Christine

There is a man with no face, and he is haunting my dream. I try not to look at him, but he draws my gaze nonetheless, and I feel raw and vulnerable as I simply stand there, staring at him. Even without eyes, however, I can tell he is feeling…something. Something akin to shame or sorrow, for his shoulders slouch and his head is slightly dropped. There is nothing around us but swirling blackness. I am not cold, but I cannot remember what it feels like to be warm, either.

His head lifts, slowly, and his blank face is directed toward mine, as if he is looking at me. A sudden chill floods through my stomach, and I have an unexplainable terror of him approaching me. When he takes a step closer, I stumble back two more steps. Our game goes on for a few more minutes until he reaches up to press a hand over his nonexistent face. When he takes his large hand away, I begin to scream, covering my eyes and trying not to see his face that –

When I wake up, the dream dissolves quickly, and I can hardly remember why I am panting. It takes me a few moments to remember where I am and why I am there. I sit up, placing a hand on my stomach, and jump a little when I see Erik there, staring intently at me. It is hard not to stare at his mask when I know what it hides, and so I train my eyes to stare at the floor.

"Did you have a nightmare?" he asks, his voice quiet.

I nod, just a little. There is silence, and my eyes flicker back up to him. He looks as if he is struggling with something internally, a thought or emotion that he isn't sure what to do with. I am also wrestling with something; I cannot bring myself to say what I have waited all night to say. It is only three words, but I am terrified of his reaction, of his rejection. To prolong the silence, I play with the too-long sleeves, twisting them between my fingers and staring at my knees. We both decide to speak at the same time:

"I must tell you – "

"Christine, do not say that you have – "

Immediately, I silence myself, a habit of old. When men talk, women are silent. He raises his seen eyebrow and says,

"Do not say that you have waited all night to apologize for what happened. Now…what is it you wanted to say?"

I am quiet for another minute: that is exactly what I was going to do. He sees this quickly and says,

"What happened would have happened later, and there is no way to change this by apologizing." I nod, still not thoroughly convinced of his nonchalance, and he says, "Would you like something to eat?"

I follow him to the kitchen. It is most strange to see a man preparing food, but he does so, calmly and almost relaxed. I am not going to complain about this. Lately, I have been constantly hungry, and I never deny food when it is offered. He sets the plate before me in silence, and I begin to eat after a quiet 'thank you.'

The sun is bright this morning, and it seeps in through the plain cotton curtains, lighting the tiny kitchen. I think about many things, the most prominent being my rounded belly, but, right next to it is curiosity about Erik. I swallow rather harshly and look at him, saying, trying to keep my voice from trembling,

"May I ask you something?"

He nods, his piercing eyes fixed upon mine. I ask, "Might I know where you went?"

"I visited an old friend." His answer is short, impersonal, and I return my eyes to my plate. There had been, however small it was, a layer of warmth between us, but now…there is nothing there.

To my surprise, however, he continues. "He gave me some advice and, because I trust him, I am going to follow his advice." There is another minute of hesitant silence. "If you would like," he says slowly, "I will tell you about where I was born and…the journey I took throughout my life."

I nearly drop my fork as I look up at him. "I would like that very much," I say, my voice a near-whisper. He sighs, rising from his chair.

"Come," he says. "I will need a drink first."

----

I sit on the couch, very inelegantly as I am still unfamiliar with the bump on my stomach and the clothes in which I am. He stands before me, hands clasped behind his back, and his eyes looking at the window. The sun illuminates his face. For the first time, I see slight wrinkles around his eyes and the corner of his exposed lip. I am struck again by how tall he is.

"Before I begin," he says, running a hand through his dark hair. "I make a disclaimer and tell you now that I am not a saint, I have never been one, nor will I become one."

"A saint?" I question.

"Perfection," he says. "I am not perfect, Christine. I have done bad things, and I will not hide them from you."

A familiar thrill runs through my stomach. For a very brief second, I wonder if I really do want to hear his story. But there is no time to say anything else, for he turns to face me and begins:

"I am not the first of my kind. I am not the first one who realized the corruptness of the government. I did not make up these ideas that the Oligarchy finds so revolting. In fact, I am positive that as long as there is a government, someone will oppose it. Happiness is not for all men, Christine. Someone will always be unhappy. It is simply the way life was designed.

"But those who took the first steps to oppose the Oligarchy took different ones than I did. Rather than submerse themselves to dig at the root, they moved themselves as far away as they could. A group of young men gathered together with their wives and small children and left the laborers' village in the dead of night, taking only what they could carry. They walked for a very, very long time, and they starved and suffered. But their vision of utopia was enough sustenance to keep them sustained, I suppose, for they stopped in the heart of a large forest and settled, away from the iron fist of the government. They painstakingly cleared a few acres of land and built small shacks. Their living conditions were no different than the ones from which they had just escaped. However, there was no one to tell them they could not better their shacks, no one to tell them that they had to give up seventy-five percent of their food, no one to tell the women to bear child after child until the effort finally kills her. And so they thrived.

