Hellfire Iris (chapters 1-3) by loverawrdinosawr (good books to read for teens .txt) 📕

a debate over the best finds as I withdrew down the south hallway, cradling the newly found book in my arms and anticipating the read. I could no longer hear them when I made it to my favorite spot in the Sanctuary. The length of the corridor had been painted with the dark swirling colors of Earth before the invasion of Hell, the best place for an unwanted historian, and the quietest. clarify

In fine details the sun glowed off the sheen of hawks’ feathers and cats lurked behind the gloss of foliage, fish swam in chaotic strokes of blue and white while the doom approached. All of the animals had blank eyes, empty sockets. It struck with the feeling of dread, being empty, without anger, without joy, without hope. The truth of the world. Further down the scenes of destruction unfolded in darker tones and sharper images. Large eyes glowed red inside an underwater cave, massive bodies of scales and feathers filled the sky. Leopards shown to be as big as two story houses and wolves even more massive scourged the land. The beasts from hell were the ones to have eyes, sharp slits brimming with ferocity and a wild need for destruction.

I rested my head against the opposite wall to better admire the way the artist had depicted the entire destruction of the planet, wild, crazy, exaggerated shades of gray and black. To accentuate the splashes of red.


Chapter 3 May 22, 2061

Around my eighth birthday Ahnjil had led me to the painted corridor. I laughed upon seeing that the painter had forgotten to paint in the eyes of the animals. It turned out an intentional error. My mother smiled kindly as she listened to me assess the parts of unadorned wall. She knew what the artist portrayed by leaving the eyes blank and didn’t see it fitting to tell me then that those blank eyes stood for death, an unknown void, one that left holes in hearts.

Once more, I turned the corner and faced the lifeless eyes. My entirety burned with hate at the images of Hell’s beasts rising up from the cursed lands and tearing the world apart, making rivers and seas bleed onto the trembling earth, and the depressed sky cry fat tears onto fires struck up from their throats. They killed everything. In the most indirect way, they killed my mother. If the demon cats and birds never raided Earth then she would live.

I tried imaging how it could have been. Her fire-red hair stood out, a beacon in the thousands of people crashing against each other as they walked down a dark, stone path. Above her towered rows of glass planes and metal and…The picture shattered.

Closing my eyes, I tried again. Once more the fragmental colors fell apart, re-piecing themselves to show Ahnjil sitting on a bed with me in her lap, as if to say she could not exist anywhere else. Then, hate left and in its place sorrow returned. My fists unclenched and more tears flowed, sobs completing a chorus of helplessness, the feelings of losing things I wanted so much but couldn’t reach.

Someone echoed my cries. I fell quiet hearing the soft whimpers of another and spun around to see who might have stood in the hall with me. She huddled in the corner. Her sallow hands held her face as clear tears spilled through her bone-thin fingers. The woman swayed unsteadily and each moan she released was louder than the one before. Pale red hair matted her head. The locks seemed to fall out in clumps around her angular shoulders.

My throat closed up in fright. “Mom?” I choked out.

The sobs stopped, the woman huddled in the corner removed her hands from her face slowly, and raised her eyes to mine. Black, pitiless eyes. Ahnjil parted her raw, bleeding lips and her voice resounded off the walls, striking me with an invisible, inhuman force, “These tears burn in Hell.”

I staggered back against the painted wall, my vision shuttering as the ghost of my mother faded. First, the feet and stomach, then the arms and hair. Her black eyes lingered for an instant, flashing menacingly before she disappeared altogether. Two short breaths. Gone.

It took a while before the gears in my head started clicking, the grinding of metal in my ears shouting fear. I should be afraid. Fumbling for my footing, I ran as scared people did with fire at my heels and disregard for surroundings. Around the corner, passed the people at the Last Sanctuary entrance, and under the stairs. I ignored the person who opened the door, and pushed into the Mechanics Lab, metal clanking and buzzing in a sing-song greeting. In the middle of the room of scattered wires and useless blocks of dull aluminum stood a stout woman fussing over a table of brass scrapes and waving pieces in her assistants face.

