A thick, dirty needle began to emerge from the darkness. Somewhere above it, a dim lightbulb swayed, painting shadows on the needle, first to the left, then to the right.
He felt as if he were at sea. The rocking made him feel sick. He knew he couldn't contain the strange mixture that must now be its contents. But he took a deep, slow breath, trying to stave off the unpleasant moment of retching.
The pain of his parted lips was unbearable. He realized his face must now resemble everything he had only seen in movies.
A series of images pierced the wall of pain, reaching his mind's eye. "Raging Bull," Muhammad Ali in Kinshasa... games watched first with his father, then with his buddies... his childhood in the Eighth... memories of his parents from the Color Age. That's what his mother called the years before the Mutation. "Honey, it was all so colorful." He'd heard that phrase hundreds of times. She poured her nostalgia, sentimentality—and bitterness—into him. The feeling that life was ending with each passing day, that it would never get better. A feeling the entire population of the City struggled with. A city-state, a damned Noah's Ark, he often thought, an Ark from which three percent of the population escaped by shooting themselves in the head. In recent years, however, jumping off buildings had gained popularity. There seemed something heroic in the pool of blood surrounding you and the astonished gaze of passersby. After all, so little could still surprise them. Wide nets and alarms on the roofs of the tallest buildings. Guards and police officers guarding not only the entrances to buildings but also the observation decks. Posters in churches proclaiming "The Will to Live—The Duty of the Children of God."
"You are the middle sons of history," he heard a phrase from some old movie echo in his head. His gaze was fixed on the motionless needle. The light from the bulb seemed to be everywhere now. It swirled above him, picking up speed, then slowing down again. Finally, he realized that a motionless needle was lodged in his skull, splitting it in half with a throbbing pain.
His stomach couldn't take it. The wave, caused by the bulb's monsoon of light, flowed up his digestive system and spread across the wounds covering his face. He lacked the strength or courage to move his head, so blood mixed with food ran down his cheeks, spreading around his head. He was forced to swallow the part still in his mouth.
He wasn't sure he wasn't in some nightmare. He tried to move his lips again. Pain tore through his lips. Just like when, in ninth grade, he'd fought a boy known as "Stockholm." It was over a girl. Dorian had taken her away from him without much effort at his birthday party. Her name was Mika. Or maybe not at all... It was his first fight, his hardest. He'd suffered a broken nose and a knocked-out tooth. But Stockholm had lost both his upper front teeth and ended up in the hospital with a broken collarbone. Dorian saw that fight again, and the pain from the needle in his head made him feel those memorable blows almost physically. The first few had belonged to his opponent, but then Dorian slowly but methodically began to gain the upper hand. After the first few counter-punches, he was the only one landing. The blows were regular, about one every second. Then he slowed down, realizing his opponent wouldn't get up. But he didn't stop.
A visit to a psychologist didn't help. Nor did his suspension from school. He liked to fight, venting his mounting youthful frustration. He didn't hide it at all. For six months, Mika dated only him. After that, she dated everyone. But he never held a grudge. Few people had stable partners back then, just as few had a purpose in life. They felt justified by what was happening outside the City. "Never before in the history of humanity have values been so relative," a renowned sociologist repeated. But no one knew the answer to the question, "What next?" Only the authorities did what they could. Propaganda ramped up to the point of absurdity, television was as colorful as ever, artists received subsidies to proclaim in their works the praise of life and human heroism, the strength of the individual fighting for the good of the new society. Visions of a bright future were overwhelming from huge billboards in the city center. More trees were planted than ever before.
Yet there was no response to the intrusive propaganda, the censorship, the absolute power of the Party of Hope. There was no student revolt, no walls fell, tanks didn't have to roll back and forth across the squares like in the past. Skepticism was individual, everyone was slowly killing themselves in their own head. Depression had become the tuberculosis of the 21st century. And unlike tuberculosis, the sick didn't care whether they lived or died.
The needle began to turn. The gag reflex returned, but there was nothing left in the boy's body to throw up.
"Everything was so colorful back then. I remember your father and I going out of town, to the forest, and to the beach."
"What the fuck are you telling me?! Shut up, Mom!" he screamed through tears on his eighteenth birthday.
Then he went hunting with the boys. Only after shooting corpses for several hours did he feel better. They had social acceptance. People were only interested in themselves – the New Ones were what the enemy was in war, their lives worth as much as an insect's on the kitchen table.
Behind Dorian's closed eyelids, images from the past flashed. No conclusions, no thoughts. Just immobilized, seemingly dead figures and moments, everything frozen in his mind like the black box of a falling plane.
Am I dead already? The question pierced his mind with another needle of pain.
Once he had settled into it, he tried to move his lips again. He felt as if electricity was flowing through his lips.
