Pariah: A Tale of Lost Love, Corruption and Escapism

DAVID OXFORD

Year 11

I should be in agony. My bruised knuckles bleed as my exhausted legs continue to push on through the soaked city streets and claustrophobic corridors. The grimy pigs continue to chase me as I jump fences and dart from side-to-side dodging bullets like fireworks blazing past. My body of sixty should be burning in pain like the flames of Hell, but as the thunderous rain wash-es over me like an unholy baptism, I am a man twenty years younger, forty years younger. I am reborn anew.

Bright red and blue lights and blaring sirens from Police Spinners wail like a newborn through-out the icy-cold November night in New York. The lieutenant with his raised brow and stretched skin furiously barks orders like a dog to the dirty pigs chasing me. The pigs are different now, ever since they were allowed to use unhindered amounts of force due to the 2049 Weapons Declaration Act, trigger-happy divisions now light up alleyways, street corners and homes with the cutting sound of high-round ammunition and blinding lights of muzzle flashes, the same sounds that took her away. But this information, this file will undo all of this and maybe give this damned society what it needs – freedom, justice, hope.

As I continue to run I can hear their slimy voices, calling me by the name this society has as-signed me, Detective #21195. That isn’t my name, I don’t even remember my birth given name anymore. This repulsive society relishes the idea of deconstructing your personality until you’re a mindless number, a drone walking the void that is the city’s streets. But they couldn’t tear her down, not through their usual methods, not without the help of a division armed to the teeth with assault rifles and 100 rounds at least. I remember coming back to our apartment on the 13th floor, ripped apart by bullet holes like an open-heart surgery or at least that’s what my mind tells me. I don’t even know my own past anymore, none of it – except for her.

I’m at a dead end. I hear the suffocating sirens and feel as if the walls are closing in until... a ladder! Like the hand of God, an oxidised and rusted ladder reaches down from the rustic roof-tops above the streets to a stranger in the dark. I reach the roof and stop for a moment to glance at the almost Lovecraftian moon. All those nights spent with my love staring at this space rock and yet I never appreciated its glistening beauty until now, until she was gone.

As I continue to run, my brain ponders why he would betray me. Detective #181090 was his name but everyone just called him by his family name, Caracappa. We worked together for thirty years, and we both took the same oath to follow the principles of the law, duty, mercy and honour. But this file represents how, like the Angel Lucifer, Caracappa fell from the light and into the open arms of the demons that dictate over this cesspool of a city.

The file spelled it out through police reports and blood red stamps of approval. The department always despised me because I was honest and decent and valued preserving the little bit of humanity left, over a promotion or bribe. They knew that there was no tangible threat that could bring me down, so they opted to take the psychological route. But time and time again I re-mained unfazed, unmoved like a statue by these attempts to destroy me. That fortitude endured until they stole my soul, my world, away from me. Caracappa sent out the orders and put the final bullet between her soft green eyes and lied to my face and laughed to the others. But there’s no time to think about this now. I hear the clambering of feet on the ladder and sound of rifles being reloaded.

So, I push on.

The building’s rooftop felt as if it went on for eternity. Seeing the same skylights and radar dishes over and over again, hearing the same advertisements from different televisions, it became almost nauseating. But then like a sharp sting from a hornet, the decade-old arthritis I’ve felt in my right knee returns. I have to stop, to catch my breath, but I can’t, not with the grubby pigs behind me, not with them so close, not when I’m so close.

So, I continue to run.

A large canyon of darkness appears between this rooftop and the next and I must make the dis-tance. I must take the leap. With the filthy pigs’ footsteps becoming louder and louder so does the beating of my heart.

And then, I jump.

As I’m gliding through the air, the fantasy in my head catches up with the reality of my body and I crash onto the fire escape of the next building and painfully stumble through the shat-tered window. As I sit bleeding from head to toe, I hide in the shadows from the voices of the putrid pigs and scanning searchlights and... finally breathe, really breathe and process the events that just occurred.

I slump down and begin to fall asleep. For now, I know I am safe but tomorrow will be different. I will be chased, I will be hunted, I will need to escape. Again.