Nameless
Legacy Name: Nameless

The boy walked with his hood up, bag held above his head a makeshift shield- and still it wasn't any shelter from the rain. The water on top collected into a small pool, leaking straight through the bag and poured down from either side on top of him. With a groan he finally relinquished himself to the elements, hopeless to withstand them, and returned his soaked bag to his shoulders. Not that there was anything of value inside- an empty can he’d merely scraped the sides of for a meal the night before, lying to himself that there’d be more to be found within it today; his indifference to it sloshing around within the bag now revealing the truth of the matter.

“Gotta get outta this shit.” He muttered to himself, and jammed his hands into the pocket on the front of his jacket, rustling some small object within. The rain pelted down upon him, pale skin glistening wet and white hair plastered across his face despite his best repeated efforts to push it back and and away. For a fleeting moment he shut his eyes and hesitantly stopped walking, wanting a break. Needing a break. But whenever he stopped; stopped moving, stopped thinking, stopped forcing different thoughts into his mind to push the others out, he was consumed with them. He still remembered the stomping. Still heard the crunching, the squelching, the voice rasped from screaming. His voice. Still saw it all, clear as if it were right in front of him now- and it was all too fucking much. At once, the boy shook his head, and soldiered on through the torrent.

He stuck to the alleys and kept to the dark corners, as far as he was concerned he’d gotten all the introduction he needed from the locals. He’d disappeared- for real now, out of sight and out of mind. As unknown to the citizens of the great city above as he’d ever been, and he’d been stalking through the upper streets for the better part of a month now. If he could isolate one word to describe it, it would be grey. Column after column of enormous concrete pillars, not a colorful hue in sight- and why would there be? To compose murals to their egos would be a waste of paint. Underground was a prison, sure, but this place didn’t seem all that different. If not a physical prison, the city had been designed as a mental one. After the third or fourth identical street corner rounded even he’d felt his creativity draining away by the second. Sure, he didn’t hold the people of the underground in much higher regard, but at least there was some sense of camaraderie amongst most, some sense of all being in the shit together. Up here, there was something in the wayward glances everyone would give each other, in the way they were trying to get a leg up on one another at every opportunity that didn’t sit right with him. As he finally reached the overpass, he knelt up against the concrete divider and peered over to glare down at the small encampment below the bridge. Roughly a dozen desperate souls huddled around various small fires burning in barrels, trash cans and small baskets. The boy sighed and shook his head. “Fuck if I’m spending another night in this shithole.”

“Couldn’t agree more!” A small, shrill voice piped up from behind him. At once, the boys’ throat tightened and a pit sunk deep within his stomach. He turned, startled, and instinctively reached to yank his hood down while his legs tangled up together beneath him. Before he could say a thing, he was hurdling backward and onto his ass, nearly toppled over the overpass on his way down.

“Shit!” He gasped, and frantically patted down his pockets before a small black rodent nudged out of the collar of his shirt beneath his jacket. With a relieved sigh, the boy returned to his feet. “What the-? Who the-?”

The short, frail girl beamed an eager smile. “I’m-”

The boy's eyes widened, hand shot out in protest. “Nope. Don’t want to know.” And turned he turned, shoulders’ stiff, towards the staircase leading down to the encampment.

“So, you’re leaving, yeah?” The girl followed closely behind, matted, frayed hair bouncing on her shoulders as they rounded a corner at the bottom. The boy did his best to ignore her, and marched onward towards the space he’d marked out for himself- not that any of these bastards had treated the designation with much consideration. He knelt, and gathered up his scant possessions into a pile. One other change of clothes, a tattered blanket and a small instrument wrapped in the aforementioned sheet. He jammed the pitiful collection into his bag, neck of the banjo jutting from one unzipped section, and returned it to his shoulders. Rising once again to leave, the girl stood blocking his path with crossed arms. “Yeah?” She repeated.

“Yeah! Okay? Yeah. Happy?” He snapped while turning to brush past, attempting to hold a stern eye contact but breaking halfway through. The girl scoffed.

“Well, you can either set off into the unknown again, seeing how well that went for you today-” she started, turning to face him but not moving from her position. “-or you can listen. I have a lead.” And the boy stopped in his tracks.

God, how he wanted to be free of this interaction. A lurching in his empty, aching stomach kept him from continuing to storm away, however. “I’m listening.” He submitted with a defeated sigh.

The girl skipped over to meet his pace. “Overheard something about a construction site on the western outskirts of the city. Acres of vacant lots, filled with empty houses.” She started, voice distinctly more hushed than before. “Might be bullshit. Might not be.” And met his eyes. “But it’s something. More than you’ve got.” And he couldn’t deny it.

