An Eldian's Journal
Chapter 7: A long conversation
"Mrs. Steiner, I'm going to sit down for a bit."
"Ok."
Carrying my ear along with her, Lina walked over to the two lonely chairs that sat in the kitchen out of sight from the living room. She threw me down on one and lowered herself calmly into another.
My heart was beating like a hammer.
She pulled a few thin papers from a hidden pocket and an ominous powdered plant from another. She displayed them atop her non-pained hand with the overworked light from above applying a glare on the wax paper.
"You know how to roll cigarettes?"
I looked behind me past the kitchen door to the living room. Mama and Papa were sitting on separate chairs, and they played unenthusiastically with the silence that existed between them. I took the cigarette ingredients from Lina's hand and for a brief second her crystal face cracked into a mischievous smile before it healed itself to normal.
She said, "Good…while you're doing that, let me ask you a question." The secret ingredients quivered in my hands. I had a few questions in the bank to ask her as well.
***A FEW QUESTIONS TO ASK THE CRYSTAL BALL***
1)'Why did you say the islanders aren't devils?'
2)'Where the hell is Viktor?'
She then crossed her right leg over the left and swept the velvet blanket of midnight hair over her shoulder.
"…do you hate Mr. Frederick?"
"My papa?"
"No dummy. The one who broke your guitar…and your papa's forehead."
Hate. Hate. Hate. That word was spat out from so many different mouths that night. I'm sure whoever came up with it would be happy that it was being used so frequently, between races in fact.
"How can you ask me that?! Of course, I hate him!"
All five food groups of emotions were sizzling in my stomach, ready to explode. I gripped the tobacco tightly in my right hand feeling the drug in its naked state, almost tempted to chuck it at her, but I refrained.
"Well, I say you shouldn't blame him—"
In the two years before that night, I learned that Lina would try to say many wise things however failing to actually be wise. This is a prime trait for cigarette wielders in section F.
My upper lip rested heavily atop my bottom one. I stayed quiet waiting to hear what bullshit she was going to spill.
"You remember what happened to the poor guy after that newspaper announced the mission failure?"
I began placing the tobacco into a column in the paper. "No. What does that have to do with my guitar?"
"Everyone got so damn upset, that most businesses went downhill for a while. Your family's bar was an exception, and I don't need to explain why…anyway…his cabbage selling hustle went down as well."
"Ok…"
"He had to eat all the cabbages himself, Ricky. Imagine the toilet aftermath."
I set the paper onto the table that stood next to us and looked directly at her face.
"So you're telling me…that rat…broke my guitar, cut my papa, because he had to eat some vegetables and didn't get enough pocket money for a week?!"
"Ok fine, I guess that isn't the best reason—"
I picked up the cigarette ingredients and chucked them at her face. "Get the fuck out!"
"Please, Ricky…I need someone to roll a cigarette for me…I get cranky when I don't have one."
With an inner dialogue clothed in a voice of malice, I thought to myself, 'What a pitiful woman. She's three-four years older than me and acts like this?'
I grabbed her good arm and tried to pull her off the chair. I couldn't make dents in it like my mama could.
To be exact: I tried to pull her off the chair but in truth…
…I couldn't pull her off the chair.
When my bitter gaze landed on her face once more, the shimmering face reverted to a dark diamond. It was just as malevolent as the time she pinned down the guy from the bar. "I'm not done talking…Heinrich."
My hand grew autonomous for a second and let go of her arm. Then my legs followed as my fear drove my body carefully back to my chair. When I sat down, I rested my hands on my thighs.
Lina cleared her throat, and her face began sparkling again. "Did you have to waste that stuff?...Jeez…Here, do it again, from the beginning." The face cracked into a mischievous smile once more as she pulled out more of the ingredients from her pocket.
"As I was saying, that isn't the only reason—" She put the ingredients in my hands once more. "—Like many people around here, he kept hoping that Reiner and the other candidates would defeat the islanders. If they did that, fewer Eldians would have to be trained into soldiers. Fewer people like his papa and his son would have to be sent off to get killed in those filthy trenches."
