!I uploaded two chapters today!
Make sure to read "Chapter 23: Juxtapositions" before reading this one.
An Eldian's Journal
Wartime Shenanigans
Chapter 24: More Juxtapositions
The only thing that silenced the arguing devils for even a moment broke. The string let go of the guitar body and decided an early retirement. I was left with only the foul and poorly written melody of silence from the people's stares. It was met with the people bolting their eyes about not knowing what they should spend their stressful waiting with.
I glanced over at K. A typically sullen face contained a slight quiver in his bony lips—I had ruined a part of his old love after all.
Mama asked her question again. "Heinrich, where did you get that guitar from?"
"I..." I wasn't entirely sure if I should give her the entire truth, but K apparently decided that it was ok. "He borrowed it from me."
I could see conflict climb on the cliff that was her face. She must have loved listening to me play. Still, there was also the fact that the guitar was from a stranger, a man who clouded himself in mystery as thick as the very filth that his skin had to carry.
As a result, she gave a neutral answer. "Heinrich, give it back to him."
"But mama..."
"Give it back before you break it even more." Through her narrowed eyelids, Mama's silver eyes laid on K as if she was trying to unlock the man who sat like a treasure chest in the corner of the basement.
I got up and picked up the guitar—it felt like an anvil for a moment. The broken string laid on the instrument like a metal piece of hair that was yanked out of its root from the guitar's head. I walked across the basement and passed the musical scrapbook of decrypted stories over to him.
"I'm sorry, Mr. K," That short burst of peace we felt a few days before was counterbalanced with the kilos of disappointment that I felt after breaking the string.
I was expecting him to yell: 'Look at what you've done you little prick!'
The reality: "You played...well. H."
"Huh?"
K the street-dweller, seemed like the kind of person to do anything obnoxiously as possible so that people would hate him. But there he was, congratulating me on my mediocre performance that managed to distract us for a moment. He was developing before my eyes, or maybe, was my perception of him developing instead?
Was he trying to make me not hate him?
I returned to my spot from before and kept in mind what just transpired. My Mama rested in her conflicted look as everyone else stayed quiet and rolled in their speechlessness.
Then came Viktor with a less than surprising proposition.
"Finally, I had enough of that guitar." The fighter stood up and put his hand out towards me. "Let's fight."
Goddammit, Viktor, why couldn't you have less destructive hobbies? I wondered why he couldn't read the room and just stayed quiet.
"Viktor, this isn't the time for that." I replied.
"There's always a time to fight." He looked at my dad and the cabbage man. There was a hint of mockery in his sentence. "You two should know that better than anyone. Especially after all the drama in the bar."
Mama's conflicted expression transferred into one of the extremes: full-on rejection. "Not in front of me you're not!" Her words clumped together like dry and crusty syrup.
"Mrs. Steiner," Viktor positioned himself towards Mama. "Remember the soup you made for us after Lina got her arm broken?"
"Y-yeah?"
"It tasted like sewage."
Everyone else oohed like ghouls, for they must have known how much of an insult that did too since her eyes began to flame, her chin jutted out, and her eyebrows lowered. She then looked over at me, and a tight lip smile rose on her face.
"Today's an exception. Beat that boy up, Heinrich."
"Mama?"
Viktor shoved me to the center of the basement—a bald spot in the room without the dandruff-like humans taking up space. He put his fists up, and the yellow light wrestled with his fudge hair. He left his shirt and jacket on this time around, but he wrapped handkerchiefs around his knuckles like padding.
The edged chill in the room grew blunt as my heart increased its pumping.
I threw my fists up as well.
Viktor initiated the "match" with a jab. It landed on my raised fists.
As Viktor and I traded blows, it felt like we were running through the motions as usual. Punch. Jab. Punch. Jab.-block-. Punch. It was a similar rhythm. I didn't notice it when we first began, but I realized what Viktor was doing in-between punches. In place of music as a distraction, he was putting on a show for the audience.
He seemed to care more about these people than he let on.
When I realized this, I did something that I thought I would never do. I took a punch on purpose. It would be more entertaining, would it not? I managed to catch a few gasps from the audience in between hits.
Two minutes passed, and Viktor yelled. "Stop!" He looked over to his older sister. "Let's switch."
The girl with midnight hair rose from the ground and entered the "ring." Lina took off the makeshift cast and rolled her arm as if it was waking up from hibernation after all this time. A smug smile curled on her face.
"Since when do you fight?" I asked, trying to mask my surprise.
"Since now."
She threw a punch.
The lack of skill was apparent, but the truth was none of us really had any, to begin with. Then again, an untrained fighter can still deal a lot of damage if their shots landed. Emphasis on if their shots landed.