They formed a word, but he couldn't utter a sound.
He tried again. He didn't know why, but the awareness that he was still trapped in the mental void between life and death gave him a sense of choice. A conscious experiment. He wanted to see what would happen next. Meanwhile, the needles continued steadily drilling into his brain, the lightbulb swirling somewhere above them.
"D... do..."
Through the hum of pain, he heard his own voice. It was weak, but with each attempt, it grew stronger.
"D... ra..."
His own voice soothed him. He realized he was still alive. He tried again, hearing the effects become increasingly clear.
"Dorh..."
The needle disappeared. The lightbulb went out.
"Dorhian..."
Only the pain remained.
"God, if it weren't for cigarettes, I'd have shot myself in the head like everyone else."
She smiled to herself. The thought amused her. She lay on her right side on the mattress against the wall, and the reddish rays of the rising sun streaming through the dirty window put her in a calm, slightly melancholic mood. She could only allow herself this state when she was alone. Mornings in the District sometimes seemed completely normal.
Red crept up her thigh shortly after five. It was the only delicate, unique shade of that color available in their world. She liked to wake up earlier than most.
Her dark skin deepened in the rays, as if they had sunk deep into her flesh. She lay still for the next few minutes, watching the light take more and more liberties, climbing her to the line of her blue, loose-fitting shorts.
She ran the cigarette along her thigh. She rolled it up and down for a moment, staring out the window in concentration. Finally, she brought the tip of the pipe to the point where the line of rays covering her ended. She smiled again, wondering if she could light a cigarette with it.
Slowly, she put it to her mouth and lit a match.
She rolled onto her back. The smoke was turning orange in the warm morning light.
It was a good night. She slept soundly, despite the fact that one of the boys was visiting Magenta again. It seemed to her like Caligari.
They'd been doing this for a while. Well, you have to make some compromises. Especially if she liked it.
They lived together as a group, but more like fellow inmates in one vast prison.
She inhaled deeply, feeling the smoke fill her lungs, flow through every cell in her body, and spread the melancholic stillness of the morning.
Their life resembled a kind of arrangement. They couldn't cope without the men. Food, weapons, security, eventually even cigarettes—they couldn't have acquired all of these on their own. At the same time, they weren't a burden. As agile and tough as they were, yet equally lost and helpless.
She tapped the ash into the overflowing ashtray beside the mattress. Her gaze fell on Magenta, lying in the opposite corner of the room. She looked like a child, curled up in a ball, her hands behind her head. But nothing could conceal her feminine curves, the mortal danger inherent in her animalism. Her legs, pressed together, exposed the curves of her hips. What lovely, shapely feet she had.
We use each other, all of us.
Through the doorless doorframe, she could see Gort sleeping in the next room. He lay on his back, his arms spread out over the mattress. Two meters away, Klaatu slept. Caligari rested on a third, unseen bed. Three boys who had been drafted into the army straight out of college. Men with a future in a world without a future. In the army, they demonstrated great physical fitness and a detachment from everything going on around them. It turned out that these very traits were sought after in special forces.
That's how they ended up in the District and, until last spring, they carried out orders.
The cigarette was dying, so she crushed it in the ashtray, leaving it among a dozen others.
She rose from the bed with the grace of a cat and walked to the bathroom, barefoot and silent.
Caligari awoke to the sound of running water in the bathroom. He glanced around, barely opening his glued-together eyelids. A soft red hue dominated the walls. Six o'clock, maybe earlier. He sat down on the mattress, rubbing his face and yawning quietly so as not to wake his companions.
He was a tall man with a thick mop of dark hair, perpetually an artistic mess. His skin, however, was quite fair, scarred, thick, and hardened. Cali's body possessed an exceptional elasticity. Light and agile, it reminded him of his climbing past.
His skills were immensely useful in the Suicide Quarter. They moved through it either through sewers or across the rooftops. Even the exit from "their" apartment led through an adjacent building.
The man's gaze was fixed on the cracked wall, yet its intensity gave the irresistible impression that it could pierce the brittle concrete. Narrow, penetrating, gray eyes slowly swept the room, as if aimlessly and casually. Without desire, but also without mercy—he did everything precisely that way. His slow, heavy gaze gave his stern, handsome face an expression of perpetual detachment from his surroundings.
Caligari's detached countenance, paradoxically, made others feel safe around him. In the eyes of others, he always seemed to be in control, even the uncontrollable.
That's why he was quickly noticed in the army. Faced with the guerrilla war the humans had been waging against the New Ones for years, in which actual strength was worth as little as self-confidence and self-assurance, Caligari would have been the ideal leader.
But he always fled. After completing a task, he would disappear for days. He hid in places where no one could find him, in bars generally considered unworthy of even the most spoiled civilian—sometimes he'd take two hundred meters of dynamic rope and climb, just to get further, just to get higher.
