In Dreams || A Collection of Short Stories

In Dreams

A/N: A slightly shorter version of this has been submitted in a short story competition.

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The pale hand whirred softly, gears and pistons moving more roughly than they should. A sharp click cut the air and the hand was quickly retracted.

The android looked at the windowsill with an expression that a human would call fear. Its silver and white sheath was in pristine condition, concealing the rust and disrepair. A mask. Hide the evil behind an illusion of purity. They'll never know. 

They'll never bother to find out.

The android drew into itself, hiding. Afraid of the world, of the people around it, of everything it knew and everything it did not. Of its creators. Of its handlers. As it should be. 

Humans are the most vicious creatures on this Earth.

It sheathed its optical sensors, weary of the endless grey of the world. The walls were grey. The ceiling was grey. The floor was grey. The tiny window was tinged grey. The plants outside were hidden in the grey ash of war.

The android didn't know any other colour.

The door (grey, grey, grey, the android was drowning in the colour) slammed open, hinges screaming a protest. The man who entered didn't look particularly threatening (slim, lithe, dark hair, pale-sky eyes, clad in  jeans and a blue flannel) but it cowered against the furthest wall of grey, curling into the tightest ball possible and then some. It pressed its hands into its audio sensors in a weak attempt to block the grey sounds, shaking its head. It expected the man to attack (and why shouldn't it? for humans are the most vicious creatures on this Earth.)

The man's expression flared into anger, and suddenly the blue of his eyes was ice instead of sky, cold instead of freedom.

He opened his mouth, and the noise came, an incomprehensible and vast ocean of anger and hate. The waves battered the android and it shrunk further into itself than before. The tide kept coming (endless, endless ocean, no break from the grey water), and destroyed what was left, as a tsunami destroys anything that dares to oppose it. The motion caused by the android's scared movement caused further gears to snap and strain, rust reducing them to ashes and dust. Beyond repair. Just another victim of the endless war humanity wages against the world (for, as all know, humans are the most vicious creatures on this Earth).

His face twisted into something monstrous, a sneer of utter disgust, hatred folded into his features. With a last yell, he threw a tiny battery (barely any energy, not enough for the android) at it and left, the slamming door echoing a message of hostility throughout the low-lying building.  The tiny sliver of metal and chemicals bounced off its forehead, clattered to the grey floor. The android did not dare to pick it up.

For a while, silence was the only sound (deafening, shouting, crying for attention, thick through the air, despair weighing heavily). The android relished it. Silence meant safety.

A soft chirp cut the silence like a dagger, echoing, echoing. The android lifted its head, hesitant. It'd never known anything but hurt.

A tiny wren clung to the grey birch outside the dust-drowned window. His feathers were brilliantly, blindingly cobalt (but even this was dulled by the endless grey). A streak of obsidian cut a mask over his eyes, and his tail was held proudly.

The android had never seen anything so beautiful in its life.

It didn't know there was any colour other than grey.

It watched the tiny wren for a while, fascinated, as he hopped around on grey branches. As the night fell (just another shade of grey) it watched him curl up in a hollow. When the sky lightened, it watched him wake. It watched him fly away. It remembered the wren as the man abused it that day. It watched the wren come back again. And again, and again, and again, as the days went on.

The only colour in the grey.

Slowly, the android learned something other than hurt. It learnt love, love for that tiny wren. It learnt hope.

And so when the wren crashed through the window, at a dusk greyer than usual, the android moved slowly over to him (whirring louder than before, on the verge of a breakdown, too tired and worn, too hurt) and picked him up gently. When it discovered his broken wing, it took its own plating and wires (exposing the hurt, the rust and disrepair- how can they ignore it now?) and attempted to bind his wing. When the man came, it shielded him with its own body, took the pain for him.

And so, as the wren healed, the android fell apart.

The android's hands trembled from strain as it unwrapped the wing from the makeshift bandages, whirring so loud that it drew the man. When he came storming in, for the first time, the android chose not to face him. As the man's footsteps echoed the promise of destruction through the grey, the android took the wren to the window. As the man drew a grey club back, it watched the wren fly from its hands. 

And as the man beat it to nothing...

as it died...

it watched the wren fly to the freedom it never had.

And smiled.