Strangers in the Night

by Flex, Raymond S

  Taken away.

  “Do you remember the drawings?” Luca said, a slight hop to her voice.

  Mitts could tell, even without her standing close, that she was trembling.

  She was terrified to be in the same room.

  Mitts turned his head.

  When he spoke, his voice was gravelly. “What’re they going to do with me?”

  Luca pressed on another smile.

  Equally as false as the last one.

  “Would you like to see the drawings?” she said.

  Mitts glanced to the folder she held in her hand. Then he looked away.

  He gave a nonchalant shrug.

  As Mitts stared at the grey concrete wall before him, he heard Luca crouch down on the outside of the bars and unzip the folder.

  The scent of lilacs was like poison in his lungs. He wished she would just go away. He wished that she would just leave him alone. He could wallow here, in his self-pity.

  Waiting for . . . whatever they intended to do with him.

  “I started about three, maybe four years ago,” Luca said, “when I first arrived to the Village. I’ve never shown them to anyone, until now. I thought that they were just stupid dreams, you know? But, for some reason, I feel like I can share them with you. That you won’t laugh about them.”

  Mitts felt like he wanted to roll his eyes, like he wanted to laugh in her face.

  Did she not understand what he was going through right now?

  How he was locked up for the second time since he’d arrived here?

  That he was a suspected serial killer?

  Mitts turned to Luca, looked into her eyes, saw her earnest expression and he realised—right there and then—that he would never be able to speak a cross word to her.

  It would be like scolding a puppy.

  Mitts turned his attention downward, to the folder. He could make out the pieces of paper within.

  Simple sheets of white A4.

  Apparently reading his mind, Luca said, “When I got here, I took it out of the photocopier, no one seemed to miss it.”

  Despite himself, Mitts couldn’t help but smile.

  There was something so light—almost childlike—about Luca’s manner.

  Then he turned his attention to the drawings themselves.

  Luca had drawn them using a blunted pencil.

  The first one was awash with grey-black carbon.

  Night.

  Within the darkness, Mitts made out a pair of figures.

  Barely visible.

  It took him another couple of moments to recognise them as a man and a women.

  Both of them wore party clothes:

  The man a tuxedo.

  The woman a cocktail dress.

  There was a splash of light toward the edge of the picture.

  A big party going on . . . off-stage.

  Mitts absorbed the picture. Thoughts scattered around his brain.

  The details were returning.

  The details which, if he’d been asked about them—not five seconds before—he would’ve had zero chance of recalling.

  But he recalled them now.

  The smell of the rose garden.

  The fragmented song of the string quartet.

  The taste of champagne.

  That cool, night breeze.

  A tingle of excitement as the New Year approached.

  A fresh start . . .

  But those thoughts—those feelings—none of them came from Mitts himself.

  They came from his subconscious.

  From his dreams.

  He gazed at Luca’s face. Her lips were slightly parted. Her eyes wide with anticipation.

  She wanted him to confirm, or deny, he saw something in these drawings.

  If he recognised these drawings.

  Luca continued to peel the drawings apart.

  More in the sequence.

  The sequence of the two dancers which Mitts had observed.

  They were out of order, but Mitts put them back together in his own mind.

  As far as he knew, the images had come to Luca in a different sequence.

  First there was the man in the tuxedo, standing alone on the balcony, looking out over the garden.

  And then the woman appeared in the doorway.

  The man turned to her. Looked to her.

  The light from inside set her in a silhouette.

  The woman stepped toward him.

  Darkness rolled in.

  And then, in the final picture of the sequence, the pair was totally lost.

  To obscurity.

  Mitts glanced up at Luca.

  He read the earnest expression on her face.

  Wanting to know—needing to know—that someone else had seen these things.

  He gave her a simple nod.

  Luca’s reply was quick, surely rehearsed.

  “I know you didn’t kill them—your family.”

  * * *

  Neither of them spoke after Luca had shown the drawings.

  They didn’t need to.

  Mitts could feel something . . . something he hadn’t felt before, something throbbing in his inner ear . . . and he knew he had undergone some sort of a change.

  That he and Luca had undergone a change.

  Because now—finally—they had found one another.

  Only to be parted again.

  Although Mitts wanted to ask about his newest set of dreams, the ones which featured the bedraggled superhero figure—Sam America—he couldn’t quite muster the strength.

  For some reason, if this was to be his final interaction with Luca—before he was unceremoniously tossed through the Village gates, or worse—he preferred to think that they did share some unique connection.

  That their dreams were intertwined.

  He would cling to a lie over reality for as long as he could.

  In the end, there was a knock at the door.

  Luca rose.

  Before she left, she reached through the bars.

  Mitts observed her dainty, pale-white hand. Her fingernails were carefully painted with a clear varnish. He took her hand in his.

