Young Writers Society

Catharsis

By Malachi Daniel Freedom Ennis

There was once a cloud of paper and stitches.

It dwelled in a strange land, far, far away from my own… and yet, so close, I can still hear the cities’ heartbeat, feel its breath upon my shoulder, taste the blood and ashes pulsing through its veins.

The cloud floated, a great mist of dreams and hopes and sadness, a mashed up ball of poetry and stories. It hung above our broken city, a gaping hole in our picture-perfect realities. A reminder of how things had once been.

Sketchington City. It had once been so beautiful, so full of life. I remember the days when it was like a utopia… a dream within a thousand dreams. Now, it was dying. Still breathing… but only barely.

Then came the day the cloud began to rain. And when it rained, it rained many things. The warm tea of inspiration. The raw juices of a broken heart. The blood, sweat, and tears of great aspirations. The essence of brilliance and sorrow.

The people began to come out of their dark little mansions. They would stand in the streets, letting the fresh rain wash over their pale grey skin, letting it fill their souls with a strange sort of beauty. For a moment, they felt free. Free to dance, free to be themselves. When they danced, they danced like circling planets and flickering stars. When they opened their mouths, the music of the spheres came out, and the whole world was filled with wonder.

Then the officers would come marching down the streets to shut us back up in our houses. They were once like us, once willing to try- but now they were dead, living corpses cocooned in the metal of their own self-made burdens. They were clockwork men- they punished brutally, but their expressions never changed. They put us back into our boxes, citing various laws of legislation, rounded us up like sow. But there was nothing they could do to stop the rains. The writers had long ago been exterminated, their bodies encased in ice, their organs donated to experimental science. But their souls lived on in the cloud, and it would take much more than a law to stop its beating heart. It was beautiful and rebellious, and when an officer took a look at it, he did so as one completely at loss. They coulden’t do anything about it.

All they could do was frown the frowns of secret desperation, as the single cloud multiplied, became a ghostly horde, a great army of black and white. Ancient words rose to battle from the graves of the art-makers. Storm clouds climbed out of book-burning bonfires with vengeance in their eyes. Frankenstinian angels of thought and dream amassed above Sketchington City. Soon, the sky was blotted out with white.

I was the one who caught the first paper airplane. I had been at my usual spot, sprawled out in the middle of the street, staring at the sky. No cars anymore. No reason to have cars. No reason to move. The air smelled like nothing. The ground felt like nothing. The sky looked like nothing. Even my cindery rags might as well have been burned long ago. I was nothing. The world was nothing. Then I saw it.

It was coming down slowly, bravely, on wings of white. I stared at it for a moment before recognition hit me, and the memories exploded within me. A paper airplane. I almost cried. I had to have been only a few years old the last time I saw one.

Gracefully it flew, searching for something. It seemed to see me. Our eyes locked. Mine, dark ponds, glass infrastructure pulsing with light. It’s; white and… nonexistent. It came down to me, skidding across the ground to land an inch away from my bare foot. I stared at it for a moment. I reached out slowly, as if it might burn me. It seemed to smile encouragingly. I picked it up, and saw that there was a message contained within.

“RETREAT TO YOUR BASEMENTS”, it said, “WAIT… HOPE…. AND PRAY.

FREEDOM IS COMING.”

The next thing I knew, I was calling out to all the houses, repeating that message, over and over again. Freedom. Freedom. I was practically over spilling with excitement. Something was about to happen. Everything was going to change.

Soon everyone was huddling together, underground, chewing anxiously on their thoughts. Most of them had never spoken a word to each other their entire lives- after living in their prison houses alone, very few even knew what family meant. But the worry in their lungs and the light in their eyes made them one, and they found a kind of kinship in this. Some tried telling stories, or jokes… but most were silent and still, listening for the storm. Waiting, hoping, praying.

I stayed above, despite the warnings. The only basement that I could call my own was… at the orphanage. I had lived there, trapped in safety and relative comfort, for most of my life. Until the day I decided to run away.

Memories flashed before my eyes at the thought. I remembered dancing, scribbling strange pictures and words with sheer frenzied delight, my eyes wild, my fingers churning into the orphanage walls. I knew there would be consequences, but for the moment… it didn’t matter. The world was gone. All there was- was me, the charcoal… and the walls.

But reality came afterwards, as it always did, wrapping me in its cold embrace. I had only one friend in that place, Jackham, and he took all the blame. He told them he was the one who had done it. I just stood there, words choked up in my throat, my heart pounding.

And I never saw him again.

After that, I had to leave. The guilt that was drowning me every night when the work was done seemed to flow through the very pipes of the ceiling, and I thought in leaving the place that I might be able to escape it. Not only this, but I had dreamed of leaving my whole life- the only thing that kept me in place was the fear for my own life- the knowledge that the officers would hunt me relentlessly if I chose to be a wanderer. But after that day, I feared nothing. I wanted to die.

In a lot of ways, after years of keeping myself alive, running, hiding, living alone, I still wanted to die. That’s why I stayed.

It was coming. I could feel it in my muscles. It was that shadowy time between morning and night. The box-house landscape of the city was now truly a sketch, a frail framework bleeding through the twilight mist, barely discernable. Stillness had descended, shrouding everything, and I felt it must have stretched across the length of the whole earth. My heart began to thud in time with the marching of feet, and my breath flowed with the ghostly gusts wind as they blew newspaper shreds around the sidewalk.

