The alarm clock buzzed and I sat up in bed. Another day.
I sat for a moment, facing the wall opposite my bed. It was still dark out when I turned to read the clock displaying little grey numbers.
4:32am.
After getting dressed, cleaning my teeth and making my face and hair look less dishevelled, I strolled downstairs in my jeans and hoodie. I was used to that, as it was all that I did every day. I grabbed the lunch that I'd made the night before and pulled on my heavy coat, tucking the dark package inside the large pockets. I strolled down the hallway and stopped at the balcony. The building's lights were still off, and would remain off for a while. This left the hallways in a cold blanket of dullness. I still couldn't hear people moving or waking up in the other rooms; this was a good sign. When I reached the balcony, I rested my hands on the cool railing and took a deep breath. The hallway opened up into a hollow cylinder that had rows and rows of railings, just like the one I was holding on to, that spiralled all the way up to a black ceiling and then all the way down to the grey concrete floor. Each floor had hallways, just like mine, that were lined with rooms, just like mine, which contained the workers, who, just like me, were there to work. We were like organised ants in an anthill. It must have looked amazing from a distance, might have even been beautiful, but it wasn't common to view my house from a distance. I was in it, constantly, I didn't even know if there was a distance to see it from.
I was out of the house earlier than usual and so I got to work quicker. I walked down the first four staircases and stopped when I reached about three quarters of the way down the perfectly circular cylinder. I didn't need to count the numbers on the hallway's entrances as I'd been down here so much that my feet just kept walking around the ring of the building until I stopped outside an old archway. It had the number 7 engraved in a piece of old concrete that was surrounded by degrading bricks. These lower floors were the oldest, and so were not as well built as the higher floors. I sometimes wondered if the upper levels had fancy rooms and lights and maybe even things that you could turn on with your voice, instead of having to shovel coal and dig in the fields. I continued to walk, down the corridor, through the number 21 door, the kitchen and straight into Cherry's bedroom.
"Wake up!" I hissed in his ear. He was never up when I needed him to be. I don't remember a single time when he was already awake when I got down there. He was lying on his face, wrapped up in the thin duvet. His legs were splayed out like an octopus and his hands under the pillow. He was drooling. He was up soon enough though. I stayed in the small kitchen to cook him some breakfast while he changed. He ate quickly and we got to work.
We went to the back of Cherry's house and in that last room there stood a single wardrobe that stood alone in the dust. The crack of the door closing caused the dust to become unsettled and it floated gently around the room. Together, we heaved the wardrobe aside, into the corner of the room, to reveal a hole. A long, dark, dripping tunnel. We'd been working on it since we could remember. We of course could get little done in our teens, when we were told to start it by an older man who came to us while having lunch one day. He sat with us and started to eat until we asked what he was doing. He simply replied with "kids, are you happy here? I see it in you; you're not". He was looking at me the whole time. He'd flicker to Cherry every now and then in the conversation but I could feel that he was talking mainly to me. I told him that I didn't like it here, but I didn't think that there was anything else, so what was there to do? He again, very quietly, explained that we should try to occupy houses at low levels, when we move out from our parents houses, down on the very bottom floors. Explaining that it'd be a great idea to be low down so that his plans for us would work, telling us that we have to start now, start scratching away at the wall, start digging, start mining if we wanted to get anywhere.
We listened intently, I can't really explain why, and the day we turned 16, we found our low-level houses. Cherry's was the lowest and so we used his house. We chose a room that was closest to the outside of the cylinder so that it was the quickest route possible to anywhere that wasn't here.
I grabbed the rucksack of food and supplies, pulled it up onto my back and through the one sitting next to it to Cherry. He did the same and we headed down the tunnel. About a meter through, and I decided to flick on my headlight. It didn't illuminate much, but it meant that I could see the rubble and the dirt that lined the floor. I guess I didn't really need it, because I'd walked this path a million times before and knew where each piece of wood or broken concrete lay. I think it was a habit. I was feeling pretty determined today and so I dug away more violently and harder than usual while Cherry kept up his usual pace. We both worked solidly until about 7:30am, in the dank, dark, grey tunnel, until Cherry decided that we needed to get back to the house. "We need to pack up and shower, Aylo, we're already late."
"No, not yet, we still have time, just 10 more minutes"
"I'm not gunna be late again just so you can rot in this hole for another 10 minutes!"
"Fine, but that means I get the shower first"
We walked the path of the tunnel, with our rucksacks heavy on our backs and water bottles in our hands. It was a 20 minute walk back. I hated the distance, but when walking it, it made me feel like I'd made enough progress for the long distance to annoy me. It was the small things.
We showered after heaving the wardrobe back into it's original place, covering the tunnel's entrance. I went in first, since I needed to make some quick snacks to eat before we went to work, and of course, Cherry's lazy as ever, so he wouldn't have done it. I was finished in the kitchen, and so I paced the three rooms that made up Cherry's house. It wasn't a long stroll, but it was a nice change from being hunched over for a few hours digging away. I came across the mirror in Cherry's room and I stood in front of it for a while. My reflection told me that I looked like shit. My pale white hair was clean of the dirt, mud and dust, which was a rare thing to see. It was short and spiked up in every direction possible. I had never even tried to mange it, far too much hassle. My eyes looked tired, dark grey circles under my almost black eyes. I guess waking up at 4 every morning wasn't one of my best ideas. I had a few freckles, dotted across my cheeks and nose but they were barely visible in this dark winter. I could see my shoulders sagging, and when I twisted awkwardly to get a look at my behind I could see how my shoulder blades were heavy on my back. My vest was tight and it showed off my curves, though I didn't exactly thank it for doing so.
