The Outcast

The Outcast’s first waking breath plumed silver before him, an ashen bud turned gold as it surpassed the shadow of the concrete barrier he lay behind, expanding and dying in the morning light like a spectre ill fit for the world it tried to break into. He lounged in that moment of wakefulness, where the self had yet to materialise. None who wake can escape themselves, he least of all. And so with every other breath came the sorrow, the fear, the rage.

Winter had taken his world in full, and corrupted all that was there to touch. And though it was a danger to be seen in the space he chose, he had not felt the warmth of sunlight for some time. So he rose from his bed of stone, his shoddy bedroll incapable of making the ground feel like any other, a sharp ache across his entire being made worse by the shifting of limbs that had grown numb. And by the meagre warmth of a pale morning sun the Outcast gave thanks.

It fell upon him through a wrought iron fence resting on the concrete partition, the rail’s shadows a cellblock door on the face of a wretched idol who smiled with ill fortune.

He curled his hands and feet repeatedly, tussling his arms and legs to promote circulation. He was neither young or old, a strange blessing to acknowledge as he looked beyond the barrier and into the dormant streets of this place he had come to reluctantly, a place borne of man that seemed to squander the virtues that made it.

Here there were no streams from which to fish, no fruit to bear from the soil, and no animal worthy to hunt. Its skyline rose high enough to steal the sun, and so most who dwelled here did so in shadow.

A two-story machination peeled its way onto the street before him, carrying a sleuth of dwellers towards the sunlight on rotating discs of black, their silhouettes a shrinking visage of a play that had neither a beginning or end.

The roar of that metal beast and its expulsion of corrosive soot marked the beginnings of a great awakening, wherein dwellers from the city’s darkest corners would begin to turn the cogs of the great machine. It was not his intention to become its fuel, like those he recently saw who could claim his title, men and women caught in its rusted gears and ground to dust. Be it through the machine’s seeping poison or its deafening clamour, outcasts of a different origin would succumb to the thoughtless reaping and become no more than an obstruction for dwellers to step over.

This he feared for the one who left, the one who gave him cause to trespass on this land.

He gathered his bedroll and fixed it to the lower clasps of his rucksack. Few things he brought from his abode on the outskirts, favouring agility over comfort. A second scarf, a canteen filled with creek water, dried fish leaf wrapped and tied with string of bark, and a large tarp. His knife and fire making tools he left behind. An outcast caught creating flame or carrying a weapon would bring the might of watchers down upon him, and where they would bring him is no place he could return from.

The gates to the forested sanctuary had opened, guarded vigilantly by sentinels of the earth, keepers of green that fought back against the grey. They paid him no mind after he had broken free from the midst of the tree line, nor did the dwellers who had fallen in to rest beneath the rustling canopies in remembrance of the world beyond the modern threshold. Whosoever sowed the gates of protection that allowed such a place to be should hold heavy their lordship. Appraised for its existence, burdened for the hubris of thinking that nature required chains.

As he stepped beyond its borders, into the miasma of metal and stone, vestiges of a floral fragrance riding the cold wind assuaged the stimulus of the dweller onslaught around him. Their momentum threw his balance for but a moment, as though he had stepped into a roaring river threatening to carry him off course. He regained his footing, and the currents of those around him shifted into an oval pattern, until he was no more than a rock poking through the water, an obstruction that was looked upon in brief moments of disdain.

He had come from the south, from the great sprawl of oak, birch, and pine pooling beneath the greater hills that kissed sky and broke clouds. The one he searched for had spoken of a place that rested along this land’s northeastern front, a place where one might ascend to better themselves, but in a capacity the Outcast found unworthy of seeking out. But the one he sought after, Damien, was a young man who held many ideologies of youth that neither his predicament or the blessings of nature had cleansed him of. And so here had come, an exile of the machine begging for reentry, thirsting for the oiled dregs that skimmed rust and bone to reach him.

“You won’t follow, then?” Damien had asked, the last words he had spoken.
“I will not.”
And he did not watch him leave, for rain was coming and the fire needed mending.

He sat on a log beneath the roof of his tent’s entrance, shaping string before the fire, and could not fathom the will that had been borne within the young man, what parasite of thought had stolen him from the comforts of what the Outcast had offered. Had he not given enough? Damien had stumbled upon him along the edge of a great passageway a year prior, more aimless than windswept debris, yet clean and adorned in sharp, pointed fabrics. He had not eaten in two days. After feeding him, the Outcast thought it wise to teach the youth the skills of self sufficiency, as his father had done for him so very long ago. To know water, earth, and one’s place between the two was to never know hunger in body or mind.

And yet there had clearly been another kind of hunger, a siren call from the bowels of the stone forest that Damien could not close his mind to. He left as he had come, in his new-world fabrics, his leather shoes bagged in anticipation for a less muddied surface to walk on, in a space where a person’s worth could be measured by such things.

No, he would not follow. Could not. The Outcast might have considered Damien a friend, had he the capacity to feel such things like before, but a person’s path was their own. He had done all he could.

It was only when he found an entry in his journal that was not his own, and opened the small lockbox with his only keepsake, now missing, that he ventured to follow.

A hatred spurred him, driving him headlong into the darkness, certain that the rain touching his flesh was quickly reduced to an acidic vapour poisoning the air for all. Had he come upon Damien that night, in the throes of that malice, the young man’s corpse might now be feeding the roots beneath some space that would remain unmarked until the end of days.

But he did not, his anger eventually dwindling before a meagre sense of compassion. It would not quell the fires that burned within him completely, but it would be enough to stay his hand, to not slay this jackal he had accepted into his home.

He had timed his departure perfectly, an hour before dark, and had used the light to his advantage. The Outcast conceded an appreciation for the strategy. Not something the boy would have had sense to do in the past. Damien was perhaps a half day’s walk ahead of him, but his new-world sensibilities and youth might have instilled a number of opportunities for him to take advantage of. As for tracing him within the borders of the stone kingdom, the likelihood would have been impossible had he not spoken so fondly of his destination.