The officers waited, their skeleton-souls black with desperation. They stood in the square with cannons and fireworks pooled all around them. One of them felt a sudden twinge of hesitation about what he was going to do. I could see it in his eyes. He choked on it for a moment, wrestling with himself, and then shoved it down.

Far above, deep within the sky, the clouds amassed, standing their ground bravely, digging their feet into the earth of the air. They summoned Courage, and Will, and Strength, and Sorrow. They closed their eyes. It was time.

I wondered for a moment, at the vastness of it. The sheer cosmic scope. There were a million clouds for every millionth man, and each one was fueled only by the strength of its cause- never before had the universe known such a struggle, not since the warring of the demons and angels in Paradise. I held my breath as the energies rose, reached their peak.

Then the storm began, and the hail fell.

We watched it come down at first, the officers, the officials, and me. We were frozen in awe, frozen in fear. Each crystal shard encased a story. Nothing could stop them.

The commander opened his pale, porcelain lips to issue something or other… too late. They fell upon the guards with a celestial fury, tearing into their skin beautifully, ripping their spirits apart like dolls. Lightning flashed, brilliant and searing. Blood and darkness poured out onto the pavement like paint upon a canvas. The words bled into their uncovered souls. Demons crawled out of the shells, and into the earth. The ticking stopped.

It all happened in a flash. I stood there, a boy, wide-eyed and mystified, drinking in my own breath, almost hot enough to scorch my throat. I was alive. My body was stuck full of icy blades. It shook from the force of the electricity. But I was alive. The pain was blissful. I could feel the words like sweet poison, coursing through my veins. They reached deep into my heart, making me laugh, cry and fall to my knees.

The world shifted into focus again. I saw that there were still many machine-men still standing, even in the fury of the onslaught. I could see their broken clock hearts still grinding in their chests. They stood for a moment, hating. They raised their hands. I knew what was going to happen.

Within the space of seconds, I struggled with myself. I didn’t want to die anymore. I had realized, in the span of an instant, how precious life is, and how far I would go to keep it. I wanted more than anything to live, to see what this world truly had to offer. To find a family. But I knew that life was never worth keeping if it was not fought for- if people didn’t stand up for what they believed in. And now, I couldn’t think of anything I believed in more than this- that the writers must live on. For Jackham, I thought.

And before I knew it, I found myself hurtling across the concrete void, screaming and waving, throwing myself into the ranks. I knocked the general in charge clear off his feet. I even pushed one of the cannons over onto its side, busting its internal mechanism. But my efforts weren’t enough.

The command was spoken. The gesture was returned. A thunderous sound filled the air. The sky was filled with fire. Nightmares were shot from the mouths of the cannons. My feet broke open like eggshells beneath me. I fell. The pavement kissed my lips. Smoke filled my nostrils.I struggled across the ground.

All around me, the faces I officers and officials that loomed in the black fog were splitting open. Even the shattered lips of the corpses seemed to twist into grim smiles. A wail came from the sky. The officers did not stop. Bomb after deadly neon bomb was hurled into the atmosphere, but still the clouds did not run. They stood their ground for the sins of the earth, even as the fireworks blew them apart. They stood their ground.

****

Afterwards: The officers stand in victory, alone. A cold wind twists through the ranks. It is over. The writers are finally dead. The music… snuffed out like a candle. Now there is only silence… and stares.

The people climb out of their holes, ragged and beautiful in the morning light. They begin to talk quietly amongst themselves, looking about the wreckage numbly. A sudden emotion sweeps through the crowd. Blackened white shreds are falling from the sky, like weeping roses.

I, a child, stand immersed in the concrete, frozen and broken. I stretch out my tongue, catching a piece of the papery ash upon it. My eyes shut softly as it disintegrates. My soul is open, hot, dripping, breathing into the asphalt. The words speak to me from the depths of the void. I feel them wash through my being, warm and reassuring.

IT IS NOT OVER. IT NEVER WILL BE. YOU HAVE BEEN CREATED TO CREATE. NEVER FORGET THAT. -MR. CLOUD

Even in his dying breath, the cloud has given us snow.

The automatic army breaks down now, every one of them. The pieces that fall to them matter to them more than anything in the world they have known since childhood.They weep. They kneel. Some flee, throwing themselves screaming off the edge of the world. Others strip themselves madly with their fingernails, ripping off their metal skin, to stand naked and awake amongst the others of their kind. The love around them fills them, with awe, and their hearts become wild and pulsing again as they forgiven, and healed.

I know how it is. I feel now that my whole life I have been an empty thing of tin, and am just now becoming real. Jackham comes out of the crowd and wraps me in a bear hug, and I feel at peace knowing that I am forgiven, that I have a brother. But all these people are my family now.

I stand with them, awakening. Our arms are outstretched. The words fill us, awaken us. Our mansions have fallen to their crumbling knees. The pavement is washed away like sewage. The world is coming alive again. We begin to dance and sing once more, and this time, we do not stop. The clouds are gone, and their makers finally at rest, but it is not finished. As we dance, the words take root within us, and all around us, and from it all springs new life. Green living things, beautiful and bizarre, rise from the ground at the sound of our song. The animals, long ago retreated to hibernate within the bowels of the earth, are awakened once more, coming out to join us.

So many colors. So many lives. The world is itself again.

\

We are a new people now.

The marks of bondage have long ago faded away from our skin.

We live in houses of earth.

Life is simple. Art keeps us breathing.

The light of our maker, who created us to create, has made us whole.

We are still flawed creatures.

We still struggle with hardship

And imperfection

But we know ourselves. We know who we truly are.

And to us, that is all that matters.