Neon Sands Trilogy Boxset: The Neon Series Season One

by Adam J. Smith

  He might have to deal with that.

  How flawed, he thought. Their ignorance and blind faith in the tenets of free will, or lack thereof, left them so vulnerable to anyone psychopathic yet controlled, that they would allow the seed of their own destruction to walk among them.

  “So Head Matron Kline hired someone else.”

  Five.

  Breathe.

  Four.

  Breathe.

  Three.

  Breathe.

  Two.

  Breathe.

  One.

  “Did she?” smiled Rohen, leg twitching. “Oh. Well, okay then. I will... miss this place.” His jaw began to ache. “I’ll just go and get my things then. My work locker passes by the clinic, maybe I’ll just drop my head in and give my thanks to the Head Matron for everything she has done for me, and for my brothers, over the years. And yourself, of course.” He held out his hand and she shook it. “Thank you.”

  “You smell nicer than usual. It’s a shame you went and had that accident, eh?”

  “Oh, well,” laughed Rohen. “No accident and I’d have won the race, so, you know. You’d have had to find a new janitor anyway!”

  “I didn’t know Gentle Joe all that well, but it was inevitable really that he’d get himself all tied up in knots.”

  “Yes. I wish he hadn’t entered the race.” He wasn’t bothered. “But I was grateful for his hoverbike.”

  “Smart move! Oh well, there’s always next time.” She winked. “Run along now.” As if he was still a child.

  He ran along, crossing the foyer a little faster than he could handle. He didn’t want the Stead bitch calling him back for whatever reason. As he neared the rear the old smells returned; the sweat from above mixing with the sterile, chemical smell of the ground-floor clinic. He pushed through the doors into the long corridor; on the right, a bank of wards; on the left, a long glass wall through which rows of leather recliners faced a cinema wall. Light streamed through the multiple single windows and lit the boys in the chairs with needles in the crooks of their arms. The blood in the tubes dripping slowly into the clear plastic bags would be a glimmering red where the rays of light hit it, Rohen knew, from his own childhood spent drifting off as he watched the dust motes dance.

  A few heads tilted towards the sound of the opening door, gazes distant. Others watched the colours shift on the wall, old cartoons without sound. Pictures he knew well. Some of the boys sipped at glasses of glucosade while others nibbled at biscuits. Some were dozing.

  Beyond the room, Rohen passed the Blood Store; ceiling-height refrigerators lined the walls and formed channels within it. Since there had been a convoy recently, they were almost empty. Another six months and they’d be back to full capacity, throwing shades of red upon the walls from the sharp white iridescence of the refrigerator lights filtering through all the plasma.

  “You don’t ask why,” he remembered Matron Helena saying, early in his letting days. “You don’t question.” She’d paced around the clinic, looking into the eyes of each and every five year old sitting there with a needle in his arm. “You just accept.”

  And truthfully, that mantra hadn’t really changed even now he was older. The city wanted the blood. No blood, no trade. And that was the end of it. There were no geneticists in the town, and as soon as anyone began to show signs of investigating what made the blood so special, they were shut down.

  Like anyone cared, he thought. Whatever happened within these walls stayed within these walls. Out of sight and mind and all that. So long as the city officials were able to fill their trucks, so long as the deliveries continued, all was well with the world.

  He put his face to the glass wall and looked at the empty racks. He’d cleaned this room plenty over the years. Swept his mop up and down this corridor with nothing more than a passing glance. Even enjoying how the room, when pregnant, would cast that red glow into the corridor. The redder the light, the more imminent was Liberty Day, and the exciting Trials, watched by the whole town but enjoyed particularly by the boys sitting in the auditorium with a special big-screen setup. The Matrons even brought in outside catering, and they’d sit and holler and each have their favourite racer, while others walked up and down the buffet table scoffing their faces. It was unusual to go more than a day without a fight breaking out among them; without a brother facing purgatory in solitary confinement or feeling the burn of the cane across the back of his hands. But they were always well behaved for the Liberty Day celebrations.