“It’s a high tower that bathes in light, surrounded by a cluster of metal arms that make it grow taller. It’s meant to be taller than a mountain, made for those without homes.” “You have made a home.”
“Everything grows here,” Damien said. “Everything but a family.”
And to this the Outcast found no response.

A high tower bathing in light would not be so obvious during the day, but one of its size that is meant to be adorned in heaving mechanical arms could be manageable.
He made note of the sun’s position and took his first steps north, crossing an empty street littered with cracks and waste. The mass of dwellers was less prominent on this side, enough for him to take note of a young girl running in his direction, her outfit of some academia, the mother not far behind, calling out with caution.

The child tripped just several feet from the Outcast. He reached out as she fell, a learned reflex, as was the intention to help her up, brush her clothes, tell her she’s fine, to be more careful, reflexes that have long been dulled, breaking an inner barrier as he took a step towards her.

“Ellie!” the mother called. The concern was palpable, her eyes fixed on the Outcast.

He stopped, remembering himself, his appearance. The mother put herself between the Outcast and the child before attention was given, allowing one cautionary glance towards him as she did what he had intended. Knowing what she had seen, and the strange arrhythmia of unbound souls colliding at random, he felt he should offer some assurance, some words that would absolve him of her perception, but none came to pass.

He suffered another cautionary glance as they continued onwards, the child huddled against her hip, both quickly becoming a familiar memory in the distance they attained.

The anticipation was poor, but he could not afford to let the encounter tarnish his will. He pressed on, and the lathe of modernity took him in without question. Stone residences laced with glass fixtures created an artificial sunrise along the facade that blinded without warmth. They occupied spaces so large that he was forced to change streets, pursuing paths with directions he could not ascertain, the sun hidden well behind those obstructions of sky. Eventually he decided to turn back, to go another direction, but the rigidity of the kingdom’s layout looked no different from where he started, so uniform and without noteworthy features. He need only double back to find the space he began at, amongst the green, and start over.

Several turns later, and no sight of the green square. Yet he continued, amassing more turns than what he had begun with. He couldn’t have said whether he was moving closer or farther, and that uncertainty shackled his legs.

He was lost, and the maze he found himself in was indifferent to that circumstance.

All that was required to subvert this was a direction, and there were plenty of dwellers going about their business before him. Two of them, a man and a woman, conversed with each other on the steps of a grand entryway, their hands clasping paper cups brimming with hot liquid, the heat in their hands dying beneath their smiles. He thought of his own sachets of earl grey, enough for half a year, happily traded for a small pale of berries and a stack of chopped wood.

He approached them.
The man caught his eye, and before he could utter a word,
“Oh, sorry, I have no change.”
The woman turned to him, eyes and mouth frozen in the midst of her sentence, and immediately turned back and continued speaking. The man offered no further attention.

It was too quick, too mortifying, too presumptive, and in an unusual kind of shock the Outcast veered away from them. It took a moment and several steps further to regain his composure, enough to attempt conversing with another dweller.

He spotted one in a black trench coat and gloves, hair glistening like metal, and in his hands two pristine bags of paper and sharp design, a wayfarer who appeared to have learned the rites of navigation within this place long ago.

The Outcast offered a greeting, and the dweller of high repute offered none back. Not even a glance.

The Outcast tried again, this time with a dweller concealing their form in clothes that were large and round, hiding in a coat wide enough for two.

“Busy,” was all they offered him, and continued forward.

With dejection and dignity under siege, the Outcast stood to the side of an indoor market and weighed his options. He could continue forward and hope that the seemingly endless sprawl would subside in some capacity, enough to allow him some sense of direction, or he could grab a dweller discretely and force the answers from them in the shadows. The latter was more a cathartic thought, but desperation can indulge such things at the worst of times, and so he dismissed it with high prejudice.

Continuing forward seemed the only viable choice, but as he readjusted his pack and took a breath a voice broke through the swelter.

“Hey. Buddy.”

He turned and saw a woman standing behind a yellow stall, adorned in etchings of cups splashing their contents. She was large, her hair cut short, with piercing brown eyes and a stance that suggested a complete intolerance for ne’er-do-wells.

“Yes?” the Outcast said.

Satisfied enough at grabbing his attention, she turned to the machinations before her and grabbed a plastic cup, smouldering like a vat of oil, and held it in his direction.

He stared at it.
“I’m not a customer,” he said.
And at this she smiled, raising the cup ever so slightly to reiterate. “You don’t need to be. Here.”
The Outcast went to her, placing both hands gently against the lower half of the cup, the heated nectar a jewel plucked from the surface of the sun and placed in the palm of his hands, the aroma borne of toiled earth in the garden of lost gods, its colour blacker than the void.

“It’s just an americano. That okay?”

His eyes welled.
“Thank you.”
“Not at all. You need sugar?”

“No,” he said, perhaps a bit too forcefully, aghast that one might desecrate such a divine ambrosia. “No, thank you. Could you perhaps tell me which way north lies?”

“North...like the direction?”
The Outcast knew of no other thing. “Yes.”

Her brows furled at the strangeness of it. She pointed further along the street, where he had intended to go. “Well that’ll take you towards the beach, east.”

“A beach?”

“Yeah, just down that way,” she continued pointing. “So I guess if you book a left anywhere here you’ll wind up at the canal. After that it’s nonsense to me. I only moved here a while ago. Where are you heading?”

“A tower bathed in light, larger than the rest.”

“I think I know the one. Very noticeable at night when I leave here. It’s by the beach on the north side of town. Just stick to the sands. You’ll have to cross the bridge when you hit the canal, but I’m sure you’ll have seen it by then anyway.”

“Thank you,” he said, bowing his head. “...I apologise, I have nothing to offer in return.”

She chuckled. “Buddy, it’s just a coffee and some directions. Don’t worry about it.”

A pack of dwellers came and stood before the stall, eyeing the Outcast in curiosity.
The purveyor of nectars tossed her head towards them. “I better sort them out. You take care, alright?”
“You as well,” he said, and meant it with every fibre of his being.
As he walked, sipping the coffee, a cloak of protection came over him by way of the gift he had received. The branding along the cup’s hilt was a ward, shielding him against the othering composed by onlookers. None who were so destitute could carry such an item, this potion of dexterity. It gave him speed, focus, and emboldened him against the weight of both himself and the kingdom that hung high and swayed little.