The more pressing issue for me was, where the hell was I supposed to punch her? In the face? No. Diamond is unbreakable, after all. In the stomach? That would just feel weird.
She threw her mediocre punches; she stabbed the air repeatedly, but there wasn't much grace. Her feet floundered about and stood in awkward positions. Her fists moved slower in comparison to her little brother, so they were easier to dodge.
I came to a realization: I didn't have to actually punch her. I could just wait for her to grow tired and wear herself out.
Despite this, that smile remained glued to her face. She appeared to be enjoying herself.
As I kept dashing about, I noticed that her breaths grew more and more labored. I guess that's expected when breathing smoke is a hobby.
I went that little fight without landing a single punch on Lina.
When she went back to sit down, I got out of my head and saw the effects of our little fights. Everyone's faces contained spots of joy, some amusement, some laughter. I wondered what it looked like from their positions to see Lina prance about punching the air and occasionally, when she was lucky, me.
I thought the fights for that day's bomb siren were over until I heard the tinny vocal cords of a certain man in overalls.
"Freddy?"
My papa and Dick the cabbage man shot glances at each other, but neither spoke their minds. In our shelter adventures, these two had the most chaotic relationship out of anyone in this journal. They were the most memorable pair that I can think of (2nd to my relationship with K). This is because, despite the world containing human-eating monsters, they misfortuned each other's lives simply by being the most human.
It took a minute of eye chasing for one of them to make the suggestion.
Dick the Cabbage man: "Freddy, you want to fight?" Dick asked that without a noticeable hint of malice. Instead, it was similar to how Viktor would approach me at random times of the day.
"I don't want to fight."
"Why not?"
"Because the last time we fought..." Papa raised a finger to the scar on his forehead. "This happened."
"Look Freddy..." Dick tilted his head and crossed his arms in a look of confusion. He simply didn't have a good reason. "It's better than sitting around and waiting for a bomb."
Papa let out a sigh from his mouth, and his thinning hair mimicked him. "Fine."
The ground squeaked and moaned as they walked over to the center of the basement. Their pot bellies braced themselves as they put up their fists. They were sober with some fear, not fear for each other but the apparent threat of what could be falling above their heads.
***A DOSE OF IMAGINATION***
The Cabbage Titan vs. The Whiskey Titan
As the pair moved about, I paid attention to the looks on their faces. Surprisingly there was focus resting on their features rather than murderous intent that I was used to seeing them with.
I watched the "audience" reactions and thought back to how people watched these two grown men batter each brutally during the bar fight that occurred after Reiner's radio talk. The responses for those two different days were polar opposites. On the radio day, the audience members glued themselves to the wall, frozen in the confusion of what to do. But in the basement, they chose sides and cheered along like they were watching a sport.
I witnessed the duplicitous, double nature of fighting. Viktor seemed to understand it all along.
After a few minutes of fighting, I saw something rather bizarre after a few sheets of adrenaline grew in their faces. The corners of their mouths reached from each side of their faces. They must have noticed it, too, for they stopped after a few seconds.
They were smiling.
Yes, men that hated each other's guts appeared to be enjoying each other's company. My papa and the cabbage man switched their ambitions for fighting from trying to kill each other to enjoying the brawl.
After the pair of men went back to their spots, the wives were next up for a brawl. They cursed like sailors as usual.
Mama threw on her iron exterior again. "Listen here, bitch. I've heard you've been going around saying I make horrible cookies."
The Grinch: "You're ugly enough now as it is. I wonder how ugly you would be if you were a titan."
That day marked the beginning of a routine for section F devils that waited out in my basement during bomb warnings. If we didn't have music, we would brawl 'till our heart's content. It was a juxtaposition of two themes—two ways to make the thought of war, famine, and defeat all the more bearable: the dynamic duo of music and fighting.
"Hey, Freddy."
"What Dick?"
"If your son ever gets that guitar fixed..." His gaze shifted around as if he couldn't say it directly. "Tell him to come play it for me...at my home..."
I was watching their conversation, but they never even bothered to ask for my opinion.
"Hmmm." Papa replied.
"I'll give you my ration of coffee beans."
"Hmmm."
"Fine. I'll give you some flour as well."
Indirectly, it seemed like the two had accepted their differing viewpoints on what the islanders were really like. Acceptance. Such a simple human concept people fight wars to ignore.
"Deal."
If two stupid, perverted middle-aged men could do it, why not a whole nation?
XXX
The following day, on the way back from my newspaper route, I caught a glimpse of Lina behind her home putting up damp clothes on a clothesline. Her midnight hair was clumped together as a messy bun, and the sleeves of her raggedy brown dress were rolled up. For some reason, I spaced out and got entranced by how methodically she wrung out water from some clothes and put them up to dry.
