Beggar's Utopia -- Chapter Four

Right now, I'm not giving you the chapters that I'm writing--this is actually the first half of Chapter Three.

Chapter One -- Chapter Two -- Chapter Three

Chapter Four

The colours attracted, drawing Logan’s eyes open. At first, he threw his hands around himself, shivering and clutching under an obscure joy. But then the smile fell from his lips as he noted aloud his pending existence.

‘Oh.’

He lay against the walls to a chamber, a hideous room.

Undefined grandeur beamed from the walls and shone a spectacle. Logan hated it. The red carpets rubbed his feet, but the protection of such powerful walls astounded him. Through the window shone the light of a hidden sun, and he passed over to it, glaring out, like a king staring in awe across his castle. Rain pattered upon the glass panels and the wind howled. It was too unnatural, daunting. To have something as feeble as a sheet of glass stuck before him, stopping the rain from drenching him, drew him to disgust. He illustrated it with his clenched fist. The window needed punishment—the great stretch of green deserved no such hindering.

Logan pressed his hand against the window, and leaned against it. He felt the dampness of a wintry morning, thrusting its icy desire through the glass.

He was still buried in slumber, dazed, and the blend of all the colours was drowning. The air was, however, as stale as ever, untouched by the voracious appearance. Seeing the gold, and the silver, purples and even the bed from which he came, Logan twisted it into a compilation of all the evils—were the owner of this property to sell but one ornament in the room, a thousand people could eat for a year. It was all too obvious. Every scrutiny he concluded upon, like the fingerprints on the jewellery as his fingers rubbed against it, the ornate ribbons and the bed’s creases, would all haunt him soon. He was not meant to be there.

Logan enjoyed the soft silk upon his skin, but treated it as habit. He was horrified to learn that he was adorned in wondrous clothes. He grabbed the thread line and pulled, tearing the centre open.

Perfection gleamed back at him. From what he recalled, the scars of age had once mustered in uncountable numbers, next to bruises and dry blood, dirt upon the skin.

He turned round, and then he saw. A requiem passed for his misguidance, in the howling wind outside; in a manner, the carpet was red with burning hatred; the wall was browned to depression and the sweet smell of lavender floated to scent away the horrid, rich man. Logan felt a little embarrassed by the colours; had they seen him misjudge them?

And then he began to question.

Why am I even here?

Is this the end of the rainbow?

Had the river carried him to eternity—was this his bliss? Was this heaven? There was no reason for him to linger behind a few inches of brick, not when the wilderness lay laden in freedom. And for that reason, he decided, it was not heaven.

The window now gleamed behind him, taunting, inviting Logan to another look.

The sparkles faded. There was nothing to see. He gripped his hand into a rock and flung it at the glass, shattering the snide fragments to the ground. Air of the cold evening flooded in and filled Logan with a fresh taste. The heat retired, until the wind’s breathe was upon him, then slowly, as if whispering a secret into his ear, it froze. Logan walked further forward, arms parting from his side as it drew him in, which clutched the wound in his heart.

The grimness among the sun may have filled him with mourning, but as he thus stood, arms spread before the gusts, desire purged him and a beauty thrust him to a supreme stature of such sovereign wonder, that his eyes shut and the world span away. Gladness was profound within him for living now, so close to freedom. His dominance over the dusk drew him to awe.

He leant across the brittle windowsill for perhaps an hour, until the last of the red tint was dead in the sky.

What if, after all, he lived there and he was the proprietor? What would he be thinking? He wondered…

Once, he would have rushed, or hurried for the sake of the few, weak men that his companions were. They were just little pawns, blocking the path of the King. Now that Logan was free of their mistrustful gropes, he could to enjoy the comforts of life.

Like the magnificent bed, with intertwining sheets and silk for pillows, or even the corridor—now that was truly a marvel. He passed down it, hands clenched together behind his back. Several towers of books leered over him, bowing in humility, old beggars with misplaced backs, offering a few attractive covers before him. There was a flight of stairs, resting against the stone walls. It made sense, he decided, since the floor was too rickety for the ground.

As he progressed, he noticed another floor, a window, and some more steps. Again, he took with his feet a liberty of style, swooping down them and pressing with the delicate steps of a dancer, but following to the rhythm of the creaks in the floor.

Minutes passed, and the stairs were ever winding further into the distance. More windows, more steps, more eternal comfort. Finally, there sat the bottom of the house, greeting him like a servant.

