Calista is released by Percival. She looks at everyone. Then, she looks up at Percival. “So, what shall we do with them? Father wants them dead.”
“I have the perfect thing for them all. I will not kill them.”
“So what is your plan?”
“Banish them from this realm. Let’s send them to Limbo.”
Calista nods. Both Calista and Percival point their wands into the room. Both begin chanting and flicking, swishing, and twirling their wands in unison. “Yn teleportio'r bobl hyn i dir y limbo.”
A flash of light brightens up the room. Calista and Percival turn their heads away from the sitting room. The light dissipates as fast as it appeared. The dissipation of light is joined by a popping sound. Aurick, Brianne, Caldren, Lindsey, and Ragnor are gone.
Calista and Percival turn back to the room. Percival looks down at Calista. “What shall we do now, my love?”
Calista sees the mess in the room. She shrugs her shoulders. “Now, babe, we need to clean the room and forget about them. Mission accomplished.”
Or is it? Percival wonders. What will be coming next?
The End or is it?
About the Author
Bryan Rainey is a family man. He graduated from Rocky Mountain College of Art + Design. He loves to write. Some say he’s obsessed. He would describe it as a need to clear his head from his overactive imagination. He is all over social media on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, and Google+ to name a few.
He also has a site and blog.
Site / Blog: http://bryanrainey.weebly.com
Facebook: http://facebook.com/AuthorBryanRainey
Twitter: @bdr2031
Instagram: @bryanrainey2031
Tumblr: http://bdr2031.tumblr.com
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The Smallest Spark
By: Nils Nisse Visser
THE HORN THAT SOUNDS the end of the short-day shift is barely audible, competing as it is with the clunk-thunking of machinery.
Jill BN3-02F85-NN984d can barely hear it. Her mind is numb after eight hours of unprotected auditory exposure to the factory’s mechanical workings, and that included the fifteen minute lunch break and two five minute tea breaks. The factory workers are expected to eat and drink at their work stations, with the machines kept running to discourage conversation.
Issuing a weary sigh of relief, Jill closes down her work station. She shuffles to the exit, along with her colleagues, all of the women shapeless in faded and oil-stained red coveralls.
The queue by the exit is held up. One of the factory workers searches through her pockets, looking for her ID card. She mutters shamefaced apologies as the card remains elusive. Her atonement is not well received by the others in the queue, including Jill, who tries not to scowl.
Jill is empathic by nature, and of course she feels badly for the poor woman, who must be having a horrendous time – not only knowing that she is slowing everybody down, but also that that the incident is likely to earn her a Green Mark.
However, Jill isn’t just eager escape the monotonous misery of the manufacturing hall, there are other things she needs to do, not least picking up Sally, whose shift ends fifteen minutes after Jill’s. If she is late, Jill herself would earn a Green Mark, and maybe Sally would too. Fear of that happening overrides concern for the anxious moment of a colleague Jill barely knows.
The queue moves again after the issue is resolved, though it seems slower than other days. At long last it’s Jill’s turn. She hands over her ID card to the grumpy security officer, seated behind a counter by the door. Behind him stands an Enforcement Officer, still as a statue, his face unreadable behind the dark visor of his helmet. He is clutching a sub-machine gun in his gloved hands.
The security man inserts Jill’s card into a slot in his computer.
“Name?” He growls.
“BN3-02F85-NN984d,” Jill replies, the letters and numbers rolling of her lips effortlessly.
The security officer grunts something unintelligible, then nods curtly, retrieves the card, and hands it back to Jill – even as he beckons the next person in the queue.
Even though her limbs are aching, and her lungs protesting at the increased intake of the foul air – a mixture of diesel fumes, soot and acrid smoke –, Jill hurries across the grim industrial estate. Many of the workshops and factories are disgorging their short-day shift as she passes. To her relief, Jill makes it to the building where Sally works as a Junior Apprentice in the nick of time.
