I always knew my son had something special about him, and I know all mothers say that, but with my boy it was true. Jude had a curiosity that was like a bright light always chasing away the shadows. And as endearing as his smile was, his laugh was infectious. ‘He’ll melt some poor girl’s heart one day’, I would say to Bill, watching him reading his hardback of the manifesto in the living room.
A memory that stayed with me was forged on the grassy riverbank near our local park. We were in the middle of a heatwave, and families had emerged like hidden creatures from the urban maze and were spread out on plaid picnic mats, sipping from water bottles, bathing in the intensity of the natural heat and light that bore down on them. My beautiful boy, who was only eight at the time, was waist-deep in the taller reeds and had his soft little white hand held out to the water, palm up, as if a welcoming gesture. It reminded me of the days when he was a mere baby, exploring my face with his tiny fingers. I was curious and careful like all mums, and so I hauled my aching bones up to take a look, to check what mischief he was creating. There, hidden amongst the pencil thing, bowing stems, was a slender grey snake, a long one, floating in the water with its little triangular head poking curiously above the surface, staring at my son as if it understood him. I sensed their connection. When I lurched nearer, the snake turned and swirled away down the river, and the spell was broken. Jude turned back to me with the brightest, biggest eyes, and said: “I made a friend today…” and he had no fear at all. It was so surprising and somehow both spectacularly brave and naïve, like unconditional love.
Jude grew up with a gregarious group of lolloping friends who seemed to be drawn to each other through their love of words and through a natural unquenchable curiosity. They were unusually intelligent and excelled in their studies at the state college. It felt both like a blessing and a curse. I knew I’d need to watch them for mistakes, like a mother lion draws her cubs in when the scent of a territorial male was on the breeze.
I remember one day having what I guess was a panic attack, as my breathing was unmanageable and my chest hurt. I stopped him, with my palm out to command him to halt, halfway in the hallway, when he bumbled in later than usual – too close to the curfew. I said to him almost sternly, ‘You may be fifteen now, but you need to be careful. Promise your mother’. He nodded, of course and said to me, ‘Love you, mum,’ bowing down and kissing my forehead, as he was taller than me, even at that age. He would wrap his arms around me, and as Bill was gone by then, I noticed how much effort he made to make sure I did not feel alone, confined in the house with my grief, to make sure I felt safe and held.
About a year later, it was the middle of the night, and I was dreaming of an empty road full of drifting, wandering black-eyed people; we were all caught in a blue fog. They were more like ghosts than flesh and bone, peculiar and sinister, staring at me as I walked barefoot along the tarmac. I remember that dream to this day. The front door burst open, and I heard heavy boots clambering up the stairs all the way to his bedroom. He was asleep too, when they roughly dragged him out of his bed, knocking over his glass of water on his bedside table, and elbowing his beloved model boat off his shelf that he spent weeks building, so it smashed into fragments on his floor.
I did hear him too. I was awake long enough to absorb the sound of his panicky sobbing and his desperate call for me. ‘Mum,’ he screeched, with immeasurable terror in his voice, ‘Mum!’ The dark shapes on our landing were clattering; they had shields and guns, helmets and masks. They seemed sub-human, like animatronic mannequins, dark dolls designed to steal souls of the vulnerable straight from their safest sanctuaries. They were rampaging through our rooms like raging cattle, not taking pleasure in it, but more like doing a thorough job. I was confused and in shock, and all of a sudden one of them had my hair bunched in his tight, gloved fist, holding my head up at an unnatural angle. My bare knees were being dragged across the carpet of my little bedroom, and I could feel the intense burn of the skin peeling off. By that time, poor Jude was being thrown down our stairs, and in a way that he could not protect himself or break his fall. I heard him hurt himself, little cracks and pops of a bone, but I could not go to him, and I could not comfort him. I heard van doors swooshing shut and slamming into the lock position, and beyond them a muffled voice begging for me to help. The last of the men left, and when I finally made it to the top of our stairs, I could see plainly that our front door was hanging off the higher of the two hinges, fully exposing us to the street. I could see lights too, blue lights flashing close by and then evaporating into darkness. When I screamed, I found I could not stop; like a valve had broken open under unbearable pressure.
And Jude was gone.