The difference was minimal in comparison, downstairs, except there were no windows and a fireside was a burning brightly. The room was illuminated in the hungry flames. Before it, an oak chair was seated, laden in velvet. Running his finger along it as he passed, Logan sighed.

It was too perfect. Suspiciously so. Everything around him was neat, tidy, neat, tidy, neat, tidy. Boring. The drawer beside the door faced a desk to the other side, in which paper sat, completely inline. The fire offered some sharp clicks and crackles, inciting warmth, but otherwise… Logan’s wealth was already boring. What use was splendour to a man when the only person to ever see it, was, in fact, himself?

He remembered it all—pain rushed through his foot, tearing him apart. The agony threw him back and he clashed against the wall. He loved every moment of it; there was the thrill, the rupturing excitement of fear and anger.

He started laughing, but the tune cut itself short. Logan bent forward and yanked out a shard of glass, rubbing the bleeding skin. With an intent gaze, he saw a small part to his eye look back at him. He limped forward, and turned, to see a frame lay against the ground, with the many remnants of a broken mirror in-between. Behind the crust of air it lay, quite undisturbed under a thin dust.

Perfection. The irony was that perfection denied its own definition. There was no challenge, nothing to change, no desire for anything. That was not perfection, or at least not his perfection.

He thought little else of the mirror, each time seeing distorted images of himself glaring back at him as he passed to and fro, scratching his head.

Night tide was a notably pleasant time, Logan decided, as he crusaded among the household. Not a moment passed in which he considered to depart the house or return to peer beyond the window, but kept his mind busy, ignoring various excuses for his being in such a house. He had left the other exiles—was that all he had ever needed to do to be accepted into such a magnificent world? They had drawn him back, far away upon a ruined sphere, when in all that time, this world was waiting for him.

He sat in front of the fire. Confused. There was a small document resting across the mantelpiece, waving up and down in the billowing crackle of the fire.

When his little fancy flies away,

the little man will sway,

back and forth, back and forth.

He reaches into his pocket,

drawing a little fist.

The night is risen as he screams,

roaring a little twist.

He throws it at the horrid echo,

and, dying,

the little man is happy again.

The lyrics made the paper seem more beautiful than it was. Stuffing it into his pocket, Logan leaned back into the chair and closed his eyes. How much more of this?

In realisation of the irrelevance to self-dignity, and, feeling in warmth, he answered the ringing of the doorbell in a semi-naked trance. Before the stretch of greens and blacks and browns a human stood. A face, another creature!

‘Greetings to the stars!’ Logan yowled. Why, he had no idea.

The man – for it was a man, certainly – beheld him inquisitively. Then, pressing Logan aside, proceeded into the house and faced the fire, shaking as the wind blew the door into the wall.

‘Logan.’

A neighbour? It was a hopeless fancy, and Logan dismissed the idea barely before he had time to entertain it.

‘That’d be me… I’m Logan. Yes, my name’s Logan!’

‘You remember your name, that’s good.’ There was a tone of sarcasm to his voice, and the rolling eyes offered little comfort.

Logan tendered his puzzled eyebrows with a finger, complimented with a scratch or two.

‘Why wouldn’t I, exactly?’

‘I don’t know.’

Logan shook his head, and passed over to the wardrobe. He produced a bottle of port, and poured two servings in one glass.

‘Care for some port?’ inquired Logan, offering the bottle.

‘No.’

‘Please yourself.’ And Logan knocked back the drink in a single slurp. By the time he had finished, he saw that his clement soberness was under question, and shrugged. According to his oppressed dignity, he was making a fool out of himself, in which the man assented, by raising all four of his eyebrows. That’s quite enough of that! And he swallowed the contents of a second glass, hating, but loving, the dusty flavour.

‘Put these on.’ Logan was suddenly aware of the man rushing around the house, thrusting assortments of clothes upon his hands. He did not argue, but went upstairs to throw them over himself. He was getting cold, anyway. Having exchanged the poem along with his own legs into the trousers, and begun scratching at the itchy overalls, he proceeded to descend back down the stairs.

A few hiccups escaped his mouth, and he reached out for another port. How depraved of ale he must have been throughout his life, to get drunk over a so small a bottle, scared him. Actually, it terrified him. The room turned to pitch-black and the man looked at him with two evil eyes, both piercing his mind, and two horns shot from his temple like red eruptions.

