by Melissa Kuch
The car swerved down Wishbone Avenue, and Mrs. Xiomy said that there was a police car parked in front of both the Alvarez and the Stockington residences. All the neighbors were out of their houses, congregating around the driveways to get news about what happened. Mrs. Xiomy turned on the radio, and Aurora and Boreas perked up their ears to listen to the announcer.
“At the cusp of the Sacred Hour, two teenagers, now identified as Aurora Alvarez and Boreas Stockington, were found trespassing in the Candlewick Private National Library. They attacked two Common Good officers and stole one book. I repeat, one book has been stolen and an article ripped out of the Archives. Stockington and Alvarez are fugitives of the state. If you have any information about their whereabouts please call your local precinct immediately. It is for the Common Good that they be caught. The IDEAL has spoken.”
Mrs. Xiomy looked down and smiled at the teenagers. “You two were busier than you let on. I am so proud to be your teacher.”
Aurora breathed a sigh of relief. At least the announcement hadn’t mentioned a thirty-foot-tall giant. Officers Woolchuck and Pelican were either too embarrassed to admit it, or they had only told their superiors, who wanted to keep that part hushed up to the public.
Just then she heard a scream from outside the car, and she felt her blood run cold. It was her mother’s scream. She quickly removed the blanket covering her and stole a glance out the window. There was her mother, looking disheveled and wearing only her red bathrobe. She never went out in public without her makeup and her hair perfectly done. And then beside her was her father, Mr. Alvarez, speaking to Inspector Herald, who was ordering another officer to handcuff him. Her father’s face was strong and steady, and she saw the Inspector strike him across the cheek with a copy of his History magazine. The paper sliced his cheek, and blood oozed out. She couldn’t watch anymore, and before Mrs. Xiomy could stop her, she flung open the door and rolled out, hitting the pavement hard against her chest. She heard Boreas cry out to her, but she didn’t listen. She got to her feet and screamed out, “Dad!”
He looked up, the blood dripping down his face. Mrs. Alvarez ran up to her daughter and threw her arms around her. “Aurora, tell me this isn’t true! Tell me this isn’t true.”
Aurora couldn’t answer and felt her eyes glazed with tears as she turned and looked into the notorious face of Inspector Herald. He smiled, licking the tip of his front chipped tooth in satisfaction. He stood six foot seven inches in height, and was dressed formally in the Common Good uniform except for the long black trench coat that covered the length of his body. His right sleeve bore the symbol of the country’s flag and the INSPECTOR in bold orange letters. His face was scarred from the infamous Candlewick Prison fire ten years earlier, and he attempted to cover it with a massive amount of makeup. His bald scalp was covered with a gray fedora, and he stared at Aurora with his piercing coal-black eyes. “Well, Miss Alvarez, so nice of you to join us this morning. And I see that you aren’t alone. Guards seize the two in the Fiat. I believe if I am not mistaken that you will find Boreas Stockington and Mrs. Rana Xiomy. Bring them to the Candlewick Prison along with our prestigious guest here.”
“What about my father?” Aurora exclaimed.
With a slight grimace, the Inspector ordered the guards to remove the handcuffs from Mr. Alvarez’s wrists. “Burn everything in the home. This will set an example to others who have illegal USA nationalistic merchandise. The IDEAL expressly forbids it.”
“These were confiscated from other homes, from my own clients,” Mr. Alvarez said strongly without any hint of regret. “I was housing them to be destroyed following the Independence Day of the Last Straw. I didn’t deem it appropriate to burn on a national holiday, don’t you agree?”
Inspector Herald gleamed with delight at this display of wits. “You were right in assuming that, and I will give you until the end of today to see that all of this is burned immediately in your front yard. I will want media coverage of the event to be aired all day and night for the remainder of the week. We have to set an example for other families who might be housing this type of merchandise. I will instruct the Common Good officers to invade each home to ensure the safety of the United States of the Common Good’s people from instigators.”
“Herald,” Mrs. Xiomy screamed out. “You leave these kids alone. They didn’t do anything.”
