A Collection of Ruins

Chapter 5 - The Tunnels of Rats (Tess)

Tess

I stood in the centre of the colourful garden in the very centre of the Met, surrounded by an empty courtyard the size of a football field. It was strange; Johnson’s Court was hardly ever empty.

Around me, green hedges grew to my waist, forming a maze littered with tiny purple flowers. It was a habit of young children to play in and around the maze, so the Court was always alive with the bubbly personalities of the Met’s children. Ahead of me lay the Building of Judgement, where all eighteen year olds are taken after graduation, and judged by the Met-Reps – robots that looked entirely human that held jobs in various important positions in the Met – to see which job they would receive in the Metropolis, and that would be the job they work until they die. I shivered at the thought of entering the building in less than a year and a half. The movement passed through my body just as a high-pitched giggle pierced the abnormal, weighted silence. I spun around, starting at the noise, and my gaze met a young girl around the age of six. She had coppery curls and green piercing eyes, as well as a smile from ear to ear. I took a startled step back. I was looking at myself.

A young boy’s head appeared from around a corner of the maze, his grin matching that of my younger self. “I found you! I win!” He announced, his blonde hair falling into his blue eyes, from where it had previously been combed back, just as the Met-Reps ordered it. My breath caught in my throat.

Matt.

He was an inch or so taller than me, but still short enough that the hedges towered over his head. I found myself longing for days like these. The simpler days. Before the Virus. Before Matt disappeared. Before my Mother’s death.

“No!” The younger version of me argued. “I wasn’t ready!”

Young Matt’s shoulder’s slumped, but he didn’t argue with me. “Okay, but you only get ten seconds this time!” And with that, he disappeared back around the corner before I could reply.

My younger self’s eyes widened and she took a deep, over-exaggerated breath before taking off at a run. I didn’t get far; I had only taken around five steps before I tripped over my untied shoelace, grazing my kneecaps. As sobs filled the air in place of the earlier giggles, Matt’s exclamations of worry faded into nothingness as the scene shifted.

My mother was walking towards me, and I found myself crying at the base of the concrete stairs leading to the back door of our house. She picked me up, balancing me on her hip, and walked me inside the house. She sat me on the kitchen counter and started cleaning my grazed knees. “There,” she said, smiling, as she placed a plaster over the graze, “all better.”

“No,” I insisted, in a voice that sounded a lot younger than I felt, “it still hurts.”

She laughed, a mesmerising sound that made my heart ache with longing. “We’ve ran out of Regenerat. I’ll pick some up for you when I go to work.”

The pain in my knee was only slight, yet my child-mind still longed for the Regenerat, a spray that sped up the regrowth of skin cells and heals cuts or wounds. “But, mum,” I pressed in my childlike voice as she turned around to put the first aid kit back in the cupboard, “it’s not fixed yet.”

“You listen to me,” hissed a voice that was not my mother’s, “it’s fixed because I say it’s fixed.”

When my mother turned around once more, her hair was knotted and out of its previous pony tail. Her eyes sunken and bloodshot, her blue and purple veins easily visible through her now pale complexion. On her left cheek, the veins were crimson, webbing out from the centre of her cheek like a morbid snowflake. Her front teeth were no longer straight, some surrounding ones turning brown.