An Eldian's Journal

Chapter 5: A set of dominoes—an assortment of words

During the broadcast, my papa was sitting behind the counter. Strands of his thinning, dirty blonde hair were frowning onto the mountain peak wrinkle on his forehead. His elbows were dug into the countertop and his head was resting on his palms while he echoed the reactions of the customers. My mama stood next to him with one fist hanging limply by her side and the other soldered to her right hip. Her metal face continuously bent into different expressions.

Her other fist went limp,

when a certain cabbage seller's glass struck the radio.

When it struck, the audio shattered and scattered along with the glass. What we heard next was the dysfunctional mingling of the radio's squeals with the whispers of the drizzling going on outside. Papa rushed around the counter, pushed me out of the way, and looked at the radio. He put his hands on the contraption and his fingers began to tremble. He shut the blinds over his eyes and the wrinkle on his forehead grew deeper; A power within him was beginning to surge.

But he gulped it down.
He did so with a grimace, for it was too sour. My mama couldn't do the same. "You filthy, scamming cabbage rat! I oughta—"

***PAPA STEINER'S UNCHARACTERISTIC REACTION***

He softly grabbed mama by the arm. "Leave it be, Rosa."

My mom simply took a step back and returned a soft growl.

By that point, me and my family had lived in section F for around two or so years. Papa lived by his code of not causing trouble but that usually didn't bar him from snapping off on people.

Reiner's blood-drenched words still hung damp in the bar. I walked with them alongside my fear as I disconnected the radio and put it out of its misery.

The chairs creaked sadly as the customers turned towards the cabbage man with their eyes still stretched open. He rose up wonkily from his seat. His cheeks were tomatoes and his words tasted like mockery with a dash of intoxication. Each one grew dirtier than the previous.

" ..' I'm worthy of one of the nine' he said…"
He took a few misguided steps around his table, just brushing past my guitar that was resting against the wall.
"..' I'm only loyal to Marley' he said…"

After crossing the room, he stood toe to toe with papa. Despite him being half a cabbage shorter, the cabbage man conducted a staredown. However, papa's cerulean eyes couldn't handle the impassioned flame behind the cabbage man's. Thus, he simply looked down at his feet, where his dignity laid like a corpse.

The cabbage man turned away from papa and faced the customers. He stood on his imaginary soapbox and spewed his thoughts. For a man who drank too much, his words were strung together quite sturdily. Yet, they were laced in malice.

The broadcast lit a fuse in the man…

"That failure has seen what's outside these internment zone walls. Outside this ghetto. Since he's…an honorary Marleyan…since when have any of us seen what's out there?!"

…it was a power that exacerbated thoughts. It had applied a multiplier on his feelings and beliefs…

"He spent 4 years on that island. How do we know he's still on our side?... How do we know he hasn't become an island devil?!"

…it was the only power Section F's characters had, for none of us carried any of the nine…

"We're on the receiving end of his screwups. What's going to happen if the island devils come after us? They have four of the nine!"

…words are its edged blade and shield…

"Was he trying to make us feel sorry for him? After he gave that pity story, the host just blindly believed him. I won't be pacified that easily!"

…the issue with this power is, it comes and goes. It has a set time limit…

"I hate…hate…hate him as much as a man can hate. I always will."

…it's a commonplace power, Emotion.

"do any of you trust that sonofabitch?!"

The cabbage man's distress-filled words cluttered the air. They provided company for the nooks and crannies of the room still bogged down by Reiner's words. Many of the customers simply peered at the shards of glass that dressed the wooden planked floor underneath their feet. They were breathing in and out various breeds of words that night. Horror must have laid in their throats like red phlegm.

As for the cabbage man's last question, the thunder outside kindly answered with a cough and the crickets returned their opinions.

Crickets were prepared to answer once more but a single chair squeaked from within the crowd. It appeared a soul had mustered the will to push their chair back and stand up. The soul removed the vail from its head and I could see who it was clearly. It was a woman that bore a jewel-like face. Yet, it was slightly impure; she was a devil after all.
A devil that went by the name of Lina Dassler.
A neighbor whose bra I had indirectly stolen in Chapter 1.
It appeared her fuse had lit as well, but it burned in a different direction.

