Young Writers Society

Prologue

It beat through him, sustaining him. It was the legend of sunlight, heating up his muscles, even the bionic ones. It was the cool nourishing rain of old washing his face, tasting like the crops that the great farming civilizations used to grow. It was his mother’s eyes, watching him, encouraging him. It was the games he used to play as a boy, and as his fingers danced the length of the black and white ivory piano keys he was nearly back there, in his carefree childhood. He was gone, out of the world he lived in and nobody could touch him anymore.

He was oblivious as the melody flew through his fingers. Metal and flesh worked together and he lost track as the sun was replaced by a synthetic dark material the President had named sky.

He was a dancer, the crowd awed by the way he moved along his stage. He was lost in it as it came from him. And then he came to the end of the page and his heart fell.

It was cold and damp in the cellar, and as he remembered so quickly after the music stopped, he wasn’t meant to be there. This house was somebody else’s home now, and as he looked around the dust covered room he used to play in as a boy, it seemed strange, how he could still be so tied to this place even though it didn’t belong to him. The sheet covering a cabinet fluttered with the breath of wind that was sent through the window.

Silken and cat like, Sham rose up from his seat and donned the shadow cape he had disguised himself under to break into the Citadel. In a matter of seconds, as the young girl that lived in the house now came to investigate melody that had been flowing out of her cellar like a fresh river all that was left of him was the window. The wind whipped through his ears as he jumped onto the wall of the Citadel below, and somersaulted over it.

And upstairs it was Irina’s birthday.

Tomorrow she would have to take the test for the first time. It was staring at the open window and the half closed piano cover that the first nerves started to set in.

Chapter One: Grey

For Sham, everything was grey.

This wasn’t some statement of mood or a cry for help. It was the fact that grey dye was the only thing that anyone living near or around him could afford with any kind of consistency. In fact, since the Outer Rim was constructed almost entirely from whatever scrap metal the first Rim- People had been able to find in the wasteland beyond, most people would say rightly that Sham was lucky to have any kind of dye.

The fact was that Sham had very real memories of other things. Memories, he reminded himself that if he stopped to dwell on any longer, would make him late for the place he called work. He straightened himself out and flexed the arm. It was grubby and badly in need of oil. But the screws fit into the stump left by a glass sword some five years earlier.

He eyed himself, in his grey overalls in his cracked mirror. Just for a second.

Then, as though bringing himself back down from a daydream, he pulled on the doorknob and then out of habit pushed as he waited for the doorknob to fall out into his hand as normal. When it didn’t he looked down and was astounded by the sight of a clean one. He twisted it, and the door opened. Puzzled, he picked up his bag and left the door closed.

“Hunky innit dude.” Sham paused in his rush downstairs to see Fair, pipe in mouth, eyes dazed and hat on back to front as usual coming back home after his night out wherever he’d been this time.

“What?”

“Dude, the new manageress!”

Sham’s mind went back, and in the recesses of his memory, he saw once again a woman knocking on his door and introducing herself as,

“Rin.”

“Yeah, yeah that’s her.”

The woman had been, Sham remembered as he flew downstairs and out of the Motel front door, gorgeous. Curvy and long- lashed with sparkling eyes, she had explained that she was the Old Manger’s daughter; Sham gasped as he rounded the metal plated corner and was forced to stop for breath. Then, he remembered the door knob coming out of the door in front of her, and her offer to fix it. They must have come when he was at work, yesterday.

He continued running, lost in the memory of how Rin’s eyes had seemed sympathetic when the door knob had come out, almost caring even. She must have been born here.

“OI! DREAMER!”

Sham’s stomach squirmed with the sensation of breath on his shoulder. He blinked and he was in front of a sink, the washing up that he had to do towering above him in three wobbling piles.

“DREAMER!” It was in his ear, this time. His bosses putrid breath, “If I see’s you dreamin’ another time, you’ll be fired.” Sham turned around, and his nose was almost touching his bosses. Eyes on the wort that was the closest thing to his nose, he tried to move his face out of the way of her’s, but then her hand was on his shoulder.

“I don’t want to come in ‘ere again, geddit!”

And so, Sham’s day was suddenly filled with other people’s plates.

Or so it might have been. Just like every day for the past two years had something not happened that set his life on a completely different path.

There was a window, in Sham’s patch of kitchen, through which the red sun chose to shine sometimes, reflecting off the water causing whoever’s job it was to wash the plates that day (IF YOU DON’T ‘AVE THEM DONE BY THE TIME I GETS BACK IN ‘ERE, THERE’ GONNA BE TROUBLE!), usually Sham, to go temporarily blind.

