Monochrome Page 5

  She was inches away from him now. His eyes were stuck to his shoes. “Look at me,” she demanded in her best scolding mom voice.

  He lifted his head and focused his black eyes on her green. She felt a chill move through her body, but she continued. “I’ve already made the choice to go back to my husband and child, and nothing you say or do will change that. Once I make a decision, I follow through. Okay?”

  He stalked past her. “Don’t let me hold you back then.” He motioned her ahead with a mocking swoop of his arm. She noticed the shirt under his coat changed to coal black.

  She started to walk but paused at his side. “Ishmael, I don’t care what happened before. I’m not them. This time will be different. I will get home.”

  She noticed his face soften. She walked ahead but shot back. “And don’t fight on my behalf. This place is unvarying enough without you getting punched in the face. Your face was one of the only things not blue here, and now look at it!”

  She heard Ishmael snort to himself, and shuffle his feet behind her. “And don’t drag your feet. It’ll take us forever to get to the border if you do, and it’s bad for your shoes.”

  She walked backwards, motioning in big circles with her arms for him to hurry.

  His grin almost touched his eyes. “You’re a dork. I’m leading a dork,” he muttered. She nodded in agreement, smiling. His face took on an aspect of amused surprise. “Abby, your dress…”

  She glanced down and noticed that her velvety dress was replaced with blue jeans, a red scoop-neck t-shirt, a black Gothic style long jacket, and, to her elation, her favorite grey scarf. She breathed in the fibers of the scarf. It smelled like lavender and tea, like home.

  She sighed, sad but hopeful. “Looks like I’m dressed for the journey.” She pivoted and skipped down the rock path, the sound of Ishmael’s hesitant, deep laughter following just behind her.

  *

  The walk was a quiet one, like the walk to the bar, but less uncomfortable. It was apparent Ishmael was thinking about something very seriously, so Abigail let him lead. She had a suspicion ignorance was bliss in a place like this, anyway.

  It must’ve been at least a couple hours into their never-ending walk down the pebbly path, when Ishmael stopped suddenly, and walked off the path and through the steely trees, motioning for Abigail to follow him. She frowned, not eager to leave the path, but followed reluctantly, since there was little else she could do.

  She followed silently for five minutes, until her discomfort was too much. “You mind telling me why we’re walking off the path?”

  He shushed her and continued to trudge ahead.

  She lowered her voice and hissed, “Don’t shush me! I’m not a child. And answer my question. I haven’t asked you anything in an hour at least. It was you who said we needed to stay on the path.”

  Ishmael stopped and peered nervously into the dark woods surrounding them. His agitation set her on edge, since he didn’t seem the nervous type.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked him quietly, straining to listen for the danger Ishmael sensed.

  He scanned the forest and answered in a whisper, “I don’t want to alarm you too much, but I think someone or, rather, a couple of someones may have followed us from the bar.”

  Those words made her feel like ants crawled across her neck and down her spine. “Why would someone do that?”

  He motioned for her to move closer. She moved forward, stepping lightly. It wasn’t until this point she realized he hadn’t lit a cigarette since they left the bar. “You haven’t been smoking because it makes us easier to follow.”

  He nodded. “I’m going to tell you something but I want you to remain calm, okay?”

  “Okay.” She pulled at the bottom of her Gothic coattails, remembering when she found the jacket, a beautiful black treasure that fit like a glove, at a second hand store called Black Rags.

  The shop was filled with a bounty of antique, recycled black clothing, some new, some vintage, some worn, and some with the tags hanging limply from them, forlorn that no one had even tried to put them on. Hers was lightly worn, but it slid on like it was made for her. She liked to think the previous owner knew it was meant for someone else. Perhaps it hadn’t hugged other hopeful shoppers like it hugged her. Touching something familiar comforted her now, when Ishmael’s face was so severe and distant.

  He took a deep breath and let it go. His voice was just above a whisper. When we walked into the bar, did you notice the men sitting by the bathrooms?”