  Soft skin.

  Impossibly soft.

  And then—just like that—she left him.

  Perhaps forever.

  A few hours later, a previously unseen man entered the holding area. Like all the others, he wore a dark-green tank top. A gun was holstered at his waist, like Dag.

  He handed Mitts a bowl of cereal, already drenched in milk.

  Mitts did his best to act civil. He tried not to let it show that hunger was eating him from the inside out. Under the man’s watchful eye, he scoffed the cereal down.

  When the man was gone, Mitts was alone again.

  It had gone dark outside. The lights blinked on.

  The door creaked open again.

  This time it was Samantha who stood there.

  Mitts felt his heart leap in his chest.

  He stood up.

  Samantha was alone.

  She had no escort.

  She stared long and hard at him, as if she was physically trying to see through his lies.

  Lies that weren’t there at all.

  “So,” she said, “I see you’ve met Dag.”

  Mitts said nothing.

  “He seems to have taken a shine to you—despite your lying ways.”

  Again, Mitts kept himself from saying anything.

  Samantha breathed in deeply. Then she said, straight out, “I want you to confirm or deny whether or not you killed your family. And the doctor.”

  Mitts took a moment.

  Allowed himself to get all his rage under control.

  He didn’t want to mess up what might be his final opportunity.

  “It’s just as I said,” Mitts replied, “I told the truth.”

  “Apart from the creature,” Samantha butted in. “We saw your fingerprints on the drawer in the Autopsy room—bloody fingerprints. You slid that drawer back in, didn’t you
? Hoping that nobody would see it?”

  There seemed no denying it.

  Why should he try to deny it?

  He nodded.

  Samantha sighed out a harsh breath. “Why?” she said.

  Mitts again took his time. “Listen,” he said, “this has been pretty much the most hectic few hours of my entire life. Don’t you think you should cut me a little slack?”

  Samantha’s blue eyes narrowed into slits. “What makes you think we should believe you? That just because you were tired you were incapable of telling us everything?”

  Mitts had no answer to that. “I don’t know,” he said.

  Samantha shook her head, and looked about the holding cell, almost with a sense of nostalgia. “Dag’s taken a shine to you,” she repeated, almost to herself.

  And, it seemed, with a deep sense of regret.

  “Listen,” Mitts said, drawing Samantha’s attention back onto him, “I’m sorry for not telling you about the creatures, I . . . I didn’t think you knew about them, and I thought that it might freak you all out, that—”

  “That we wouldn’t take you in?” Samantha said, arching an eyebrow. “And do you think I’d bother staying up all night looking after a new arrival, making sure they don’t do themselves in, if you thought we’d cast someone out just because they were a little funny in the head?”

  “Well,” Mitts replied, “I don’t really know—I mean, I didn’t really know.”

  “Those creatures are our enemies. That’s the reason for the walls—that’s the reason why we have to live like this.” She breathed in, her chest rising beneath her tank top. “You really have no inkling about the world, do you? It’s not just a show? Not just a way of making us underestimate you . . . not a means for you to case our living situation before turning it to your advantage?”

  “Look,” Mitts replied, “I’ve lived underground for the past seven years, why don’t you just assume that I’ve got about as much knowledge of the outside world as an extremely advanced new-born baby, huh?”

  Samantha met him with a stern glance. Her precise, sharp blue eyes followed him.

  She was looking for any sign of defiance.

  Anything which might topple the balance.

  She nodded, seemingly to herself, and then made for the door.

  But Mitts wanted to know one more thing. “What did you mean when you said that I wouldn’t get far if I tried to run? Did you mean that I wouldn’t ever make it past the Village gates?”

  Samantha froze. She didn’t turn, remaining in profile.

  Mitts got a good view of those three scars on the side of her face.

  All three of them were deep.

  “No,” she replied, finally, “anybody is free to come and go as they choose. We never cast anybody out. What I meant to say was that we’re on a peninsula. This place, where we find ourselves, is one of the last habitable locations on Earth . . .”

  Without further explanation, she slipped out the door.

  Leaving Mitts to his thoughts.

  * * *

  The car engine churned.

  Mitts stared into the headlights of the oncoming cars.

  All of them gridlocked.

  Halted.

  But their side of the road was clear.

  They were going the wrong way . . . they had to be going the wrong way.

  He looked to the driver.

  To the grey-haired man driving.

  And then he looked to the back seat.

  To his mother.

  She sat huddled up against the window.

  Her eyes were closed. But Mitts could tell she wasn’t sleeping.

  His father sat up front, beside the grey-haired man.

  The grey-haired man was driving quickly.

  Mitts heard his father speak.

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Yes,” the grey-haired man replied, “they shall all be dead by daybreak—this is the only way out now.”

  Mitts’s stomach went all gooey.

  His heart sunk.

