Hear the City Scream

Phoenix dreaded sleeping. Every night, when his body went still and his mind began to roam, he was transported to a barren field enclosed by a 30 feet tall fence made of electric barbed wire. A middle-aged woman with messy locks of ash-blonde hair was staring at him, frantically mouthing something.

“I can’t hear you!” Phoenix would scream, crawling towards her. As he was about to reach her, an aircraft would appear and two bulky men dressed in blue soldier-like clothes would jump out and grab the woman. She would kick and claw at her abductors, but they’d simply knock her out of consciousness and take her away. A tall, brunette, cloaked woman would then approach Phoenix. She’d hum haunting lullabies in his left ear until the men returned.

“He’s only a child,” the woman would say. “Commence Operation 87XT.” The men would nod and then stick a needle into Phoenix's arm. He’d cry out in pain, then wake up in his bed, panting.

Phoenix had considered telling the director of his cohort about these nightmares, but his instincts told him not to. The ash-blonde-haired woman he saw in his dreams was the same as the one pictured in the heart-shaped locket his director forced him to wear every day.

At first, Phoenix truly thought nothing of the locket or his dreams. He belonged to a cohort of 20 orphaned minors, and they were all required to wear lockets with random faces in them. They’d asked the director many times who these people in the photos were, but the director never answered. Phoenix only confided in one person about his dreams: a girl named Charlotte.

“You can’t make up faces in your dreams,” she’d told him. “So your brain probably copied the woman in your locket and inserted her into your nightmare.” That explanation seemed perfectly logical. Yet Phoenix didn’t understand why the woman in his dreams had a small tattoo of a dove near her ear, and not in the picture. Phoenix opened his locket again later that day and stared at the ear. He realized he could vaguely make out some sort of black mark.

Today, Phoenix was turning 17.

“Does my hair look white yet?” he jokingly asked Charlotte, who was reading a cookbook. She laughed in response. Phoenix smiled; he quite liked it when Charlotte laughed. It made his heart feel as if it were rising in his chest.

“What are you doing for your birthday?” Charlotte asked.

“Hoping I get assigned a fun job. I want to be a traffic engineer, or maybe a chocolatier,” Phoenix replied. He fiddled with his locket and looked at his watch. Three hours until the ceremony.

“Do you mind helping me get ready?” Phoenix asked. Charlotte nodded, and the two of them walked into the communal bathroom. Charlotte washed and combed his hair, then went to his closet and picked out a light blue polo and khakis. Charlotte felt her cheeks redden when Phoenix changed in front of her.

Three hours later, Phoenix was waiting patiently in a lobby for his name to be announced on the intercom.

“Phoenix, child of the country,” an automated voice began. “Please make your way to Office 8793.” Phoenix got up. He sighed heavily before opening the office door. His heart plummeted through the floor and his eyes went agog when he entered. The tall cloaked woman in his dreams was sitting at a desk, typing away on a computer.

“Sit down,” she instructed without meeting his eyes. “Today, you shall be receiving your work assignment. Some assignments require schooling, while others don’t. Let me take a look at your files.” She typed away some more and said nothing except “I see” for the next ten minutes. “Alright, Phoenix. You’re not very academic, as evidenced by your mediocre grades. You’re also not incredibly patient, as remarked by past teachers. This disqualifies you from engineering and cooking, your top choices.” Phoenix felt his eyes start to water. “Truth be told, you’re below average in most aspects, but you are athletic. I’m giving you a choice. You either work in the garbage landfills, or you work as a guard in the prison.” Phoenix stared at the woman who had managed to crush all his dreams in mere seconds.

“I-I’m not sure,” he finally said. The woman met his eyes. She gasped quietly, then quickly composed herself.

“Landfill is easier,” she said.

“I think I would prefer guard, actually.”

“Fine. You’ll work in the North Station,” she replied. “Training starts tomorrow. Go home, pack, and be ready to leave. You’ll be picked up at 8 AM. Goodbye.”

Phoenix left the office, shaken. When he got back to the dorms, Charlotte was patiently sitting on her bed, waiting for him.

“So?” she asked.

“Guard,” he replied. “Charlotte, I start tomorrow.”

“Which Station?” Charlotte asked. “If it’s West, I can visit you.”

“North,” Phoenix responded, his head hanging low. “I think this is goodbye.”

“Don’t say that,” she responded. “Maybe we will be matched to co-parent, maybe I’ll be gu-”

“That’s never going to happen,” Phoenix interrupted.

“Why?” Charlotte asked.

“They don’t match people with someone they have a crush on,” Phoenix whispered.

“A crush?” Charlotte repeated, confused.

“I found it in a dictionary from Before. It’s what you call the person who makes your heart feel weightless. That’s you. You’re my crush.”

Charlotte looked at him blankly for a second, then reached for his hand. Phoenix was surprised but clasped his fingers around her’s.

“You’re my crush too, then,” she said. “I’ll help you pack.”

In the next three hours, the two stuffed over a decade of Phoenix's life into a large duffel bag.

“Are you taking your locket?” Charlotte asked later that night. Phoenix nodded. He felt naked without it at this point. He put it in his bag to be sure not to forget it.

The next morning, Phoenix was picked up by a man in a blue uniform. Something felt so familiar about the uniform, but he couldn’t place it.

