Computatio

Eugo found himself sitting alone in a pile of scrap. He must’ve fallen asleep sometime earlier in the day. He deduced that Fiz had probably left him there to sleep peacefully. It had been some time since he discovered Ilken’s motives as a revolutionary leader, and he hadn’t seen him since.

Eugo had even taken a day away from coal in an attempt to visit the boy, for the first time since his first meeting with him he was missing. Eugo almost thought that the desert may have swallowed him hole, trapping him in a cage of iron. Or possibly his family had discovered Ilken’s intentions.

Eugo’s mind once again continued its habit of spiralling downwards into progressively consequences. After some time, he imaged Ilken experiencing a revolution within his own army, causing his head to be impaled into his own shovel. 

This idea was slightly flawed in that, Ilken didn’t own a shove (as far as Eugo knew). Similarly, Eugo wasn’t even sure if Ilken had an army… he was just a boy anyway.

Some deeper thought and Eugo started questioning how a boy so young could start a revolution anyway, he sure was stupid when disillusioned. Eugo spent another few hour contemplating a full variety of topics, including Ilken, the meat blender and at some point Fiz. 

He was admittedly somewhat annoyed that she had gone out somewhere, feeling the need to experience her overtly optimistic mindset.

Wanting to freshen his mind, and in the mood for some… intellectual conversation, Eugo went to visit Helena.

“She’s out somewhere, George went off looking for her a little while ago.”

“Thanks Miss Helena, I’ll go looking for them then.”

Eugo spent some time firstly trying to think of where the pair would be, although he didn’t have to spend long thinking. 

The grimy hunchback dragged himself around the corner towards Eugo, fresh corpse in tow. 

Eugo saw the blood. 

Seeping through George’s clothes and practically streaming from his eyes. While Helena’s body was but a weird mix of bare flesh and ebbing blood. It dripped down from her neck, originating from a silver pebble glistening underneath.

Eugo had seen enough, his eyes tried to adjust to what he was seeing. Yet they failed to focus, his eyes dried in their sockets. Emotion this strong was foreign to the boy, maybe if he just opened his eyes. He could go back to times where he could simply talk to her.

Though his sorrow could not compare to the empty shell of a man trembling in front of him, George was long since gone. 

The nearby family on the other hand, was slowly descending into an apocalyptic madness. Hysteria was paired with tears. Inhumane screams crawling into the ears of those nearby. 

They saw the foul boy and they saw the angelic remains, and most looked on in a cold embrace. Their eyes saw past the death of a young girl, instead they saw only violence and their eyes had seen it many times before. 

Such horrors had desensitised many men and women that day. Yet on another day, from another perspective, a boy walked past a decaying corpse, and he too was indifferent. 

Those who died in a wretched inferno, those who hung from a roof or those who succumbed to the inevitability. All shared the same trait, birth and penultimate death. 

The dome cared not what was inside it, nor whom and who might be devastated at the death.

“Eugo…” The voice seemed to disrupt the frozen silence that had ebbed into his mind, the sounds of whistling steam and bone curdling screams had returned.

“I’m sorry.” The voice continued, and Eugo wished to console it. Perhaps say that it wasn’t his fault, or that the death was an accident. Maybe in another lifetime it could have been.

“I… tried.” In these moments the mind wanders, why had Helena been taken. Where was she at the time? Maybe the gentle shove forwards intended for a healing friend had really been a shove into the depths of hell.

Eugo was no superhero, he couldn’t save someone from despair, all he could do was pray. George had been holed in his room from several days now, he spoke only to his mother and rarely more than a word at that.

§

Within the four walls of his room George’s mind stood at a halt, as though nothing more in this world could excite it. From time to time his mother would enter, feed him and he found himself to simply nod.

Answering in simple commands of “yes” or “no” his overt passion had degraded into apathy.

George would find himself laying on the steel floor of his room, and if it weren’t for his mother’s intervention, never move again. 

His throat dried, he didn’t care. 

His muscles grew sore from their irregular movement, he didn’t care. 

The person who he loved wholeheartedly had died in his arms, he didn’t care.

His room enclosed around him; walls seemed to shrink in front of his eyes. His world collapsed in on itself, oscillating around him. It seemed to shimmer and wave in his illusioned eyes. 

The world warped, nothing that he knew seemed real anymore he questioned if this life he was living even existed. What was there left to live for if the world was nothing more than a blank façade conceptualised by his corrupted mind. His psychedelic thoughts drove him to a dance.

An onlooker would have seen a boy waltz in his room, arm in hand with someone, he looked deep into their eyes. What he saw was only for him to know, maybe he had looked death in the face. 

Or maybe he saw those two brown pearls that he had admired for so long. His face crept into an adjacent smile, as he fell into a joyous laugh. Tears flung themselves from his face, a hand clawed at his neck. Blood drew itself across the floor as the boy danced himself to exhaustion.

§

At some point George fell asleep and dreamed, his mind drifted across landscapes he could never even comprehend. Basins of more water than he had ever seen, deserts of yellow crystals refracting in a blazing sun. 

There he saw her; his mind could never mistake her dark hair tightly bound down her back. Her dark skin reflected off the sunlight giving it a brighter shine than he had ever seen.

George thought she was beautiful.

He reached out, he wanted to touch her, embrace her, do everything he never had a chance to do. All for her. His mind lusted for one answer, one that would release him from the chains binding him down. They cut into his arms and tore at his flesh. George cried out to his goddess.

“Save me!”

She didn’t reply, she only stared. George saw only himself in her reflection, he had created this being. This wasn’t her; Helena was dead. She didn’t exist. She would never talk to him ever again.

“Shut up!”

George screamed at the truth, but she continued to stare back into his face.

“Stop looking at me!”

He grasped at the illusion, aimlessly trending forwards towards her. Yet all it had to do was take some steps back.

“Forgive me!”

“Please…”

George, looked up into the sky, kneeling. Stars shined their way across the ethereal plane. Circling him the cosmos seemed to grant the boy his freedom. In the form of a quiet whisper.

“It wasn’t your fault.”

In his head, he didn’t know if it was real. Fake. An illusion of his flurried mind. George didn’t care, he had heard what he needed to. His body descended from the sky in a blinding show of light. 

Rebirthed.

“George?” The voice of a boy, slightly older than him. George knew that he cared for him, he knew everything he had done. His voice had given him motivation, a passion to continue onwards. 

It had saved him from despair. It may not have this time, but at the least it was there waiting at the end of the tunnel.

“Thanks, Eugo.”

The boy looked at him confused; George realised he was going through the same thing. Perhaps not as bad, but they were one in the same. 

They had lost a friend, something that would bond them together for eternity. Now all they had to do, was not lose each other.

George held out his hand, Eugo shook it without a moment’s hesitation. One could have sworn in that moment that a brotherhood far stronger than anything else in this world was created. 

The two boys saw in each other’s eyes a passion. It burned greater than any coal lit flame could. Though it was one of peace, the two boys were filled with an eternal calm.

George knew that nothing more in the world could scar him, he would fight in place of Eugo even after his death, and he knew Eugo would do the same. Although what George didn’t know is that Eugo had yet to experience his true reckoning. He was laying it wait for the inevitable loss that was to come.