The next time I saw him was on the television. He was dangling from a short rope by his neck from a yellow crane arm, right in the main square of the town and in broad daylight. A news anchor was describing his punishment and crime, matter-of-factly in the same cadence she had talked about a town parade and a weather event, just moments ago. They had not put a hood over his head, so I could clearly see his face, and his eyes staring out at something forever. They would leave him there for one day and one night. Children from the local school had been escorted to the square especially to see the spectacle, so it imprinted in their brains as a valuable lesson. They were holding milk bottles to keep them hydrated, as that was always a worry for educators on hot days.
I found out that my neighbour, a widower like me, Miss Walder, with her headscarf and limp, had been spying on Jude through his bedroom window and had seen him watching a rock band performing a song called Black Sun. It was a music video he was playing on his college laptop, and it was blaring out loudly with a mash of guitars and drums. All media beyond the border was strictly forbidden, but apparently at college, some of the students had come into smuggled flash drives full with movies, popular music and TV shows from other continents far across the seas. I suppose Jude just had to see for himself. For him, he would have felt like an astronaut daring to venture to the moon, or a jungle explorer daring to look around the corner when he was told it was too dangerous. It was his adventure.
The men who had come had thoroughly ransacked his room and mine but had found nothing of consequence. It didn’t make a difference; his story had been decided with a rubber stamp and a terse official in town. I knew where the flash drive was, of course. I had found it and hidden it under a floorboard at the bottom of the pantry cupboard. I pushed a tray of potatoes and cabbage out of the way, pried the loose board up with a kitchen knife and plucked the little plastic dongle from its hiding place, into the hard skin of my palm.
I waited, as you should; I waited until time had passed. Everyone who lived in this town knew that being patient was the best way to make it to another day, to keep ahead of what was always watching. I never shouted at her; I never even accused my neighbour to her face, in private or in public; that would have been an error.
When she was on her rounds one morning, lumbering along the pavement on her way to queue for bread at the market, I pulled a little three-legged stool up beside the fence between our homes, and hauled myself over the boundary, which was hard work. I knew it was possible I could be seen. There were at least two houses on the opposite side of the street with a direct line of sight to the fence, as well as a bedroom window behind the house in another property. Like anything, any time of any day, there was risk.
My hands were shaking when I opened her greenhouse door and slipped the drive of rock music and television shows under a bright teal upturned flowerpot. It was easy. It was cruel.
I managed to find a crate to stand on from her garden and scale the panelled wooden fence back to my house. I slipped into my bland cube of a kitchen and calmed my taut nerves with a cup of hot ginger tea. After a few surreal hours, no one had knocked on my door, so I left the house to make my way to the Municipal Hall for Neighbourhood Reporting. My task would only take an hour, and I’d be back home, sitting in my one well-worn chair, a duty solemnly performed.
That night I visited his room again. I tended to go in once a week since it had happened. I sat quietly on his bed for several minutes in the dark; I had never had the heart to clear up the mess of the violence. His duvet was still pulled open where they had yanked him from his peace. I patted the pillow where his head had made an indent. It still had a few strands of his black hair curled in loops. The hair locks were warm, like they still had his life stored in them.
I eventually left his bedroom and took myself to my own around the corner.
As I lay down on my back and eased the blanket over my neck, my eyes were wide open. I lay there for a solid hour, staring up at the plain white ceiling. There was a fly in the room, spiralling and flitting about like a bad thought had escaped.
I heard the screeching of tyres first, as I expected to. The slamming of car doors was followed by the scuffling and smashing sounds of a home invasion. Violence, simple, crude violence. I let one tear go, just the one, as if to acknowledge the horror, to validate it.
Miss Walder was protesting her innocence, as they all did. She fought as best she could; she scratched out at the walls as they pulled her down her staircase in her nightdress.
She screamed at the injustice, perplexed at her error. She told them that she loved them, she told them she was loyal, and then quite suddenly, her voice vanished, as if she had never been there at all. Despite their large number, not one of the men had said one word to her as they abducted her from her house.
When I was sure they had driven her away, I decided to close my eyes. I decided I would see what my dreams would tell me next. Maybe I would dream of Jude, and he would be there with his outstretched hand, and he would forgive me for what I had done.
The End
Dystopian Days 