The Fourth World: Ch4 Part 1

Note: I've decided to post my chapters in different parts from now on since they are 7 pages on a word document, they're always too long on here. Enjoy and criticism is always well-received! :)

Chapter 4

I feel a piercing ache in my chest, each breath I take like fire being inhaled into my lungs, burning every inch in my body. It feels as if I am grasping onto my last breaths of air; yet my ribcage is moving in motion with my legs, going in and out faster than ever. I don’t remember how I got here, or how long I’ve been here, for how long I’ve been running. Too many questions run through my mind while my legs keep running through these blinding-white corridors, as if they are disconnected from my brain but trying to get me somewhere important.

I strain my eyes, half-hoping the white I see is just in my imagination, and will slowly blur into a place I recognize.

But the white does not fade away.

I turn on the right, into another glowing corridor, so bright that even with my eyes closed I find no darkness. I can now hear a muffled noise in the distance, as if by closing my eyes my other senses heighten. As my focus grows stronger the sound starts to come together at different tones and pitches… like a song. I can feel myself getting closer as the song gets louder, the sweet melody entering my body, rushing through my veins, speaking out to me. It’s not just music, it’s trying to tell me something, like a message. Drops of sweat start staining the floor below me. My eyes are opened wide and a sense of panic rushes through my spine. The song becomes a lament, beautiful but stinging, each note filled with pain and agony. Strangely, I recognize it, and that is why fear suddenly takes over me. I realize it’s not the music that’s familiar but the thing behind it. Or the person? It is someone I love, someone I would save with my own life and I need to find this person now. As the running grows faster the setting around me becomes clearer; I push past white doors onto other corridors, zigzagging endlessly into more and more doors. Does the singing become louder or am I just focusing harder on it? Am I getting closer?

But there is no time to find out.

I wake up at the sound of my father’s voice in the other room.

“We can’t keep living like this Amelia!” there is a strain of desperation in his voice, one I’ve hardly ever heard from him before. “We’re never safe like this!”

“You think I don’t know that?” I hear the unsteadiness of her words and even from my room it’s as if I can feel her lips trembling, letting out so little of what she’s holding inside. “This is all about our safety! This is all about protecting us, how can you—”

“Amelia. Protecting us from what?” His voice is so stern it quiets my mother for a bit, maybe calming her, maybe making her despair even more. “You know…” He doesn’t want to say it. “You know we don’t think the same. You’re trying to protect us from something that’s all in your head, that’s been put in your head, while you should be concerning yourself about the woman who put it there!”

“Jai is not our enemy!” There is defensiveness in her tone. “She is right, we’re all in danger… we’re all in danger…” I’m not sure if it was just the echo through the walls or if my mother is actually repeating those three words.

“I’m sick of it. I’m tired Amelia! Living in secret, living a lie. You know we should have never...”

“Never what? Huh? Never taken her? Is that what you’re trying to say?” My mother’s voice rose in anger.

“We should have never gotten ourselves mixed into this!”

“It’s not just us, Dennis, nobody is ‘mixed in’. We’re all a part of it, it’s our world!” My father doesn’t answer, and she adds, more hushed, “We would have never had her. Is that what you wanted?”

There is a long silence, neither of them have the courage or even the force to start speaking their thoughts out loud. I stare blankly at the wall for that time, the words that came out of my parents’ mouths still entering and processing in my mind. We’re never safe, my father said. Is he scared of something? Someone? Is there somebody going after us?

“She’s going to get us all into trouble. Or worse yet. Nobody messes with the Authority.” He is calmer now, “She’s not who you think she is and we don’t even know who our---”

I hear footsteps towards their bedroom door and my mother interrupts him, “Well, the Authority is not what you think it is.” slamming the door shut behind her.

***

I don’t know for how long I’ve been awake anymore. Sometime during that conversation I found myself staring at a dead end, lost in one of the alleys of my thoughts. I go back and try to remember step by step all that’s happened this night. A jab of pain hits my stomach as soon as I recall the Fourth Ceremony.

Sky. The colours. The infringement. I remember those haunting eyes again, the stranger who seems to be in front of me no matter where I look. Why did he help us? How was he even able to get the Members to leave so quickly? Nobody has superiority over them, almost nobody even dares to talk to them. We know they’re of a higher standard and that without them our world would be once again falling apart. Part of me now feels as though I owe him, someone whom I still don’t know the name of; but who saved one of the most important people in my life. Where would Sky be now if it weren’t for him? Where would I be?

I realize there is no point in trying to fall back to sleep and as I look out my window I see a bit of light is already sneaking up in the distance.

Quietly, I go downstairs, not wanting to capture the attention of either of my parents who seemed to have had a rough night. My mouth is dry, so I head to the kitchen. As water pours into my glass I see a flicker of light on the back wall of the living room. The lights are all turned off, since we are only allowed to have them on during the evening as it is one of the many ways to keep our Earth healthy like the Authority teaches us. I place my untouched cup on the counter and walk towards the living room. I don’t know what I expect to find until I hear some familiar sniffs. I walk inside and find my mother, in tears, clutching onto a wide cardboard box on her lap and staring at the Projector. Every house has a Projector; but is almost never used, it only turns on when the Authority has messages and announcements to inform us on. The only way for us to use it is by scanning the certain clip we want to watch and enter a specific code. I don’t understand what my mother could possibly be watching. She is so focused on the screen she still hasn’t noticed me.

“Of course, honey, we hope there will be no need for you to watch this,” A woman’s voice from the Projector speaks, I feel her expression into a smile but a fake one. Worry and fear hiding beneath it. “But if you are that also means you are in safe hands and that’s all we wish for our little blaze of fire.”

“Be very careful.” Now I hear a man’s voice. “Everything in this world is an illusion, we are all living lives which wouldn’t be our own. Which are guided by others. Em—”

“Mum?” I am whispering, almost stammering although I wasn’t aware of how scared I was until the words came out of my mouth.

My mother’s wild eyes untangle themselves from the strange voices. She looks at me, shock covering her pale cheeks.

“Ember!”

I don’t even know if she just mouthed my name or if she said it. She was so quick. Just as I turn around to look again at the two strangers, she rushes to the projector and turns it all off. I’m staring at a blank wall, desperately trying to put the faces I just managed to glance at back on the screen. Two relatively young adults, a man with dark hair and thick eyebrows and a woman with a very long face-shape, her cheekbones heightened with freckles. That is all I can seem to place.

I stand motionless for a few minutes, neither of us saying anything. My mother doesn’t look at me, and I feel as though she is ignoring looking at me in the eye.

“I can’t. I can’t tell her. No. It’s not time yet.”

Is she speaking to herself or to me?

“I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know. When is the time? No. Too young. I don’t know.”

“Mum..?”

She gives a quick movement of her head and looks at me with a sharp expression, making me step backwards.

“It’s not the time yet.”

“The time for what?”

She hesitates. “You’ll know soon. It’s coming.”