Why?
The lights in the massive apartment were dim, and Kat was alone.
Somewhere in the recesses of the place- the kitchen, most likely- the servants
were going about their affairs, but in her mind they were not companions. They
could never understand the trial she was facing. Their worlds were entirely
different.
She was standing amid a sea of luggage, gripping the one-way ticket for
the night train which she’d purchased that morning. She couldn’t believe
what she was doing. She was giving up. She was running away- if only for a
little while. After all she’d been through over the past month, she felt she
had no choice. She had to get out.
Why? She thought bleakly. Why did this happen to me?
It seemed to
be only yesterday that she’d stood on the platform with her best friend, Karae,
and her boyfriend, Tana. They’d been out to a movie, followed by a trip to
their favorite café. The Underground station was packed with weekend revelers,
as was usual. Kat and Tana hung back from the crowd, exchanging a long goodbye,
as they were headed in different directions. Finally, he turned and left.
As Kat went to rejoin her friend, the train came rolling in. People filed
through the doors until they resembled crayons stuffed in a cardboard carton.
There was no space left, though a group still stood dejected on the platform.
She scanned the faces for her friend as the train lurched away. Karae was
nowhere to be seen. She must’ve gotten on. Well, she’ll wait for me at
our stop.
As a sigh of frustration was escaping Kat’s lips, there came the sudden
sound of thunder, uncanny in the Underground. The ground shook, and flames began
to roll from the tunnel where the train had disappeared. All at once, the heat
was unbearable, the roaring sound and choking smoke terrifying. People standing
near to the tracks began to wail as their clothes and hair caught fire. Panic
engulfed the crowd, distorting faces along with souls. In the stampede to flee
the station, human beings mutated into creatures- lone animals in search of the
exit, no thought or feeling spared to the bodies impeding them. Men and women
trampled one another, children were crushed against walls, turnstiles, ticket
booths.
Kat emerged from the chaos, covered in soot and blood. She would never
remember the monster she’d become, or the faces of the people she’d helped
push to the ground. She’d been consumed by the need to survive, and so survive
she did.
She awoke in a strange bed, surrounded by familiar faces. They gazed at
her with concern. She looked at them with confusion. Her mother was there, and
her father, and Tana.
“Where am I?” she softly asked, half-knowing the answer.
“Do you remember what happened?” her mother’s style- answer with a
question.
Kat’s pretty face scrunched up with the strain of gripping at memories.
“Tana?” He moved closer to her, staring at her. His firey eyes were
soft and full of pain. “We were in the Underground. You left. The train came.
I was looking for-“ She’d never been stabbed by an icicle before, but she
was certain that what she felt ripping through her gut produced the same
feeling. “What happened to Karae?”
The eyes that had been trained on her drifted away.
“Where is she?”
Nobody spoke.
Sobs shuddered in her body before tears could swell upon the rims of her
eyes. Her best friend of seventeen years was dead.
For two weeks, Kat refused to leave her room. She admitted only her
parents, and that was just because she couldn’t keep them out by force. Even
Tana was rejected at her door. For days she lay on her bed, staring, sometimes
sleeping, sometimes crying. She ate only when her mother stood over her, forcing
her.
“It’s true that grief is good for the figure,” the ravishing, tall,
cold woman told her. “At least you’ll lose that weight you put on over the
winter.”
For a little while, Kat wondered if she might die, too. She could hardly
imagine a life without Karae. What about all the things they’d planned to do?
What was she supposed to do now? With a sigh, she realized what the future held.
Her political aspirations, fuelled by the support of her closest friend, would
quietly be put aside. She would marry Tana, who she did love dearly, and strive
to stand behind him the way a well-bred woman did. At first, she felt despair
wash over her as she realized she mourned her own future as much as that of her
friend. However, having a plan, something to do, was comforting. That night,
she’d fallen into the first deep sleep she’d had since she awoke in the
hospital.
The next day she rose early, showered, dressed and ate breakfast. She’d
decided to visit Karae’s parents. Her mother supported her decision, stating
blandly that taking flowers would be a “kind gesture”. Her mother was
constantly droning about “kind gestures” and “public face”.
“It’s important, dear,” she’d always say, “to be detached, but
make it look like you care.”
Kat wondered if her mother actually cared about anything. Yet she found
herself slowly being molded into that same marble creature, existing only to be
a perfect, pretty thing, with no voice- and no heart.
She arrived at Karae’s parent’s home, proffering a huge bouquet of
cloying hothouse flowers. She was admitted by the usual butler, and led to the
usual couch. This time, however, her friend would not waft breezily into the
room to retrieve her. Instead she would wait for the only people who’d lost
more than she had to lumber in, carrying the taxing weight of their grief until
they could spread it before her like a picnic lunch.
In the kitchen, they were arguing. Karae’s father’s voice was but a
muffled grumble, but her mother’s voice climbed frantically in both volume and
pitch. Kat could hear her clearly.
“How can you say that we’ll catch them!? You control the
police department! You know as well as I do that there aren’t any leads!”
Grumble grumble.
“It’s them. I know it is! All of them. They’re
punishing us. Killing us the way we’ve been killing them! It’s the
god-forsaken Dauern and you know it, too!”
Kat was frozen for a moment, remembering something that Tana had told
her. Once, she’d seen a man come to the house, an Angemal. He left with one of
the servants, a woman whose soul seemed to have flown away the moment he took
her by the arm. Tana said that the Dauern were all taken away one day- taken
away and “used”. After that, if they weren’t dead already, they were
killed. She hadn’t believed him.
“Kat, it’s what my father does for a living. He heads the department
which regulates all of that. I’m telling you, it’s true- and it’s what
I’ll be doing someday.”
She still hadn’t believed him. Nobody talked about things like that.
Nobody talked about Underground bombings, either. These were the problems of
other people’s lives.
She got up and ran out of the room.
She’d gone to Central Station and bought herself a ticket on the train
that would leave the city in twelve hours. There were no more private rooms.
She’d have to share with another girl. She didn’t care. She had to get out.
Kat stopped by Tana’s to tell him goodbye. She forced herself to sound
casual. It was only a few weeks in the country, so she could recover. Something
deep within her told her she was lying. After all, how could she return to this
place?
