Achtus 30, 2698....
Morning. The dull, grey-blue light of a winter's morning fell early on the Apshus' household, and the din of early-rising servants was there to meet it. In the kitchen, the soft clinking of pots and pans was overpowered by a fast-talking and jovial staff chirping happily as they crafted a large and hearty breakfast to garner energy for the house staff for the day. Through the swinging kitchen doors and into the polished dining room, the youngest servants of the house carefully aligned place settings for breakfast. Their small hands were covered in warm rags so as to avoid getting greedy fingerprints on the silver metal of the dinnerware, lined up on the table in straight lines of salad forks, dinner forks, polished plates, butter knives, tablespoons, and soup spoons, always winking in the morning light and always in that impeccable order. In the halls, servants made sure that every particle of dust was swept just as it landed, in the bedrooms, handmaids dressed the tired galdor family for the day with deft hands and attentive eyes, in the windows, Thaddeus and his underlings could be seen tending to every blade of grass to ensure that each had the perfect posture, and in the attic, Charlotte M. Bradwick lay on the dusty floorboards just as she had for however many hours she had lost track of.
The floor was rough beneath her cheek, and she could hear the babel of the house as it rose to greet the day through the floors as if she were standing on the shore and listening to the horns of blind ships in a foggy, soupy sea. She had watched the same rat, roughly the size of an average cat, skitter across the floor at least twelve times in the night and had heard the clicking of tiny claws and the chirping of a million rat babies in a nest hidden in the labyrinth of neglected clutter. The clutter had cast strange shapes in the curious light of dawn. Here, Lotta thought she saw the rising shadows of a two-headed Cerberus rising menacingly from behind dusty trunks, and she could only stare back as she watched the hound of Hell stare her down, waiting for her to move, to entice it to catch its prey. Lotta was paralyzed by fatigue, however, and she glared at the dog, begging it to take her body and whip it around if only to remind her a final time what it was like to feel anything except for an all-consuming emptiness. Cerberus eventually retreated, afraid to be whipped if he came any farther into the glaring spotlights of the girl's brown eyes. He was replaced by a terribly fat witch speaking in a wicked tongue that hurt Lotta's ears and brandished a gnarled and twisted broom. The obese witch showed no interest in Lotta and instead climbed onto her broom, weighing it down so much that it could barely crawl across the floor and shook as it attempted to raise her through the window. In the twisted scenes that met her eyes, Lotta expected a boy, both afraid and brave, both terribly sweet and sweetly terrible, to arrive, but the cruel puppeteers of darkness, dawn, and delusion would not allow her the pleasure of seeing her friend, would not allow her one final goodbye.
By morning, Lotta's mind and heart were disconnected from her eyes, ears, nose, fingers, and mouth, and every detail around her was a meaningless observation that was seen, noted, and tasted, but never once comprehended. Night, however, had found her mind and emotions in a constant, self-destructive disarray. She had been led into the house roughly and quickly, scolded and whipped, but she could barely hear the world outside her head as the world inside her head screamed for her to listen. Her anger at Wikus melted with the cold the deeper she walked into the warm fortress of the house, and, as if someone had turned off a faucet of hot water in her body and turned on the faucet of cold water in its place, a sad and empty coldness filled her small body.
The moment she was thrown to the floor of the attic, she did all that she could think to do: Lotta wept. The tears streamed down the side of her face and into her hair uncontrollably, and she felt a sadness she had never felt before. She felt a sadness, a true despondency, for another person. She had made a friend, a truly kind and caring friend, and lost him in an instant. In that same instant, Lotta had felt hope that, for once, things were looking up, hope that, for once, she had made a friend, that for once someone would want to listen to her, and to want more than scolds and orders to be heard by her, that for once someone wanted her to be more than a servant, more than an underling, more than a robot, that for once someone wanted to both see and hear her, that for once someone could see and hear her. And yet, though it may not have been entirely her fault, a guilt of such magnitude that she nearly choked on it gripped her stomach and her mind, latching onto every thought like a malicious virus.
The very last impression Wikus would ever see of her before the rest of a lifetime in the mines would be her spite, her hate, and her anger. One of his final memories of the world outside the dark mines would be that of watching one of his only friends in the world glare at him with a look of pure murderous intentions, and Lotta was unable to apologize, unable to grab his hand in hers to tell him she didn't mean it, unable to wrap an arm around his shoulder and tell him that they would always be best friends, always be together, always have each other's back no matter what, unable to simply tell him once more, or perhaps a hundred times more, that it would be okay. She wanted Wikus to be there when they escaped, when his parents came and swept both of them away, when they found a place somewhere where humans could have the peace and humanity they toiled so hard for but never received. Now, Wikus would never even get to see the sun as it rose over the windowsill, into the attic, and onto Lotta's blank face. She could cry no more, could think no more, could feel no more.
The snow fell. The world turned, and all of Vita continued on as a feeble but persistent flame of hope finally sputtered and died, unnoticed in the grey light of a quiet attic.