“North Station?” the man grunted. “Ridiculous. I’ve told Vegas I need men in West.”

“I can go to West, sir,” Phoenix said, thinking of Charlotte.

“To hell with Vegas’s orders,” he replied. “West it is.”

The drive was short. Pheonix was brought to a large apartment building. “You’ll be living here,” the man said. Phoenix dropped his duffle bag off and was handed a uniform of his own. He changed quickly and walked back out.

“Welcome to West,” the man said. “My name is Jackson, I’ll be your boss. I’m handing you to Hamilton, he’s going to train you.” Hamilton came into view and motioned for Phoenix to follow him down a narrow, dimly lit hallway.

“These prisoners in this section are what we call ‘Beforists’. They brainwashed themselves into thinking that life prior to the Accident was better.” Hamilton chuckled a little at that outrageous notion. “We put them in here once they start spreading those dangerous ideas.” Hamilton opened a heavy door, and suddenly, Phoenix heard many cries.

“W-What’s going on?” Phoenix asked, scared. Hamilton glanced at his watch.

“It’s 11:00 AM, locket time.”

“Locket time?”

“It’s how we punish those who have misbehaved,” Hamilton said. “We wipe the memories of everyone they loved, then give the person they loved the most a mandatory locket. This locket contains an audio recorder and a camera. Our prisoners all have screens inside their cells where they watch their loved ones continue on and forget them.” Hamilton grinned, proud of himself. “And the cruelest part is that the locket contains a picture of the prisoner, so they have to watch their loved ones stare at them daily and not recognize them.”

Phoenix’s jaw dropped a little as everything started coming together. The dreams, the locket, the lack of explanation from the director...

“Can I peer into the cells?” he asked. Hamilton nodded, and Pheonix looked through every cell’s barred windows. He kept looking until his eyes finally landed on a middle-aged woman with messy locks of ash blonde hair.

“Ma’am?” he called out. The woman turned to face him and immediately rushed to the window.

“My son,” she whispered. Phoenix nodded. Those words felt right to him, as though his mind were a stray puzzle piece that finally found its puzzle. He still didn’t remember who she was, and he wasn’t given much time to process before his mother spoke again. “Never tell them you know me.” She rushed back to the floor as Hamilton appeared.

“Poor woman,” Hamilton remarked.

Over the next few years, Phoenix’s life developed a pattern. During the weekdays, he was working, then he’d sneak back into the cells in the evening to talk to his mother. Saturdays, he’d go out to see Charlotte, who was eventually given a job as a cook nearby. Eventually, the day came for Pheonix to be given a wife. He received a name and profile in the mail, and when the name did not say Charlotte, Phoenix felt an urge to rip the paper into many bits.

“I can take it all,” Phoenix told Charlotte as she prepared meals to be distributed to the town the following morning. “I can take watching my mother in prison, I can take not knowing where my father is, I can take working as a heartless guard, but I cannot take you having children with another.” Charlotte nodded solemnly and rested her head on his shoulder.

“We don’t have a choice,” Charlotte told him.

“We do,” he said. “My mother tells me of people who rebel and succeed. They run away to other countries. What if we did that?”

“It’s too risky,” Charlotte said. “What if they throw us in prison?”

“I would rather be in prison than without you,” Phoenix said. “The thought of you with another is more torture than anything West Station could do to me.

Phoenix and Charlotte spoke with Phoenix's mother, and they were given a location and a time. The edge of the West Forest at 1 AM. The pair spent the day packing and preparing themselves. When the time came, they hiked over together. They were surprised when the forest was absolutely empty. They walked around the trees and bushes, to no avail. Suddenly, Charlotte tripped and fell. Phoenix helped her back up, then looked at what she tripped over. He paled.

“A corpse,” he whispered. He followed a line of red liquid to another body, and another, and another.

“A massacre,” Charlotte squeaked, her voice shaking.

“Exactly,” a woman said behind them. Phoenix turned around and recognized her as the cloaked woman from the office. Vegas. “Don’t be so surprised,” she said. “Did you think we don’t bug the cells? We’ve been waiting for your mother to tell you something important for years.”

“P-please, don’t kill us, I just wanted to marry Charlotte,” Phoenix pleaded.

“How touching,” Vegas said coldly. “If we let people marry who they loved, our society wouldn’t function. Love is what ruined Before.”

“Love,” Charlotte murmured. “That’s the word I’ve been looking for.” She turned to Phoenix. “I love you.”

“I love you too,” he replied.

“You’ll both love each other from cells,” Vegas laughed. She snapped her fingers, and a blur of blue uniforms encircled them.

Phoenix woke up in a cramped room with one bed, one chair, and a screen. A prison cell. He rushed to his door and saw Hamilton patrolling the halls.

“Hamilton!” Phoenix called out. Hamilton walked over.

“What,” he grunted.

“It’s me, Phoenix, help me out.”

“I don’t know you,” Hamilton replied, then walked away.

The screen in Phoenix’s cell started flickering, and an image of a handsome young man appeared.

“Hello,” the man said. “My name is Denver, I’m your match.”

“Hi,” a familiar voice replied. “I’m Charlotte.”

“Who is that boy in your locket?” Denver asked.

“I don’t know,” Charlotte replied. “Probably nobody.”

Phoenix’s screams were heard throughout the entire West Station.