The Lightbreakers of Orpheus [12]
A Sci-fi flash fiction
Previously [11]
[12]
Explosions shattered their refuge inch by inch. Chunks of concrete fell down, forcing them to retreat into the last vacant corner by the door. Anouk couldn’t hold back her tears; the poor thing shrieked and wailed after every explosion. Derek and Sophie held her in a tight embrace, until after what felt like hours, the shattered world above them had gone quiet. Anouk was inconsolable, she cried so hard, she could not breathe. The darkness, and the stuffy air of their broken refuge made it worse. Derek and Sophie had no more words of comfort to give her.
Mark was strangely calm. He was used to darkness, and explosions. It had been his daily routine. As well as being stuck in complicated situations. The voice always guided him back to safety, until the day it betrayed him.
Anouk needed somebody to guide her out of the darkness of her own head. Mark found her hand, while she kept shaking and gasping for air.
“When they took away my vision, and I had a hard time living in the darkness, I remembered the place where I grew up. It was all green; trees, plants and flowers. They smelled nice. Just like you.”
Anouk listened to his calm voice humming through the silence.
“I spend all my days running around, climbing trees. When I came home, she held me tight. Mom. I called her Mom. She was…pretty. I remembered her every day, when they took me away. It helped. You should think about something good,” Mark’s voice was calm but void of emotion. Anouk squeezed his had tighter, and took many deep breaths, while Sophie put her hand on Mark’s shoulder.
“How old were you?” she asked.
“I don’t know.”
Derek tried to push the door. It was pointless, they were buried under the remains of their house. The silence meant that nobody was coming to their rescue.
***
“I too spent my early childhood in a green place,” said Derek after, they’d sat in silence for a long while. Anouk had calmed, she sat sobbing quietly, holding on to Mark’s hand. “The Gardens. Then the Government took it over, and made it a restricted area. We moved to the Mainland Orpheus. Nothing but red sand, and dead rocks.”
Mark didn’t answer. He pressed his ear to the door, listening.
“What is it?” Derek asked, but soon enough he too heard something rumbling above their heads.
It took another couple of hours for their rescuers to dig through the rubble, but Derek laughed like a mad man when the door finally cracked open with the light of dawn breaking through the cloud of red dust.
“Jimmy, am I glad to see you!” He said at the sight of the dirty face of the Gravedigger.
“Not as glad as we are, Cap!”