Total pages in book: 89
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 83946 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 420(@200wpm)___ 336(@250wpm)___ 280(@300wpm)
“Well, I’m glad to see your mind is becoming one with The New Order at last,” he says. “Maybe there is still hope to get you married.”
I look down in equal parts shame and relief. I am well past the age of marriage, and also my father’s youngest and last child, and yet remain unmarried. I’ve barely had any suitors. Teachings drilled into me all my life are what causes the deepest of my shame for these failures. I should be in my own household by now, raising a family. Perhaps, a larger part of the shame also comes from knowing I don’t want any of that. Not with the treatment I know I’ll receive from whoever I marry. Not when I know how any children I have will be raised. It’s foolish of me to think that I would marry one of the few kind men that remain on our planet. This thought brings some relief. At least in this household, I know the devil I live with.
“It’s not my fault,” I murmur.
He sighs. “I suppose not. You cannot help the way your eyes are.”
One green and one blue. My different color eyes are seen as a bad omen to the people. I hated it as a child, but now I appreciate the way they keep me safe.
“I’m off, then,” he tells me as he stands. “Remember to recite your tenants before you go to sleep.”
“Of course, father.”
He leaves the dining room and the servants who have stood speechless and frozen the entire meal burst into action, clearing off the table of plates and candles. I get up and walk towards my bedroom with a certain giddiness, knowing I will have a bit of freedom tonight.
I wait at least an hour after I hear the last footsteps through the house before I even dare to open my door and peek into the hallway. Dimmed lights line the corridor, allowing me to see there’s no one roaming. Swallowing, I turn off the lights in my room and exit it, softly closing the door behind me. I go down the back stairwell, knowing my father will have left at least one soldier near the front door, where the main staircase to the basement is.
The staircase winds as it descends thirty steps down. I count them each time I sneak down here. I reach the landing and let my eyes adjust to the darkness, not knowing if the lights turning on are what activate the cameras down here. However, when I’ve remained in the dark the other times I’ve come down here, my father has never said anything to me. So, I always leave the lights off, even though it makes it much harder to navigate and find what I want.
I walk down the long hallway, past rooms I’ve never wanted to ask my father the purpose of. I can guess. He is a scientist by trade, and always looking to understand everything about everything. Even if that means taking something apart to see what’s inside. I’ve sometimes seen animals in these rooms when I came down here, in various states, most of which caused nightmares and nausea.
Once, I even saw a man that had been shown on the news to be a defector. He was whole when I saw him on the bed and I was too afraid to come back down and see what happened to him, so I stayed away from the library for a month. When I next ventured to the library, he was gone and the room was empty once again.
I reach the library and breathe deeply, inhaling the smell of old books. Sweeping my fingers over the spines of some as I walk past the first bookcase, I head towards the one which holds the books I came here for. The thick medical texts sit on the bookshelves that are made of steel instead of wood. Their weight would buckle anything else. I open the book I started when I last came down here a week ago and begin walking towards the table between the bookcases.
Sudden movement out the corner of my eye stills me, though. Fear paralyzes me for a few seconds. Did my father place a soldier down here? Has he set some type of trap for me, just waiting for the next time I dared to come to his prized library? Or is it my father himself, anticipating the moment I look at him and know I’m doomed?
Slowly, I begin to turn my head towards the glass wall that separates the library from another of the basement’s rooms. Dread fills me as I, indeed, take in a figure moving in the darkness. Back and forth, back and forth he goes. But he doesn’t see me, or he doesn’t seem to, anyway. As I begin to see him more clearly, I realize something is different about this man. He’s tall. Taller than any man I have ever seen. His head might touch the ceiling in a regular room if he didn’t bend his neck. His shoulders are too broad, his entire body, really, is too large for the cage my father has him in, but watching him now, I can’t see anything else but his dark silhouette pacing the room.