Cherry walked into his room, with a towel around his waist and wet dark hair. He sat on the bed and started to dry off. I decided to leave for the other room so he could get dressed. A few moments later, he came into the kitchen, where I was sitting on the counter, and he ate the snack of scrambled eggs that I'd made him. I'd already finished with mine. I grabbed my lunch bag that was left on the side this morning and threw on my hoodie and coat to protect from the cold outside. The clock Cherry had on his wall over the sink displayed 8am. The lights of his kitchen flickered on, along with every other light in the whole building. They didn't help much. Everything was still grey and dark. That just reminded me of this boring place, and I starred to wonder if there was anything out there, on the other side of our tunnel, that wasn't this.
We left his house and assembled down on the concrete floor at the bottom of the cylinder. It was still cold out and everyone who stood with us in our rows were bundled up in cloth and coats, anything for conserving heat, really. A few people had mittens and scarves but that was unlikely for us low-level people. We were never left standing for long. We'd only be waiting for the last people to scramble into the area. The iron gates would close shut and every few days there'd be someone left on the other side of them, with the houses, and well, we'd never see them again. I stood facing the gates for a while. I thought about how that's what 'late' is, but to Cherry, it's if you're not the first ones here. And of course, we were always the first two here. From a hallway behind the closed gates emerged a person who finally noticed that the gates were closed and they locked eyes with me, as I was the only one looking the wrong way, and they simply smiled at me, admitting their defeat and they gave me a nod. I winced a little at how ridiculous that was and turned to face the other way after a quick sympathetic smile to the person who was left behind the gates.
I pulled my coat in closer to myself and looked up. Standing at the bottom, I could see all the way up the cylinder. The railings spiralled from where we all stood up and round and round each level and all the way up to the very top where it met the black ceiling and stopped. There were millions of levels, I've never had the time to stop and count, which, to me, is a good indication of there being far too many. The building lights had been on for about 10 minutes now and they really made no difference except that everything was a lighter shade of grey then it already was. I guess it made the building less eerie than before, as it had been earlier this morning.
The lines of us standing dispersed and everyone went down their assigned archways that led to a short walk through a garage-like room. We each gathered our things from the holes in the walls as we walked. Cherry and I were at the front so we were leading the single file lines through the room. We reached the large wooden double doors that led to our work space. I smirked at the audible sigh that pulsed through the group. A man stood to the side of the doors next to a keyboard in the wall. He typed in a password or code of some kind and the wooden doors slowly creaked open.
It was light out today, cold, but light. The lines trudged through the muddy grass until the dirt pathway reached our feet. A mother behind me stopped and put the child she had been carrying on the floor. The kid cried and I hissed at the mother to pick her back up. The mother was clearly tired but we couldn't be slowing down the group. I picked up the child and gave the mother my water pouch. She smiled at me, knowing that I meant well, and I helped her stand by heaving her arm over my shoulders. "I can walk" she said. She continued to walk behind me as I carried her child. She had little pale grey pigtails, a little darker than my own hair, and she had dark white ribbons at the end of her pigtails to hold them in. I spent the rest of the walk through the fields holding the kid.
People began to reach their rows and stopped. I had come to mine, along with Cherry, and we stood for a moment while I handed the child back to her mother and watched as they walked to their row. We got working on ours. For the rest of the morning, we would simply dig up the earth, plant, water, harvest and repeat.
We had an hour break for lunch so Cherry and I sat in the dirt to eat. I'd given my water pouch away and so we shared his. We never really talked at lunch. I think that was my fault because I would just look at him and analyse his. I'm not really sure why, he was just interesting, I guess. He had a strong jaw and short hair. His hair was pretty much black, but in this artificial light, it gleamed a little lighter. He'd slick it back usually but today it was all natural and a little curly. His eyes were dark, like mine, a dark grey around the black pupil. His skin was darker than mine though, mine being almost white but his, he had slightly silver skin tone. It was really quite pretty, it matched his dark hair and eyes. He had a strong build; broad shoulders and muscle everywhere. He was taller than me, though it was hard to do, as I was quite tall for a girl. A bit lanky, I was. His clothes were a lot like mine, though his jeans were tighter and his v-neck shirt far more baggy. We were quite the opposites. His face was bold. I squinted at him a little. He had a kind of large nose, but it suited him and actually made him quite attractive. Thin lips and bushy eyebrows completed his look. He'd grown up pretty well from that scrawny kid that I'd met him as.
I continued to look around, as I thought that he'd think I was weird if I kept looking at him. I averted my eyes up to the ceiling. It was charcoal, like the other ceiling. The large lamps were littered across it that illuminated the fields. It gracefully arched from the floor on my right to the floor on my left, reaching it's highest point just above where we were sitting. It was extremely high, I knew how large the lamps were in actuality but I could pretend to squish one with my fingers if I held them up at the right angle. The fields stretched on under the ceiling and there were millions of people in the room with me. All the archways from the cylinder led to this room, they just came at it from different angles. The grass and flowers of the fields were all grey. The grass made the floor look like it was coated in a layer of battleship grey film. The artificial wind that was pumped through the room made it sway slightly. It almost looked like fur of a giant creature and we were all sitting on it's back. The flowers that were dotted around it, were darker, more of a Davy's grey. It would have been real pretty if the flowers were brighter but I guess that just how things were.