  He scratched unconsciously at the scars in the crook of his arm. The spiders were tingling again. Sometimes when he’d sat in the letting-chair, he’d dozed off, and in those moments of half-sleep, imagined hundreds of tiny feet scurrying up and down his arm. Burrowing under. Sometimes he woke in the middle of the night convinced that his skin was crawling with them.

  Because of his blood. He looked down; there was red beneath his fingernails. He put his fingertips to his lips and tasted the copperiness.

  “Maybe they just really like blood sausage,” he’d overheard a butcher joke once. “They mix it all up with a few spices, pork and oatmeal, and churn out dog after dog after dog. Fuck, there’s probably actual dog in them, not pork, and it’s probably for their annual sausage-eating contest. Maybe it’s their favourite sport!”

  Weird how no one ever considered the lettings to be theft. Even his fellow brothers. But it was. They stole his blood.

  So he’d steal theirs.

  Pe

  rfume

  Whisper had been disappointed by Calix’s rejection. He’d returned to his room and lay down and watched as she stood in his doorway, neither in nor out, on the precipice of taking a leap, but not. She even did a funny kind of half-dance, some small bounce while contemplating her next move. Calix felt sorry for her. Maybe she really did like him.

  When she did finally say, “Get some rest, maybe tomorrow,” she closed the door to a crack and he heard her whispering to someone outside. Peering around the door a few minutes later, he noticed that there was a guard there, sat and either knitting or crocheting, he could only see the frantic arm movements.

  He contemplated trying his luck; maybe saying he needed the washroom or to just take a walk, just to see what the reaction would be. Pointless, he thought. The guard would follow. So he reasoned it would be best to wait until night – if Elissa had slipped in and out so easily, it couldn’t be that difficult.

  But when, around midnight, he got up and tip-toed to the edge of the door, he could still hear the clack-clack-clack of needlework. Looking through, he saw it was someone new. The hallway was mostly dark except for the neon spotlight above the guard.

  He sat back down on his bed with a creak, and the clack-clack-clacking stopped momentarily.

  She’s got those ears pricked.

  He wanted nothing more than to grab his boots and trousers, a shirt and jacket, and escape. I know about Annora. Elissa’s face passed through his mind. The place was full of women – sure he was in recovery and weak as fuck but what could they really do to him if he just up and walked out? What right did they have to hold him like this?

  Whisper’s been nothing but kind to you.

  He rubbed his hands together, scratched at his neck, rolled the stiffness from his left shoulder and began to pace.

  Quintessa was the problem. He didn’t think she was particularly mean-spirited, or sadistic, or anything like that – but she had acted like a spoiled child. And spoiled children were apt to throw their toys from the pen. He’d seen enough of that in Sanctum to know. Of course, there was a Linwood to quash that kind of thing, over time, with his relentless, pressing force. Or had been. Here, it didn’t seem as though anyone had ever told Quintessa to behave.

  “Everything okay in there?” called a voice.

  “Yeah fine, thanks.”

  “Sounds like you’re running in circles.”

  “I had pins and needles. Just walking it off.”

  “Oh right. Sure you�
��re not jerking off?”

  “You what?”

  “That’s what young men do when they’re left to their own devices, isn’t it? Nothing wrong with it if you are. Might even be some helping hands nearby, if you know what I mean.”

  Calix watched the door, expecting it to open and for those ‘helping hands’ to show themselves.

  “Oh, sorry. Didn’t make you shy did I? Didn’t ruin the moment?”

  “Far from it. You just helped me over the finishing line.”

  She laughed, a little too loud and raucous. “Well I’m glad to have been of assistance.”

  “I do actually need to go to the bathroom,” he said, opening the door.

  She looked around to him; big blue eyes peering down and then back up again. The remnants of her laugh showed on her face and the wobble of her double chin. “Lead the way,” she said, standing to follow.

  Calix made his way to the bathroom, relieved to see that the guard wasn’t going to try and watch him. He did his business into the toilet and flushed it, amazed by the power of it. The pressure was nothing like this in Sanctum. The place must be well-plumbed. He washed his hands and returned to the corridor.

