An Eldian's Journal
Wartime Shenanigans
Chapter 14: A Riddle and Some Gravel
I have a riddle for you.
Try to answer it between now and the end of the next chapter.
***A RIDDLE***
Which bomb doesn't hiss,
doesn't crackle,
doesn't boom,
but still bites?
I must say, the answer to this riddle is rather simple. When you read the answer, I'm sure you'll slap yourself from how obvious it is.
XXX
The evening of the following day, I found myself outside wearing the metaphorical blue scarf again. Most of it was blue—decent memories. The rest of it was either patchy black or crimson red—not so decent memories.
This scarf would keep me warm at times and other times it would constrict my neck like a python.
(It still happens to this day)
'Tis the duplicitous nature of memories.
On that evening, I was pacing up and down Hell Street contemplating whether I should go to Viktor's home and apologize for my barrage of punches. The issue was, I simply wasn't sure what I would say to Lina if I saw her—even Viktor for that matter.
'Hey, Lina. Sorry for beating the shit out of your brother yesterday.'
Or
'Hey, Viktor. You can punch me twelve times if you'd like.'
Or
'I almost killed two people in one day. Please pity me.'
When I reached the end of Hell street, my thought process was interrupted by gravelly lyrics.
Not gravelly words.
Gravelly lyrics.
I peered around the corner of Hell Street to see the street dweller playing guitar with a floppy-eared dog huddled next to him. They occupied the sidewalk a little ways away from me.
I found it intriguing how he clothed himself in a blanket of poverty and sang a song to keep his mouth warm in the autumn days. I covered myself in the metaphorical scarf and thick clothes.
His lyrics sang a wounded song. I didn't know who they were directed to, but I listened anyway. I allowed the drooping vowels and consonants to tell me their pain.
"What have I become?... My sweetest friend."
He had a voice of wounded gravel…
"Everyone I know, goes away…in the end."
…Gravel suffocating underneath mounds of wasted corpses…
"And you could have it all…my empire of dirt"
…Corpses neglected, left to decompose, and become one with the soil…
"I will let you down…"
….'Who will you let down?', I thought.
"I will make you…hurt"
With the lyric "hurt," hate began to rain from above in the form of rolled-up papers and used cans.
"Go sing somewhere else, old man!" Residents yelled out.
The people on the street sold him some reserved pity. The dog simply licked him as if it was saying "I'm sorry".
I felt an ache of pity echo through the streets of my heart.
***UNOFFICIAL THESAURUS REFERENCE #1***
Antonyms for 'Heroic':
Cowardly
Weak
Heinrich Steiner
Once again, I was met with the issue of confronting people.
I simply turned away from it.
The imaginary Ymir stated it well herself. I had difficulties with directly confronting people and instead, I would shoot newspapers and evade them. However, when I finally confronted someone properly (**cough**cough** the journalist)…you know what happened.
Thus, I was content with walking away.
This feeling of content-ness lasted for 1 second.
I thought back to the lyrics of the street-dweller. "I will let you down…" "I will make you…hurt" These lyrics rang in a different chamber in my heart. A weak, pained bellow. I realized that in a way I had let my parents down. I let Viktor down in his twisted hope that I would properly kill Reiner.
In the end, I made both groups hurt.
Alas, I carried my lack of content-ness in my right hand, with my lack of heroic traits in my left. It was a perfect blend for inner turmoil.
After walking a block from where I saw the street-dweller, I turned around to see what came of that short spurt of hate.
It was the sleepy street-dweller. He just moved to a different location as if what transpired before was just another day in the internment zones for him.
An answer to my turmoil stood next to him against the wall. Actually… a distraction from it. Something to muffle it just a while—his guitar.
The guitar appeared to be so old it could have been covered in wooden rust. It was wounded just like the lyrics that accompanied it a short while before then. Each scratch seemed like they had their own stories to tell.
It lured me in for it reminded me of my deceased guitar. So much so that a woody tear dropped onto my cheek.