The acrid plumes of industry eventually withered as he crested the eastern border, where stone became sand, and arctic wisps slid along the ocean’s surface to portend of winter’s absolution. Its air was truly frigid, and gusts of sand would flay his clothes in rapid bursts. The dunes were small, almost flat, and oceanic in their listlessness against the wind. The sound of the city had become nothing, and the ocean everything. His first steps within those granules of history were that of a traveler between worlds, unshackled and alone.

Up north, by some miracle he could not attest to, a single pillar of light had cleaved its way through the stone kingdom and halved the sands, holding beige reeds and other ocean detritus in a ridge of warmth. He stopped before this wall of heat, the light’s ray a near tangible thing within the ocean’s ceaseless mists. He put his hand forward, and the warmth was stronger than the remains of his cup.

The whipping of fabric in the wind brought his attention towards the city, where someone had erected a tent in a hovel between reeds and some of the beach’s taller dunes. The Outcast held his hands before him to observe a tent that was eerily reminiscent of his own, saturated in light. He made his way to it.

He stood before it in uncertainty, a scavenger at the mouth of a cave that none dared delve. Its roof shook with violence against the wind, its sides upending ever so slightly. The Outcast could think of no other thing inside than a bestial castoff ill-fit even for the lowest pits of the kingdom, exiled to the fringes to face oblivion.

“Hello?” he asked.
No answer came, just the continued rustling of the tent’s canvas.
“Hello?” A little louder this time.
Something pushed against the tents side from within, absolving that section of ripples. The familiar tear of a zip coming undone tore over the wind, and the disgruntled face of an elderly woman hung above the door’s flap.

“What?” was her response, though more of a statement than a question.

“I’m sorry,” the Outcast said. “I didn’t know if anyone was in there.”

“Well there is,” she said. “What do you want?”
“Nothing in particular. I was just wondering if you lived here.”

She said nothing, and held her gaze.

“I live in a tent much like this one,” he continued, “though mine is much farther away. I wouldn’t have thought it possible to live here like this.”

“Like what?”
“An outcast.”
She snorted. “That’s what I am, is it?”
“I’m sorry, I mean no offence. I admire you.”
“What’s there to admire?”
“You picked a hardy spot to take residence. You must fish.” This seemed to annoy her even further.

“Never fished in my life. Beach’s the only spot I won’t get hassled for. It’s safe here.”

And as though she willed it to be so, the Outcast looked about and found it odd that none were currently frequenting such a pristine beach. The ocean current had created a swell beneath the water’s surface, a colony of gulls spiralling above, dive bombing the dark grey murk to feed on whatever lingered below. The Outcast knew there would also be cod feeding alongside those white specs in the distance.

“If you fish here, you’ll never go hungry,” he said.

“Don’t have a rod. Don’t have bait.”
“You can fashion one.”
“With fucking what?”

There were no trees around, no fallen branches to create with. “Right.”
“Yeah. You done? Can I go back to minding my own business?”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “How do you eat?”

She rolled her eyes. “There’s bins all over the place. Always have food.”
“You scavenge.”
“It ain’t scavenging. I’m not pickin’ berries or nuts. The shit I scrape off my meals when the trucks are empty, you couldn’t even imagine.”

“But why live like this?”

“What?”
“Why stay here?”
Her confusion surpassed reason. “Are you fucking tapped or somethin’? Where else am I gonna go?”
“The forest. I made a life there. It’s not easy, but I survive. You could make your way to me. I could teach you to fish.”
“You really are insane to think I’d go into the woods with a man I don’t know. Jesus, even the ones I had known would have a hard time dragging me out.”
“It would be better than this. You can have your dignity.”
“That was taken from me long before I came here, let me tell ya. You have some nerve. Do they have methadone in this forest of yours?”

The Outcast could not answer.
“What about a clinic with inhalers?”

“...no.”

“But there must be estrogen patches out there, somewhere, right? Under some shrubs?”

The Outcast was mortified by the veil pulled from his shortsightedness. He shook his head, disappointed in himself.

“I’m sorry.”
“You’re not sorry, you’re just fucking ignorant.”
He offered no more words. He slid his pack from his shoulders and dug around until he found his dried fish. There were four full fillets. He grabbed three and extended them to her, an offering by way of apology.

“What do I want leaves for?”
“It’s dried fish, wrapped in herbs.”
“I won’t take them.”
“Please.”
“No. I don’t need any reminders of better things, stranger. Things I can’t have. Now please leave me be.”
She closed her tent.

The pillar of sun across the sand was now no wider than a foot. The air became frigid as the Outcast moved on. It was mid afternoon and the sun had already began to set.

He saw two mammoth steel linked arms breaking the skyline, ahead, one so large it hung past the sands and beyond the water. Light segments clung to their frames, and on their ends wired hooks the size of a person. It was a headless titan, gallantly dressed in armour from a different time, its sole purpose now simply to build.

He reached the canal, a murky thing that smelled of sulphur. A small set of stone stairs brought him to the street that would take him to the bridge. Flashes of blue and red struck him as he emerged, emanating from the farthest end of the bridge. A large gathering of both dwellers and watchers clung to the disturbance as a sole wielder of authority diverted wheeled machines away and further along the canal. The Outcast could see no other bridge.

A barrier of four watchers stood along the bridge’s width at its centre, dissuading any dwellers from crossing, despite it being a route home. Two other watchers at the foot of the bridge were flagging down men carrying bags, pulling them aside to strip them of their possessions in unwarranted searches. One who complained too passionately was pushed against the feeble wood barrier along the canal, bending it like rope.