The thought of the previous day's bomb warning escaped my mind, like a scent in the wind.
"Move out the way, kid!" Some loser caught me off guard and buzzed past me on his rusty bicycle.
Lina must have heard it since she looked up from the bucket, and I could see the bun move left and right. She finally turned around and saw me.
"Heya Ricky."
The letters didn't sound as excited as they typically were.
She sat down on an upside-down bucket and patted her hand down on another as if she was calling me. I worried she would make me help her since I didn't want to deal with Viktor's cursed clothes. On the upside-down bucket, she sat with drooped shoulders and puffy eyes with red veins like a peppermint. Something appeared to be wrong with the cigarette wielder.
"Ricky, I got fired this morning."
"What happened?"
"With the war rolling in, people are worried about income. Today, I had two families saying that I was fired. Another family offered me a cigarette instead of paying me."
Lina earned her income through doing laundry for local families and running errands for people too old to do things themselves. With her above-average appearance, she could have easily gotten into...some more explicit jobs with higher pay...but she treasured her integrity. She managed to scrape together enough money to stay all those years afloat without her parents.
I had no idea what to do to make her feel better. So, I just stayed quiet.
After a few seconds, she changed the subject. "What have you been doing with the homeless guy?" Her puffy eyes wandered over to me, taking a pit stop every second.
I thought back to the crossword puzzle day. "When I saw him a while back, he wanted me to complete a crossword puzzle with him."
"A crossword puzzle?" Lina's puffy eyes narrowed in, but her mask of puffiness stayed intact.
"Yeah."
I pulled out a newspaper that I was planning to give to K, but I thought playing with words would help Lina feel better. They were similar people in the aspect that they tried understanding human behaviors and learning what makes them tick. I thought she would like the same things as him...
I looked through the list of hints on the crossword section and found one that was quite relevant to issues of that time.
***A HINT***
25 across: Unexpected attack
I asked. "What do you think the word is for 'Unexpected attack'?"
"Umm.." The bun raised as she lowered her gaze towards the paper. "I don't know."
"At least try."
"Hmm...capture?"
"No. It's a six-letter word."
She took a few seconds to reply. "Arrest."
"No."
She let out a sigh, and which each attempt, she kept rubbing the back of her neck as if she was growing more and more agitated with each effort.
"It's 'ambush'." I said finally.
"This is boring."
I wasn't expecting the bluntness of her response. For some reason, I was hoping her to like the same stuff as K. I thought that since they both were similar in a way, that was a logical expectation.
Lina: "What does he tell you?"
"He told me once that we don't react to reality but to a perception of it."
"W-What does that mean?"
"It means..." I went on and told her what it means, but as I continued, she clenched her jaw pinched her lips together. She blinked rapidly as if she was growing frustrated. I finally said, "I didn't know all that before I met him." I felt some pride in the fact that I was growing out of my ignorance.
Her puffiness transferred to a pint of coldness. Her gaze bounced from place to place, and she went to light up a cigarette. Maybe she was getting frustrated because I couldn't understand her and how she was feeling. Or, perhaps she was getting frustrated since she could no longer understand me.
I offered, "If money's the issue, my Mama can cook for you two. The bar still has business."
"I don't want it!"
She finished the cigarette in one long drag—then came one long, tired cloud of smoke. She then threw the deceased cigarette on the newspaper, almost making it catch fire.
It was like she was killing herself purposefully, slowly. A crystal face slowly morphed into coal.
As she walked back to the clothesline, I thought about her smoking habit, if anything it was a waste of money. She would have more money to spend if she gave up on it. But then again, she needed those to kill herself with.
What a confusing girl. No one expected stable income from a pair of orphans except herself. There I was thinking that I was growing out of my ignorance, but the crossword reinforced that I still didn't understand her.
This world is garbage.
Goddammit, why did those people with fezzes from the mid-east have to be so rebellious? Without this stupid war, we wouldn't need to be worrying about getting bombed in the internment zones. Why couldn't they just accept Marley's occupation?
I think I know why; it's because they're human.
I'm going on a tangent again.
The Real Author's Note
Ok, writing two chapters for this week was A LOT more difficult than I expected. I'm gonna be honest with you guys, it was difficult not necessarily because of plot but rather the writing style.
I think what makes this story unique is the odd but creative comparisons that I use to tell a simple story in an interesting way. It was harder to come up with them since I had to double the length.
Anyway, I'm still doing double chapters for next week but that will be the last double upload for a while now. However, that is not a full stop on double chapters. It's that I'm just not going to be doing them one after another.