Finally, the command had had enough of him. They sent him to the District.
There he stayed.
"It's your turn to shop today.
" "Yes, I know. Am I going with Gort?
" "Mhm..."
He absorbed the poetry of Anya's every move as she pulled a can of canned food and a bottle of water from the makeshift refrigerator. He sometimes wondered when she would finally become accustomed to the phenomenon that was the Lieutenant.
She didn't even glance at him, can in hand, marching toward the open pack of cigarettes.
They'd known each other for a long time, but the relationships between the five people were covered in vast blank spaces of untouched topics, gestures never made. Distance seemed a necessary condition for existence in their situation. The awareness of the fleeting nature of things stirred an anxiety that each of them tried to nip in the bud. Even after such a long time of acquaintance, of living in a strange, twisted community, of mutual kindness, it was difficult to develop into friendship.
He glanced at Magenta, sleeping peacefully. In the boxers he'd slept in, he felt a stirring at the memory of what had passed between them a few hours earlier. He gazed fondly at her hips, her thighs, at the hair by which he'd held her tightly that night. His gaze slid down her waist, down her breasts, across her perfectly smooth stomach, toward the secrets now guarded by her tightly pressed thighs.
His eyebrow twitched. What secrets... Someone else would have her today. He remembered how he'd emerged from her at night. She lay on her stomach, breathing deeply. Beautiful and relaxed, like a snake basking in the sun. One of those that, according to his grandparents, had lain on the rocks outside the City. He wondered if they were still there...
He quickly scolded himself mentally, as he always did when his mind drifted beyond the City. He didn't want the pain of his never-developed wings to spoil such a peaceful start to his day.
He preferred to return his thoughts to Magenta. He remembered watching her body howl in slowly subsiding pleasure. He watched for a long moment. She lay there more and more calmly, almost expectantly. He instinctively felt his movement now. It seemed to him that she was afraid to turn her head for fear of startling him with her gaze. He touched his hand to her sweat-drenched back and ran his fingertips up along her spine. When his hand reached her neck, Magenta held her head, brushing her cheek against it. He slowly removed his hand and stood up, walking to the other room.
Looking at her sleeping body, he wondered if he had gone to bed after sex because she belonged to everyone, or if she belonged to everyone because after sex he always simply got up and left. But the thought that had been intriguing him for some time vanished as quickly as it had appeared. Anya's gaze lingered on him, but he sensed not a shred of interest. He knew she was as lost in thought as he was, and their gazes met almost by chance. He narrowed his eyes, staring intently into the face of the group's unofficial leader.
Why her? Perhaps because she maintained a greater distance than all the others. As if a leader could only be someone who mastered the art of controlling their own behavior, feelings, and emotions.
There are planets far more powerful than Earth, farther from the sun's warmth. But there is no life on them.
The corners of his mouth curved slightly as this banal thought flashed through his mind. Its naive novella reminded him of "The Alchemist," a novel by a Brazilian writer from the late 1900s that he had read in his youth. His sister had been fascinated by it when she was a teenager. He remembered Alta, sitting on the bed across from him, brandishing a worn copy, reciting quote after quote that seemed far more tacky and banal than insightful.
"Are you smiling at me like that?"
Anya's voice was indifferent but warm. A faint smile flickered around the corner of her beautiful lips.
The image of Alta and "The Alchemist" faded in his mind, replaced by the no less pleasant sight of her friend, inhaling cigarette smoke by the window, mingled with the rays of the rising sun.
"And what if..." The nostalgic smile smoothly transformed into another, unconsciously boyish one, lent a warm and secure air to the mature, handsome face.
Anya sensed this change. It seemed to her that they were both being deceived by morning illusions. For a moment, they felt as if they were living in a normal world. For a moment, she didn't need to see what was happening outside the window. To the rays streaming through, the plague didn't exist—nothing had changed.
The woman glanced sideways at Magenta, sleeping peacefully, turning over with a soft purr. In Caligari's presence, her almost maternal feelings for her younger friend made her uneasy. Despite the warmth she seemed to detect in his eyes, her expression involuntarily hardened.
She resembled a Greek goddess now, cold and incredibly unapproachable. A frustratingly untouchable statue, carved over the years from hard, gleaming bronze.
Finally, she replied,
"I'd say that's the most manly gesture either of us has seen in a long time.
How does she do it?" The obvious irony, perhaps even reproach, in her words was reminiscent of a strong drink in these circumstances, the proportions of which were so carefully chosen that the alcohol was barely perceptible.
The smile slowly faded from his face. Cali retreated into himself again, yet harbored no resentment. From a cool shadow of distance, he said slowly, in a conciliatory tone:
"I'm glad we started another day on such an optimistic note..."
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