When I walked back to the guitar, the unrefined stench of the street-dweller bombarded my nose. His skin was caked with filth, and he slept in punctuated snores. They were like dashes in sentences.
I picked up the guitar and tried balancing it with my still wounded hands. After a few seconds of shuffling about, my strumming finger rubbed its lips on the strings. It felt a shadow of its old love. Yet, something felt different; there was something more…intriguing…about this one. It had a wider palette of sound.
Its tones were colored in ebony, mellow oak, maybe even some rust.
As I was discovering the complexities of the guitar, a growl intermingled with my faint strums. It was the growl of the dog that accompanied the street-dweller during his poorly received "concert".
A bark came up next. It was from an awakened street-dweller. "You're that brat from last week!" He sat up and set his skeleton torso against the wall. "I told you to leave me alone. Do I need to throw some more gravel at you again?"
I was faced with confrontation again.
My vocal chords took a second before they strummed a response. "Your guitar…" They went out of tune. "It reminds me of my guitar."
The street-dweller released a wheezily chuckle. It was the sound of retired lungs.
I paused to think up an offer or an answer to resolve the crowded poison that was negativity in my head. I hoped it would provide me at least 10 mins of bliss. "If you let me play your guitar for 10 minutes a day, I will bring you an apple each time I visit."
The street-dweller used his skeleton claws to take back his guitar.
"You said a similar thing last week," he said.
"Huh?"
"You told me that you'd bring me food if I showed you that I could play guitar."
"Yea…"
"And what did I tell you?"
"….'Leave me alone'…"
"Yes," his words throttled. "And what makes you think I changed my mind now?!"
Following my luck that month, I was berated by another Eldian male who decided that they should take their miseries out on a simple newspaper boy.
I returned the favor.
I let out my thoughts. I let them out raw since filtering them takes willpower and restraint. I was severely lacking in those things that day.
"Have you ever wondered why people treat you like crap? You can't even say one nice thing!—"
I continued my line of berating. But with each insult, the street-dweller's face remained impoverished of emotions.
He retorted. "I don't care...nothing you say matters…I'm already broken."
XXX
Excuse my suddenness.
I'm interrupting my regularly scheduled narrating to tell you something. It doesn't really have a buildup or an increase in tension to it. There is only the climax.
That is exactly how I felt at the moment that it actually happened.
This world we live in seems to take pleasure in throwing things in our directions when we least expect it, and most importantly when we least need it.
Enter: a siren.
Above our heads are PA speakers. They are like crows that are always ready to send out a bad omen through a negative announcement.
These 'crows' decided that they should bring out something more direct and to the point on that evening.
A sound that pierced conversations throughout the internment zones. It was colored red and it howled into the devil pens.
A bomb siren.
XXX
With the siren sound, the conversation between me and the street-dweller halted and died on the sidewalk.
With the howls, people came out running, hobbling, and recoiling as they exited their homes. In their hands were prized possessions. In some cases they were photos, books, and even children.
Two of these people were a pair of siblings.
I looked at the street-dweller. His expressions laid level whereas my thoughts and shock clashed together in my mind. They couldn't find common ground until someone tapped my arm and got me out of it.
It was Viktor.
In my shock, I turned towards Viktor and was able to make out the image of his face. It was a geographical map of bruises. His jaw was red as if it was its own giant continent. Lina, on the other hand, fidgeted with a match and a cigarette. She must have thought that a rush of nicotine could suppress her shock.
"We need to hide in your basement! Ours isn't deep enough!" Viktor said.
It appeared that our prior struggles were temporarily discarded for more pressing issues.
I looked over at the street-dweller and grabbed his arm to lift him. Despite my disapproving opinions of him, who in their right mind would just let someone die from a bomb?
The street-dweller did for his skeleton arm refused my hand.
He insisted, "It's like I told you…I'm already broken…I'm already dead."
"Heinrich, forget about him! Let's go!"
Once again, indecisiveness grasped my legs with its unkempt claws. This time around, I didn't fight it; I simply let fight or flight take control. I let the basic mechanisms of my human existence act with disregard for moral responsibilities.
