The Beginning and the End; Jack Merridew
Mother had been tearful, but ever since the silent nights started she had been tearful nearly every day. Father had been somber, stoic; he shed no tears, but fathers aren't supposed to. I had just returned from school, I hadn't had enough time to change out of my choir robes before the sirens sounded, signaling the silence. We had the lights dimmed and the windows blackened. I was being quiet; we are supposed to be quiet when the silence begins. Father was standing at the door, just standing and occasionally looking back towards me for a half of a second. Mother was seated across from me at the table; her hands were shaking as she took mine in hers. It happened all at once, the knock on the door and the men filing in. They scooped me up in their stiff arms and mother cried behind them, father looked away. I didn't scream or resist, I just watched as the men carried me out into the street, into the cold, into the stale night air. I remember watching my house as we drove away until I couldn't see it anymore, it didn't take long; the sky was dark and the house had no light to stand out against the cold night.
I was supposed to cry. I was supposed to flail and scream for my mother. I was supposed to be confused and frightened. I didn't cry or flail or scream, I wasn't confused or frightened. I knew what had just happened; I knew parents had started sending their children off somewhere, somewhere there were no silent nights and no need for dim lights or black windows. Every day my class had dwindled, it was a game now. It was the 'who-will-be-gone-today' game, we played it every morning.
The men tried to speak with me as we drove away. I couldn't listen; I focused on their stiff uniforms with the brass buttons and the platinum badges. They all looked the same; they all had hard jaws and eyes to match. I heard words like 'plane' and 'sea' and 'Australia', but all I could notice was the way their eyes kept flitting towards the blackness of the windows and how their hands twitched on their knees or twisted with each other.
One of the men patted my knee and smiled kindly. "It'll be fine." I heard the words as if they were through a fogged glass. They had no meaning, no depth; I did not care and therefore could not find it in myself to listen. "You'll be with other boys, your friends." What did it matter if I was with other boys? Why should I care if any of my friends went with me? I was being sent away, just like all the rest of them. I was to be shipped off to somewhere safe until the day that the silent nights were over and the sirens stopped. I would return when there was no more burning buildings or quakes that shook the house and made mother cry harder. They would come, mother would come and hold me in her small arms and father would pat my shoulder and not really look at me. Father wouldn't look at me because he wanted to cry, mother had told me that once, so mother would cry for the both of them.
"Kiddo," I had almost forgotten the uniforms seated around me "come on." The fogged glass voice with no meaning or depth scratched at my mind, but found no abrasion so was given no leeway. I was vaguely aware that hands were nudging me out the door and words were instructing me to move. My legs must have heard because they obeyed; they moved and I wasn't exactly sure why. My legs pulled me further into the darkness of the night, away from the car, towards an unknown object swelling over the concealed horizon. It wasn't until the object was close enough to touch that I registered what it was.
The large metal bird sat before me like it was waiting; whether or not it was waiting for me I had no idea. All I knew was that I was being pushed up the cold metal entrails of the waiting bird and into the warmth and confinement of its belly. It was loud inside the beast; the chatter of boys beat at the barrier of my mind and begged to be let inside and absorbed. I looked around and saw the crowd without seeing them at all. I could see them there, but they gave me no warmth and no company. I felt as if I was watching a picture show, one of the ones father treated me to sometimes, because they couldn't really be there. All of these children weren't really there; I hated them for pretending that they were. I hated them for being under the illusion that they could possibly be real and tangible. I hated them for being there, because I knew they were there, and some part of me knew I hated them for knowing how I felt. I didn't want them to feel how I felt or be where I was. I wanted to wait in the silence and coldness that was my mind until I could return to the smallness of my mother and the stability of my father and forget the feeling and the being that was me inside the gut of a metal beast that was waiting, for something, maybe me.
The uniforms must have led me to a seat; it could have been seconds or hours before it registered in the increasing thickness of my mind, but eventually it did. I found myself seated upon a cage of rough fabric. It burned to the touch; the smell of it clogged my throat and denied my lungs the benefit of a breath. The upholstery swallowed me slowly, seeping through my cloak and trousers to the pale innerness of my thighs and burning every new patch of skin it found the ability to reach. This was the stomach of the metal beast and the acid of the gut was burning me alive.
