't discuss it, but it hung over our lives nonetheless. I never forgot those eyes. They visited my dreams every night and weighed on my conscience every moment of every day, a stain on my very soul.
We had children, and we raised them to be kind, responsible, and accountable. Life wasn't perfect, far from it, but nonetheless it was a good life. We shared in our pains and our happiness. Neither of us told our children about Omelas. It was more than two decades since the day I walked out of the gate and into the mountains when that finally changed.
I realized that in hiding away the truth, we were behaving like the people of Omelas. It was this catalyst that led me to sitting down my children and revealing to them where we were from, and the dark secret that led us to leave the place forever. They all had their questions, but it was the question my youngest asked that changed everything.
"Why didn't you help the child, if you knew that leaving it there was wrong?"
The question froze my blood in my veins. I started to give the answers my parents had given so long ago, about how it wasn't my place to refuse the bargain because it would affect everyone in Omelas and how real evil would be bringing destruction to so many to help just one. Than I stopped. Those answers had not appeased me when I was ten, and they still weren't good enough now. I didn't do anything then, but the seed was planted.
Over the coming months I began bringing the question up to others who had found their way here from Omelas. It wasn't hard to tell which of us were from the city; there was a hollow emptiness in our eyes. Most didn't want to talk about it; some even didn't agree, feeling that while the deal in Omelas was wrong for them it didn't make accepting the deal wrong for everyone else. But enough saw things the same as I did. Enough were ready to try to actually make things right, instead of spending their lives running from the horror of that beautiful city. Enough were ready to return to Omelas.
We planned and gathered supplies and resources. It was a sunny spring day when we set out from the mountains, heading towards the sea. Most of us had children accompanying us. The children were buzzing with excited energy. The adults were filled with a sort of resolute calm. I had no misconceptions about what I was doing, or how it would end. Nonetheless, I was filled with calm serenity. Perhaps that stain on my soul would finally be scrubbed clean.
We arrived in the late afternoon, still bright but the sun moving closer to the horizon. It was quiet but not deserted. We went our separate ways as we entered the city in drips and drabbles, but none of us brought our children into the city, a telling action. I thought briefly of my parents and siblings, a bit longer of my twin, before dismissing the thoughts. I had ceased to exist to all of them the day I left; I knew well enough what the reaction was when someone left Omelas, I had seen enough times from the other side. It would not be a happy reunion.
I made my way to the unassuming little house, remembering the route as though I had walked it yesterday and not nearly a quarter century ago. Like all homes in Omelas the front door was unlocked. There was no crime, so there was no need for locks. Most homes didn't even have locks at all. The house looked exactly the same. It was clean, well-kept, but no one lived there. Save one.
It seemed to take a year to walk across the floor and down the basement steps. My heart hammered in my throat. It was just as I remembered it, the padlocked door, keys hanging on a nail to the left. It was as though time had simply stood still. Hands shaking, I took the keys. The lock popping open sounded like an explosion in the silence.
A familiar wail emanated from the room as the door swung open, so much the same cry that my body jerked in response. Light splashed through the open doorway, revealing the bundle in the back corner. The filth covering it looked the same, the same matted hair squirming with larva, same filthy wounds. For just a moment I thought it was the same child, somehow unchanged after all these years. The spell was only broken when it looked up. The same fearful non-comprehension filled the eyes that I remembered from my own childhood, but these eyes were hazel, not blue. We looked at one another, and again I stretched out my arm, palm up, offering my hand. After a brief pause the child crept forward uncertainly and reached out a tiny, filthy, hand in return. It hesitated just once, then our fingers touched. This time, there was no one there to pull the door closed and stop me.
I felt the change in the air around me as soon as the tips of our fingers brushed. It was like an electrical discharge, like close lightening during a storm. There was almost a smell to it. Whatever spell that had ensconced Omelas all of these years, more than a millennia, dissipated instantly with the gentle touch, just as had been forewarned. I put my arm around the child's shoulders and led it up the stairs, out of the basement and into the sunlight.
The little one walked with a hunch; the malnutrition seemed to have twisted her bones. Looking up at the sky as we stepped outside, I could see dark clouds forming where blue sky had been before. The temperature was cooling, a steady wind blowing in from the bay, still light but building. I led the child down to the water, holding the small hand tightly. Those who saw us watched in terror before rushing away. I figured some of them would flee, or try to at least. Afterall, what were they guilty of? I felt my eyes narrow at the thought. There was plenty of guilt in Omelas; what was lacking was remorse.
I bathed the child in the warm shallows of the bay. Getting a closer look at her I realized she wasn't as bad off as the child I had seen so many years ago. This child, this girl, had a chance to recover. Clean and hair untangled, she was a pretty child, despite her gaunt face and limbs and distended belly. Her hair was pale blonde; I had thought her a dark brunette when I found her. I watched her sit in the water and splash, giggling for possibly the first time in years.
I let the child play until the waves rolling in grew too rough. It was time that she leave Omelas, before the Wrath was visited upon her as well. Again. When I went to collect her, she wrapped herself around my legs, and any lingering regrets for dooming this place disappeared.
As I led her to the gate the gathering clouds darkened. The sea was pushing steadily inward, taking over the beaches now and moving towards the closest homes. Overhead there were purple flashes of lightening, accompanied by menacing snarls of thunder. Below our feet the ground was beginning to tremble. A crack opened up in the street along side us, and I picked up my pace, carrying the child now.
As I approached the gate, I saw something interesting. The smallest children were fleeing, but the adults and the older children stood inside the gate, unable to pass through. Watching the scene unfold, I realized what was happening. Those who didn't know about the secret, the innocents, were able to leave. They had never accepted the evil, never participated in the darkness of the city. Those who had accepted were now doomed to face the consequences of their actions. All of the pain and fear that had been visited upon their sacrifices was now to be visited upon them, shared amongst everyone, as was natural.
I approached the gate, and found that I could not pass through. I tried to step forward, but my body would not move. I did not understand. I had come back. I had saved the child. I had shown her kindness. But than I realized. I had come back and saved this child. What about the one I had been shown as a child? What about the others who must have come in between? My inaction had left them to their miserable little fates. I was as guilty as the rest.
I beckoned my oldest over to me and handed the child over. She fought. Even with the city beginning to collapse around us, she didn't want to leave me. My oldest held on tight, understanding in his eyes and tears rolling down his face.
"Don't forget what happened here!" I called to him, hoping he could hear me above the now raging storm and collapsing buildings. The ground was shaking so badly that I could barely stay standing. Behind me the steady roar of the approaching sea was growing louder. "Don't ever let it happen again."
There was nothing left to say. A wail was rising up from the people of Omelas, a dreadful sound, but one that was familiar to me. The city was dying in one great shudder, sinking into the ground and crumbling into the sea. I walked towards the coming waves in silence with my head up, somehow immune to the destruction around me. All of the pain and misery we had forced upon the innocents was being repaid. Our soul debt had, finally, come due.