  She nodded. “The ones who were talking. Yeah. You glanced at them when we walked in. Why?”

  “We have to keep going, but stay close and I’ll explain as we walk.”

  She fell in step beside him, still tugging her coattails. He continued, “I recognized one of them right away, unfortunately. He was one of my Leads.” Ishmael’s voice cracked a bit at the mention of his failed endeavor.

  She was so astonished she stopped walking.

  “We have to keep moving,” he warned.

  She shook herself and apologized. “Right. Sorry, just shocked is all. I guess it makes sense. If they stay, you might see them. We’ve met so few people, I just didn’t think about it. But I guess you all live here…”

  Ishmael walked sullenly on, and didn’t answer right away. His silence made her very uncomfortable; she hadn’t meant to upset him, but she seemed to be good at it. His black eyes dimmed, gloom covered his body like fog settling on a low valley.

  It seemed like a half hour before he spoke again, but it was probably only minutes. She was about to urge him to tell her more when he abruptly answered.

  “I don’t see a lot of them. A lot of them don’t make it very long here.”

  He didn’t clarify, but he didn’t have to. His tone told her all she needed to know—they’d killed themselves and Ishmael felt responsible. That’s why he got so worked up when Jim was telling him how to do his job, she thought to herself. She immediately felt stupid for assuming the fight was about her.

  “Sorry. I didn’t know,” she mumbled.

  He waved a dismissive hand. “How could you? Anyway, the man with the black hair and long nose was my third Lead. The brown-haired man sitting next to him was the one who convinced him to stay.”

  She remembered the man licking his lips at her and leering. It made her stomach churn to think he was following them. Having spent way too much time at seedy bars, she knew his type. He was a predator, and proud of it. He was just the type of person who snuggled up to lonely, naive women and bought them too many drinks. She’d been unlucky enough, as a young woman, to meet a man like him at a friend’s party. She’d never recover from that unhappy meeting, and she’d been wary and unforgiving of men since. Jason didn’t drink, and he never treated her disrespectfully.

  Abigail wondered how anyone could convince someone to stay in such a depressing, frightening place, and she listened intently as Ishmael explained.

  “The brown haired man is Eric. He’s a Snake.” Ishmael stopped walking and motioned for her to sit on a large black rock he settled on. “Let’s rest for a second.”

  She sat down. “I’ll bet. I mean, who convinces someone to stay here?”

  “No. Not a ‘snake’ as in a slimy, sneaky person, though I suppose that’s where it derives.”

  He exhaled. “I think we’ve lost them for a little while.” But he continued to scan the metallic trees behind them, and fumble in his pockets anxiously.

  He explained further. “A Snake is someone who tries to convince a Lead that Reality doesn’t want them; that they should make a place here instead of trying for the border. A Snake is paid well by Monochrome’s higher ups because they need people to stay in order to keep the place going. Reproduction doesn’t happen here. Monochrome takes life. It doesn’t create it.”

  “That’s a horrible job,” she whispered, disgusted.

  Ishmael winced at her disgust, which confused her. She wasn’t disgusted with him. “Here, it
’s just another job. A way to keep the remaining good memories you have, and maybe to collect good memories from others. It’s survival. Plain and simple.”

  “No. Don’t make excuses for them, Ishmael. Everyone has a choice to do the right thing.”

  His face was dark with bitterness. “And what is the right choice? To let your own memories go until you are nothing but a sad, pathetic, empty shell? To kill yourself?”

  It was hard to believe he was defending such a slimy occupation, though she understood his need to define his own place in the cruel society of Monochrome.

  “Killing yourself is better than having someone else’s death on you.”

  “You can’t know, Abby.”

  He said it so quietly she barely heard him. He leaned against a steely tree, fighting to find the right words to convince her, but he let it go and continued with his story.

  “Anyway, my Lead, Geoff, and I were about a fourth of the way through Monochrome. We stopped at a Hotel for the night. Geoff was particularly depressed because he’d given away a very important memory in trade for food and shelter.”

