DT 2022: In The Mud

The midday Argus sun burned down on the parade grounds of Camp Ambrose. A summer breeze rolled over the high permacrete security walls and fostered cool air wherever there was shade.
While most children loitered together under sunlight during recess from the hardships of physical training and remedial education, a brown-haired girl kneeled against a shady security wall alone. Her index finger drew in the thick, malleable mud after a rainstorm from the night before – pictures of things she left behind for forever.
A trio of stick figures in front of a house. Mom. Dad. Andra. Andra rubbed her fist into the cool earth, her parents and childhood home vanished from the scene leaving a lonely little girl. She added a landscape diorama – a deep temperate forest and mountains in the distance. She saw this landscape once upon arriving on the human colony of Argus V but not since entering the training camp.
Andra’s stick figure stood beneath the trees and the mountains. Beneath her stick figure, she outlined a boxy polygon and drew in smaller boxes marking locations with circles and X’s for places of interest. She added a UNSC freighter, the Give Me More, over the mountains.
Andra noted the wall’s shadow above her grew slightly darker but refused to acknowledge the change. The shadow acknowledged for her instead. “Is that a map of Camp Ambrose?”
The girl squinted against sunlight up at the new shadow and noticed a boy with black hair. Glancing back to her amateur art piece, Andra released a nondescript huff. She acknowledged his presence but not his person. Like other curious children, he would leave eventually from disinterest.
“Your name’s Andra, right?”
Andra thought the question was silly. It was impossible to hide the Andra-D054 stenciled across the chest of her tan tee shirt. Just like the Merlin-D032 stenciled across the boy’s tee.
She huffed once more. Go away, boy. I don’t want you here. And what kind of name is Merlin anyway?
“I like your drawing.”
Andra’s eye twitched and glanced back at the boy kneeling over her work. She pulled her finger from the mud and raised herself against the security wall… In case he did something… The girl finally spoke in her shaky, underused voice. “What do you want from me?”
“Oh. Nothing.”
“Everyone wants something,” Andra challenged back.
Merlin took a step back and shook his open hand in a sheepish placation. “I was just curious what you were doing. Honest.”
Andra huffed, adding a full breathing cycle as she kept her speedy heart from stealing her words.
“Well… You’ve seen it. You can leave now.”
The boy would take offense now. That’s what boys did when told to go away.
Or sometimes they didn’t? “But I haven’t introduced myself yet. Hi, I’m Merlin.”
Andra tried to yell at the boy again, raising her dirty fist in exclamation. She opened her mouth but only a shaky gasp came from her lips. She lost her words again.
The boy blinked in confusion.
“Umm. You, okay? You look a little sick…”
Andra’s eyes squinted at the boy but she closed her mouth and said nothing more, sliding back down to her drawing spot.
“I’ll stay… I don’t think the adults want any of us sick,” the Merlin boy continued. “And you look lonely.”
Andra felt her eyebrows tightly knit in frustration as she clicked her teeth together. She couldn’t in her frustration, pick the words she wanted to say. But she could feel the bubbling, familiar rage, and the color of her emotions. This would end the same way it always did.
Merlin harassed her like all the bullies pretending to be nice from the orphanage. At least she wouldn’t be responsible for hurting the boy without provocation. She knew his type. She would still give him a chance to go away. Instead, Andra practiced her breathing exercise Doctor Romero taught her. She sucked in a deep breath into her nostrils, ballooned her cheeks, and counted upwards as far as she could.
The boy continued, “I don’t think I’m allowed to use my surname. The adults said we can’t use it anymore. But they didn’t say we couldn’t talk about where we came from. I’m from Ballast, where are you from?”
Andra tried to shut her eyes to Merlin’s stupid questions, at least to help her breathing. Covering her ears wouldn’t block out his voice. Sigma Octanus IV. Get lost. You should know better. Nine. Ten. Eleven…
“Did you know the Office of Naval Intelligence was the one who recruited us for the Spartans? My parents used to work for them before they died… What did your parents do?”
Andra’s eyes opened but her eyes didn’t focus on Merlin or her artwork. She saw something else. A familiar face. An adult man with a scruffy beard, puffy eye lids, and blue eyes like hers. Dad. Dad. He left her behind. The girl’s heart raced faster and the color of her mind turned red with blood.
Andra lost her number count. She clenched her fist even as vivid ideas flashed into her mind. Andra stuck her finger into the mud and drew another stick figure next to her own. She extended a hand from her figure towards the other. Merlin. She wrote out the word BLAM into the mud beneath the diorama.
“Come on, you haven’t answered any of my questions… What are you drawing now? Is that me?”
Yes. It is.
Andra pulled her muddy hand from the dirt, lurching forward, and threw it at Merlin’s face. The dirt flew from her dirty fingers and Merlin threw up panicked hands to cover his eyes. Andra’s fist connected against his fleshy wrists causing the boy to trip over into the mud with a pained yelp.
“Hey, what are you doing—”
Andra jumped Merlin and tried to slap and punch his face as he tried to swat and scratch her arms away from his body. She released a feral scream from her lips, reclaiming her lost voice.
“What am I doing?” Andra screeched. She didn’t really know. She just knew her bully, and her anger.
Merlin grunted in desperate defense and pushed Andra off his stomach with a two-legged kick to her back and stamping her shirt with a mud cake.
“No. What’s wrong with you? You’re crazy!”
She flew over him with an awkward stomp but clung to his arms as he threw a fist back at her cheek. She leaned into the punch, attempting to regain control of her enemy by grappling around his neck and waist. A voice from a distant memory called out to her, taunting her. “Your mother didn’t love us. She didn’t love you. We should not have had you. You would be better off dead. I don’t love you…”
Andra muttered to herself even as she pressed into the boy, her voice growing louder and more enraged. “What am I doing,” she repeated. “My parents died a year ago. My dad shot himself in the head. He left me! You couldn’t understand that. You’re just an idiot asking dumb questions! You should keep your mouth shut!”
Their tussle transformed into a bear hug as Merlin rolled himself over the girl and struggled out, “Can-Can I say sorry?”
“No!” Andra yelled back and tried to rise but Merlin pressed his grasped hands onto her wrists, slamming her back down. The stun shocked her as her mind reeled at him leaning over her and in control.
Andra gnashed her teeth and bucked at Merlin but he held firm even as his confused and battered face stared down on her.
“Let go of me!”
“Stop hitting me!” Merlin yelled back at the girl even louder.
The struggle between the two kids seem to slow as their muffled grunts parted to the shared and begrudging realization Merlin had effectively won the brawl. It was short, but it was over. Merlin finally saw the once unnoticed tears soaked Andra’s flushed cheeks. Her blue eyes were puffy. Her mouth opened and a different, breathless voice echoed out of Andra like a ghostly whisper.
“He said he didn’t love me… He killed himself and left me alone. I had no one. Why did he leave me?”
Merlin’s grip on Andra’s wrists slackened to nothing. He stepped away from her and tripped backwards into the mud. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what he saw. He said nothing to the trembling girl as the tears rolled down her cheeks. The boy stared on and the drenched girl looked to her crushed mud art with a thousand yard stare.
Neither of the Spartan hopefuls moved as shouting adults rapidly approached, yanking the two apart and began to deliver disciplinary punishments.
Category:Short stories
Category:The Weekly
Category:The Weekly Winners