Uncertainty was casually sitting atop her vocal chords but she took a deep breath anyway and spoke. "…You're right, he is lying…He is lying because…the Paradis devils aren't devils."

Some of the customers lifted their locked gazes from the floor over to the slender 17-year-old that stood in the center of the room. Their eyes were stretched open once more. Some had bolted out of the bar right then, leaving their chairs lonely, for they must have sensed the mayhem that was to come.

***THREE VIEWPOINTS***

There are those that,
 1) Hate the Paradis Eldians
 2) Follow along with "1)" to avoid trouble
 3)Don't follow along with "1)"

A customer belted out a reply. "Sit down! Wha—"

"She's a big girl now. I wanna hear this." The cabbage man interrupted. His eyebrows came together and tightened at his nose. An impassioned flame still occupied his eyes. When was that fuse going to finally shut off?

Lina gulped her next words down as if that was enough to hold them back. Her eyes dotted about the room for a few seconds, but she finally closed them. She opened her mouth once more, but someone from the crowd interjected.

"Did you not listen to what Reiner just said? They sounded ruthless!"
Someone else in the crowd answered for Lina. "If he said they were not devils on a live broadcast, he would get in trouble. He could lose the honorary Marleyan status."

With that, sparks of argument spread from the center of the room outward. The broadcast from earlier had knocked over the domino that was Dick the cabbage man,
then Lina Dassler,
and she continued the chain.

Some neighbors revealed themselves to be islander supporters and friends started arguing with each other. On that broadcast night, many breeds of words were flung about: scratchy words, serrated words, weight-less words, even unsaid words. They were battered back and forth senselessly between all breeds of devils. One person would fling words from their mouth and another person would chew it up and shoot it back with a seasoning of foul breath.

Among the words that were flying across the bar room, a new stream was introduced. One of the dominoes stood up with his hands plastered to his face. The young man aimed himself right at Lina and his words seethed with lava.

"But they have to be monsters…My parents were taken away to get turned into titans on the island…all for looking at an officer the wrong way… Are you saying that means nothing?!"

A few of his breaths stabbed the surrounding air. He put his hands down and glared at Lina. But before I could do anything to warn her, the young man launched himself towards her. It was like a blur of blonde.

Instead of the young man pinning her onto her table and defiling her in some way, I opened my eyes to see the domino's face smothered on the table with alcohol exfoliating his pores. His left arm was facing back, straight into the air. The one pinning him: a girl with a jewel-like face. As the young man cursed vigorously into the table, Lina pinned him on the verge of defiling his arm.

Her face was no longer a jewel.
It was a dark diamond.

With the beginning of their fight, physical contact between the other customers in the room commenced. Punches, kicks, jabs, were all thrown about easily. Empty bottles, broken shards of glass, and even the dart that my dad shot earlier in the evening came to use.

The sight could be summed up in a few sentences: it was like bags of flesh ignited to action with a drug, not alcohol, but emotion. Devil blood covered the wooden floor like sloppily applied mascara. Anger, fear, dread, and all of its synonyms were jumbled together and fed to me as a rich stew.

Among all the streams of words, I focused on Lina's. "Maybe you're right. They might kill us all, but you know what's going to get us killed faster?! People like you!" Lina continued on her train of saying things she wished she could take back but didn't want to at the same time. She continued twisting the young man's left arm as if she was trying to squeeze every drop of pain she could out of him.

"Owww! If you complain about people that react too easily, think about what you're doing right now. Look at it! What are you doing to me right now!?"

She took a pause. Her dark diamond face went still.

My mother yelled from the top of her lungs for everybody to stop. But it was like yelling into an abyss. My father's legs were trembling like noodles; his fuse was yet to start burning. I stood next to him behind the counter as straight as a plank and as scared as hell.

Papa looked at Dick the cabbage man who was still standing atop his imaginary soapbox. He put words in his shaking hands and gave them to him. "Look…look at what you've done, Dick."

The cabbage man turned to reply. The dusty yellow light shimmered on the shaving blade that was sewn into the rim of his ivy hat.