"His papa and his son were killed in battle?"
"Yea, you didn't know? He's a simple man dealing his anger out on people…anyway, that's what I think. But he could easily just be an evil person that wants to cause a riot…hmm..we don't have a lot of people like that around here—"
The bubbling emotions that I carried started dwindling to something flatter and tame. She continued speaking.
"—Just give it a while. That broadcast released the worst parts of him. People think they're powerful when they're super angry. He should be back to his typical level of harassment soon enough."
I looked at my hands to see a completed cigarette with some slight plant residue lining my palms. It appeared that my focus rode along with the wise melody that Lina spoke. For once, she tried to be wise while actually making sense.
"Looks like you finished," she said. She then pulled something else from the pocket that contained druggy goods: a box of matches. She put the cigarette in between her lips, and I lit a match.
How easy would it be to drop it on the floor and burn everything down?
With a muffled tone she spoke, "If you burn this pretty face of mine…" After I lit the malevolent stick, I looked at the cigarette wielder wielding her cigarette. Her face was so pure, yet she didn't mind mixing in impurities. She wore her contradictions as a hair tie.
On the tip of my tongue, there laid a question ready to pounce into the soon-to-be smoke-filled conversation.
***A FEW QUESTIONS TO ASK THE CRYSTAL BALL***
1)'Why did you say the islanders aren't devils?'
2)' Where the hell is Viktor?
"Why did—"
"Why did I say the islanders aren't devils?"
"Yea. How did—"
"I'm glad you asked. I almost forgot."
She took a drag on the cigarette and as she spoke, the smoke left her lips sporadically.
"I don't know."
"What do you mean you don't know?"
She spun the cigarette with her index and middle finger. Her gaze was set onto a skillet on the other side of the kitchen.
"I'm a hypocrite."
"Huh?"
"I'm a hypocrite. When I shoved that guy onto the table, I said that people getting angry for no reason are going to get us killed… Yet, I am one of those people. I acted surprised even though I know I'm a hypocrite."
She took a pause, yet shortly after she continued on the path of providing an answer to a question that I had not asked.
"—I don't really want to die. Yet, I breathe smoke from paper…I know I'm pretty, yet I ask for approval…"
She breathed out smoke once more and it had a melody of its own. If it could sing, I believe it would sound like cheeriness overlaying a fat somberness. It too would be confused…like her own existence.
***LONG FORMULA #2***
Diamond face + (sounds wise – actual meaning) + narcissism + carbon emissions + x + y + z = Lina Dassler
With the verbal puzzle pieces she provided me along with the cigarette ingredients, I put together a narrative for why she did what she did. I understood why she had the gall to defend the man that broke my guitar and whom she didn't agree with. Ironically, they were quite similar.
It's a simple answer that I only figured out as of the time writing this: she too was a person that simply couldn't control the power of emotions. The only difference was that she was on the other end of the spectrum in beliefs.
After a suffocating minute, the cigarette had been reduced to a pitiful blunt and the kitchen bathed itself in faint grey. The nicotine possessed woman looked at me with slightly euphoric eyes.
"Ricky, give me a name."
"What?"
"Viktor told me about how you give names to everyone here. Like your dad: The Alpha Perv."
"That isn't my best one."
"Well, it's accurate at least. Now give me one."
The heat of the smoke in the room plus my raging hormones cooked up an uncomfortable feeling in my gut. Yet, I flipped through the pages of the developing dictionary of colorful words in my head.
"Ummm…I dunno.. a dark diamond?"
"Jeez. You make me sound like a psychopath or something…An attractive one at least."
The "cigarette wielder" name had not been conceived yet. That would take a few more months for me to come up with.
She asked me one more question and I had one left to ask her.
"What would you call… Reiner?"