I left the street-dweller on the sidewalk and ran down Hell Street to my home.
When me, Viktor, and Lina arrived, I caught the sight of 10+ people crowd heading into my house. (It seemed like my home was the go-to place to serve as a bomb shelter.)
***A GUESS-TIMATED STATISTIC #2***
There was a total of 22 people in the basement that night
Me and the Dasslers were the 17th, 18th, and 19th.
Near the doorway were Mama and Papa. I wondered what it felt like when they let the people who ravaged their bar into their property again.
Did it hurt?
Were they allowing themselves to be used by others?
After walking into the home, I looked behind us to see the 20th, 21st, and 22nd members of the crowd.
It was the cabbage man and his family.
My papa blocked the door before the family could enter. All I saw from the following interaction were the backs of my parents with the faces of the cabbage man and his family filling in the gaps between them.
The line that began the interaction was something that you would probably expect.
Papa: "Go somewhere else."
The cabbage man replied. The fire that was once in his eyes had withered into watery words and explanations.
"Look, Freddy. I'm sorry! I was just so scared that day after the broadcast. I didn't know what I was doing!"
The cabbage man kneeled and begged at my papa's feet.
"Look at my son! You can't just—"
Even from my position inside the home, I could make out the image of the son. Personality was vacant and was replaced by the smell of shell shock. He looked to be around Lina's age most likely around 18 years.
He was a veteran of war.
He had 3 limbs.
The missing arm was lost during his deployment to expand Marley's borders.
Mama interjected. She dressed her sentences with the texture of swear words and newly discovered assertiveness.
"You can't come inside you cabbage swine."
She then directed her berating towards the wife.
('The Grinch of Section F' is what me and Viktor used to call this wife. I've mentioned her existence a few times before, but this is her first true performance in this journal.)
"And you…" Mama shot a bullet of spit at The Grinch. "That's for all the times you spat on my door."
The Grinch's words had softened into a muted desperation. "What about my son, at least take him!"
"I don't give a damn about your son!" Mama retorted.
She turned her gaze and pointed a finger at me and the Dassler siblings.
"I don't give a damn about your family after what your husband did to these kids—" Her next words were rather quiet. "—And my husband."
The cabbage man responded. "Freddy, if you leave us out here, you'll be doing something worse than I did that night."
Papa took a few seconds of contemplation. From my position, I could see him raising his arm to his head. He must have been feeling his wound. He dropped "Fuck" onto the ground.
Mama answered for him. "We will let you in… we are better than you after all." She also made sure to spit one last bullet at The Grinch as her assertion of dominance.
After letting them in, Mama came to me and hugged me. "Everything will be okay, Heinrich. I won't let them do anything to you." It seemed like she reserved her maternal instincts to me only. Nonetheless, it appeared that Mama learned from her lack of resolve during the bar fight from the week before.
(But mama, things didn't end up being ok a few months later, did they?)
She looked over at Lina. "No smoking in here!"
"But I'm stressed."
"Be stressed like the rest of us!"
Me/my family/Dassler siblings/the cabbage man's family descended into the basement since the people who already entered were there. As we went down the stairs, I noticed the slight chill in the room. It was cold but not cold enough that we could see our breathing as clouds.
Along the walls were shelves lined with spirits.
To mama's disappointment, Lina took a bottle of wine off one of these shelves. She pulled off the cork and chugged a third of the liquid down. A sigh followed and she licked her lips ever so slowly.
"This is going to be a fun evening." The sarcasm in her statement was thicker than the tension of the thought of a bomb.
The strangers who came in were about to be an audience to a drama-filled performance with many characters. When you put this group of 7 Eldians into one room, there is bound to be a battlefield of words atop a battlefield of blood:
***THE HATEFUL SEVEN + 1 ***
The Cabbage Man
The Grinch of Section F
The Alpha Perv
The Iron Maiden
The Cigarette Wielder
The Fighter
Your Narrator
+ Shell Shock