  “So do you remember your name yet, stranger?” asked the guard as she lead the way back to his room.

  “No. I was thinking of choosing something so people would stop calling me stranger.”

  “So odd, this amnesia of yours. And all from sunstroke.”

  “I felt a bruise on my head too. Maybe I knocked it.”

  “Maybe our mysterious visitor knows who you are. She’d better hope we don’t cross paths again.”

  They got back to his room and for a moment he too was like Whisper, on the precipice, unsure of what move to make. He could run, but realistically speaking, how far could he make it before this new friend of his chased him down? Should he wait longer? Hope the whole palace just falls asleep?

  “You coming in?” asked Whisper.

  Inside his room, on his bed, in a sheer slip, she lay.

  “Who’s that?” asked the guard, peering round.

  “Just me. You can leave us.”

  “I’ve got my orders, Whisper.”

  And so have I, Calix imagined of her thoughts.

  “How are we supposed to have any fun with you outside, listening? Leave us be. And you,” she pointed at him. “Come here and close the door behind you.”

  Calix did as he was told. There was a perfume in the air again, something new. Across the room, in the ambient light, she raised her knee so the edge of the slip fell down her thigh, and then she opened her legs.

  He was frozen to the spot. Thoughts of escape momentarily vanished. Suddenly, his virginity was on the line.

  “I’m waiting,” said the spectre that was Whisper, whose dark nipples showed clearly through the fabric; the lamplight catching all her curves and painting a lopsided ‘S’ on the wall by the bed. “Take off your clothes.”

  It’s fine, Calix. I might be dead anyway. He pushed Annora from his mind, but she returned anyway. I’d want you to know what you’re doing by the time you get back to me.

  Instead of pushing, he held on to her. “I. I’m a bit embarrassed.”

  “We’re all adults here.”

  “No, no. Not that.” He took a step into the room. “The bed. I’ve... Grace knows what kind of state it’s in, what kind of fluids I’ve sank into that mattress and those sheets. To be honest, I was going to ask to switch rooms.”

  “That’s alright,” she smiled, turning her head into his pillow and taking a deep breath. “I like your smell.”

  Calix swallowed. “And I like yours. If you wouldn’t mind, could we go to your room?”

  ***

  “Yes!” she said, secretly glad. He had, after all, pissed the bed at one point. She pressed her thighs together and rose up, taking some satisfaction in the fact she had relied on her own charms rather than Quintessa’s perfume to seduce him. And a little of her own perfume, of course: a blend of jasmine and bergamot.

  As she walked past him, she cupped his cock and felt its firmness, giving a squeeze.

  It would soon be inside me.

  She knew there was an end-goal to all this, but that was a distant detail, like the city lights in the skyscrapers.

  She was going to do it!

  ***

  He went hard – how could he not? Whisper was pretty, and pretty naked, and her touch jolted electricity through his midsection, kicked his prostate into gear. She let go as she opened the door and he followed her out.

  The guard was gone and the lights flicked on.

  She took his hand and lead her round the curve of the corridor to her room. Her calf muscles tensed with each barefoot step, and her thighs were firm beneath the swaying slip. He could see her butt cheeks through it, and he reached out and squeezed, causing Whisper to giggle.

  “I knew you’d come around.”

  “How could I not?”

  They reached her room and she entered, all her scents drifting out.

  “Can I just go to the bathroom first?” Calix asked.

  “I’ll be waiting.” In the middle of the room she turned and let the slip fall from her shoulders. Her breasts somehow seemed larger in the spotlight.

  Calix halted for a beat; he was aware of the bulge in his shorts, and so was she, and he wanted to disguise it: he felt wrong for having these feelings. It was him and her in the middle of the night beneath a lover’s glowlight; him and her in the shared nudity of secrets; him and her with a singular urge. It could happen. It wouldn’t change anything. He could still escape.

  You could escape when she was asleep.

  That should be the plan, he knew. Yet even with that excuse, he looked for reasons to avoid it.

  And didn’t have far to look. “I won’t,” he said, spotting Quintessa’s portrait on the wall above the bed.