‘Junior Apprentice’ is a kind word, for the work is mostly packaging, the main difference with Jill’s place of work being the endless Party slogans and mottos blared at Sally and her co-workers by loudspeakers throughout the day. Jill never ceases to feel the need to tut-tut, when she hears that practice being referred to as the Enlightened Educational Programme. She never does, of course. Citizens are discouraged to express criticism in any form.
Jill cannot help but smile, when she spots Sally BN3-39Y53-NN984d emerge from the factory gates, in her yellow coveralls, just like all the other children released from their day’s work.
Sally is Jill’s granddaughter, and just about the only joy in her life.
Both Jill and Sally work reduced shifts in recognition of their age. Jill is four years past sixty, at which age Senior Citizens are rewarded with a four hour reduction in shift time, from full-day shift to short-day shift. Should she reach seventy-five, she will only be expected to work the retirement shift, of a mere four daily hours, until death takes her. The retirement shift, at least, is something to look forward to. How different it is for Sally. The little girl is seven-years-old, and blissfully unaware that she will be expected to take up the burden of the able-bodied Citizen full-day shift, when she becomes a legal adult in seven years’ time.
Jill sighs, and hopes fervently that time will pass slowly, delaying Sally’s fourteenth birthday as long as possible.
Grandmother and granddaughter face each other, exchanging a quick smile. Public signs of affection are frowned upon, sometimes even incurring a Pink Mark.
Jill is touched to see that Sally struggles to restrain her instinct to reach out for a hug. The child has an innate abundance of energy and joy in life, but has responded well to strict admonitions by both her mum and grandmother to behave like a model Citizen, when not in the dour little flat they share.
Sally’s mum, Jill’s daughter-in-law, is at work still, and will be for a while before she completes her twelve hour long full-day shift. Sally’s father, Jill’s son, didn’t survive an incident at the munitions factory he worked at. They don’t know the details; the explosion was classified as a State Secret.
Jill and Sally start their long walk into the city. There is shopping to do, at their designated Commercial Centre, followed by laundry and cooking at home. Jill likes to welcome Sally’s mum home from her long working day with a clean flat and a warm supper.
“How was your day, Sally?”
“Dull, except when Brian got himself a Blue Mark,” Sally answers, before adding proudly: “We all pretended not to look when he was punished, but secretly we all looked, Grams. We tricked them into thinking we were still working!”
“Little Brian from DW-296?”
“Yes. He was allowed a toilet break, but he was gone for five whole minutes!”
DW-296 is a tower block close to the one Jill and her family live in. In another day and age, Sally and Mark would have considered themselves neighbours, and possibly played together around the tower blocks. Jill is old enough to remember what that had been like. She recalls the little play park near her parents’ council flat with nostalgic longing, remembering well its slide, swings, and sandbox. A place to play and experience adventures in a make-believe world...and later a first stolen kiss on the swings...
If only Sally would be allowed to...
Guiltily, Jill looks around her. Citizens aren’t supposed to entertain Deviant thoughts. Even though her mind, at l
east, is her own, there isn’t all that much that escapes the electronic ears and eyes installed everywhere by the State, ostensibly to protect its Citizens.
Some of the many Citizen Motivational Messages, adhered to a brick wall they are passing, remind Jill as to her transgression.
ALL MUST SACRIFICE FOR THE GREATER GOOD.
CREATIVITY ROTS THE BRAIN – Be Smart!! Be Patriotic. REPORT ALL DEVIANCY (to your Domestic Supervisor or the nearest Citizen’s Welfare Office).
STEP BY STEP, WE STRUGGLE, UNITED, FOR A GOLDEN FUTURE
“He’s already got three Marks this month,” Sally says. “So that’s four now.”
For a moment, Jill is confused, until she realises that Sally is still talking about Brian.
“Grams, what will happen if Brian gets another Mark?”
Jill sighs. “He might be sent to a Holiday Camp, Sweetie. For a Reformation Programme.”
“That’s not good, is it, Grams?”
