Englesten: Part I

Part I: The City at the Heart of War

I think of this road as the place where dullness confronts a brilliant winter.

Staring down on the city from the top floor of the tower, I perceived only the bulk of the massive shelter no more than half a mile away. The sirens far below echoed through my empty quarters, accompanying the constant hum of electricity. It was only late afternoon, but the darkest gray had spread across the sky, a cloudy haze created by the smoke held within the city's atmosphere. The sirens screamed louder as they passed, but the shelter, like an armored hill consuming the skyline, commanded all of my attention. To think it was so close, yet ever unreachable.

A knock disrupted my thoughts and drew me back into the tower, safely behind my window. I crossed my quarters and opened the door to the sight of Nivik.

“You need to come, Dymmada.”

This I had heard a million times that week, metered always between authoritative advice and desperate begging. No amount of words, however, could alter the fact that my attendance at this workshop was by no means required at all. My usual quietness would have to be breached at last.

“You may think it so, but that is due to a needless worry. I assure you, I will be fine. So long as this meeting is not mandatory, I will not be convinced to attend it.”

“You have no desire to do what is to your own benefit, and you have no rationality concerning your own state of being,” he answered, once again with the same mixture of authority and pleading.

“Then do be so righteous as to inform the psychologists of me.”

At that he lowered his eyes to the floor, frustration marking his facial expressions. I continued to hold my shoulders high, wary of betraying the feminine weakness he seemed to believe I possessed, and at last the moment of silence ended as he raised a piercing gaze to meet my eyes.

“These affections you maintain place you in every danger of falling into their lifestyle.” Nivik's stressed emphasis made clear the disdain which he felt for the commoners to which he referred. “Unless it is your plan to remain in Englesten forever, you must let go of your past and fully become one of us.”

I twisted involuntarily to look out my window, my sight canvassing the shelter and acknowledging what was held within. I regretted this lapse of maintaining composure as I found Nivik's face taut with anger when my mind returned. I attempted to clear myself of any suppositions on Nivik's part by firmly stating that no such affections existed and that the common world had long since been lost to me. Jaw line set, Nivik departed down the corridor toward the lift.

I shut the door and leaned against it for a moment as the air filtered weakly in and out of my lungs. After several minutes, I slammed myself into my chair, closing my eyes tightly when sirens again began to penetrate the momentary silence outside.

The tower and the shelter were the only two safe buildings in Englesten, the fallen city, a metropolis covered in fallout at the heart of a massive war. The sky was lighted with a variance of grays, and armored vehicles filled with patrolmen set to kill on any indiscretion of the law continuously sped down the crumbling streets. The shells of perhaps once grand edifices gaped at the ruined city, occasionally crying a tear in the form of a wall or ceiling. Remnants of old explosives could be triggered at any time, leading to fires that were impossible to combat until they had run their course. In the streets, the bunker-resembling abodes of those citizens who preferred to live outside of the government maintained buildings could only be distinguished by the single white light of each as the night began to sink at last.

The inhabitants of Englesten knew little of the outside world, possibly as the result of being trapped within its walls and left without resources for many years prior even to my birth. The most important information that I had learned from my four years in the shelter had only made me aware that I lived in the most dangerous city of the war, located somewhere in the nation of America, and that I could never escape unless I was judged worthy of joining the elite. Becoming an elite was the only hope of living a life of freedom, of having a future with a family not tainted by this deceased city, but to achieve this, a psychologist at the shelter must select one, out of hundreds of others, to move to the tower. Though evidently powerful, each of these intimidating men never spoke to any of us as they blended into the walls in their long gray coats, occasionally hitting buttons on their hand held devices. It had been just over one year ago that I was determined as one who was potentially elite.

I could recall the day I returned to my sleeping loft alone after lunch to discover my belongings packed and neatly set upon my bed. I slowly shut the door behind me, examining the items with mild confusion. As I began to step towards my bed, a psychologist stepped forward, seeming to appear out of the very wall itself. I clutched my chest as my eyes widened in shock. He wasted no time in briefly informing me of his decision that I should move to the tower. My thoughts raced so quickly that I could barely comprehend the notion of leaving at all before he ordered me to gather my things and follow him. How I managed to move is a wonder to me; how I walked out of the place I had called home for four years and into an armored car without a backward glance and without a single goodbye to those I held most dear, I still cannot understand.

Now, as the sirens faded into the distance, I summoned my thoughts back to the warm, spaciously empty room in which I lived presently and reread the sign tacked above my monitor screen which I had written when I first moved in. In black, bold letters it read:

“Who is to determine my strength, other than my God and myself?”

I had to admit that Nivik was correctly identifying that I still clung to foolish past affections, but I could not relinquish them without losing forever the one piece of myself that was still wholly mine. In accordance with my nightly routine, I ripped a piece of paper from the pad inside my desk drawer and began to cure my flaws through writing.

* * *

I wait for you. Tossing and turning during those horrible nights when in my dreams your rejection takes a definite form. I live each day praying for your well-being as mine diminishes due to this separation. My heart falls and aches at the thought that surely my life will be lived without you. I know I am strong, and I know you will always be perfect even without me in your life. But know, my friend, that I would trade any success and any freedom to ensure that you could be happy. As the hour of my judgment nears, I grow closer to the decision of which road I will soon be forced to follow.