Every day was the same. We repeated the cycle of our illegal early mornings to work a little on our tunnel and then getting down to the actual work that we did. Months had passed, and it was turning March soon.
The alarm buzzed again, waking me up. The little numbers showed 4:30am exactly. I got up and headed to Cherry's. Our tunnel had grown a lot longer and far more narrow as we were so determined with simply getting through that we began to stop worrying about it being large enough for the both of us. We walked one by one instead of together as we usually did down the long pathway that now took more like 30 minutes to get down. We kept digging that early morning and I had no idea that that was the day. The day we broke through. It was me, because I was digging ahead while Cherry would be trying to open up the walls around us for more breathing room. I'd given a particularly hard heave of the pickaxe because the amount of time that it took us down here was getting ridiculous and I was frustrated with the lack of progress we were making, or so it felt.
I hit the concrete hard and it crumbled as it always did, with every hit, but then a hollow sound echoed through our tunnel and vibrated through my arm all the way up to my chest. My ribcage shuddered, half from the vibration and half from pure adrenaline that pumped through me with the sound. I kept hacking away at the wall, and bit by bit, it crumbled out of the way and onto the floor of our tunnel. Cherry had began to help me, to get it done quicker but the space was narrow and we were trying to be really careful. A tiny piece landed on the floor with a clink and light came shooting through the minuscule hole that it'd left. I bent down to look through the hole, my eyes hurting as they adjusted to the light instead of our dark hole. I couldn't see much and so instead, I hooked one end of the pickaxe in the hole and dragged it back to me. A whole bunch of concrete fell to our feet and the hole grew larger and larger until Cherry and I were stood with our pickaxes leaning on our shins, on the floor, in an archway of light that poured in through the tunnel.
At first it was just white light, blinding and harsh after all these 18 years of artificial light. When our eyes adjusted properly, I could see out into the open. There were rolling hills and grass and white fluffy things in the pale grey ceiling. Except, I couldn't follow the ceiling to a place where it ended or started; was it even a ceiling? Was this a place that wasn't man-made? We stood in awe as it sunk in that we'd bloody fucking done it. This was it, this was 'out', this was our future, maybe even our happiness for the rest of our lives. It was crazy. Everything was clean, there was no concrete, no walls, no ceiling, no floor. Looking down, it was clear that we'd come out a little above where the ground lay, and so we used our pickaxes to climb the little way down to the grass. Turns out that using Cherry's room was an excellent idea.
I was first, and I landed with a thud on the earth. The grass was grey and simple, but so soft. The earth was warm, and a lot less hard and dense than it had been in the fields. It was clarified then, that the fields weren't even real either. The grass felt plastic and hard in comparison to this soft fuzz that lined the floor. The air was light and clean, it was so easy to breathe out here, it felt as though my lungs were being wiped of every gross smell or thick dirty air that I'd ever breathed into them. I took so many deep breaths that it felt like I was going to pass out.
We walked a dirt path, a real dirt path, up over the hill and from there, we could look down into a valley. There was a little cluster of houses surrounding a tiny lake in the centre of the bowl. It was quite a walk and we couldn't make it down there, and back in the little time we had before work. I hammered my pickaxe into the earth so that it was stuck straight up and then kneeled next to it. I brought my eye line to the wooden handle's end and lined it up with the tunnel's entrance in the wall of the building we'd come from. That was actually the first time I'd looked back at the building and it was tiny in comparison to the whole new place I was in then. It blended into the scenery though. Grey and dull like everything, except that it was dirty in comparison.
"Well shit. He was right" Cherry sighed, saying it to himself in absolute disbelief.
"I know…" I replied since there wasn't really anything else to say. "I guess we've got to go back, we have to work in like 20 mins."
We ran home, back on the dirt path to the tunnel's entrance (where I stopped to check that I could still see the pickaxe lodged in the earth) and through the tunnel. We got to Cherry's house in no time. We showered together because there simply wasn't enough time and then ran down to join the others when the lights stuttered on at 8am. We were in good time and it turned out that no one was behind the gates when they closed. Today was clearly going to be a good day.
We did the morning ritual of getting to the fields and watering our crops. Lunch was as boring as ever but Cherry and I did start whispering about the tunnel in hushed voices so no one could hear. "It was all pretty crazy really, wasn't it?" I asked first.
"Yeah, I feel like it hasn't really happened. Now that we're here, doing the same as always and nothing of interest could have occurred earlier"
"So what are we going to do, when we're back, I mean?"
"Go through again?"
"'When we get back', d'ya think? What if we get caught?" I asked, honestly a little worried.
"Risk it" Cherry replied simply. Yeah, that sounded good. I didn't really know what would happen if we were to be caught. We just assumed we were sneaky enough to avoid even thinking about the consequences.
We got home to Cherry's house and sat on his bed. "I really don't know what to do" I thought aloud, as I shifted my weight so that I could sit on my foot. I honestly had no clue. Cherry fell back onto the bed and looked up.
"I want to go back. I want to go down that valley and see what that place was. I've been thinking about it a bit since this morning and I can feel it pulling me, you know? It's like I'm meant to go down there" Cherry commented as he stared at the ceiling.
"'Specially after all the work we've done, every morning for like 2 years." I think that was it. We just had to go back. We had both agreed that it felt like the right thing to do, even though it was clearly very wrong. Maybe that was part of it? Leaving that place when we knew we shouldn't be able to. The thrill. To hell with the rules; I'm just glad Cherry and I were on the same page.