Herald walked up to Mrs. Xiomy, touched one of her strands of hair, and said, “Rana, you are as beautiful as ever. Too bad David isn’t here to appreciate it.”
She spit into his face. The Inspector laughed and wiped the saliva from his eye with his red handkerchief.
“And I see you haven’t lost your spirit, even after your loss. Take them out of my sight.”
Officer Pelican seized Aurora and quickly handcuffed her, whispering in her ear, “I guess you don’t have your giant friend to help you out of this one.”
Aurora bit her lip as she turned around and saw Boreas and Mrs. Xiomy being handcuffed and led into another Common Good vehicle. She stole one last glance at her parents, who were huddled together and watching her, looking both worried and frightened. She heard her father’s voice call out that she was going to be okay, that he would defend her. She couldn’t even cry out to them as the car door slammed shut and locked her inside the back seat of the vehicle. As she rode in shame toward the Candlewick Prison, she saw every face on Wishbone Avenue staring back at her through the clear glass window. She saw each of their faces accusingly glare at her, judging her, even though they didn’t know her side of the story. She was the enemy here. She was the one to disappear.
andlewick Prison was a fortress, a large, circular structure made of iron with the highest security systems in the world meant to keep their prisoners in and the world out. Nobody had ever seen any media coverage of the prisoners’ trials or their executions. The only one seen by the masses had been the public execution of David Xiomy by the hand of Inspector Herald.
Officers Woolchuck and Pelican roughly led Aurora, Boreas, and Mrs. Xiomy into an elevator and then down into the deep sepulcher. It was dank and cold as they walked down a long narrow corridor lined with tiny cells, and it smelled of urine and feces. Putrid yellow fluorescent lights flickered madly above them, and Aurora felt dizzy as she followed the footsteps before her. They passed cell after cell filled with prisoners, each in a cadaverous state, and Aurora recognized the emaciated face of Joshua from Joshua’s Laundromat who had disappeared one week earlier. His hollow eyes followed her as she walked past, and Aurora felt both appalled and frightened.
They were thrown into an empty cell, most likely a transitional until they were tried and pronounced with sentence. As the cell door slammed shut, Aurora immediately felt the severity of the situation sink in.
Mrs. Xiomy paced back and forth examining the stone walls of the prison cell. “I told you to stay still and be quiet. What part of that didn’t you understand?”
Aurora slumped down onto the floor, her hand about to reach out to the prison bars but Boreas smacked it away. “It will electrocute you. Believe me, I know.”
Aurora quickly pulled her hand back. “I am so sorry. I know you both must hate me, but I couldn’t let my parents take the fall for me. I just couldn’t.”
“So you instead have us take the fall with you,” Boreas remarked severely. “Next time can you please warn me of your impromptu kindness? Because it seems to be benefitting everyone except me!”
“Blaming me is not going to get us out of here,” Aurora cried out.
“Get out of here?” Mrs. Xiomy laughed deliriously. “Aurora, there is no getting out of here. We are prisoners for life. You think Inspector Herald is going to let you go free, especially now that he knows who you are? He may not be a genius, but I think he can figure out that you are the two from the prophecy. He is going to use you now to get to your giant, if he even exists. And me, well, he is never going to let me see the light of day again, I assure you.”
Aurora’s mind was w
hirling in a million directions. She ran over to Boreas. “I think this is a good time for you to tell us how you escaped from here. You have to tell us the truth.”
Boreas looked up at her, fear ensconced in his eyes. “You want the truth? The truth is—”
A loud buzzer sounded and interrupted their conversation. Footsteps echoed from the corridor, and Aurora felt the tension in the cell heighten. She feared it would be the Inspector but was hopeful it could be her father come to release them. She was not expecting the face of Jonathan Stockington on the opposite side of that prison cell.