"Their shacks turned into small, modest cottages. Their two acres turned into five, and their small gardens became rows and rows of vegetables. The men hunted small game for special occasions. The only rule that these people had was to care for one another. If one man's harvest was terrible, everyone provided for them during the off-season. The small community grew and grew for ten years. It was then that I was born.

"I was the first dishonorable child of the community. My mother was young – seventeen, I believe – and she was in love with a man fifteen years her senior. Even though the community believed in being generous, infidelity was still looked down upon. She was given a small shack away from the rest to raise me. My appearance did nothing to help her. It was believed I was her curse, a burden for her to have as a punishment for her sins. She treated me as such. She was not mature enough to handle herself, let alone a child, and I do not blame her. None of the other children's parents allowed me to come near, and so I entertained myself in the woods. I learned…quite a lot during those first years. I left my mother and the other children alone and taught myself all that I could, mostly by listening through windows and open doors. I did not understand much of what I heard. The term 'oligarchy' was repeated hundreds of times, but I still listened.

"Ten years passed. They were surprisingly peaceful. The scandal of my mother had died down. She was allowed to be a part of the community once again, though there was no hope of a marriage for her now. And so, one afternoon, there was a marriage party for a young couple. My mother was attending, leaving me to do as I pleased. The entire community was at the celebration, and I went to the woods, the sun hot on my back. I still remember the feel of the warm wind and the smell of the fresh, clean air. It was there that I found Faye, a girl of about eighteen or nineteen years of age. She was crying by a tree.

'What is it?' I asked. 'Are you hurt?'

She snapped at me to leave her in peace, but I persisted.

'Why aren't you at the party? Why are you here by yourself?'

'I'm not wanted there,' she sobbed pathetically. 'He would send me away.'

'Who?' I asked.

"She gave a rather loud wail and said, 'Why did he do this to me? How could he marry her? Her? Of all the girls, and I was the one who told him first that I loved him…' She had still not looked at me. I think they all believed it was bad luck to look me in the eye.

"But I did not get a chance to respond, because a loud, heart-stopping crack filled the air. Screams erupted from the direction of the celebration, and there were indistinguishable shouts, more cracking sounds, and the sobs of people. Faye rose to her feet, the tears still shining on her cheeks, and she ran toward the village. I followed, but I stopped her at the edge of the clearing and pulled her down behind a log, hissing at her to be quiet and still. My heart was hammering in my chest. I remember the feeling: like someone was inside, trying to get out.

"We looked at the acres of village from the log. Unknown men in red uniforms with long guns in their hands were running, shooting at every person that moved, small children, old women… Faye was sobbing by me, whispering her fears out loud and asking God that her family would be safe. Does this bother you to hear? I suppose the details, although necessary, will be done away with.

"The massacre did not take long. Faye would not move for a very long time. I resorted to smacking her face to get her to stand up and run. When we were at a considerable distance, she stopped for breath, and I turned to see that smoke was curling up into the sky. She saw it, too, and asked,

'Do you...think anyone is still alive?'

"I was silent for a moment. 'No,' I said. As we stood, we could suddenly hear the rough sound of undergrowth cracking as someone made their way clumsily toward us. I whispered for her to hide in a thick clump of nearby bushes. She did so, and I picked up a good-sized rock and scaled a nearby tree. A man dressed in a red uniform stumbled into view, sweating and out of breath. He looked around, confused, and I heard him mutter,

'I was sure they were here.'

"My rock hit him, hard, squarely in the forehead. He was dazed and fell to his knees, clutching the blood that was streaming down his face. Quietly, I dropped from the tree and approached. The gun was very heavy. He didn't see me until I had it pointed at him. I was still awkward with it, but I had seen enough at the village to know how to fire.

'Why are you trying to kill us?' I asked calmly. I could hear Faye rustling in the bushes behind me. He did not answer for a minute, staring at me with cool indifference. His gaze raked over my crude mask.

'You can't kill me,' he said. 'You have been raised to be soft and weak. But we have been raised courageous and strong, and I know how to kill. So give me the gun!'

"He reached for it suddenly, and I…I pulled the trigger, the kick of the gun knocking me off my feet. I stood up to find him on the ground, completely still. Faye emerged, gasping for breath as her annoying sobs robbed her of air.

'Why did you kill him?' she screamed. 'Why?'

'He was going to kill us,' I said, now more than bit impatient. 'He killed our families.'

"Her stare was cold and disgusted. 'He killed my families. You don't have a family.'

"There was a small moment of silence, and so I turned my back on her and began to hurry through the trees. She followed after a moment, though, and said, 'Don't you think you're leaving me here! We don't have anywhere to go.'