“The Scavengers need to hurry with today’s search.” The stout woman pushed her magnifying spectacles up the bridge of her nose, shaking her head of silver curls. She shuffled to another table. On it splayed a box of wires and screws stripped of their threads. Picking up the box, she turned to ask her assistant something, but noticed me approaching still panic stricken and trembling. “Matty! What’s wrong dear?—Ugh. Lidianna, what have you been doing this whole time? Matty, Can you tell this excuse of an assistant that she needs to keep up with paperwork. She forgot to file the inventory of newly brought in parts!”

The lanky woman beside her sighed. “I did it yesterday. It was you who lost it in the monstrous pile of papers on your desk. Even after I told you I put it there.”

The stout woman tsked.

They didn’t seem to notice my fluttering heart or tears streaked down my face, or maybe they blamed the death of Ahnjil to my wild appearance. Whichever, I focused on helping them to get rid of the shock of seeing my mother, have dead with black eyes. We moved on to working on a huge, white box with a lid on the front instead of on top. Knobs on the head board clicked softly when turned. I read some of the fine print by the knobs aloud, ‘hot water’ and ‘normal wash’. The lanky assistant, Lidianna, asked me something, her voice rising and falling in my ears but I was too focused to understand what she said.

“Matty,”

I snapped to attention at the sound of my name, a breath of warning in the tone. “Yes, Lady Dacion?” I said, respectfully to the stout woman.

She pushed up her glasses. “Something’s been bothering you.”

I smiled, dispelling the creeping fear entangling my nerves. Ways to bring up seeing Ahnjil’s ghost sprung to mind, but as the imagined conversation came to close Dacion would think me weird. Like all the others. “Just escaping loneliness.” My voice stopped working at the end of my words as I tried holding back the wails.

“Well, then,” Dacion handed me a book. “Help Lidianna find parts on the marked pages.”

The assistant lead me in the direction of a third table where three workers sat, glancing our way but keeping to their individual tasks. I leafed through the pages to the ones marks by thin strips of paper. At least thirty diagrams littered the text and all needed for the particular project. “Lidianna, what are you trying to build?”

Her eyes swept over the table and back to the page, she picked up a few items, shuffling the scrapes, putting bad pieces and finding better ones. :A car,” she said, tossing a bolt into a bucket.

“oh.” A what?

“Damn it all!” Lady Dacion shouted from across the room, slamming down her tools. Bolts and screws hopped to the floor and rolled under the piles of scraped metal strewn about the title flooring. “It’s impossible!”

Lidianna rushed to help the stout woman find a solution.

I continued my job until Lady Dacion called me. She wiped her greasy hands on a red towel, sighing, “I need a break.” She pushed her spectacles back to the bridge of her nose and her eyes crossed as they focused on the remaining spots on the glass. Ignoring them the lady said, “Let’s go have ourselves some dinner.”


Dinner sounded good. I almost agreed with enthusiasm, but a Scavenger threw open the Mechanics Lab door and stumbled in, shaking with adrenaline, interrupting my reply. She threw of her hood. The machines rumbled to silence and the Mechanics halted their work, waiting for the woman to say something. “They’re coming!” The Scavengers eyes lit up in excitement.

“Who?” Lady Dacion asked, echoing the question of my thoughts.

“Survivors of the Atoll Colony!”

From outside the room, conversations began as quiet murmurings until a couple more Scavengers loudly exclaimed the rumors as truth, survivors of the Atoll Colony were making their way across the dangerous canyon. The Scavenger in the lab rushed out of the room to join her companions in news spreading. The women left their projects, sheets of metal, wrenches, bolts, all thrown aside to welcome the long awaited men of the Atoll Colony. I was pushed along, with an empty stomach.
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Publication Date: 08-01-2011

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