We decided to go through later that night, when the lights went off, and stay out until the morning when we could come back before the lights returned on. If the place wasn't as expected, we could just go home early and sleep until morning, but we both hoped that that wouldn't be the case. For the rest of the evening, we played cards and discussed the outside. We talked about it's grass, the light, the air, the hills, the lack of ceiling, how clean it was and we even started wondering if the village was an abandoned station or if people currently occupied it. Never once did we even think about why we were in the cylinder while there was this whole other world out there. I guess we were just too naïve back then. We were soon to find out though, about everything, really. I think that the question had been in my head, but buried at the back somewhere because I was too scared to find the answers.
The lights dimmed and turned off at about 10pm. We sat in the dark of Cherry's bedroom for a moment with the cards splayed between us on the covers. My ribs felt a little shaky and I was finding it hard to breathe evenly. I could see that Cherry was feeling the same because his breathing hitched and a crooked smile tugged at his mouth. I shook my head and smiled, knowing that we were about to do something crazy. Crazy had never felt so good. We hopped off the bed and set the cards aside, tucking them in a drawer. I pulled on my grey-black jacket and started to shift on the spot while I waited for Cherry. I couldn't really contain myself, everything felt hyper, like I'd just taken a load of caffeine shots. I was buzzing. Cherry had his coat on by then and we smiled- teeth and all- at each other for a moment. That buzz rising in my chest again. I wiggled my toes in my shoes one last time and then we went into the back room.
The wardrobe dragged on the floor with a muffled creaking when we moved it. The hole in the wall was evident then and we stepped right through. We began walking at a steady pace but it soon turned into a skip and a jog by the end of it; we couldn't even wait the walk there. Straight out the other side and down the small distance to the ground. We sat in the grass for a moment to catch our breath and looked at the lights in the sky. Stars, I think, but I didn't really know that then, all I knew was that they were damn pretty and absolutely tiny. It was late and so everything was a darker shade of grey than before. It was all blacks really; the grass, the sky, the hills. Nice, though, pretty. "It's cold out here," I shivered.
"I know, it's kinda weird."
We kept walking, back that dirt path and up the hill again. We arrived at the pickaxe in the ground and it's metal was shining a little in the minimal lighting. I continued to walk down the other side of the hill, down the valley. Cherry had followed behind me. It was odd, really;I didn't feel nervous, or scared, or concerned about anything. It felt like walking home after a long day's work. The only real way to describe it was that my heart just felt warm. Just full and warm.
It wasn't a very long walk, and we arrived at the edge of the village pretty quickly. It was large close up, but was still small compared to the cylinder. It had about 8 wooden huts and a few stone buildings in between them. The place was lit up by grey flames which threw shadows over the ground that danced as the flame flickered. There were beads and feathers falling on string from the roofs of the buildings. They were ever so pretty and they had many shades of grey in each combination. There was murky moss on some of the buildings, starting at the bottom and cascading up the edges to the roof. We walked the dirt path that flowed through the village and past about two houses before I stopped to trace the moss lines up the building on my left. Cherry was simply silent in awe of how amazing this place was. It was so alive compared to our bricks and mortar.
I reluctantly pulled my fingers away from the damp moss and turned my head to face Cherry with an open mouth, ready to speak, but before I even got there, I stopped in my tracks. There was a girl at the end of the dirt path, a little way across from us and she was watching me. She hadn't seemed to have acknowledged Cherry because she was looking at me, and only me. Her eyes flickered from mine to my hand. It was still outstretched towards to moss and I dropped it immediately to my side. I kept eye contact with her until she started walking towards us and I looked over at Cherry's face. I gave him an unsure look and he broke away from looking at her to reply with basically the same, though a little more scared. She kept walking forwards to us. She took quick paces and glanced over her shoulder as she came closer.
She stopped a few steps away from us and I could feel the tension. It was thick and heavy, not exactly what I'd call comfortable. I waited for her to say something because I was guessing that she lived here. I was quite right, and she did indeed speak up first. "Finally! Let's go!" She squealed. Her voice was pretty and her face was even prettier than it had been from a distance. Her jet-black hair reached just below her ribcage and it was shiny and thick. She was clearly of Chinese decent and her skin was slightly silver like Cherry's was but it was much prettier. Her eyes were dark too, a lot like mine, but more narrow and more elegant. She was shorter than me; her head reached my shoulder and she was slimmer than I was. Looking at her lit up face made the whole world feel less dull and boring. She grabbed my wrist with a firm fist and pulled me along behind her back the way she had came. Cherry followed at a light jog.
She held onto my wrist even though it wasn't strictly necessary for her to when we reached our destination. There was a small gathering of people in between four huts. They were all around a fire pit in the middle that was making the whole place have a stunning grey glow to it. We were all at walking pace now and she strolled us over to, I guessed, some of her friends. There were two little boys plaiting the hair of another person, about our age. The boys giggled as they put flowers in the hair. It really looked like a monumental task because the person's hair was shorter than any of ours, pretty much shaven at the back and sides with the longer part on top, that seemed to be defying gravity. The back half was braided and plaited with the grey daises planted carefully in-between strands. It was cute, and quite funny really, because the little boys had organised them so that they created a tartan-like effect. The person looked up at us and smiled, warm and bright. They seemed to have been enjoying having their hair done, and it was like we were interrupting. They patted to their side and Lily sat next to them. "Aw, Sammy, cuuuute!" she sang-song.