The Outcast could not be pulled aside in this manner. He had no credentials, no living arrangements, no rights to shield himself with. Whoever they pursued could just as well be him should they choose, should they grow bored of their station. So he strode along the left hand side of the road, averting his gaze from those that drew too close in passing. He could not help casting his eyes toward the watcher’s barrier when he stood adjacent to it, and saw a blood speckled quilt of white lying on the ground in the shape of a man. Some fingers poked out along its edges, ready to pull the quilt away, to stand and walk back where he came from, but the stillness was everlasting. A dark liquid pooled around him. Channels of it streamed their way along the the bridge’s decline towards the Outcast, and in them perfect reflections of those red and blue lights.

The sun was almost gone, and navigating a lightless kingdom would not bode well, even for a dweller with familiarity. Another bridge needed to be found. Quickly.

His pace quickened, depleted suddenly at the realisation that three watchers were walking his way. They had not yet seen him, but their eyes scanned all and branded each dweller with suspicion. Instinct drove him into the nearest alley before he could think to do anything else. It was damp and too dark to see the full extent of its trash heaps, but several large disposal units were suddenly welcome beacons of safety. He placed himself between two of them and waited.

Light spilled into the alley not from the street, but from a door the Outcast had not made out, the sound of heavy machinery deafening, and from that portal sprang the nostalgic hints of cinnamon and sugar, piled atop buttered pastries that would shatter like velvet glass upon touch. Rats scurried past the light as a dweller emerged, his white uniform stained with different sugary concoctions. In both hands was a white tray of plastic, brimming with pastries of various shapes and colours, another row stacked upon them.

He hoisted them to the disposal farthest from the Outcast, where he raised a knee to balance the tray, so that his free hand could pry the black lid to hurl every item that had not yet staled into that cursed chest. The Outcast heard the crust of the final few scrape the against the tray’s edge and his mouth watered. The dweller kept the lid open, and with a sigh turned back to his den of inviting smells. Darkness became all once more, yet the scent lingered.

There were without doubt several he could take for himself. The pile was so large that some must have escaped the desecration of the chest’s filth. He pushed himself away from the wall, and the door opened a second time. And the same dweller repeated himself, items and all.

The light did not reach the Outcast, so he watched in the comfort of the shadows.
The dweller receded once more, and the door closed yet again.
Radio activity corrupted the silence as the three watchers finally broached the canvas of the outer-alley’s reality, the end piece of the dark chasm the Outcast stood within. They stalked by, looking in with bland curiosity, the right edge of that canvas kiting them into darkness.

He pushed from the wall again and stood before the chest, the stench of decomposition somewhat sweetened. He could not know what his hand would clasp as he reached in, so he went slow. As his fingertips broached a warm crust of some sort, the door to the sweet smelling den opened yet again, impossibly, and the Outcast’s bewilderment held him there, frozen.

He saw the dweller jolt in fright.
“Oh Jesus,” he said, breathy. “Hey. What are you doing?”
The Outcast turned towards him, his hands up.
The dweller took him in, his clothes, his face, the act being committed. His head drooped with a sigh, his eyes falling to the third tray of pastries. Shame clouded his features as he looked back to the Outcast.

“You shouldn’t be back here,” he said.
“I didn’t mean to be,” the Outcast replied. “Should you be throwing all that out?”
He gestured to the tray.
“Should you be digging through our waste? You can be arrested for that.”
“Waste,” the Outcast repeated, the word falling from his mouth.
“You know what I mean. Look, let’s not make a thing of this. It’s company policy. Here,” he

said, extending the tray towards him. “Take some, and then don’t come back here again. I’ve no interest in putting a lock on that disposal. ”

The Outcast’s desire for them was marred by the senselessness of it all, but he would save what he could. He grabbed four perfectly browned circles encrusted in jewelled sugar and turned away from the dweller in disgust. What shame the baker must carry who must discard the labours of their love, and with it the gift to feed.

“Don’t tell anybody I gave you those,” the dweller called. “I could lose my job.”
The Outcast turned back to him. “And who would I tell?”
The dweller did not answer, and watched as the Outcast exited the folds of that narrow alley, where the air retained less offence to the lungs.
The Outcast packed everything he took but one, a weighty thing topped with lavish creams. It crinkled as he cupped it, still fresh by any standard. He could not remember when he had last eaten such a thing, likely during a time of excess, when the purity of its presence now could not have been fathomed.

He took a bite. His insular cortex screamed. The floodgates of the salivary glands crumbled. It stole the power from his legs, his feet congealing to the pavement. Anger could not exist in place of this. Only pity. He was a child again, standing in a world dissolving against the joy of renewed youth.

The euphoria clung to him as he finished the last bites, and the world slowly came back into focus. To think there might be passive consumption of such an edible boon was shocking, but few things had been less so thus far.

He turned his attention to the canal. Segments of sloped banks poked their way beyond the threshold of the kingdom’s design, silted muck plastered in grimy reeds. There was a point not too far where both sides of the canal’s banks came close to meeting, only apart by the length of his own body. He knew it unwise, that drenching himself moments before the beginning of a winter’s night would put him at risk, but time was critical. He believed he could jump it, but discarded the notion immediately. A broken ankle would be his end.

Who would come for him? Who would mend him so that he may leave?

Drenched clothes would surely kill him, so he began to strip, starting with his jacket and top. His days of running through the forest and exercising frequently provided him a commendable physique.

“What’s that about?” someone called out.
He stopped, looking back towards the road, above. No one was there.
“Over here.”
He looked across, and still no one was there.
“On your right.”
On the water was a fisherman, sitting low in a wooden dinghy. The Outcast had not made him out behind the wall of reeds. The man looked as perplexed as he was amused, older than the Outcast, a grey beard wider than the circumference of his face. The dinghy’s sides kept a very small distance between themselves and the banks.

“Yes, hello!” he said with a quick wave. “There’s a beach just down the way if you’re looking to swim. Bit mucky here.”

“I mean to cross,” the Outcast said.

“Ah.” The fisherman looked back towards the bridge some hundred feet back, its center still ablaze by the lights of authority. “Ahhh okay. I see.” He turned back to the Outcast and eyed him more thoughtfully, wagering intent and the road it walked. “You live north side?”

