A night sky; veiled by monoliths of iron and steel….
Rivers of tarmac; snaking through the mountains of concrete, turning here, swerving there : sometimes meeting at a point ; sometimes diverging into tributaries ; forming a labyrinth – both familiar and alien…
But the maze was empty save for a few wretched stragglers – the unfortunate few who had nowhere to go – nowhere to take shelter from the cold, hard night
All was quiet – nothing stirred….not even a mouse….not even a rat …
Yet something was amiss. Something evil was afoot.
And then, as suddenly as the silence was abrupt, a beam of light rent apart the sky ; a second moon erupted amongst the dark, stormy clouds – yet at its centre was a shadow – darker than the night sky around it – a shadow in the shape of a giant, monstrous Bat…
Damyan awoke with a stir. He knew it was a dream – he'd been having it for quite a while now. But that didn't stop it from feeling any less real.
He could still feel the asphalt beneath his feet ….still smell the noxious fumes permeating through the stillness of the night wind.
Well at least he didn't scream this time: he'd been the laughing stop of the orphana….er…the "Children's Welfare Institution" for days when he first had the dream. If matriarch Rebecca hadn't intervened people would still be calling him the night-screamer to his face – at least people now had the decency to whisper behind his back.
The living quarter was pitch black but even in the darkness he didn't need to hear the snoring emanating from every side to sense the other people in the room.
The heat was suffocating….He needed to leave the crowded dorm – the heat was suffocating.
Wrapping his bed sheet around him Damyan climbed down his bed, carefully avoiding the lumps in the dark that were his sleeping compatriots, and made his way across to the door. The wooden floorboards creaked loudly under his feet , but Damyan didn't mind – he knew the snoring was more than enough to muffle the sound of his footsteps.
A normal person would scarcely have been able to take two steps in the dark without stubbing his toes on something, but Damyan hardly ever gave it a second thought – he'd been sneaking out of bed at night for as long as he could remember. It just came naturally to him….a little bit too naturally some would say.
Outside the dorm the corridor lay empty and cold – yet this lonely coolness appealed to Damyan more than the warm, crowded dorm ever could. Yet something was still missing ;
Damyan's movements became stealthier as he walked down the hall – He knew the grown-ups weren't half as heavy sleepers as his dorm mates and he knew all too well the consequences of getting caught – he could still feel Benzhamin's hand's wringing his ear.
But he was too close to his target now to let the thought of that old weasel stop him.
Just a few more steps now….Damyan reached out his hand….the cold metal door knob felt like an ice cube under his fingers...with a swift twist of his wrist he slowly slid the door open as a gust of fresh night wind greeted him.
Damyan stepped out onto the balcony and took a deep breath – Yes ! This is what he really wanted - The Dark canopy of night, encrusted with a million diamonds above his head – and the wide black , misty horizon stretching out into infinity in front of him. The Night called to Damyan like nothing else did. And in the darkness he felt he belonged to it like he never felt he belonged to anything else that his life as a fatherless orphan had given him.