  Ishmael studied his hands, rolling his lighter between them. “It was his daughter’s first word.”

  Abigail gasped, not able to fathom giving such a memory of her Ruby away. “Oh, no.”

  “Yeah. He was really beat up. I advised him to go to bed and try to recover, and he agreed.” He shook his head. “He went down to the Hotel bar after I was asleep. I’d seen Eric at the bar earlier, but I wasn’t worried. He seemed to have his sights set on a lonely older woman who was sloshed.” Abigail nodded, thinking she sounded just like his type of target.

  Ishmael stopped fidgeting with his lighter and stared at his hands, a blank emptiness filling his eyes. “When I woke in the morning and knocked on his door, he didn’t answer. I headed down to the bar, figuring he decided against sleep, but he wasn’t there either. I thought maybe…maybe he couldn’t take it anymore, but he chose a worse fate, one all of us who have remained in Monochrome have chosen—to stay.”

  He paused, listening to the forest. But, just like the smell of Monochrome, there was a lack there, too. No bird songs, no chatter of squirrels, no wind rustling the trees. Ishmael must not have heard what he was listening for in the unnatural silence. He dropped his head and continued in a dull whisper.

  “I noticed the old woman from the previous night was still seated at the bar, so I sat down beside her and asked if she’d seen a black-haired, blue-eyed man. Geoff had baby blue eyes, the kind women love…”

  He smiled bitterly. “The woman told me he came down shortly after I went to my room, and drank for a while by himself. She told me Eric gave up on her when she insisted she wasn’t interested in his ‘sleazy’ line of work.”

  Abigail crossed her arms. “Good for her.”

  Ishmael rolled his eyes at her but continued. “She noticed my Lead at the end of the bar, head in his hands. She thought he was crying.”

  He paused to rub his face tiredly. “She said it didn’t take long for Eric to leave with Geoff. Geoff came to Monochrome having given up on life, more so than most people. He didn’t want to know how to leave or care if he returned to Reality. He only went as far as he did out of guilt over leaving his daughter with a woman he described as manipulative and unhinged. He didn’t have many good memories to start with, so when he let go of the few he had…”

  He shook his head, weary. “It was an easy sell for Eric. He promised Geoff good memories—not a return of his own, but since he didn’t have many to start off with, I guess that didn’t matter to him.”

  Ishmael rubbed his hands together as if trying to warm them, but the air was neither cold nor warm. Maybe he was trying to cleanse himself of the bad memory. “Snakes promise a secondary happiness. It’s tempting here, in a place that sucks the good out of you. Plus, like I said, being a Snake pays well, probably because it’s a job very few people are tempted into.”

  Abigail crossed her arms. “I couldn’t live with myself.”

  He didn’t say anything for a while. He might’ve been carved from ice; his body language was so cold. Again, she found herself confused by his mood swings. It’s not like she was chastising him or his choice of profession, which, given the alternative, seemed like a reputable decision.

  She shifted away from his glare, changing the subject. “Okay, why are they following us? I mean, I get their job is to get me to stay in Monochrome, but why follow us now? I just got here. I’m not even close to the point where I’d give up.”

  Ishmael glowered. “It’s me they’re following. Geoff wants me to fail you, to fail generally. He’s done this before, with other people I’ve led. He’s never succeeded in taking them from me, but, in the end, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference, I guess.”

  He took off his hat and ran his hand through his long hair. “Eric has pitted him against me somehow. I don’t know what he told him, but probably not much of it was true. It doesn’t matter. Geoff was suspicious to begin with.”

  It was tough to imagine why Geoff nurtured a grudge against Ishmael when he was in the company of a much worse person.

  “I don’t see why he’s upset with you. He gave up, right? It’s not like you pushed him over the edge.”

  Ishmael dropped his hat, and cursed under his breath. “Can we drop this? He’s just kinda crazy from this place, all right? He has an agenda against me. Maybe he feels like I failed him, and Eric has probably goaded him in some way. Eric and I are not on friendly terms. He’s…hurt someone I care about before…This is all beside the point.”