"I did not know where I was going anymore. By now I was farther from the village than I had ever been. I kept heading West, toward the sun, but it was disappearing. Faye was complaining constantly behind me, whining about her feet and stomach, but I didn't say anything to her. I knew that she would continue to follow me because she didn't know what else to do. Finally, when it was too dark for me to feel my way through the brush safely, I settled down beside a tree and, after enduring a few more minutes of Faye's complaints, we fell asleep.

"This routine continued for another two days. There wasn't much to eat, I remember, because Faye was constantly whining about how hungry she was. But we managed to get by. One night, however, we were woken by loud noises close by. Faye followed me as I crept closer to the noise, and she began to whisper that we shouldn't go, that we should turn around, but I had to know what it was.

"It was a large camp of militia. They were all talking loudly and laughing about something stupid. My stomach dropped and my very blood turned to ice. It was the same group that had massacred our little town. Faye began to pant, and, through the light of the moon and the quiet glow of the fires, I could see that she had begun to shift uneasily, her eyes focused on the men.

'Be quiet,' I hissed, but she didn't seem to hear me and licked her lips.

'We need to leave,' she said, and her voice was hoarse. 'We should run now.'

'No,' I said immediately. 'We will make too much noise. Follow me. We'll go around them slowly so they can't hear us.'

"I should have been smarter, but I wasn't. I should have known that she would panic, given her past actions, but I was confident in her complete trust in me as the leader. We crept around the edge of the campsite, and we actually got halfway around. A man suddenly looked right at us, and we froze. I knew he couldn't see us. It was too dark, but Faye didn't know this. She shrieked outright and ran. At once, nearly three-fourths of the men rose from their places. I moved away and climbed a nearby tree. They raced after her. I could hear them crashing through the undergrowth. It did not take them long. Ten minutes later, they dragged her back to the camp. She was screaming and crying. The men questioned her for a few minutes, but she couldn't say anything.

"They aren't stupid people, Christine. They are very smart. The men pieced two and two together and decided she was from the massacred village. They decided to shoot her, but one man had taken a fancy to her, I suppose, because he appealed for her, and she was handed over to him. That was the last time I've ever seen her. And I'm not proud that I did not intervene somehow, that I did not cause a distraction so she could escape. I simply sat up, safe, in the tree and watched her cry. They would have shot me instantly, so I stayed in that tree long after they packed up and left, Faye stumbling behind her new master, trying to keep her tears silent.

"A few days later, I emerged from the forest. The sun was brighter than I had ever seen it. There were no trees to shade me, and the light was unfamiliar. Still, I pressed on with eagerness and curiosity. My stomach also made me march. I had not eaten in a solid meal in days, and I could feel the effects. Not far from the forest, I came upon the laborers' village. It was nearing evening, but there was enough sun out to see, so most of the people were outside, working under the hot sun. I wandered through the deserted village, looking at the run-down shacks and filthy roads. A scrawny dog barked at me, but, other than that, I was completely alone. I was a boy of ten, and I was still drunk on my wonder years of the little community in the woods. I went into a shack and began to look for food. If one man could not provide for himself, everyone else helped him.

"So Claude found me an hour later, emptying his small cupboard of the little food it had, and he nearly killed me right then. However, he noticed my clothing. It was much, much finer than anything else he had seen somebody wear in the laborers' village, so he demanded to know from whence I came.

'The woods,' I said, quite indignantly, if I remember correctly. He asked me a few more questions and suddenly became very excited when he understood exactly from whence I came. I do not want to make this very long and boring for you, dear, so I will only skim the next few years. Claude allowed me to stay with him for a few days, but he warned that I was not to be there for long. However, days turned into months, and the months grew into an entire year. I still stayed with Claude. He taught me more than anyone else. After teaching me to read and write, he introduced me to religion, politics, economics, education, and I absorbed everything eagerly. I could not learn enough. He fully explained what the Oligarchy was and where he was living and why.

"When I was almost fifteen, Claude finally confessed the reason he knew so much. You understand, darling, that most laborers consider themselves lucky if they are able to write their name. Claude told me that he had, in fact, been a member of the Oligarchy. He discovered, however, that he was going to be eliminated because of his ideas and beliefs, and he fled to the laborers' village and had been there ever since.

'It's better than being dead,' he would say harshly. 'Sometimes.'

"And so I was taught the inside secrets of the government, the true intentions of the Oligarchy, and the loopholes in their laws. Claude was the main benefactor of my idea, Christine. He told me of those who he knew disagreed with the Oligarchy but were too afraid to stand against it. And so, around my sixteenth or seventeenth birthday, I finally gathered a small group of men and began."

Erik looks at me shrewdly. I think he is trying to detect some form of disgust or anger, but I feel none. Although his story fascinates me and I will spend many days thinking of it, there are only two words he said that ring in my mind continuously: "dear" and "darling."