He stood there, his blond hair tied in a ponytail and his big turquoise eyes staring intently back at them. His eyes moved from hers to Mrs. Xiomy until they finally settled on Boreas, who was just as surprised to see him as Aurora was. She felt so humiliated that he was there seeing her in the lowest point of her life. She tried to fix her hair but realized there was no point. He wasn’t here in the depths of Candlewick Prison to see her.
Boreas finally called out, “What are you doing here, Jonathan?”
“Dad sent me,” Jonathan replied coldly. “He wants you to know that he is not able to save you this time. He warned you that if you got into trouble again his hands would be tied. Inspector Herald did him a favor the last time you violated the Sacred Hour. He cannot intervene again.”
Aurora’s head swerved to look at Boreas, who sat there with his mouth open in exasperation. Aurora couldn’t believe her ears. Boreas had never escaped. His father had gotten permission to let him go free. And all this time she had been fooled like so many others. And he had let them revel in this mystery like he was some great magician.
“Is that all?” Boreas asked, unfazed by the news. “I thought you would bring me a fruit basket as well.”
“This is no time for jokes,” Jonathan cried out. “This is by far the biggest screw-up you have ever made. And to get Aurora mixed up in this too. I can’t believe you would be so selfish.”
“He didn’t. I mean, we both got into this together,” Aurora retorted, finding the words.
“You are defending him?” Jonathan asked accusingly, and then his eyes softened and he called out to the guard, “I want to speak with Miss Alvarez alone if that’s possible.”
“Yes, Mr. Stockington,” the guard answered, putting in the code and dismantling the electric current as the prison bars slid open.
“What do you have to say to her that you can’t say to my face?” Boreas growled.
Jonathan shook his head at his younger brother. The guard led Aurora out of the cell and into a private room, where both she and Jonathan were to be together alone. The guard said that they had five minutes, and then the door locked shut behind him.
Jonathan looked genuinely upset as he sat down in a chair and offered her the other facing him.
“Aurora, I am pleading with you. You need to talk some sense into Boreas. He won’t listen to me. Maybe he will listen to you. He needs to come clean about the whole thing. If not, I don’t know what will happen to him. This is a second offense. It could lead to death.”
Aurora felt so vulnerable in Jonathan’s presence, staring down at her wrists, still sore where she had been handcuffed. “I don’t know what I can do.”
“It’s the same story. He is always trying to get Dad’s attention. Ever since Mom died he has gone down the wrong path, and he envies me. It’s obvious. And yes, I know that I am my father’s favorite, but do you see me getting locked up in Candlewick Prison? It’s like that spring formal when Boreas made a fool of himself singing and I had to beat him up to get the microphone back to the DJ. He won’t learn unless it’s beaten out of him. I need you to beat the truth out of him. Both of your lives depend on it.”
“I don’t understand,” Aurora said slowly. “What do you want me to find out?”
Jonathan leaned closer toward her, so close to her proximity that she could smell the almond scent of his aftershave lotion.
“Inspector Herald believes he is hiding something. Something detrimental to the security of the country. He needs the whereabouts of this weapon. Do you know about this? Has he told you about this?”
Aurora recoiled back into her chair. She couldn’t believe that she had been misled to think that Jonathan cared. Disheartened, she exclaimed, “So I see the Inspector is having you do the dirty work for him!”
“I am trying to save my brother’s life! I think you know how far someone would go to save their family.” He put his hand on top of hers and Aurora’s heart fluttered as his eyes were gazing into hers. “You’re smart, Aurora. You’ll do the right thing.”
Aurora felt hypnotized staring into her crush’s eyes and she wanted to tell him that she would help, that she would reveal the whereabouts of this weapon.
The door unlocked, and the guard announced that the five minutes were up. Aurora snapped out of the spell as Jonathan released his hand from her grasp. She stole one last glance at him as the guard led her back into the prison cell, his words still replaying in her mind. The prison bars slammed shut behind her, and she beheld Boreas sitting in a corner, his arms crossed and his hair hanging slightly over his left eye.
“So what did my brother have to say?” he angrily snapped.
“He wants to know the whereabouts of a weapon of national security. They want to know about Otus. And Jonathan says that your life depends on it.”