  Something . . . something about the situation. It just didn’t feel right.

  Mitts was so used to his parents—to adults in general—being a calming influence.

  But now they seemed to be the source of tension.

  The grey-haired driver took the next corner sharply.

  Mitts’s parents’ case slipped from one side of the car boot to the other.

  It bashed up against the sides with a heavy thunk.

  The car drove on.

  Mitts felt himself being gently lulled to sleep.

  When he next opened his eyes, it was to see the sun already rising on the horizon.

  Setting the sky in its pinkish-orange glow.

  He looked to his parents. Both of them were sleeping.

  The grey-haired man continued to drive.

  As Mitts sat alone, on the back seat, looking over the grey-haired man’s shoulder, he recalled the shuddering sensation passing through him.

  The knowledge that things would never be like they were.

  Mitts followed the transition from deserted motorways, to winding, single-lane country roads.

  He listened to the rustle of long grass against the side of the car.

  When the car pulled to a stop, his parents were awake again.

  Before their eyes stood the Compound.

  The wire fence.

  The flat, square buildings.

  The grey-haired man scanned his plastic card against a reader. A bleeping sound emanated from somewhere. The hefty wire gates retreated, groaning back on their hinges.

  When the car came to a stop, all of them got out.

  All of them yawning . . . except for the grey-haired man:

  Doctor Heinmein.

  They worked quickly, unloading the boot.

  The large case.

  Mitts grabbed hold of his sports bag: the one which contained every last worldly thing he owned.

  The rest was gone.

  Later on, perhaps the one time Mitts successfully managed to corner his father—to drag something of an explanation out of him—he got something of the real story.

  Heinmein had warned of the danger. He had told Mitts’s father he had a safe place for his family.

  But they couldn’t bring others.

  There was no time.

  Not enough space.

  But Mitts knew, from the calculations he had performed, that they could’ve saved more.

  Many more.

  But Heinmein had had to have his experiment.

  He had had to play his games.

  Take his notes.

  Turn Mitts and his family into lab rats.

  Ones which would never escape.

  He had lied to them.

  Bred fear.

  And then, when his controlled conditions were threatened, he had panicked.

  Shown his true colours.

  Made that final—fatal—transition from scientist, to maniac.

  Why had Mitts been the only one to see?

  * * *

  The next day, Mitts watched the golden sunlight glisten through the window. It reached its most brilliant just before nightfall, when it faded and turned back to darkness.

  He wondered if everyone in the Village had forgotten about him.

  Or if, maybe, some sort of crisis had taken place.

  Meaning that Mitts had been relegated to some secondary task.

  He didn’t know which of the two eventualities he would’ve preferred.

  What he did know was—about an hour after the lights had blinked on; after he’d chewed through some cardboard-tasting cereal—there was a sudden and high-pitched siren.

  It was shrill and it seared through the air.

  It was so out of place in the otherwise tranquil location of the Village.

  Mitts snapped upright, straight-backed, like a soldier standing to attention.

  Outside the window, he heard a commotion, the stomping of boots.

  Pani
cked shouting.

  Dag appeared in the doorway.

  His eyes were crazed, his smile more so.

  He held what looked like a rifle.

  “You doing all right?” Dag said, striding up to Mitts’s cell and—without a word of explanation—opening it with a large key.

  Mitts stared at Dag, watching as he freed him from the cell.

  For a long while, Mitts stared at the opened door, as if Dag might be teasing him.

  He was certain that, in a matter of seconds, Dag would bring it shut.

  With the flash of a smile.

  Perhaps a dry chuckle.

  But Dag made no move to shut the door again.

  In fact, he turned a touch impatient.

  “What’re you waiting for?”

  Mitts felt a little dizzy as he left the cell behind. “Where’re we going?”

  Before Dag replied, Mitts found a rifle placed in his hands.

  It was much heavier than Mitts expected.

  He almost dropped it.

  “You’ll see,” Dag replied.

  Sam America had spent hours searching for the location of the cough.

  But he found nothing.

  It was only in his mind.

  He could feel vibrations passing through the ground.

  An earthquake?

  No, he didn’t believe so . . . but, then again, what made him say that?

  This was still a natural world.

  It still possessed the same features it had had when humans roamed the face of the Earth; when they had been the dominant race.

  Before the Strangers had come.

  The sky was growing grimier now as Sam America paced through the broken-up village, with its cobblestones all turned up, and the shoots of trees and grasses ground up through the exposed earth.

  People had lived here once—survivors—but they were long gone now.

  Of course they were.

  Everyone was long gone now.

  Anyone with any sense.

  As Sam America paced past the dilapidated cottages, the broken windows, the tumbled-in roofs, he wondered whether the people who’d lived here, who’d survived here, had found some happiness.

  Because in this grey, grim world, he thought that the rarest of things.