The smart thing to do, instead of thrashing around complaining of not being able to see was to bend down and pretend to be tying a shoelace. Then, if in the mirror that was on your left, Sham remembered the other guy telling him this, showed the boss coming, you got back up and took a plate without looking at the water and pretended to be washing it until she went away. Which is exactly what he did, except for the first time in two years she yelled, “CUSTOMER!”

And Sham, who as always was on his own in the kitchen, was forced to rush out into the already bustling diner and grab a table number and notebook with his flesh arm.

“Here,” he thrust the menu at the huge man, who had already chosen a table without having to be directed by him.

“Nah, s’alright, I know’s what I want, just need to rest my feet for a bit, then I’ll tell yer.”

Sham stood there, awkwardly, not really used to talking to people, but at the same time, not wanting to appear to be slacking off, the eyes of the boss burning into his shoulder blade, he put his metal hand in his pocket and pretended to be talking to the man.

“I said, I’ll tell yer when my mate gets ‘ere.”

Sham nodded, and then walked away.

“Order?”

“What?”

“Order!”

The chef was looking at him, face red with sweat, Sham had often had some flickers of sympathy towards this man, upon whom the entire business rested and who, like him with the plates, often had no help. But not when his face, red and sweating came out of the kitchen and strode to the table, snatching Sham’s notebook.

“Beg yer pardon mate, He’s jus’ trainin’ like. It’ ain’t ‘is fault.”

“What?”

“E’ never actually wrote yer’ order down, stupid eh?”

“Oh, yeah, stupid.”

“ So If I could...”

“Ham...and rice...and a bottle of orangeade...” the chef nodded and then ripped the order of the notepad without bothering to explain to Sham how to write it down as quickly as he had.

“Get back in there wi’ yer plates and leave this,” he gesticulated around, his English failing him, “to people who are serious abou’ it.”

Sham didn’t need to be told twice. He hated this job.

By the time he got out of there, the red sun had all but gone, its light slowly drifting into non-existence as he trudged through the metal plated streets. A chilly breeze swept through him, and he stopped for a second, just in time to put his hood up. In the corner of his eye he could just about make out the white buildings that were the Citadel by the light of the iron streetlamps, shining through the thick fog that was starting to descend on them.

He paused and looked at it properly, for a moment, before going up the steps and in the metallic Motel front door.

Inside the dingy entrance, chaos reigned as Sham was greeted by piles of other people’s bags, piled randomly. As though a stampede of people had rushed through the front door, and just left their things there, with no thought for how or when they might be found again.

Sham stumbled over one bag strap, arriving at reception. Steadying himself with the metal hand he looked around uneasily. The test must have happened today.

As usual, the entrance was pitch black, apart from a couple of lanterns that smelt suspiciously of crab oil, which was illegal unless you knew what was good for you. Sham slid in behind the metallic counter, and squinted at the indistinct numbers on cubby holes that corresponded to rooms.

“I wouldn’t bother...” a voice rang out behind him, and Sham turned around, half stooping for his boot.

“It’s full up here,” it was a girl and she was on her own. Momentarily confused by this new person, Sham looked around half expecting a companion to pop out.

“The woman said that there wasn’t any space here.” The girl looked half dead on her feet, as though either she hadn’t eaten in a couple of days or she’d seen some sort of ghost.

“I already live here...” Sham said awkwardly.

“Oh...” the girl tried to walk towards him unsteadily, “Cause...I don’t have anyone in the Outer Rim...no...family,” her speech was slurring, “everywhere full...”

Sham was just in time, as she fell, ashen white onto the blackened Motel carpet.

“You need food,” he hoisted up with his metal arm and looking around for anyone else, even a drone, he started towards the staircase, keys in his other hand.

Half an hour later, she had eaten some of his mushroom soup and was soundly asleep. Sham watched her from the shadows of his room, and reflected that she, Cassie as he had found out her name was, had no idea of what lay ahead of her.

Swathed in grey she slept on.

Everything in the Outer Rim was grey, Sham decided, reaching for his green blanket. It was one of the only things that reminded him of the good bits of living in the Citadel. Even now, it was hard for him to remember anything other than the bloodbath that had surrounded his last day there. That day, his eyes grew heavy as he settled down on the makeshift bed he had made on the motheaten sofa, that was the day...

That was the day everything had gone grey.