He blinked. Much better.

The bottle trembled a little between his fingers, slipping—the man span reached for it:

‘Give that here!’

‘No! It’s my wine.’ Logan spun round and delivered the bottle upon his temples, cracking the glass. He admired it a little more, laughing. ‘Big man. You’re funny. Very funny.’ Suddenly, he took up another laugh and put a smirk on his face, like a naughty child, having just stolen something sweet. ‘Oops!’ He stared at the man, lying on the floor. ‘Oh, come on! Get up!’

There was no crack in the glass, but blood was dribbling from the man’s head.

Something deep inside him trembled, and fell. He decided that he needed to verbalise everything within him, draw it all to reality and crush it. ‘Oh,’ he said, and drank the other port.

A few hours passed. They were all blurring in out of his vision, as he whimpered around the body, occasionally poking it, hoping that it would suddenly spring back to life. Logan inquired with himself about the man’s sense of urgency. And, above all, who he was. Not a name—a name would be meaningless. He still wondered about the possibility of a neighbour, and even opened the door ajar, peering out with two icy eyes. All before slamming it shut. He drew from that it he was alone in the wilderness; he spied not a single other soul, not even an animal. Trees appeared in clusters of even numbers, always in fuzzy pairs.

Reclining once again at the fireplace’s recess, he collapsed in a drunken mess, snoring. But there were visions, dreams. They swept across the slate in his mind and continued to sprout.

#

Everyone, glaring. They glared at Logan—the small beggar with a coin for a friend. Some glanced with selfish eyes, snobbish risks. Others stared, gawky lips upon them; these were the children, the housewives scurrying to cook their meals, in a desperate hope to avoid their duties for a few moments.

Logan was back in his haven, the streets within a lonely city. He was sober, free from the stenches of ale and wine, whiskey, excess. The majestic ascetic.

His legs were growing number, or perhaps it was just the nerves in his skin fading away, laying against the bone, pressing beside his protruding ribs. And his heart drummed with a beat, and nothing, a beat, and nothing. The moments continued to sail past in ridiculously slow ships, ones that relied on slaves to pull the heavy oars, the ships that fought against the wind, and the ships that drifted completely silently into blocks of ice.

He sighed as he considered if this was the grand total of his life, or, well, boredom.

Having the spent the preceding few days clutching to his shabby belongings, and his tin can, he wondered why. Who was going to steal them? Besides, his things were few enough to carry about his person.

Having soon left the grey overcast of the bridge, rain splattered before his tracks in seasonal greetings. That is to say, it was winter. It must have been—the last time sun had glistened upon his skin was much of an eon ago. Now that he thought about it, it had not rained for equally as long. The snow reminded Logan of his dream self; they sailed down, and the competition was always with others as to who could survive the longest. The further the plunge, the quicker the death. And then the cold, iceless hands. Before long, the air would change and within the grace of plummeting, his shape would change to water, and then a second later, the swooping fingers are dead. [i]Rain was never like that. Rain just hit the ground and disappeared, no drifting path.

Just simple.

If only I could melt. Life would have been so much easier. I want to get rid of all the pain. I’ll die one day, whatever happens. Why not now? Why must I delay it? It was just his human inspection, he assumed.

The cart, full of pies and customary dishes, stood before him, taunting, with the taste of something delicious upon his lips. But the sweetness became horrid, like sour grapes, as he suddenly saw the great barrier between him and the food. It tolled money; the golden gate.

There was no one around it; the place stood bare, almost isolated, with a chest stuck right in the middle. A wonderful chest made of iron and bronze, glittering.

The grips in the air were so tight. Perhaps he should indulge himself in a guilty pleasure? Yes, he thought so. He had that right.

And he ran over to the cart, picked an apple, as if from a tree, and scurried into the distance.

The next few moments were spent in a back alley, nibbling at the fruit. Lumps of apple swelled against the block in his throat, but he continued to bite, and forced the chomps as far as they would go.

The core was soon bare. He licked his lips some more, craving the urge to devour more. Then the thought suddenly occurred to him: Did anyone see me?

Noises in the street boomed around the alleys and into his ears, as soldiers came racing down at him, swords hungry.

--

A few things:

That terrible poemy thingy is only meant to be something random and strange, with a slight significance later on, but not much. And if you still can't picture what Logan looks like, good. That, too, is important.