The Stamp

That’s the thing about the Fore Fellows, it’s as though they can still feel through their memories, even if not in flesh. You can see it flash in their eyes when they tell the stories of the time before chains. Before the dragons awoke. Dodden says not to trust them, that they’re programmed with lies to give us false hope; make us believe we came from something greater than this so that we stay strong enough to keep feeding the web. But I don't think so. Maybe I’m naive, maybe I just want to believe, because nothing else makes sense. This misery, this endless suffering.

Everyone knows it’s dangerous to smile. But they’re the only ones who can do it using their eyes alone. Mostly, you see them weeping, lamenting in senseless babble - flailing their ancient limbs around and spitting at imaginary culprits. It’s tempting to steer clear and I don’t blame anyone for avoiding them altogether. After all, they’re unpredictable and if you stare too long they can start to see things in you you never consented to reveal. They’ll begin chasing you down the stone alleys, exclaiming your role in prophecies and summoning you to The Cause. No, it’s definitely best to lay low in their presence. Smiling can catch and spread feeling. Yet, I can’t help wonder if they hold the answers, the key to our liberation.

I got stamped before I turned six, back when you had a chance to fully expand into yourself with no pain or fear for a few years before it all got taken away. If I had known I’d never be able to feel freely again I’d have paid more attention, memorised every happy feeling, pleasing sensation and easy breath I took. But at least I had my moment. Kids these days are getting stamped as early as two! They’ll never know what being us is meant to feel like. The youth nowadays have no inner compass, all they know is dysregulation and the pain of our limits. Masters of dancing on the peripheries of our human axis: they barely seem human at all.

I remember so well the day I was called into the vacuum. Everything was blindingly bright, the chair wasn’t so comfy, even though it was cushioned - all the moveable components met the wrong parts of my body. All I could think was how badly designed it was, not knowing all the while it was doing precisely what it had been engineered to. As it jolted and beeped, buzzed and repositioned itself - I know now it was taking an intricate reading of my biochemistry, measuring the bounds of my emotional territory and mapping out where to cut off my happiness. Then suddenly, it stopped shifting and the room went completely black and more silent than I ever knew was possible. Did you know that silence itself makes noise?! Well remove that sound too and suck out all the space in which anything can vibrate and you’ll have something close to that mind-muting silence. I could hear my own body fighting to pulsate against the spaceless void, forbidding its existence, whilst simultaneously allowing it no escape. I could neither inhale, nor exhale. All was paused in this unbearable nothingness.

And that’s when it happened. I can only describe The Stamp as a complete violation of your physical anatomy. There’s an electric current that releases an instant clamp down on every cell in your body and it’s done. You are never the same again. DNA irreversibly tampered with and your life changed forever.

When the lights came back on and the air returned to my lungs, I was expelled like a bad smell returned to the streets. I was so confused, but didn’t really feel much different until later that night. I’d run straight over to my sister’s shack, telling her everything that had happened as she held me, softly crying and refusing to answer any of my questions. Eventually, she fell asleep and I too started to relax into a warm stupor. I began remembering a time I was playing in a waterhole with my brothers and how much fun we’d had splashing, trying to recall the joke we had all found so funny - when it hit me! A horrible, searing pain rose from deep in my bones along with a wave of overwhelming nausea. I ran to the window, waking my sister in the commotion and vomited all over the streets below. What had happened!? I was dizzy and still reeling, but I could feel a hook inside me that would claw at me from within with differing levels of intensity depending on my thoughts! Little did I know then, that this would be my new normal form here on out.

After your initiation, you learn quickly what to think and what not to. Feeling happy or light in any way shape or form, even just a sigh of relief can bring on a wave of excruciating pain and retching nausea. The worse you feel emotionally, the more comfortable you will feel physically, at least as far as your flesh and bones go. Conversely, any iota of unchecked joy you let slip through the radar will cost you gravely, sometimes even leaving you bed ridden for up to a fortnight.

They say the Fore Fellows don’t get stamped. That they had to drink something that sent them half crazy. They knew too much, having started life in the times before the Earth cracked open, releasing the Dragons - or so the stories go. But somehow the Hollows need them. That’s what I don’t understand. They could have killed them off.

Legend has it, one of these elders possesses a tiny vile of the last Dragon’s drop of blood before it got slain by them. If it is freely given to you by a Fore Fellow it can antidote the effects of The Stamp. I dream of that little bottle of freedom every night and I pay for it dearly. I’ve learnt how to formulate desired thoughts devoid of positive emotion, but it’s not a perfected art yet. I may still get migraines and stabs of pain in my abdomen, but it’s worth it just to be in some proximity to hope!

My sister worries about me though. The other day I caught the eye of Hansel again, a Fore Fellow who hangs around the steel market, clanking on his copper cup with a spoon and preaching in tongues. He looked at me all queer and asked in a toothless lisp if I’d been chewing on too much lead or thinking too contently again... "You look stiff as a beetle!", he jeered. That’s what happens, when you feel too much pain you get such tension your body changes demeanour. You have to be careful, try to slump and look relaxed so the Hollows don’t get on to you.

I told him I was perfectly solemn and on my way to clock in for my shift at the dunes. I jigged from foot to foot, trying to rearrange my bones to hang loose. His eyes twinkled as he lent forward to whisper something to me, but instead broke into a coughing fit and staggered back on his walking stick.

That's when I saw it! A silver chain swinging about his neck caught my attention and held me in rapture. Time stood still as it sang to me, slinging this way and that, commanding every inch of my attention. A large oval locket clunked about as though it had a life of its own and I knew, I just knew, it had to contain the vial of the last dragon’s blood!

My elation knocked the wind out of me and I found myself retching on the ground again, curled up in pain and clawing at the dust for relief. Nothing helped, I'd gone too far, let myself feel too much. Couldn’t he just hand me the vial of mercy, already!? Hansel leant over me tutting, poking at my writhing body with his stick. “You listen to too many stories, young man!” - he said with a wink.

So he DID know! Through gasps I tried to ask him, to beg him for answers - but that’s when they arrived. The hallows descended, cracking their whips and sounding the dreaded frequencies to scatter the crowds. I couldn’t move, but I could smell them getting closer to my useless form on the ground. Through streaming eyes I did my best to see where Hansel slipped off to, his cloaked figure merging into the flurrying bustle.

Maybe I’d imagined it, created what I wanted to see. But the ice-cold, bullish grip that clasped at my shoulders was all too real. Dragged into the back of the one-way tram, I knew I was being taken to the reckoning halls. People like me don’t last long there; misery is the only way to survive. Misery is strength, power and health. But a deeper sickness takes root. The soul blackens and never finds its way back. It’s where unruly dreamers get taken to have their souls crumble into entropy and a dutiful servant to the Web emerge.

As feared, I found myself at the entrance of the halls, trying to fill my head with heaviness and not let the nerves mess with my stamp. The Hollows want us steady, sedate, predictable and compliant. Heightened emotion of any kind is gravely frowned upon. I cast my mind to my go-to equaliser : 1000 nights of rain on concrete, nothing to do and no one to speak to. I stay there until I feel my mood drop and my body ease. Steadied, I prepare to be brought to the jury of Hollows.

The immense doors open and to my instant horror and winding surprise, I see Hansel - sat at the head of a council of other Fore Fellows, swinging the locket from his fingers with an expression that betrayed a little too much enjoyment and yet none of the repercussions. My stomach hit the floor and with a thundering echo, the great doors slammed shut behind me.

To be continued...