“No.”
“You in some kinda trouble?”
“One could say.”
“Any kinda trouble with them?” he gestured back to the bridge.
“No.”
The fisherman nodded absently, tugging his beard.
“You’ve never been north, have ya?”
The Outcast shook his head.
“Yeah. Anyone who has wouldn’t be too keen drowning themselves to get back.”

“Someone took something belonging to me. I need it back.”
“Is it worth your life?”
“It is.”
“Well then hop in, fella. I’ll take you down the canal. There’s a ladder just beyond the bridge back there. Climbing that’s gonna be a lot nicer than sliding in the mud.”

“If it’s not too much trouble.”

The fisherman frowned. “I don’t think I’m helping you out, if I’m bein’ honest. But I’ll keep ya outta the water. Mind throwing your clothes back on?”

The Outcast refit himself and took an awkward step aboard the would be ferry, aided by the grip of one who spent near a lifetime of wrangling creatures of vast depths. With a quick pull of the motor they were off. By necessity, the fisherman would have to steer the boat away from the banks by hand, pushing land away like a gentle giant.

“Have you come far?” The Fisherman asked.
“Yes. Very. I live in the forests to the south, where the highways run through.”
The Fisherman whistled. “Not an easy life, is it?”
“I fare better than others, it seems.”
“Now that’s a good attitude. I feel the same. I call a small shack home, just by the ocean a good ways south. I’m of the water.”
“Were you raised here?” The Outcast asked.
They came to the bridge, and the Fisherman suggested silence by bringing his finger to his concealed lips. Radio distortion blared above disinterested voices outlining procedures for the deceased. Laughter broke out in some spaces, and suggestions for future activities. Once they passed, the Fisherman sighed.

“No,” he said. “My pop’s homeland is on the other side of the world. This place is just one of many, and I can’t say truthfully whether I wanna stay or not. It’s a sorrowful place, but I’ll tell ya this...it’s a helluva lot safer here than some others. I reckon I take comfort in knowing I can leave whenever I want, and that keeps me put. Easier when you’re on your own. You got anybody?”

The Outcast shook his head.

“I’m sorry to hear it. I thought I might persuade you to turn back from whatever you’re after, but...well, you hold onto it, whatever it is. Can I ask what it is?”

“It was a gift.”
The Fisherman nodded, seeming to understand the implication.
“And who took it?”
“A fool.”
“I don’t envy the encounter, from either end. It frightens me to think of the desperation one’s gotta feel to take something that would compel a journey like yours. Or maybe it’s just wickedness as a symptom of desperation. Hard to say. And you know where the sorry soul is?”

“Before he robbed me he spoke of a stone tower bathed in light, somewhere north by the ocean.”

“You can’t go there.”

The Fisherman gave up on steering, his hands gripping his knees, a sternness had come into him that was not present before.

“Why not?”

And the Fisherman shook his head. “My god. You would have gone there without knowing.”

“Tell me.”

“It’s a prison disguised as salvation. The powers that be in the south got tired of the sick and desperate dirtying their air, so they erected a hollow block, this tower you said, and made out like it’s a paradise that would shelter anyone who had nothing to their name. And to get in you’ve to give your name, and then that ain’t yours, either. You commit yourself to a program that looks to house and shape you. You can’t leave. Eighty stories packing refugees and homeless into concrete slabs and asking for thanks. They don’t tend to their sicknesses or ailments. They feed ‘em scraps. And they keep them there on the promise that help will eventually come, that they’ll rehabilitate ‘em, make ‘em fit for their society once more. But when I’m making my rounds along the shore, the only ones I see leave are either escorted by police or those psych ward cronies. And then there’s the jumpers. Jesus. Sometimes I see fire licking the sides of the building from a few windows, and eventually that too gets snuffed. It’s riddled with unqualified strongmen who get off on beating the defenceless when they’re meant to maintain order. It’s a...fucking meat grinder! A pocket of hell wrapped in glass and stone. A vertical city of the damned. If you go in there, my friend, I can promise that you ain’t comin’ out. They won’t let ya.”

It would have been a lie the Outcast told himself to say he was not disturbed, how such a thing was not the visage of a waking nightmare lurking among the comfort of his thoughts. It would be easy to ask the Fisherman to keep going until they met the ocean, to break out and head south once more.

But there was the signature upon his lost treasure. A note from a different world. He thought briefly of living his life without it and it simply was not possible.

“How do you know any of this?”
The Fisherman shook his head once more, continuing his paddle.
“I got out,” he said. “And I’ll speak no more of it.”
They arrived at the ladder, dark rusted rungs sitting atop a small stone port.
The Outcast looked to the Fisherman, his features in protest.
“I can take you back. Drop you just along the southern shore. You can make peace with the loss on your own time and keep yourself. You can keep yourself.”
The Outcast stepped out of the boat.
“Thank you,” he told the Fisherman, “but it isn’t a choice.”
The Fisherman tugged on his beard. He bent forward to open a container the Outcast could not see, and came up with a thick, weighted stick of some kind.
“Here,” he said, “it’s a priest. I knock fish with it once I reel ‘em in. It’s clean.”
The instrument was thickest at its end, the handle indented with grooves for the fingers.

The Outcast took a moment to consider.
“Night is here, friend. You won’t be allowed to take this into the tower, but you’ll need it to get there. Take it. I have others.”
The Fisherman leaned further as the Outcast bent to accept the gift. Its weight was considerable for something so small.
“And don’t thank me for it,” the Fisherman said. “I’ve done nothing but enable you so far and I think it’ll be the death of ya. I hope you have no use for it, but better to be with than without up there.” The Fisherman pushed away. “I wish you luck, even if it doesn’t exist where you’re going. I’ll pray it finds you. All the best, traveller.”

“And to you, Fisherman. Let the waters be kind.”

He watched the ferryman shrink from sight down that flooded concrete valley until he was no more, veering away to greater waters and purposes the Outcast could only speculate.

There was a silence spilling from above, a dereliction of communal space that he felt would hone on him the moment he produced himself, but he climbed regardless.