"Oh c'mon, do I have to deal with you over this again?" 'Sammy' asked sarcastically, though they were smiling the whole time. "The name's Sam, too, not Sammy" they said to us, giving a little bow of their head. The almost-white flowers did look pretty in their dark hair, to be honest.
"It's real nice to meet you, I'm Cherry and this is Aylo" Cherry said with a bit of an awkward curtsey. Sam giggled and they shook hands. I looked down at my own hand that Lily was still kind of holding on to and she let go, looking rather embarrassed. Her cheeks flushed a tint of pink.
(That pink on the silver of her skin was the first time I had seen colour. I never really noticed it back then, it just happened. That was it though, that moment. That was the start of it all. I'm pretty sure that Cherry thought the same about Sam. I think the giggle from that ridiculous curtsey was it, when they first saw a hint of colour. I noticed it a lot after that, Lily. Her colour, her village's colour, the world's colour. Cherry and I visited the village whenever we could. Sometimes it would have to be really early in the morning, way before work started, or it'd be late at night when the lights had just gone out in the cylinder and we could creep out with no one knowing. The visits were becoming almost daily and it was, you could say, getting out of hand. We spent more time at the village with Sam and Lily than in the cylinder. To be honest, I don't think I'd want to go anywhere else.)
Lily got up when the music started, a group of older people were playing various instruments. It was apparently a celebration of some kind. It was lovely to listen to and it had a hearty beat. Lily grabbed both of my hands and pulled me over to the fire. People had spread out to make a ring around the fire for people to dance in. Lily and I were the first to be spinning and twisting to the music before loads of couples and mothers and daughters joined in. It wasn't long before almost everyone was dancing to the beat. The people were all dressed in baggy clothes that swished around when they danced. I was pretty focused on Lily and her laughing face whenever I got a step wrong or nearly fell over. For the spare moment I had, I saw that Sam and Cherry were sitting together, close and calm over where the light didn't quite reach the wooden log. Cherry's hand was up by Sam's hair and they were both laughing at something. Before I could even think about it, I was being pulled the other way to hold hands with someone else and Lily was behind me instead of in front. I couldn't stop myself from smiling and laughing and my cheeks were beginning to ache from it but I don't think I'd ever been much happier.
We danced and messed around forever, it felt like, until I was aching and tired out at least. Lily dragged me away from the quieting dance area and we ducked under some of the dream catcher decorations that were strung up in rows which lined the houses. Lily took me out to a little tiny lake that was situated in the centre of the valley and we sat by the water for a while in the grass. "I'd been waiting for you, ever since yesterday when I saw you and Cherry up at the top of the hill" Lily mused. She was looking out over the water.
"Really? Why?"
"I don't really know. I saw the white of your hair I think, and it got me. I've never seen such a bright colour. It wasn't grey like everything else and it got me really interested"
"My hair?" I asked with a little laugh. Lily giggled too, putting her hands in her lap. "How did you know I'd come back? Did you see the pickaxe?"
"Yeah, I did, but I didn't know when you'd come down here. You were quicker than most of the people I see who venture outside the cylinder. You came back basically the same day. It was crazy, but it felt like a really long wait for me."
"Sorry for taking so long then. If I'd have known you were down here, I guess I would've just skipped the work day," I laughed at how crazy that would have been and then cringed internally at the comment that I just heard myself say. I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly to have something to do.
"Less fun in the day though, there's always drinking and dancing in the night so I think it worked out well," she trailed off a little. She looked at me, with those pretty eyes and I almost couldn't handle the pressure of it. Her irises were golden-brown rings around black pupils. Her cheeks were a little pink again but instead of the silver that I noted before, her skin was a pale bronze. Her hair was a little reddish in the light where it caught the highlights of it. Her lips were this pretty shade of pale peach and it was all so amazing. So feminine but so bold at the same time. She was full of energy and this colour and I couldn't help myself but kiss her. And so I did. It didn't last very long or anything, but when I pulled back, suddenly everything was brilliantly coloured and bold. She was looking just as confused as I was and we both started to just look around us. The water was this clear blue with the dark green moss and leaves around it. The grass we sat in was a limey green in the darkness and the sky reflected all of these new colours beautifully. Everything was stunning. The orange of the flames from the fire pit behind us were giving everything around us this reddish tinge, making the scenery suddenly quite breath taking. I didn't really know what to do.
"Did we just do that?" I asked incredulously.
"I have no idea." She answered completely honestly.
We stayed by the water a little longer, taking in the colours. Not long though, because we needed to head back into the little village centre to find Sam and Cherry. We caught them together on the same log, with drinks in one hand and each other's in the other. Cherry had never looked more at ease, to me, and I knew him pretty well. Sam was looking a little drunk, if you asked me, but Lily would have just said it was 'excited Sam'. Sam was slightly slouching onto Cherry's broad shoulder, with their intertwined hands in Cherry's lap and their drinks tipping about precariously. Neither seemed to mind and they looked like a right picture. Cherry looked up at me with this stupid grin on his face, like he'd just found the answers to all of his questions. He looked a little embarrassed but maybe that was because he had a drunken kid leaning on him helplessly. Sam wouldn't stop giggling and eventually stood up, still holding hands with Cherry and started to walk off down a cobble path between two huts. Lily and I watched them go. It was beautiful really, they complemented each other really well; they were quite a good looking couple. Sam's dark skin next to Cherry's tan and both of their dark eyes and hair looked so picturesque. With their backs to us as they walked, they were like a little pair of dolls. Cherry was wearing his tight jeans and a baggy top and Sam was wearing a tight top and baggy jeans.