  She was, again, confused as to why he was so angry with her for asking him pertinent questions. He grunted and stood, brushing off his hat and jeans.

  “What matters is, they’re trying to get into your head and you can’t let them. No matter what.” He knelt and placed a hand on her shoulder. “Promise me.” He studied her eyes. “Promise you won’t let them get to you in any way.”

  Abigail flipped her hair away from her eyes, “You must think I’m a sucker. I promise, okay? Nothing they do or say will get me to give up my goal. I’m going home. No matter what.”

  “I don’t know about Geoff, but be especially leery of Eric. His tactics are always unpleasant, especially with pretty women.”

  She blushed at the offhand compliment, but was also proud of herself for reading Eric correctly. Ishmael was still gazing into her eyes, his lingering stare causing the hair on the back of her neck to rise.

  She closed her eyes to shut his out and to warm herself with something less gloomy. She thought of her husband’s beautiful half-moon eyes, full of intelligence and laughter. His laughter itself was rich and sparse, and always made her feel as though her troubles were weightless, like they’d float away in a comfortable breeze. She thought of the way her daughter’s whole body smiled when she was happy. The memories invigorated her.

  She stood. “What are we doing sitting around? Let’s keep going. The more distance between us and them the better, right?”

  “You must have something good to look forward to. Your positive energy is very annoying.” His words didn’t reach his face which was amused.

  “You don’t think I’m annoying. You think I’m wonderful, and I am.” Abigail playfully punched his arm.

  He put his hands up in mock defeat, his reluctant smile almost reaching the deep black of depths of his irises. She continued. “And, yes, I do have something good. Something great. I guess I just didn’t realize it until now.”

  “We should stay to the woods a bit longer, but don’t worry, I know where I’m going. I just wanted to take the time to tell you what we’re up against. You warned me against holding out, and I didn’t want to be on the other end of your wrath.”

  His face was bemused and not at all frightened of the prospect. He might actually be frightened if he ever saw me truly angry. But, for the first time since she arrived here, she didn’t think to doubt his intentions, and was surprised to feel she w
as beginning to trust this strange, sad man.

  As they made their way through the eerie, steel blue forest, she felt her heart stir for him. She wanted to make it through this bleak place for her family, sure, but blood rushed through her veins when she looked at Ishmael. An old emotion warmed her body, and pulsed color into her cheeks. Staring at his tense back as he walked through the gloom, she realized she already cared about her Guide. It might be silly, but she wanted to make it to the border for him, too. She would not add to his defeat.

  CHAPTER 5:

  A Like Mind

  THE DARK TREES lost their silvery sheen as they moved further into the woods. Whatever the dim light that touched their smooth trunks, and from wherever it came, it didn’t reach them this deep into the forest. Abigail felt her skin crawl and jumped with every crack of a twig, so resounding against the eerie silence of the blue landscape. Though she still hear nothing but Ishmael’s light steps and her own breathing, she kept thinking of Geoff, imagining his black hair, the same dark, greasy color of his eyes.

  They used to be blue. Or so Ishmael told her. But she saw Geoff in everything around them, with Eric behind him, prodding him forward, his sick mind bent on reaching her. To keep these thoughts at bay, Abigail did she always did when she was nervous, she recited a poem under her breath. It instantly calmed her when she was upset. She studied the back of Ishmael’s coat, noticing the way his back formed a perfect V, broad shoulders and narrow waist. She quickly looked at her feet, not trusting the pull of her blood when her eyes slid over her Guide’s body.

  Her voice was a hesitant whisper:

  “Since all that beat about in Nature’s range,

  Or veer or vanish; why should’st thou remain

  The only constant in a world of change,

  O yearning Thought! that liv’st but in the brain?”

  Ishmael slowed in front of her and raised his head. She lowered her voice, embarrassed he might hear, but he dropped his head again, still lost in his own mind.