He was met by a row of older buildings used by dwellers to conduct less modern means of business, columns of discoloured stone propping sheltered walkways towards their main entrances, now gated by rusted metal barriers. They suffered the waning vibrance of poor juvenile artistry from a time that has now stripped the offenders of youth, their messages unclear and altogether alien. None walked the streets, and the Outcast knew there to be a reason for that. He brought himself out of the open quickly, scurrying along the row of buildings like a mouse, veering into shadows whenever they presented themselves.

He made his way back towards the ocean, buffered not by sands but by sharp, pointed fences restricting access to trash. There was no other word for it. Beyond those fences were the remains of a modernity that had lost its fashion, technology and furniture heaped to form small mounds within a horrid landscape. It maintained itself in a strip stretching north, eventually veering west to follow an industrial road. The mounds were larger at that corner, and from them sprung the tower of stone.

It stood solitary against an empty sky, a spire with a jagged peak, crowned in a wreathe of industry, those metal arms forever immobile.

The Outcast assumed the road would circumvent the landfill, to a vacant lot that would surround the tower as badlands do a mesa, but the path ended abruptly against a larger gate, access permitted for industrial carts, only.

Through the landfill, then.

He backtracked briefly, eyeing points along the fence where contents of the landfill threatened to spill over, pushing against and seemingly bending the bars. It was difficult to see at night, but the frills of the fabric jewel he sought for could not be denied, rolled and stuffed between a series of broken wood cupboards. He pulled at it, disturbing dust pockets and wooden debris, shaking it back and forth like a dog with its kill. It seemed to be stuck as it came out halfway. The Outcast propped a foot against one of the fence’s many bars and heaved with all his strength, until finally the landfill deemed him worthy of its wool Excalibur and released. He fell upon the ground, cradling the discarded rug in his arms.

As he stood to unfurl it, a clattering in the deeper nooks of the landfill held him at bay, his eyes roaming the heaps for anyone or thing that might be lurking, but all was still and he could hold his breath no longer. He draped the rug over the pointed fence, testing its resilience against the jagged metal by hanging from it for a moment. Nothing punctured.

He stepped back to make a commendable leap, and saw from the distance taken that the rug was that of a child’s, its surface a cartoonish depiction of a town, an emphasis put on its many roads for the purpose of toy vehicles. He leapt upon it, hoisting himself above and over the fence, the rug’s sturdiness absolving him of any discomfort. He landed in a compost of sheet plastic and flimsy cardboard, coughing against the cloak of dust settling upon him. He pulled the rug back and tucked it beneath his arm.

Though the street lights were shoddy, they stole the immediate adjustment of sight within that dark space. He stood and waited, eyeing the darkness until the vagueness of all shapes before him became tangible, a graveyard of glass and steel. Spaces had been carved throughout the landfill for those wishing to make additions to the phalanx of waste. The Outcast hesitated to call them paths, but he made his way to the nearest one just the same. Coarse glass crunched beneath his feet as he walked, his foot slipping against material pretending to be ground.

All beneath him was shadow. Depth was impossible to wager, and with his last step he dropped roughly three feet. The realisation of nothing existing beneath his foot was an adrenal binge. A moment of panic, the fall seemingly eternal, a shapeless void ready to take him entirely. But ground did come to him, quickly and without prejudice, the momentum of his upper half careening him forwards in a spill that would have been more damaging had he not used the rug to break the fall.

The noise stirred more commotion, and urgent voices from no clear direction drawing nearer.
“Where?” he heard someone say, angered and frantic. A man’s voice.
“Here. Here.” This one a woman’s.
And the sound of the scuffling became more distinct.
The Outcast would not risk a confrontation. Frantic voices approaching him from the shadows of such a place spurred quick action. He unfurled the rug and draped it over himself, pushing as far and quietly as possible into a corner comprised of a lone car door and a pile of drywall. He curled the top of the fabrics to hide his hand.

Steps drew near. He held his breath.

“Here?” the man asked.
He heard nothing from the woman. “You’re sure?”

Again nothing.

“Right...right. Probably heard us coming. Fuck. Probably has good shoes if he got away that quickly. Come on. He’s stuck if he went this way.”

More steps from one pair of feet, walking not away but towards him.
“What are you doing?” the man asked.
A hand pressed against the rug, right over the space covering his shoulder.
“Whatcha want that for?”
“I had one like it,” the woman said.
The man scoffed. “Come on.”
More steps, receding.
“Got your knife?”
And there was no answer.
They fell away from him in pursuit of nothing. He gave it a moment, then stepped out from that corner, quickly rolled the rug, and sped away in the opposite direction. Fear coalesced with his sense of duty, driving him deeper into the maze of waste. It occurred to him as he rounded the first corner that jumping his original point of entry might have served him better.

He equipped the fisherman’s weapon as he moved and put his self doubt to bed, its weight a concerning comfort.

Three paths forked out to his left, the one furthest to the right a clear deliverance to the side belonging to the stone tower. He heard footsteps once again, less frantic, walking along the opposite side of the trash wall he stood beside, close to his hiding space.

“...might be hearing things,” the man said. “Good exercise either way.” No response.
“What? What is it?”
A murmur, something the Outcast could not hear.

“What?”
“The rug is gone,” said the woman.
Their footsteps exploded in haste, bare soles slapping the dusted ground. The Outcast ran.

By the encroaching darkness or his fear, the walls of waste appeared to reach out as he moved, distance between the walls growing thinner with every stride. Sharp objects nipped at his coat and pants. Had he been cut, he did not feel it.

He chose not to look back as he arrived at the fence, the ground before it clear of any obstruction. He threw the rug over the pointed guards and launched himself upward. He felt something clasp the hem of his pants as he flung both feet upwards and over, falling violently into a leaf cushioned thicket. The air was stolen from his lungs, and he felt content enough in his escape to continue suffering in that space, until the wretched pale arm of his pursuer stretched out beyond the fence’s bars towards him.

He scurried away, kicking at it, the person it belonged to obscured by the rug.
They gave up and pulled the rug from the fence.
It was the man, a skeletal creature of ill means wielding a rusted blade, his clothes a greased assortment of rags. He presented the rug to the woman, whose own complexion and attire were of similar value, also wielding a rusted blade. Her belly protruded a great deal, swollen by the unborn child resting within.