  His heart thumped as he crossed the corridor to the bathroom, her nudity flashing through his mind. She wasn’t Annora, and that’s about all it boiled down to. He stopped at the door and pushed it open, so the sound of the creak would travel down to Whisper. Then he followed the wall back to his own room, keeping to the edge to avoid the shifting floorboards, and glancing into Whisper’s room to see her adjust the bedcovers.

  He had to be quick.

  Inside his room, he grabbed his clothes and boots in a single sweep and headed back for the corridor. Turning left, he walked quickly towards the stairway, hoping to all of Sanctum that he wouldn’t run into anyone. At the stairs, he went down, winding left. How long until Whisper’s patience ran out?

  At the bottom, he skipped quickly across to the second set of stairs and continued down. His palms were slick against the handrail, skipping the steps three at a time. The wood felt warm and soft-worn beneath his feet.

  The stairs opened up into a dim passageway that lead away with closed doors on either side. He froze. Could hear nothing. Contemplated sitting and putting on his boots, but he wasn’t clear yet.

  A draught blew past him and up the stairs.

  Edging down the passage, he put an ear to each door he passed and heard nothing. He didn’t imagine that people slept down here. It had more of a workman-like vibe, a little like Sanctum’s municipal level. The passage opened into a lobby, and there was the exit! He started to run but then saw a light swinging on the wall from another passage, and ducked into what appeared to be a reception area. A worktop of polished stone stretched for four or five metres and had an array of ledgers on it. He saw the light brighten and hid beneath the worktop.

  Footsteps tapped on the other side.

  He tried to hold his breath, but how come when you do so for ‘fun’ you can stretch it out for thirty, forty, or fifty seconds, he thought; but when you need to do it for life or death, five seconds feels like you’re going to suffocate? He resorted to short, quick intakes.

  The footsteps stopped, and a woman started to hum as the sound of rifling paper infiltrated through the stone. Kee
p humming, he thought. To cover my panic attack.

  The rifling ceased and the steps continued. The light flashed momentarily on the wall in front of him, sending his panic into orbit, and then disappeared down the passage he’d come from.

  When the sound had receded almost completely he came out of hiding and crossed the lobby to the glass front doors, which were padlocked. He pushed and pulled at them, uselessly, and tried to yank the padlock, failing.

  That would have been too easy.

  He was running out of time, so it was time to start running. He jogged across to the passage the guard had come from and began trying doors. One after the other was locked. His feet schlicked and schlucked on the polished floor. Eventually, he came to an archway and through it, tables were lined in rows with upturned chairs sitting on them, and moonlight glowed through the large windows at the rear. He ran to them, jostled a chair and had to throw out a hand to hold it and stop it from falling, and then placed his face against the glass. Condensation steamed over what looked to be some kind of courtyard. Possibly the central plaza of the three towers, he thought.

  He ran his fingers across the windows until he found a latch, and opened it. And climbed out. And ran for the plaza entrance with the cool breeze in his face and the occasional stone biting into the soles of his feet.

  Through the entrance, it opened out into a wider and accommodating set of elaborate steps. They were in shadow with the colonnade bearing over the palace entrance covering most of them. There was something flashy about the grandiosity of it: no doubt in the full light of day it would sparkle in the sun, perhaps with various colours and other ornamentation or sculptures that he both couldn’t see, and didn’t have time to check out. He ran down the steps, glancing back and finally appreciating that he had indeed been a guest inside a palace. Lights blazed within the lobby and the upper windows, and he ran harder, clothes and boots still clutched tightly in his hands.

  Mornin

  g

  The mornings had an eerie red quality to the dawn. First the sky turned from speckled black to a dark blue, and then a lake – as though the brother’s themselves were hooked into the atmosphere – siphoned the blue away and bled in to replace it. The red spread like the train-girls’ paint in their waterpots, out into an arc until the whole of the plains was covered in fire. It was like this for about an hour until the sun began to bleach it. Until then, adobe was mahogany, the silver of the metal water tanks was the rarest ruby, and gently flapping curtains flashed bronze onto the walls of bedrooms and sleeping faces.