Lily and I took off too, ending up in the hut next to the one that the other two were in. We sat on the plushy sofa, it was full of feathers so that we wouldn't be sitting on the wood that made up the chair. I crossed my legs to sit and Lily knelt on her own feet next to me. I still had a few questions and so I got them out while I could. "So, why is everything colourful now?"
"I'm not sure, and I've never really believed it, but one time I heard a old tale about the founders of this village. Apparently, they'd escaped from your cylinder years ago, and found love in each other and they never went back because once they'd found each other they could see the world in colour. The tale went on about soul mates and people you're destined to meet in your life and events and such. I thought it was just a sappy story to tell the little kids. When I first heard it when I was younger, I went around asking the adults and they all said that it was true and that they could see in colour too, but I thought everyone was just pulling a massive prank on me, I don't know."
"Does that mean that we're soul mates or something? You don't believe in that?" I cut in.
"According to the tales, yeah. And no, I didn't, but I don't know now because you have kind of changed everything and now I'm just really confused. I do really like you though, and I wouldn't want this colour to leave when or if you go back to your cylinder." She seemed kind of awkward talking about it.
"I like you too, and this is all happening really fast and I'm also really confused," I agreed. We both sort of giggled at how random this all was. I looked around the room we were in and it didn't feel odd seeing colour. Everything looked right, how it was meant to, and I never realised but I felt so complete, like I'd been missing out for my whole life until now. I thought back to the man who sat with us at the dinner table that one time and asked if I was happy. I hadn't answered him then because he told me that he could see that I wasn't. I wasn't, all those years, everything was bleak and ugly. But, being here, with Lily, in full colour, outside the cylinder, being here I was happy. Everything felt right and no, I didn't want to go back to the cylinder.
"How though, how have they not been caught yet, all of you here, any of you?"
"The story just says that they ran away together here and built it up from the ground and had a child. They then would venture back to the cylinder every few years to find people who were destined to be out here instead of in there. I remember one of our men leaving one time and my parents wouldn't stop talking about how exciting it was, even though it happened almost every year."
"A man? An older guy? When was this?"
"I don't know, two years ago maybe?
"What did he look like because I had a guy come to me two years ago talking about breaking free of the cylinder"
"He was old, as you say, dark skin, pale hair, black glasses that he rarely took off, he left wearing a heavy leather coat. You had someone tell you about this place?" She described him while trying to remember important details. I couldn't believe it, she was talking about the man who spoke to Cherry and I and suddenly it made sense. He had left their village one year to find the people who were meant to be in the village, not the cylinder, and he found me, he found Cherry and he directed us towards this place, towards our soul mates. I explained this to Lily and she was shocked. Her story fitted perfectly with mine and it made sense but why did it happen and why was there even a cylinder if there was this whole other world out here? I needed some answers.
The light came in through the windows and started to shine brighter than I'd ever seen it. Maybe it was this new 'colour' thing. Light was a white-yellow apparently, not grey. Morning. Cherry and I needed to be back, we had no idea what time it was but it was getting light and so it must be about time. I got up and told Lily that I needed to leave, get Cherry and get back to the cylinder otherwise people will notice that we're gone. I ran to the next hut after giving Lily a quick peck on the cheek and found Cherry asleep in Sam's arms on the floor with knitted covers over them. They were both dressed, thank goodness, and so I woke up Cherry with a bit of a violent shudder to the shoulder. He opened his eyes and immediately knew that it was early and we needed to be in the cylinder. He pushed the covers away and gave the sleeping Sam a kiss before getting up and following me out of the hut. We darted home as quickly as we could and arrived back in the tunnel in record time. We speed-walked all the way back to Cherry's house and arrived in his back room. We lugged the wardrobe back into it's place and took showers. It wasn't too late and we had about four hours until we had to get to work and so we both collapsed on Cherry's bed and slept until morning.
We went through the days as normal, working until lunch, playing cards or messing around until lights went out and then went to the village to see our soul mates. We had discussed how both of us could see in colour and how vivid everything was now. We took turns looking in the mirror and seeing our new full-colour appearances. I told Cherry about the man and everything that Lily and I had figured out that night. It was a few days later when we saw the man again. I had been keeping an eye out for him but it wasn't until that lunch that I spotted him. He was with a younger girl, long chocolate hair down to her hips and she looked about 25. They were both dressed similar to us, ragged and pretty unkept but Cherry and I noticed the necklaces poking out from under their tops and the dangly earrings that the woman was wearing under all that hair. They were tiny symbols that they were from the village. While I was watching them walking towards a group of boys a little older than us, the woman noticed me looking and gave me a knowing wink. I smiled and turned away. Cherry was facing me and so he told me what they were doing while they were behind me. The man crouched by the boys and whispered to them while the woman stood to keep look-out. When they were finished they got up and walked away, Cherry didn't follow where they went and so he went back to watching the boy's reaction and spelled it all out for me.
They were giggling together quite violently and shoving each other on the shoulder. One boy bowed his head a little and nodded. When we got up to leave the fake fields, we left through the brown rusty wooden doors but the boy from before stopped by the man at the keyboard and spoke to him in a hushed voice, looking full of rage. The man pulled out a radio from his belt and spoke into it fast and quiet. He looked angry and worried. Cherry and I kept walking.