They looked upon the Outcast with wide, jaundiced eyes, a hateful fear enrapturing their features. Without a word they turned and disappeared once more into the many hovels of that collected waste.

The end drew near. The tower’s light was the apocalypse flame and he the enraptured moth, inching nearer, and no hypnotic allure to dispel the dread. He found himself on a flat plane of concrete after cresting the hill of the ditch, confronted by a series of steel pillars, each a dual edged host for white, crackling light. Painted borders marked spaces for dweller engines and their wheeled bodies, though none occupied the space presently. The tower’s architects ordained by some misguided notion that its inhabitants would possess the means for such devices. Or perhaps it was not for them. Regardless of intent, it remained empty, and the effort to conjure such a space for nothing was yet another omission of the kingdom’s usefulness in the greater span of all things.

The walk across that liminal space incurred nothing of worth. The Outcast felt himself a ghost walking beneath those lights, lost between the many rows of steel pillars propping a cosmic ceiling, a grand hall that saw no end and held no hearth for journey’s end. But the lights proved finite, his tangibility returning as he stood before the glass gates of the tower, a single cubicle of black centred at its lowest point.

A man and woman sat on opposing ends of a heightened security stall, two empty laneways divided by metal stretching before and beyond them. The Outcast approached the left side, occupied by the woman. Both gatekeepers looked to him with blank faces, eyes dead like fish. Two inches of glass separated The Outcast from the woman, her black uniform pristine. She spoke through a circular cutout inlaid with mesh, distorting her tone, masking her humanity.

“Name?” she asked, not looking to him, equipping forms of consignment.
At a glance, the Outcast saw her name branded on a gold bar, pinned to her breast. Alice.

He stammered. “I...I’m not looking for admission. I need to find someone.”
“Name,” she said again, unvexed, the pen in hand poised like a carving.
“I just need to know if someone I know came through here,” he said.
“Sir, if you have no intent on cooperating, please remove yourself from the premises. Any and all disruptions will be met with force.”
He looked back towards the man who sat across from her. He too paid him no mind, writing who knew what on another form.
Uncouth displays of humanity had no doubt curbed their empathy.
“Please,” he said, after turning back. “Alice.”
Her eyes left the paper and found his, still cold and unflinching.
“I know how I look. But I’m begging you to look a little deeper. I’m not broken just yet. I have a life. I’m here because something was taken from me by someone I believe is here. I only want to ask for its return. Nothing else.”

She sighed.
“You want to file a stolen property report?”
“No. There’s no need. If the person I’m looking for is in there, and he still has what’s mine, he’ll give it back without issue.”
She sighed again, wagging the pen in thought. She let it drop.
“Okay. What’s his name, then?”
“Damien West. He would have been wearing formal attire. Business attire.” She nodded.

“I remember him. Came last night. We thought he was lost.”

“He is.”
She tapped the forms before her, looking to her partner. “Hey, Gordon.”

The Outcast looked to the man, who maintained focus on whatever he was writing. “Yeah, go on,” he said. “I’ll hold ‘er down.”
Alice produced a keycard and motioned her head towards the entrance. “Let’s go.”
She brought him through the impenetrable glass partition, two magnetically sealed slabs of glass separating at the swipe of her card.
The tower’s entrance hall was high vaulted and grey, the dark quarry stone accented only by that which cut it. Bars of light hung from chains, and between two black doorways rested a registry station, manned by a woman bathing in the glow of a large screen device. The reflection of the screen on her rimmed spectacles hid her eyes. She turned to Alice as they approached.

“Who’s this?”

“Don’t worry about it,” Alice said. “There’s a bit of a non-situation, here. I need the room number of the guy we took in last night.” She turned to the Outcast. “Damien?”

He nodded.
“Damien,” she affirmed.
“Mhm,” the other woman said.
A series of clacks followed, and a change in the colour reflecting from her glasses. “11B.”
“Thanks, Tess.”
The clacking continued, and Tess fell once more into the digital plane before her. The Outcast was led into a narrow hallway outfitted with extensive security features, operated by five armed guards, padded in black armour and masked with dark visored helmets. None turned or spoke to him as he walked.

“Any weapons on you?” Alice asked.
“Oh.”
The Outcast produced the priest. All five watchmen looked to him, statuesque, waiting. “For protection along the way,” The Outcast said, offering it to Alice.
The nearest watchmen produced a plastic compartment and held it before him.
“In there,” Alice said. “You’ll get it back.”
He surrendered it.
“That all? Anything else you might have is only gonna get you hurt.”
“That’s all.”
“Onwards, then.”
They passed through two peculiar frames, each one thrumming with a distinct energy. A brief, grating siren erupted as Alice passed through, but remained silent for the Outcast. Of the two doors on each end of the hall, Alice chose the right.

The base level of the tower’s center was an artificial courtyard, decorated by a small series of moss enveloped boulders. They sat in a shallow pool of water, surrounded by an archipelago of black soil islands exploding with ferns. Bars of light hung above it in a wreathe, intersected randomly. Above the lights were nets. The space above the courtyard continued throughout all the floors, and the Outcast could look up and see directly the unfinished floors as tiny incompletions in the distance. Human shapes lingered beyond the edge of those walkways, shadowed points marking separate floors, some in twos, most alone.

They entered a carriage of steel to the courtyard’s right, grafted in cables hanging from the depths of a shaft, above. Its doors closed and they ascended. A transparent back wall offered nothing but darkness until they broke free of the carriage’s port. Each level mimicked the other, stone walkways hosting a series of yellow doors. Their only discerning features were those instilled by their residents: coloured banners and cloth suggesting tribal turfs, walls for certain complexes completely missing to allow spaces for stalls and markets for contraband, and wires descending to lower levels as a method of delivery. One such package slid across the open space as they passed the eight level.

The Outcast looked to Alice, who remained uninterested.
“Amazing what they’re capable,” she said.
He looked to her, unsure of what she meant.
“Their kind. Vagrants, addicts...broken people with nothing to lose. When they’re put together they role play the birth of society. They form tribes, trade, elect leaders.”

