Suprise! : Part Two

“Calm down, calm down. I am not lying to you, this is the truth. I took these pictures myself.”

“No you didn’t.” I said through the tears. “It’s not real, how could you have done such a thing?

“Yes, I did.” He reached into the pile of rubbish and pulled out a gray thing.

“What is that?”

“A camera. I’m going to take your picture, don’t be scared.” A blinding flash went off inside the building and I screamed. The man with the snapmetal finally found me, and was shooting at me. I screamed knowing that I was never going to see Katlyn again. The worst thing about it was that I was going to die here with this lying bastard. Something grabbed my shoulders and shook me. “Look!” I opened my eyes and Justin shoved something into my lap. It was a picture of me. I had my mouth open and my face was a brilliant shade of red from shouting at him earlier.

“No way.” I whispered softly.

“Yes, now do you believe me?”

I believed him alright, there was a Raski, and here was the proof right in front of me, I just didn‘t want to believe it. “Show me more.” We spent the next hour or so looking at each individual picture closely. I became more amazed at the ones he pulled out, and was skeptical when he pulled out one with white rainpillows. They looked like you could float atop them. He said that was what they were supposed to look like. “Rainpillows aren’t white, they’re dark, and ominous, and you rarely see them.” I had told him when I saw the picture, but he insisted that they were like that. I saw a picture of one of the monsters my momma would always talk about when I asked her about the flameyards. “What are those monsters for?” I asked Justin.

“Some people keep them in their slums as a kind of slummate, but most of those go around and eat little things.”

“That’s disgusting.”

“Yea, I didn’t really catch onto the craze.”

I looked him curiously and asked him the one question that I had been dying to ask the entire time I was there. “Why did you come back?”

He sighed. “It’s a long story. The walls of the lifesphere are not open to men from other places. They said that there shouldn’t be scum coming in from the outside. The city of Raski is very beautiful, but they are a very corrupt bunch. People steal from each other everyday, and you can get killed at random wherever you go. You’re always open to danger from anyone and everyone, and I just couldn’t take it.”

“You said that the walls were not open to men, how did you get the pictures? How did you get in there? Are women let in?”

“There was a secret society in Raski called the Sehoe, they let me in through a crack in the walls. No man is in allowed in there from the outside, and if a woman goes in through the regular way, they become what you are now, a whore.”

I don’t know what happened at that moment, but something clicked in me, and a sudden understanding of everything overcame me. “And Katlyn took the back way in so she could be free from everything. What do they believe in? Do they give you protection from everyone?”

“All I can say about the protection is that they will do their best to protect you from the evils in Raski. They believe that a womans body should not be shared with a man unless she wants to. That it should be shared with one, and only one, man in the entire world. She picks the man, and if he wants to, then they can be together.”

Somewhere inside of me, I felt a twinge of hope, a light in the dark. “How would I go about getting there? One side of his mouth twisted up into a smile, “It’s past the flameyards beyond our city, my dear. Very much past them. Are you sure you want to go?”

I thought about it for a moment. “Yes, I do.”

Justin stood up and walked once again, to the pile of rubbish and fished out a quite large piece of paper. “Here, you’ll need this. Just follow it, and you’ll be fine.” I heard a pounding on the door.

“Justin! I know youre in there, open up!” I recognized that voice, it was the man with the snapmetal.” I know you have a little runaway in there, you best give her to me.”

“Quick.” Justin ushered me through the lookout hole, grabbed my knotsack, and said “Go past the flameyards then look at the map, don’t get yourself killed,” he lifted his hand to my face and caressed it gently, “daughter.”