"You're just like that Reiner kid. He says he hates the Paradis devils. But did he mean it? I. Think. Not. In the few years you've been in section F, you've been saying you hate 'em too. Cracking jokes about 'em. Tell me, Freddy, do you really hate 'em?" His tinny metal vocal chords mirrored a certain radio host from earlier.

Papa turned his uncomfortable gaze over to me, the sentence 'w-what should I do now?' was scribbled in red marker over his stubbly face. His blue eyes were the o's.

I shifted my gaze back to Lina. She was restraining the young man in the same position from before. But I could see her slender fingers slowly untying themselves as the realization of hypocrisy must have been ringing in her head. When her grip went loose enough, the man slid out from underneath. He pushed her onto the table with his right hand and pulled her left arm back with his left arm. It was the same as she did to him. Under the pressure, Lina's face became a ruby red.

I wished I could have done something to help her, but bags of flesh were fighting everywhere.

When I returned my gaze over to my dad, I noticed the cabbage man's physical body was gone. Yet, I could hear his voice from somewhere. "Think about your answer now, Freddy!"

Me, mama, and papa looked around the room past the bloody faces and dirtied tables. After a few seconds of fretful searching from our comfortable shelter behind the counter, we found the cabbage man standing by the left side of the room. His signature pair of overalls were ruffed up; he must have bulldozed his way through all the mayhem. In his callous-ridden right hand, he held a guitar. He eyed it like a piece of rotten produce.

It was a guitar that belonged to a certain narrator.

My papa gave his answer. He yelled as much as he could about how he supposedly hated the Paradis devils. He shot the words from his mouth with velocity, yet they all landed flat like rolling coins that were starved of momentum. All the words were correct, but much like Reiner, they lacked the minimum required acidity level. My family followed the second viewpoint: "2) Follow along with "1)" to avoid trouble". Simply put, we were followers that didn't believe in what we followed.

" I can't hear you, Freddy! But that's ok. Your answer doesn't matter."

This is where'd you expect someone like the wall-soldier to break up the madness, or Viktor to come to save his sister. Or even the homeless man to come to save my guitar.

***A REMINDER***
 Unfortunately,
 this is real life.

Instead,

I heard bones make a vicious snap from the center of the room and to accompany it, a chilling shriek that cleanly sliced the surrounding area. I didn't look over, but it must have been the girl with a jewel-like face.

Chilly tears were carved into mine.

One by one, I noticed the cabbage man pulling off the guitar strings as if they were thin cotton threads. I ran out from behind the counter and charged into the abyss of jabs, punches, and kicks so I could reach him. Upon my arrival inside, my stomach became a baseball mitt for a ball that happened to be a 100-pound fist. After wobbling to the ground, I became a blonde floormat for all the dirt above to step on and wipe their filthy feet with. After managing to stand up, without sparing a second, the back of my skull generously welcomed a shattered bottle of beer to bring about its doom.

That was an interesting minute indeed.

Upon my leaving of the abyss, my faltering eyes caught the rotten image of the cabbage man. In my sight, the edges of my guitar and the edges of his overalls smoothened together to form a sickly vomit color. But just when I felt like my body escaped the minute of hell,

my legs gave out,
then my arms,
and then my eyes.
The only thing left to see was a vibrant black.

I laid there in front of him as a floormat once more. This time, with a screaming pain at the back of my head; it felt like a mixture of salt and needles. And as a cherry on top, I was left with the curse of hearing. It was a curse since I had to use my imagination to see what happened for the 30 seconds that followed.

On top of the ambient soundtrack of people yelling and beating the pulp out of each other, I was left to my imagination for a few sounds:

1. Some thuds

For this first one, I received a hint: I felt fresh tears rolling out onto my flattened cheeks. I heard the thud a few more times, for each occurrence, the sound morphed into something thinner and thinner. I couldn't figure out what it was right then, but I would find the corpse of the sound later. In the background, in between every bang, the thunder from outside laughed uncontrollably, like a cynical overlooker.

2. A canon

What I heard next however was peculiar. It sounded like a canon that fired a single-syllable sound. "Dick!"
A fuse had finally awakened. I thought it belonged to a Papa Steiner.
His scream rung in my head like shell shock as I drifted away into half-consciousness. One devil foot in the real world, but another into a hallucination.