Tenth Man

by Tamara Sheehan

Chapter 11

Toven sat perched on the edge of the chair, picking crumbs off the table long after Saul had gone to his room and closed the door.

When all the crumbs were gone, he rose, went to the makeshift bed and looked down at the work. The neat comforter, plump pillows, the clean smelling sheets carefully arranged. A pair of jogging pants were laid out for him to sleep in. He looked back at the food on the table. Slowly, he looked over his shoulder at the door to Saul’s room.

But Saul wasn’t watching him. The door was shut tight, the light under the door was gone. No one was watching him. The cat jumped onto the pillows and lay down. He scratched at it absently.

“Takes in strays a lot, this guy?” he asked.

It seemed as if the cat grinned at him.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.”

Toven left the cat to the pillows, and went to the kitchen. A slice of bread from the bag, another mouthful of milk from the container. Carefully and quietly, he put everything back where he had found it. Then he tucked the bread into a pocket of Saul’s jeans, pulled the heavy comforter free of the couch cushions and dragged it to the bathroom.

Some distant part of him remembered the pleasure of being clean, but he was beginning to wish he hadn’t showered. His skin itched madly, his hands and face buzzed from the unaccustomed heat. His nails had grown long and yellow. He’d cut them and now they scratched any exposed flesh they touched.

He had become Toven Audel again. He had explored the altered geography of his face and cringed at the sight of his teeth. His hair came out in clumps in the shower. Something worrying and white had taken up residence close to his scalp. He’d been repulsed, revolted, scrubbed until his skin was pink and raw.

And now it seemed the entire surface of his body hurt. Here, among the objects of a life half-forgotten, he felt mortal, more human than he wanted to be. He avoided the mirror, turned off the lights and lay down.

The filth that had covered him had been a second skin. Without it he was merely himself, undergrown and afraid. The filth had been shield and sword, madness and sanity. No one would touch him, no one would eat what he ate, sleep where he slept. The tunnels had been his alone. He had been lord of a long, dark manor.

All that he had shed. It was Saul who had convinced him, whose features had awakened something in him. The promise of air, of food, of the vast, rolling surface of the world had been intoxication. The part of him washed off and winding its way back into the sewers was the part that belonged there. Some of him wanted to plunge down after it, curl up in the darkness and be lost, some of him knew hiding was no longer possible. Things had changed.

He could feel his body readjusting to the rhythm of upper world and city. He heard the vibration of voices, of feet in the hall beyond the apartment, heard the steadily rising wave of sound that was a hymn of work as commuters went to work. He felt all the awe and overload that had made him laugh like a fool a few hours ago becoming remembrance of things mundane: Of colors that were neither grey nor red. Of smells that were not wet and sour. Of desires not limited to food.

He had changed, not the world. It was the same Verusa that had sent him into the sewers in the first place. Still at war with Shier over some unremembered slight, still a one-company town. Somewhere, the mayor was standing in sock feet and underwear while the weathermen chattered, somewhere students piled onto yellow school buses. Stores opened. Bars closed. Edward Audel had entered his office at Audel Corp, even as a thousand of his drones were humming on the roads toward the factory.

Toven turned over. The thought of his father stripped the desire to sleep from him. He wrapped his head in his arms to block out the bar of light seeping under the bathroom door. Without the dark, the finite tunnels, the echoing of water, he felt helpless and exposed. He knew, whatever Saul said about it, the world of people, light and air, the upper world, was no safe place.

Pressing his back against the cold tub he inhaled the smell of the place. Water, chemical, urine, garbage slowly decomposing in a nearby bin, these smells so slight but familiar, just enough to comfort. The bathroom shut out most of the city light. Sounds echoed off the glossy walls. It only wanted the distant boom of water, the soft patter of raccoon and rat feet.

Toven closed his eyes, his hand resting on the piece of bread in his pocket, and imagined home.

Proceed to chapter 12...