“No, Sally, that isn’t good. Which is why we must try to be good Citizens, and not get any Marks.”
Jill feels a stab of disappointment in herself. This is not what she is...was like when she was younger. Back then, she had been as mischievous as the next child, the warning ‘forbidden’, interpreted as an extra challenging quest. What was left of her now? Walk in line, don’t rock the boat, don’t get noticed, be dull and compliant...for good reasons, sure enough, but still...
“Oh look!” Sally points ahead of them, at the towering windowless side wall of a township residential complex.
Looking in the indicated direction, Jill sees something on the wall that warms her blood.
Though clearly hurriedly sprayed, the graffiti on the wall is unmistakably a fox, sitting on its haunches, staring intently sideways, its coat a luxuriant red. The contrast between the image of the extinct animal and the stained, gloomy concrete of the building couldn’t be more pronounced.
“It’s pretty, Grams. What is it?”
“Keep on walking, Sally. We mustn’t stop.”
“I want to look at it.”
Jill looks around, to see if anybody is within earshot. Although the pavement is busy, nobody is close enough to overhear them. Jill allows herself a quick smile. “So do I, Sweetie, but it’ll be like Brian’s punishment. We’ll pretend we’re just walking by, and not looking at it, and then look at it secretly.”
“We trick them!” Sally said eagerly. “I like that. Is that an animal, Grams? On the wall we’re not looking at?”
“It’s a fox, there used to be lots of them around when I was a little girl. Even in the cities, until the culling programme began in earnest.”
“Culling?”
“Foxes posed a danger to public health and safety. So they...removed them.”
“Were they sent to Holiday Camp for a Refrom...Refarmition Programme?”
“Something like that, Sweetie.”
Jill recognises the signature tag of the artist:
SQUASH THE BEEF
Jill doesn’t quite know what it means, other than that it’s a message of defiance requiring a lot of courage, for sedition is punishable by termination of citizenship, a synonym for the death penalty.
Over the last few months, Jill has spotted several of the images left around the city by the anonymous artist, whom she has secretly dubbed ‘Squash’. Last week it was a robin, complete with cheeky twinkle in its eyes and a puffed up red breast. The week before that it had been a badger, and a few days before that a soaring falcon, which had been preceded by a hedgehog.
She is somewhat concerned by this latest artwork, because she had spotted all of the other hauntingly beautiful and poignant images of extinct wildlife early in the morning, on her way to work. They had been scrubbed away by the time her short-day shifts had been over. Why has the image of the fox, well over ten feet tall, not been removed? It’s hard to miss.
Glancing swiftly about, Jill can see that almost all of the many CCTV cameras in the area are pointed at the seditious artwork. She also spots a couple of unmarked vans with darkened windows parked in side streets, no doubt concealing Enforcement Officers.
She becomes tense. She briefly wonders how on earth Squash manages to evade the attention of the cameras, but mostly she is concerned. It’s not safe here.
“We’d best stop pretending that we’re not looking now,” Jill tells her granddaughter, “And hurry on to the shops.”
“Okay, Grams.” Sally doesn’t protest. “It’s not safe, is it? Can we hold hands?”
“No, it isn’t safe, and better not to hold hands,” Jill answers. Two women her own age, in red coveralls like Jill’s own, have stopped about twenty feet in front of them, to look at the fox. One of them points at it...
“Let’s cross the street here,” Jill suggests.
“There’s no crossing!”
“No, there isn’t,” Jill agrees.
The risk of a Grey Mark for a traffic violation concerns her far less than becoming implicated in a Red Mark offense, simply by straying into the vicinity of two old women foolish enough to stop and stare at deviant paint strokes on a wall.
They cross the street. Jill doesn’t dare look back. Whatever happens near that wall is none of her business.
It isn’t until they are a block away, that Jill allows herself a big sigh of relief. It’s followed by a grimace. Now that the immediate danger is over, her age catches up with her, stabbing her joints with pains.
“Let’s rest for just a moment, Sweetie,” Jill tells Sally. “I need to catch my breath.”