Time bore no meaning in the cold, dark depths of Candlewick Prison. There were no windows so the hours wore on, and there was no way to determine if the sun rose or set. The only lights were the flickering fluorescents that seeped through the bars of the prison cell and the little red flickering light of the camera that was omnipresent in the corner. Aurora began to dread that Otus was getting worried waiting for them at the Candlewick Park cave. She feared he would come searching for them and risk getting captured by Inspector Herald and the Common Good Army. So far the three of them were the only ones who knew about his whereabouts, but she didn’t want to think about the interrogation skills of the Inspector. Mrs. Xiomy had gone into a catatonic state and was busy rocking back and forth in a corner of the prison cell. It was bringing back memories of her last time she had inhabited one of these cells fifteen years before when she had been tortured and had given up key information to try to save her husband’s life.
“The Inspector cannot be trusted,” she repeated over and over again in her rambling state. Boreas was busy pacing back and forth trying to not go crazy. Aurora listened to the sounds of the wailing and crying from the corridor where so many like herself were imprisoned.
“How long have they kept us in the dark?” she thought solemnly. “It’s almost as if we wanted to be ignorant and pretend that everything was okay.”
She started thinking that maybe Mary was down here in these dungeons, not in Iowa like the media had claimed. After seeing Joshua from Joshua’s Laundromat, she began to think the others who had disappeared from their town of Candlewick were down here too. Perhaps they had been down here all this time. Why hadn’t her father ever told her? Why did he lie to her and say everyone got a fair trial and was given equal rights?
“He probably wanted to protect you,” Boreas had replied after she had vented to him. “And if he had told you the truth, would you have believed him?”
“I don’t know,” she said slowly. “I wanted to believe that Mary had been taken to Iowa. If I knew she was down here this whole time, I would never have forgiven myself. And now we might never get out of here.”
She felt so scared and alone that the tears started falling. Boreas wrapped his arms around her, and she cried into his shoulder.
“We are not going to die down here,” he said reassuringly. “We will find a way out.”
They had not been given any food or water since they had arrived, and Aurora felt stomach pangs as she tried to stay awake. She heard a sound outside the prison, thinking it was someone bringing them food, but instead she smelled the sweet aromas of chicken soup passing them an
d going to the neighboring cell.
“They are going to make us starve to death!” she wailed.
Mrs. Xiomy shook her head at the young girl, saying, “They won’t kill you yet. Not until they get what they want out of you.”
An empty bowl of soup was thrown into their cell, and Boreas and Aurora both lunged for it, but it had been licked clean. A pit of emptiness overwhelmed her as Aurora looked up to behold two eyes staring at her through the bars. She knew that they were in trouble now as he started to punch in the numeric code and the bars slid to the side. He stood up over them like a towering shadow and pointed his gun at them. Behind him were two armed guards who stood anchored at a standstill in the doorway.
Mrs. Xiomy struggled to her feet and ushered Aurora and Boreas to do the same.
“He’s the First Lieutenant.” The words came out of her mouth like she was choking on her own fear.
Famished and dehydrated, Aurora walked in a haze down the corridor and was pushed into a small white cell that smelled of mildew. The table inside was stained with dry blood. Aurora felt sick as the door closed shut behind her. She cried out to Mrs. Xiomy and Boreas, but only silence echoed back. She had been separated from her friends, and she knew this was part of their interrogation ploy. She stood there immobilized and helpless as the First Lieutenant took a seat opposite her, and in the light she could make out his features. He was a handsome man of about twenty with thick brown hair and a chiseled face with a small goatee. He wore dark sunglasses and was dressed in the Common Good officer uniform, but his left shoulder bore two orange stripes, which was the mark of the First Lieutenant status. Mrs. Xiomy had said in the cell that besides the Inspector, the First Lieutenant was the most feared man in the army.
Aurora looked into his face and there was something familiar about him but she couldn’t put her finger on how she knew him. He eyed the camera and started speaking.