“Prisons will do that,” the Outcast said.

“It wasn’t always,” Alice said, unabashed by the label. “It was a good place when there were only twenty levels available...so I was told. Too many people now. Too much ground. Not enough of us to cover it all.”

“But you keep building.”

“Those cranes haven’t moved in weeks,” she said. “Nobody can get to them. The power cuts out after the thirtieth level. Everything between that and the eightieth is no man’s land. We don’t know how they’ve been living without our food drops. Most of us think they have gardens in the eastern and western blocks. Any of us who’ve walked the higher levels haven’t come back, so we do what we can for those in the lower levels. But things slip through.” She regarded the Outcast. “I’m sure you know.”

“Yes.”
They arrived on the 11th level. The stench of metal filled the carriageway as the doors parted.
“Jesus,” Alice said, equipping her baton.
Blood had run free before them, dripping into the elevator shaft.
Alice raised her hand and held him back within the carriage as she inspected the walkway.

None walked the halls. The carriageway’s movement likely warned loiterers to scatter. Traces of blood led away from a complex to the left, and before its door a chaotic pattern of streaked footprints, bloodied feet a makeshift brush on a stone canvas.

“Stay with me,” Alice said. “Don’t think about running off.”

All door signs were free of blood, 11B being the only exception. Alice presented a card against a black matte surface. A green light blipped and the yellow door slid aside. From the coagulated pool of blood piled against the other side, it was apparent that whoever it came from was unquestionably dead. The space itself was a single box room of no great measure, a hollow nook fit with a bed, an open toilet, several compartments along the wall and a shelf.

A slumped form resided at the head of the bed, a bloodied duvet covering it. A section of wall lay on the floor before the bed, a steel bar protruding from it like a mace. Bits of flesh still clung to it.

Alice backed away, pulling a black device from her hip. Static erupted as she pressed a button.
“I need a clean up crew at 11B. Bring enforcers.”
“Copy,” was the only reply.
She sheathed the communication tool and sighed.
“Don’t move,” she told the Outcast. “I need to call someone. Jesus Christ.”
She stepped out.
He did not linger. Once her back was turned, he brought himself before the bloodied mass and drew back the sheet. The natural points that define a face simply were not there. It was a fatal deconstruction, and the artistry of the act kept by the maker. What remained of the hair was unfamiliar, and though the clothes did seem formal, the congealed blood was too transformative. He might have been looking down on an animal that failed to outrun its predator. What he did recognise was Damien’s brown leather satchel, tossed and deflated against the corner beside the toilet. He opened it quickly. Everything belonging to the boy had been stripped and taken, all of his shiny tokens and the dead devices he would keep from the rain.

All things but one. A dusted trinket with a worn spine and sun kissed pages, an aged book bound in leather, the first edition of a contemporary master now long dead, worth more than anyone such as himself could think to spend.

The item’s attributes and worth were nothing to him.

He opened the cover. On the page before the author’s signature was the note that had brought him so far, text that felt both ancient and new upon every reading. It was an affirmation of his past and all the self that had been stricken by loss and time, written with a love now absent, its faint traces echoed only by the curvature of every letter.

He placed it in his bag delicately and stepped outside. Alice stood before a platoon of people dressed in both hazmat suits and riot gear. She gestured to him and spoke to three armed guards. They nodded and advanced on him.

“Wait,” he said, as they drew near. He looked to Alice, who had turned her back on him. “What’s happening?”

Two of them grabbed a shoulder each. Their strength caused his feet to hover for a moment.

“Alice!” he called, but she did not turn back. “Be quiet,” the guard to his left said.

“I haven’t done anything.”
“Be quiet,” he said again.
“Don’t give us a reason. Just shut your mouth,” the guard at the rear said.
They brought him to a locked stairwell and guided him down the Tower’s stairs. He counted eleven flights, and was ready to be brought to the entrance and released, until they forced him down a last and final flight, into the first of the Tower’s many sub levels.

They continued hauling him through a maze of featureless hallways, the walls broken up every so often by unmarked doors. The Outcast could only speculate as to who or what lay beyond them, as no other sound but the shuffling of his own person filled that space. He did not know how well he could suffer such confined isolation, but he dared not speak.

They rounded a final corner, just before the disorientation of such a liminal space could set in, and made way to a larger double door at the hallway’s end.

He was pushed through, and the cold air of a winter’s night struck his face. Before him was a ramp leading to the ground floor, a delivery truck to his left.

“Don’t come back,” one of the guards said, before slamming both doors shut.

Cold and shaken, he climbed the stone ramp and emerged into a grey night, the world around him pixelated by the soft flurry of light snow. The lot he stood in was gated, with only one road that seemed to wrap around the building towards the entrance. But towards the back, where a rusted gate divided the concrete from sanded hills, he heard the faint crashing of waves against a frozen shore.

He managed to pull the corner of the farthest grating from its post and slunk beyond it. Snow had not yet begun to collect, but the sands fell through his hands like coarse frost as he climbed.

A black ocean greeted him, its horizon speckled with the undulating lights of vessels far in the distance. An upturned dinghy lay along the bank towards the south, its bow sunk beneath the flat sand. Whether abandoned or forgotten, the Outcast gave thanks as he plucked the vessel from its sandy mould and saw that it was intact, its wet oars resting within.

The ocean accepted him without complaint and brought him south, away from the Tower, past the canal, and well beyond the shores lining the Kingdom’s edge. The stone facades began to dissipate, replaced by tree lines and homes.

His arms and back finally grew tired and he stopped, vowing to continue once the cold set in again. As he gathered his breath, he turned to see an isolated pier shrouded by stone and wood, a single boat resting before a modest shack. Smoke pilfered from its tiny chimney, and the light hanging above the door gave a quiet warmth to the onslaught of snow.

The cold took him quickly, as did the hunger and fatigue, but there was a purity in the sight before him that he could not bring himself to disturb just yet.

And so he sat for a while, adrift in that soundless ocean, content to give witness to a beauty that otherwise would have gone unseen.