Beggar's Utopia -- Chapter Three

NB: Just, er, wondered what you thought? I still don't like this guy's name, but oh well. Thanks to all (and thank you crits to all who review)!

Chapter One -- Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Having chiefly committed himself to the hearth, Eoghan found it difficult to look away. It had taken him a while to light, long enough for him to decide against leaving it until all the timber was devoured. He was doddering and frail, and rather miserable in his age of forty, or so. With the absence of a clock among the interior, he found it difficult to navigate a routine, especially since (he was sure of it) the days were growing shorter, and colder too.

He ran a finger along the arms of his chair, stroking the dust then smudging it over the floor. The nibbled planks might have been so by character, were the rats not responsible for the holes, and gnawed wood, crumbling to the touch. A human hand had not touched it for many years, hundreds in fact. Not a house had been built since then either, and he was certain that there were once panes of glass in the windows. It was wrong—storms were for the rejected to endure, not people. He needed new windows. Now he just hugged the fire for warmth, or poured some boiling gruel down his throat to fight the pale whenever the ice grew dire.

That is to say, he had no hate for it. It was just there, and he was far from more, impossibly distant to love and warmth and wonder.

#

Eoghan awoke with ice between his skin, and a shiver, churning within the emptiness where his heart once lay. Perhaps it was still there; he was not entirely sure, but the great strain, tugging at his innards with every thought and consequence was gone. Everything was so… plain, undistinguishable. He loved not to hate, which he assumed was always. Except he hated the cold, and it was always cold.

Shrugging, a sigh passed from his lips, beneath the smoke and within the drifting air. The hearth had cooled, and a night had veiled upon his home. Offering streaks of pallid tendrils where the dark rested, the moon gleamed through the empty window. Some of the light even landed across his own seat, and as Eoghan stood up to gaze longingly upon the mist, it mollified him, and he drank to his health with a sip of whiskey. It was all so wooden. Everything. Nibbled planks were beneath his feet, and those stitched upon the wall let some dust sleep upon them. In the gloom of a silent night, Eoghan threw down his glass, shattering the emptiness with something remotely interesting.

He was a real rebel. Oh yes. It was the best he could do, and thus the best is what he did. How, after all, does a people that cannot know hate from love wage war?

To show that he cared about anything was a crime, he suspected, but worse was to commit within the proximity of another—by giving them a comparison, there would be room for thought. And by giving them room for thought, it undermined the common equality notorious within the city. Well, it was hardly notorious, since no one else could see it as anything other than the norm.

Nor could Eoghan, really, but the whiskey was good; it did these things to him. He took another glass from the dresser, and poured it full. He tightened his lips, readying himself for another long, burning swallow.

A heartbeat pounded against the door. Dust burst from it, and suddenly the whiskey glass flew from his shivering grasp. It crashed onto the wood, smearing the shattered remains of the other. He fingered his sword as gingerly as possible, struggling against the inability to control with such icy bones.

Then the door swung open. Eoghan remained motionless, like a child gazing upon a monster. A great figure walked in, a small man, half a man—a child, bearing upon his face the forlorn midwinter glare.

Perhaps he had just mistaken light knocks upon the door as eruptions, born from a feeble boy. Eoghan watched him flick his eyes down, to the glass then up, in fleeting steers of shock.

But it passed, and the boy spoke.

‘Come with me.’

Eoghan did. He could not protest, and as they proceeded through the grim darkness, the boy upfront, he gave his thought into conceiving excuses—anything for every feint he had ever construed, or the even when he missed the bin in the morning crowds – littering – or as he went to help a beggar to his feet—they were all lies. He knew it, or he wanted to know it, then whatever should happen afterwards he would believe it. He would trust in his innocence by the clutches to his heart—

‘Quiet.’

What now? The last syllable he had uttered had been long ago—in fact, no, how did he know there were not curses leaking out of his sleep? By committing himself to silence, he had executed reason for his own execution. He had been muttering—he knew it. If they caught him offering a moment’s peace to himself, considering with a voice for others to hear, it would all be over.

‘Keep your feet in a line, pace silently, look straight ahead…’ The boy directed his orders in such military-like precision; Eoghan was a little taken aback. He made a great many crimes during that march if these were the current laws; he took in the surroundings, stumbled through drunken slumber and ignored as much as he could from the boy. At that moment, Eoghan was not looking upon the child as one younger or even weaker than he, but as a sort of insane general, one who struggles with his soldiers and own emotions, and so to calm himself, orders, for no real reason, countless ways to dull the senses.