The beast gave a violent shutter and the crowd fell into silence. It was this sudden silence that tore me from the coldness and comfort of my impenetrable reservoir. I looked up and found myself able to wipe away the majority of the fogginess my mind had conjured, at least enough to notice that the uniforms were nowhere to be found and that I was now surrounded by the deafening silence that occurs only once in a while. The deafening silence of children, too afraid to speak or move, was more acidic than the fabric and colder than my mind. The bird lurched forward and must have begun to flap those large, metal wings because the sensation of forward momentum was suddenly very present in the base of my own stomach. I had never flown before, but the numbness of my brain had not fully cleared, so the fear that might have possessed my being was reduced to a slight twist in my diaphragm as I felt the pressure of being forced downwards as our beast flew up. There was no doubt in my mind that, in that moment, I was going to be pushed through the seat, for the pressure of the suddenness was becoming rapidly more present within every inch of my body so much so as that I felt the white-knuckled grip of my hands upon the rests of my cage, even through the numbness.
I was able to pry my stiff grip from the rests once the pressure stabilized and the twist in my gut dimmed enough to allow my lungs to release the captive breath I had not been aware of. I felt a tap on my shoulder and looked round with my still slightly glazed eyes. My vision cleared and focused slowly upon the face of the disrupter. I turned in my cage and found myself looking into the dark eyes of Rodger, who was perched horribly behind me. My voice was painful and rough from the unknown amount of time I had denied its use; however, I managed a curt greeting.
Rodger was scowling at me. I didn't feel like looking at Rodger, much less conversing with him, but intelligence had never been a substantial attribute of the sour faced choir boy so I didn't expect him to grasp the gravity of my reproach. He sized me up, raking those cold, feral sockets across what little he could see of me above the barrier. I could have growled as he asked me what my problem was, said that he had been trying to get me to acknowledge him for the better part of half a hour. I graced him with a sour smile, asking him if it had possibly occurred to him that I had no desire or intension to speak with him and if he could kindly shut up and leave me alone. Rodger's frown deepened, ugly lines formed on his creased brow and contorted his sharp features. By some miracle, the boy accepted the rejection and sunk into the dark acid seat.
I sat back in my cage and scowled at no one in particular. I drew in a heavy breath and pinched the soft bridge of my nose. I lifted my eyes and took in the stomach as a whole. The crowd was mainly comprised of littluns, who were squirming and crying for their mothers or some reason unknown even to themselves. Around me sat the choir, my choir, each wore their cloaks and caps. I self-consciously secured my own cap with the little golden emblem that had meant so much to me when it was received and now felt so utterly useless it was laughable.
There were several other boys, boys my age, boys I didn't know. There was a fat one that was snoring obnoxiously a few rows up whom I instantly disliked. A pair of squirming twins also caught my eye, but one figure drew my attention more than the rest. He was asleep, contorted uncomfortably in his cage and twitching occasionally. He was fair in hair and complexion with the hardening features of an older boy. My mind attempted to label the emotion rolling in my thoughts, but found no name. It was not like the contempt for the fat boy, nor the amusement for the twins. I decided upon guilty admiration, wrongful respect and unpleasant awe. I was grateful for the distraction from the acid of the fabric and the fog of my head, but wished it had been something that didn't instill the unpleasant oxymoron emotions I struggled to understand.
I was only able to tear my eyes away from the curiousness of the fair haired boy after his twitching increased and I started to believe he had actually developed the unfortunate ability to feel my stare even when in such deep sleep. So, I settled on curling in on myself and closing the iron lids of my eyes. My breathing slowed and I hugged the stiff legs that offered little comfort and let my mind sink into the fog and the numb and the cold. I thought about how mother's swollen orbs had adopted the curious redness of our hair and seemed empty those past weeks. I thought about how father had looked away because it hurt less. I thought about the dark house and how it had been swallowed by the coldness of the night and I wondered why I had never noticed before that the house had died some time ago. Maybe it was the black windows or the silence or the sound of mother's quiet, never ending tears splashing against the table as she waited for the moment that the uniforms would come and carry me away; whatever it was, it had killed the house. It had sucked out the light and the sound and left it as dark and a silent as the cold night air that swallowed the cries of boys taken from their dead homes to be shipped away in cold metal birds with acid seats and a curious fair haired boy. I found the thoughts comforting, or at least comforting enough to begin the odd tug of phantom's fingers towards the warm darkness of sleep.
The images and voices flooding my brain had lulled me into an unpleasant comfort, but something was tearing it away at a horrid pace. I felt the screams before I heard them; they vibrated my bones and raised the hair on my neck. The bird, the giant metal beast, was falling. I found the situation difficult to process through the fog of my brain, but it didn't really matter if I processed it or not, it was happening. Even through the blur of tears as invisible wind tore at my eyes and ripped the scream from my lungs and tossed it off among the ensemble of cries, I was able to notice the fair haired boy. He was very much awake now, screaming and panicking like the rest of us, and I found some comfort in that. The comfort was short lived, but I was glad to have some small bit of comfort; I figured no one else did. "Too bad I'm going to die"