Before I could open my mental dictionary to the ass-hole description section, my mama roared from the living room. "Hey! When did this smoke get here? I swear, it's that whor—" She censored herself with the last word.
***A FEW QUESTIONS TO ASK THE CRYSTAL BALL***
1) 'Why did you say the islanders aren't devils?'
2)'Where is Viktor?
"Why didn't Viktor show up? It's not like the bar is age-restricted."
"He said he didn't want to listen to it because he already knew what would happen."
She got off her chair and walked to the door. She looked back at me; the light from the wheezing light bulb caressed her face as a 'goodbye'.
As a brief farewell, she spoke without reluctance. "Good night, Bra Stealer."
My raging hormones briefly muted the unsavory stew of emotions that the broadcast had left in my stomach. And as expected, mama berated Lina on her way out.
***A NEW QUESTION AND ITS ANSWER***
3)Did I have a crush on Lina Dassler?
You guessed correctly
-AN OUT OF PLACE HALLUCINATION-
I woke up in a body with a working pair of legs,
working pair of arms,
working pair of eyes,
and a shameless hunger working through my intestines.
I looked up at the big plate of gold in the sky. Its rays were bleeding into my eyes and I welcomed it. It was a sunny day; a perfect day for a parade of Eldians.
To greet me into this hallucination was rain. Rather, a downpour of stones. To the right and left of me, me and my parade of Eldians were being graciously greeted by armband-lacking humans: Marleyans. They greeted us with a various assortment of stones but with it an assortment of words: "Devils!", "Scum of the earth!". 'Is this outside the internment walls?' I asked myself.
I looked at the Marleyan officer leading us then at an Eldian next to me. I asked her, "Where are they taking us? Are we going to be turned into titans?!"
The lady's face stayed still, waterlogged with tears but content in hopelessness. After a few seconds of processing she replied, "Titans?" Before I could return my response, my temple welcomed a sharp grey stone and once again, I was knocked onto the ground. This time with my vision intact.
I watched as the parade kept marching forward and marching on the fine line between life and death. But as my head lay on the ground, I looked past the fallen stones onto something that glimmered under the gaze of the sun. It was something plump, with calories, a part of a whole: a quarter loaf of bread. At the moment of recognition, my hunger from within started running on full throttle and I somehow managed to crawl to the bread. I could feel it in my hands— the plumpness and the refined grains. But as it approached my mouth, a bludgeon hit my back.
I turned my head to the left to see an oppressor's boot stamping pain and dust onto my spine. It was another officer. I looked into his steel eyes with my tear-logged eyes.
Mistake.
He then grabbed my right arm and started tugging it back. The ripe pain I felt was fresh for harvesting, available to be enjoyed by the officer. Shamelessly, I started the pledge, wishing it would save me even if it removed me of dignity "…grateful to my Marleyan…". After I finished it, the officer's face creased in laughter. His officer friends that circled around me started laughing too. From my view, it looked like a ring fire of despicable cackling. One of them took a break from his laughter and said something that sounded like he was talking out of a thin straw. "Marleyans? What the hell are those? Looks like someone's hallucinating and we're not even at the place yet!" They continued laughing.
As my body manufactured screams and squeals, the officer on my back kept wringing out every drop of pain from my arm. 'Is this how Lina felt?' I asked myself.
Then, I heard something. It sounded like thunder, thunder on a sunny day. Thunder that sounded like tables clashing and middle-aged men yelling.
As the tension in my right arm reached its peak tension, I noticed something on my left forearm:
Numbers.
I thought to myself, 'Why are there so many numbers?'
-THE END OF THE OUT OF PLACE HALLUCINATION-
This is the hallucination that I saw when I got knocked out a few chapters back.
When I laid on my bed that night, my sheets felt suffocating. But to accompany me in the dark, were two questions that were stuck to the ceiling as moldy stains:
1) What did Reiner really see on the island?
2) What would a world be like if Eldians couldn't turn into titans?
The Real Author's Note
As always, any feedback is greatly appreciated!