Migration

Tomb

Mo lost track of how long he'd spent floating silently in the darkness, but it was days. Once or twice he crawled back up into the bright lights of Disposal 10 to refill his water supply, but the rest of the time he drifted in and out of sleep at the end of his short lifeline.

After his first trip back up to get more water, frustrated by too many struggles with his clothes when he needed to urinate or defecate, he had removed them, ditching them down the Chute in a tight bundle ahead of himself. It was hot in there, the stale air from below constantly warming him with deliciously sweet waves, so his torn and bloodstained utility suit had no practical purpose in his current existence. At first, he had held on painfully for hours when he needed to pee, even more to shit, as the mission to remove his suit was immensely complicated, dangling from a single cord in the dark. Now he was free, his body functioned without his help and he could focus all his time on sleep.

He slept a lot. It felt like his whole body and mind surrendered to an involuntary sleep, a great wave of exhaustion that had been building for years. Although his cord was uncomfortable at first, the pain soon passed and this new weightless existence, rotating slowly in the void with his limbs dangling limply below, lulled him repeatedly into a deep and enveloping hibernation. He hadn't realised how much of his energy had been spent on existing, resisting, clinging on and free falling, killing and grieving, until now. Without it all, there was so little of him left he could barely open his eyes.

When he did, it wasn't long before he couldn't tell if he was awake or dreaming, the darkness outside and inside of him merging into one continuous flow of thoughts and memories, colours and nothingness. Colours pulsed and bled all around him, bursting from pinpricks into dazzling sunshine when the Chute occasional cracked and creaked from inactivity. From out of the darkness, people would arrive without warning and stay with him. Raleigh, the Ghosts from behind his apartment, his mother and father, a girl he'd slept with who sold hacked and bent tech from a kiosk on the boulevards. They would all come and talk with him, sometimes for hours, although he was never sure if his words were real or not, and his dry lips would split and bleed when he tried to test them.

Gradually an enormous sadness overcame him, a great wave of grief that swallowed him so completely that his breathing arrested and he felt sure he would suffocate in the deep, vacuum of pain. He felt as if some terrible tragedy had occurred that he couldn't remember, and his thoughts itched and panicked looking for a record of the event. It was as if he'd lost some great love, something so vital that living without it was utterly impossible. He sobbed uncontrollably, embarrassed at first, a silent outpouring alone in the darkness, his tears falling away from him to the horrors below and his chest splayed open, begging for his soul to be mended or taken away.

More than once he thought about wrapping the cord irreversibly around his neck and unhooking his waist, letting his heaviness strangle him completely until his body gave up and this tragic agonising stopped. But he knew he wasn't ready for that step and besides, he wasn't alone.

The boy.

The boy was always there. He never spoke, but Mo would sometimes catch him spying on him out of the corner of his eye. When his eyelids eased shut, he would feel him take his hand as he drifted between waking and sleeping, a tiny palm that would nest inside his and twitch gently as they both slept. It felt good. Like brothers.

He hadn't eaten since returning to the dark, and although at first he was tempted to at least retrieve Maddie's food, he felt like it wasn't his to take and, increasingly, that he just no longer wanted to eat. Although intense at first, his hunger eventually subsided, as if his whole body came to a decision that food was something it no longer required, a habit from his past life, with no purpose now. Mo felt good about this, he felt strong in his simplicity, pure even. Hidden away in the tiny space that was his and his alone, Mo had made his own crossing and he was happy to drift to whatever place it was taking him. Happy? Yes, that was it. Mo felt happy.