We thought nothing of it until about two months later. We spent those two months at the village almost constantly, whenever we had free time. We met almost everyone in the town and had fallen even more in love with our partners. Cherry and Sam were dating a bit before Lily and I but it wasn't much difference. We'd spend our nights dancing and drinking and fooling around and our early mornings sitting and talking and eating the amazing food that people would cook for the town gatherings. It was lovely. Everything was bright and full of different colours. Lily taught me how to stargaze and we documented the star's patterns, I taught her to grow crops and we planted a load of pretty colourful flowers outside her house. We would sit and knit together when Cherry and Sam went off to do private things in another hut because we weren't really into that stuff. It was quiet and calm in the village and I was starting to call it home because it felt more like a place that I belonged to than the cylinder. Plus, Lily lived there and she made everything better. We soaked up all the time we could with each other. There was never a dull moment between us. I'd always hate it when Cherry and I had to leave for work or when we couldn't make it down to the village on some days. It was two months of absolute bliss, colourful vibrant bliss.
One night when Cherry and I had reached the top of the valley and were unconsciously about to make our way down to the village when we were stuck in our tracks. It was like quicksand and neither of us could move for a moment. The village was crackling and groaning under the heat and the flames. The fire was lighting up the valley in a horrible orange glow. There were men like the ones inside the cylinder, who marked entrances and exits, surrounding the village, watching it burn. The flames were towering all the way up to the brim of the valley. Smoke engulfed the whole bottom half of the bowl and was billowing up over our heads before long. We stood and watched for a while, in utter disbelief. Two months, those two months were the cylinder people building up an army to come and invade. They had it planned and were out to get the villagers. I stood there with tears welling in my eyes when I thought of Lily. I screamed, loud and heavy, and took off running down the valley with Cherry, thinking the same about Sam, right behind me.
We ran straight up behind two of the men watching the village burn down and tackled them. I threw myself full force into his back and took him down. I sat on his back and grabbed for his arm, pulling it up behind is head until he was screaming in pain instead of shock from the hit. Cherry had jumped on the other one, who actually turned out to be a woman, and he was punching her square in the ribs, with yells each time. Both of the soldiers dropped to the ground and stayed there. We continued past them and ran through the flames licking at the buildings. I sprinted straight to Lily's house and flung the door aside to get in. The smoke inside was filling up and I struggled to breathe as soon as I entered. I pulled my top up over my mouth and nose to breathe easier though it didn't help much. I screamed Lily's name a thousand times until my throat hurt because I couldn't hear a reply at first. "Aylo, over here darling," a hoarse voice came from the sofa and it broke as she said my name. I ducked under some wood that had fallen from supporting the roof and dodged some out of control flames to get to her limp body on the couch. I knelt by her side and placed a hand on her chest. I checked her over for injuries and there was nothing that I noticed and so I picked her up in an attempt of a fireman's lift and hauled her out of the house with great difficultly. When I got outside, I laid her down in the grass where the flames were calmer and the air was clearer and I sat beside her, holding her hand, asking if she was okay over and over. She grinned at me the whole time and just giggled at every other stupid comment I made about the flames and such.
Cherry and Sam came tumbling out of their hut, arms over each other's shoulders and around their waists. They both just collapsed on the ground, heavy breathing and shaky breaths. Their clothes were spattered with rips and ash. "You're both okay, thank fuck," I sighed with relief. "I was getting worried about you both."
"Us? Nah, we're always gunna pull through, Aylo, c'mon" Cherry heaved out. His voice was thick and heavy and he sounded like he was struggling for air a little. "Wanna get out of here, though?"
I picked up Lily again, this time in a cradle and the four of us left the back of the village, and back towards the tunnel. I don't know why we went back to the tunnel, but we did, it seemed like a well-sheltered place to stay for a while. I climbed up the short distance to the ledge of the tunnel's entrance, and hauled Lily up after me, with Cherry and Sam behind her. We all sat in the tunnel, trying to control our breathing. We weren't sat in there long before we could hear the soldiers running footsteps and the cocking of guns. The other three looked out towards the grass, thinking they'd heard it all coming from the hills but I looked to the right and came face-to-face with a silver, gleaming gun. I froze, my heart basically stopping. The others must have heard my sudden intake of breath as they each slowly turned to face the man with the gun. He was accompanied by four others who each had guns too. One of the soldiers took a few steps forward and held up his gun next to Lily's head and I couldn't have given him a dirtier look if I'd have tried. I felt my blood boiling and my veins pumping adrenaline but I sat still, with the cold metal to the side of my head.
Lily looked at me helplessly, like a little lost kitten. I focused on her, thinking that it may be the last time I ever got to see her but it was much worse than that. The men next to me dropped his gun and pulled me up harshly by grabbing my arm. The others did the same with Lily, Cherry and Sam. They dragged us back down the tunnel with us kicking and screaming to break free. I was throwing swears and cusses at them the whole time, telling them to let go of us but they just marched in silence and tightened their grips around our arms. We reached Cherry's house and in his back room, there were more soldiers who had their arms up and aimed at us. We stopped yelling and there was kind of an awkward silence between us, four kids who were disrespecting the law, and a bunch of soldiers who were here to reinforce it. They kept dragging us through Cherry's house that hadn't even been touched except from the door being unlocked upon their entrance. We ended up in the area, that we would wait in before work, where they lined us four up in the middle in pairs; Lily facing me and Sam facing Cherry. A man came down from the closest stairs with a microphone and as he spoke it echoed through the cylinder.