The roads were everlasting. Eoghan had no comprehension of where they were going, and just kept walking. Drowse was still fairly real within his thoughts, like the colour of night, stewing into everything he speculated with as he questioned what was going on. What if he had refused to go with the boy? What if the boy had tried to kill him? Would Eoghan have fought back, killed and hid the body within the floorboards? With such a rotting plague of mould and bitter perfumes, the odour of flesh would be of no great focus.

The thought was absurd. Channelling his hate aside, Eoghan spent his awe in the majesty about him, designed in great walls and houses, with every shade of grey imaginable.

Ahead, a tower thrust into the heavens in solitude, reaching for the heavens like the soulless guardsmen upon it. Even in the low mist, and through the blackened skies, the messy torches gave it grandeur against the rest of the city. The light upon it pierced the darkness with alms, the smoke blotting out some of the stars yet still offering a hazy onset, with spikes and spears and construed temples resting at its base.

It was hard to imagine the city’s arms not in some way a part of unconcealed mirth. Each and every spectacle was in some way determined by it; the grass sparkled with dew, shattered glass and splinters stuck out from random holes and pointed violently, but with a degree of honour, they shimmered like the stars. In the grim night, anything other than grey deplored an unnatural guilt. Simplicity was beautiful; abnormality was not.

The clicks to his feet were alone audible. There were noises, forging horrid thoughts in his mind; the bruising of old, battered skin, or the bones, crumbling into a leather grave to the soles of his feet.

Eoghan blinked, and the air was fraught with tension; it would not move, and it appeared to be pressing him back in spite. But then it suddenly passed, and he blinked again, and the boy was gone. Eoghan glanced about him, risking obedience.

The fog, it had snatched him. He had heard tales of small children being torn from the night, but oh so was it that they were true. But the colours began to spin. They twisted and wrung like a deluded soup—he looked around, searched for any hints. He could be sure of one thing though; this was it.

The boy had led him into somewhere remote, given him orders, all hints. If he had kept looking, he would not be so attracted to the surroundings, curious and bizarre. He might have traced his steps, or been able to flee, noted where he was. But the tower above just shone like it ever did, until it was complete.

Blindness tormented his eyes. With the moon gone behind the distant black, before the night raged the dying stars, blotted until gone—there was just Eoghan lying upon dirt, praying for the sun.

You will soon beg for your country back. We are the elite; all of us. Go ahead, take that longing contrast.

The voice tore open his mind. Splitting there numbed his sight and ears and touch and nose, until his voice was alone, but blocked and unheard. He could just scream, press his face into the void.

And beg.

He begged for freedom.

And the white flag sailed from his hand, parting with the grip of integrity, hope, dignity.

Do you see? Now what, Eoghan?

He submitted.

And voices conflicted. Fleeting vestiges of ice chipped away at his mind, and all he could hear resounded like trumpets, bold before the victim as his barrier crumbled to the ground. No longer could he assume if the vicious noises came from outside or not, just that the more he screamed, the less he knew it. His reflections became unspoken illusions, the blackness revealing white before every crease. The vision’s voices were dead, compressed into an impossible reality of screeching fire and ember, flames deafening the ears of the mute Eoghan.

He was filled with hate, as he cried ever louder for escape. It no longer mattered where he went—just anywhere from here. Ruing his old kingdom, he begged for release, the home of a dismal morning in which one may see as golden. But to be part of it too. To feel love instead of mourning, to have no emotions, to have no fear.

Well done.

The voice hung atop his head in impressive majesty, and it had won! Eoghan’s mind was blank, a polished slab, free from temptation. The spoils were beautiful. He adored the practice of everyone else’s morals as they filled him up; it was wisdom, his mental cultivation to nothing.

#

Stirring, Eoghan curled his eyes wide apart like burning paper. The fire was no longer lit, he saw. It was fresh, instead, with a glistening fog drifting beneath the night. He was glad, and loved his little paradise even more; if he was living how everyone else did, and was happy about it, he was even happier.

It was royalty. There was always heat, and it was remarkably wondrous that he should have anything at all. Smiling, he issued his gratitude in a receipt of appreciation. He clapped.