Sally nods, wandering about on the pavement restlessly, as Jill tries to will her pains away.
Jill cannot erase the image of the fox from her mind’s eye, nor those of the robin, badger, falcon, and hedgehog. She is struck by a deep longing for the green countryside of her youth. Looking along one of the streets, she can see the barren hills in the distance, foulishly brown – permanently poisoned. Jill suspects there are areas of greenery left around the country...where no fracking took place. She knows there are areas of the country that are off-limits to regular Citizens, the private reserve of Party Members.
Not for the first time, Jill wonders how they had all let it come this far. The nightmare they are living in used to be the kind of future predicted if the populace drifted too far to one side of the political spectrum. Instead, they had drifted in the other direction, seduced by the promises of a populist selling the notion of a dreamlike paradise.
Now, fifty years later, that better world is still promised – along with the admonition that great public sacrifice would be required to reach it. Jill doubts that anybody believes it anymore, but she isn’t sure. Socialisation, though not forbidden, is actively discouraged; the populace reduced to small – isolated – nuclear family units.
“Grams! Look what I found!”
Jill glances at her granddaughter, who is holding a twig in her outstretched hand. It’s about twelve inches long, smooth with black, velvety leaf buds arranged opposite each other. Nothing out of the ordi...
...doing a double take, Jill gasps.
She berates herself for allowing her thoughts to dwell in the past too much, when the twig would have been as common as sparrows, foxes...or trees. Trees have long been removed from the city, another alleged public health and safety issue. It’s been decades since Jill has seen something as simple as the twig that Sally is proudly holding up.
How on earth did that get here?
“That’s very nice, Sweetie,” Jill says. “It’s a twig. I think it’s ash.”
“What are these round little knobs?”
“They are leaf buds. When spring comes, they fold out and become leaves.”
“Leaves! Is it from a tree?” Sally asks. “I’ve seen trees on the Telebox.”
“Yes, it’s from a tree,” Jill agrees, smiling at the wonder on Sally’s face, whilst simultaneously – she just can’t help it – regretting that they live in a world in which something as simple as a sprig is a
miraculous revelation to a child. “I used to climb trees when I was your age. It was good fun.”
“Maybe...” Sally looks around her, just like Jill did earlier, to see if there is anybody close enough to hear them. She reduces her voice to a whisper. “Maybe it’s a magical wand, like the fairy godmother had in Cind’rella.”
Jill takes a deep breath. “Sally, do you remember what we agreed on?”
Sally quickly nods. “Not to tell anyone, ever, ever, ever, about the fai...those stories.”
Jill sighs. Telling fairy tales to Sally, at bedtime, is their special secret. Jill retells them from memory. She wouldn’t dare keep a book of fairy tales at home in case their Domestic Supervisor found it on one of his inspections. Even if she had wanted to, there would have been nowhere she knew of to obtain such a forbidden item.
“And why don’t we tell anyone, Sweetie?”
“Black Marks,” Sally murmurs. “I won’t talk of it again, I promise.”
“Better not use the words “magical wand” either, okay?”
“I won’t! But...do you think it might be one?”
“Who knows? It might well be. Come, I’ve rested enough, it’s high time we do the shopping.”
Sally nods, her young face endearingly earnest. Jill gives her a brief smile, all she dares to display in public, before they continue walking.
§ § § § §
Jill’s heart sinks when they reach the Commercial Centre. The queue to the lower floor entrance stretches halfway along the block. There are shorter queues for the higher levels, but that is only reserved for those who have earned the reward of accessing those floors – mostly by informing on neighbours, co-workers, and even family members. It has never even occurred to Jill to get others Marked and in trouble just to gain a few extras.
They take their place in the long queue, shuffling forwards slowly whenever another batch of ration-card holders is allowed entry. Sally is wholly entranced by her twig, her mind no doubt soaring free within her lively imagination, so Jill allows her own thoughts to stray.
The Magical Book of Wands Page 45