"Now, now, wake up all. We've got some news for you," he said is a gruff voice, harsh and cruel, "get out here, you lot" he yelled. The lights flickered on and people began emerging from their houses and coming out to the railings. It wasn't long before everyone was lined up around the different layers of railings. The artificial light was bright and harsh. I squinted when I looked up at the people watching down over us. The four of us stood close together, unsure of what was happening. The man continued to walk as he spoke, "it seems that we have some kids here, who think that they can leave the cylinder and start a village outside. Now, we all know that isn't allowed. What makes it worse, is that they have been associating with the outsiders." Some of the people watching the scene gaspsed and began whispering amongst themselves. "Shut it!" the man yelled just as he reached the concrete floor that we were standing on. Silence. No one even moved.
"I won't have this scum in our building. I won't have them coming in here with their dirty nature and their ways of not working. You are all," he motioned to the people watching with an arm stretched out wide, "here to work. Here to provide us with food and warmth and shelter so that this building can continue on. I refuse to have anyone leave this building." He was shrieking by the end of it, like a child who had his toy stolen. His voice was coming through the microphone in crackles and it was popping every few minutes. The man was walking towards us as he spoke. He was an intimidating man, large and burly, with no softness to his looks. He looked like one of the men from the higher levels who lived in luxury. He stopped flat in front of me and gave me a sickening smile and a wink. He turned around to be stood behind Lily and raised his hand. A gun shot fired and a scream ripped itself from my throat. I shook with anger and disbelief. I was just mindlessly yelling to Lily, at the man, who knows, but I couldn't stay quiet. Cherry let out a scream of horror and Sam covered their face with their hands. I closed my eyes as I felt the unease in my body.
When I opened them again, Lily began to sink to the floor. I caught her just in time and lay her down softly on the grey concrete. I held her upper body on my lap and stroked her hair softly in a rhythmic pattern. "You're okay, it's okay" I whispered, barely able to choke it out. My eyes stung with the feeling of tears coming and my throat was tight. I felt a shudder in my ribs as I held her and I was struggling to breathe. My cheeks were hot with tension behind them as I came close to tears. I didn't want her to see my cry but it was getting awfully hard to hold back.
"I know, Aylo, I know, it's fine" she said, her voice breaking at almost every word. She took deep breaths between her words and it sounded like she was choking on them. She raised her hand to my cheek and I pushed back so that her hand was between my cheek and my shoulder. She smiled, small and painful and closed her eyes. I closed mine too, scrunching up my face, thinking that it'd help this all to not be happening. My chest heaved and her hand went slack. I opened my eyes to see her silver hand drop to her side. Her face was silver again too, her hair black and her peachy lips gone grey. I looked at her, plain and simple again, the way she had been when I first saw her and I broke. Another yelp from my throat and my ribs felt like they were breaking. I'd never hurt so much in my life and I cried over her dead body. She was cold and grey. I looked up at Cherry with tears in my eyes, staining my cheeks, and he was holding Sam in a bear-hug who couldn't handle watching his friend die. They were both grey. Sam's silvery skin against Sam's darker shade of the same grey. They had no fleshy colours or warmth to the colour of their clothes. It was like a grey wash was covering everything I could see and I could feel the corners of my mouth being pulled down and I tried to contain my crying. I looked up and around only to see a load of grey faces looking down at me with blank expressions and the men with guns around us in a circle wearing grey uniforms. Everything was cold again and I couldn't stand it.
"No stop it- what are you doing- Sam!" I heard Cherry yelling in his deep voice. I looked over just in time to see Sam being shot too, a second loud crack through the building. He fell to the floor with a hard thump as Cherry was being held back by two soldiers. "Sam!" Cherry screamed repeatedly with horror and pain in his voice. I couldn't handle hearing him in such pain and I just buried my face in Lily's black hair. I wept for her, for Cherry and for Sam. I let it just rip out of me, before I even had a chance to try and stop it. Cherry scrambled over to Sam on his knees after the men let him go and positioned himself over Sam's body. "Sammy, baby, Sammy," he whispered, close and intimate, while stroking the top-side of Sam's arm.
"Now let that be a lesson to all of you!" The man yelled loud and clear to everyone watching. The lights of the building flickered off and plunged the inner part of the cylinder into darkness. People began to walk away, back to their houses and probably back to bed.
The soldiers began to turn away too, but I stood up, bringing their attention to me. I turned to face the man with the microphone and brought my hands to fists at my side. His face was so punchable. He looked at me like I was a train about to crush him and I was thrilled by that. It encouraged me further. My chest was heaving up and down at a face pace. My throat was tight and tense and my whole body was shaking with anger. I lunged forwards, straight into his chest, shoulder-first and he gave out, crashing to the floor with a gust of wind leaving his lungs. I kept drilling punches to the sides of his head, grey droplets were dripping from his nose and even then I kept going. I only stopped when Cherry was pulling me away and I stoop up heaving over the man's body. Dark grey blood staining his face and decorating the floor in splashes on either side of his head. My knuckles throbbed. Cherry couldn't hold me for long before I was onto the next man, whose arm I broke, and the next who I shot with another's gun.
I gave one last kiss to Lily's still-warm cheek, before I sprinted out of there, back up the stairs to Cherry's house and down the tunnel. I came out of the entrance to the real fields and they were bland. I walked, around the grey cylinder and then away from it, the opposite direction of the path to the village. I just kept walking, blood dripping behind me from my hands, leaving a little trail of grey speckles. I breathed in the fresh air and even that felt thick and weighty. I just kept walking, through the grey fields with the dark sky over me. I never looked back once, just kept my head straight, pacing through the dull, bleak scenery.