The boys’ eyes darted away. “What’s the catch?”

“There isn’t one. I’m curious about this place, too. It shouldn’t be too far that way.” And she pointed over the horizon behind them towards a somehow even more industrial looking section of the city, black plumes of smoke billowing from nearly every cloud-piercing tower in the distance. “If you don’t come back, I’ll take it as a sign it’s legit. I want out of this shithole too.” She sneered.

“Or it could mean I’m dead.” The boy thought to himself. “Sure, fine.” And he shrugged away, ready to depart. “Er- thanks.” He turned and remarked over his shoulder before setting down another flight of stairs.

“Don’t thank me yet.” He heard her mumble.

He’d finally reached the construction site just as the sun vanished from the sky, not that it made a drastic difference to the light levels, with it being smothered beneath thick smog most of the time. Overlooking the half-finished buildings and heavily up-turned ground from atop a steep concrete bank, he’d realized the city could in fact look even more depressing than he’d previously thought. He shrugged and wiped more wet hair from his brow with futility; the place could look like an active crime scene for all he cared, as long as it got him out of the rain. He vaulted over the concrete divider and carefully slid down the embankment towards the rows of homes.

Unable to shake the ever-present feeling of worry, the boy still kept to unseen shadows and corners despite the entire place seeming entirely vacant. It was eerily quiet on the lot, even the droning city noises were muffled in this strange pocket of land. When he’d finally settled on a home he figured would be inconspicuous enough as to not raise suspicion, he set to finding a way in. At first, he considered simply smashing a side-window with his elbow, but some nagging thought urged him against it. How long would he be here, anyway? Not long, he quickly decided, not wanting to let his guard down or get complacent. And in that case, why leave the place in worse condition than he’d found it? Some other soul in a situation similar to him might come across it, only to find a shattered window letting in the cold? Not to mention, the lengths the actual owners might go to if they’d somehow connected him to the damages; these people were anything if not petty. He sighed and knelt down face-level to the knob on the front door. Rummaging through his pockets, he eventually pulled out a badly-warped hair pin and set to jamming it into the keyhole.

“Come on… come on…” he whispered to himself in concentration as he slowly tilted the pin upward at ever-so precise an angle. When he heard a faint click, he turned the knob and the pin together at once, and the latch popped open with a metallic scrape. An old trick he’d learned underground from his best friend, surprised himself that he’d still remembered the proper way to do it. The boy caught himself letting slip a nostalgic grin before shaking his head, correcting himself. At once he stood and pushed the door open, creaking slowly to reveal the shelter within; dark green walls, marble countertops and an overall atmosphere of being entirely too fancy a place for him to rightly be setting foot into. That didn’t stop him- nor could a brick wall have, at that point.

He’d hardly even remembered what not having raindrops pelting his face every waking moment had felt like. Upon entering the home and firmly locking the door behind him, he pulled down his hood and wiped white hair out from his face, for real this time, and the feeling of relief that washed over him was debilitating. Without thinking he instinctively rushed over to the cupboards and swung the doors of each open, swiftly moving onto the next before they'd even fully revealed their contents, anticipating empty shelves. It wasn’t until he made it to the fourth set of small doors that he stopped in his tracks; the shelves were full. Stocked full to the very backs like some newly opened superstore. The boy shovelled armfulls of cans, bottles and packages into his bag, removing the banjo and slinging it over his shoulder by the strap to make room. For an instant, he considered checking if the food all hadn’t met its’ expiration date yet, then scoffed at the notion he’d be turning any of it away regardless. Eventually after his bag refused to close for the bulk within it, he made his way up a flight of stairs to the above level while shovelling crackers into his mouth from a hastily ripped package. At the top, he saw a room at the other end of the hall that caught his eye- a bathroom. Crossing his fingers he rushed over towards it, held his breath, and tried a tap sticking from the wall. There was a faint sputtering and shaking of the faucet before a weak stream of water eventually shot out of the showerhead above. The water was cold and pressure was not ideal, but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth, especially given his current situation. What followed was the most bone-chilling, near freezing, incredibly refreshing shower he’d ever experienced.

Nearly drunk on the relief, or perhaps the whiskey he’d fished out of one of the cabinets downstairs, the boy sauntered into what he could only assume was the master bedroom. He sat with his legs hanging over the edge of the bed and plucked the strings of his banjo slowly, nodding his head periodically as if recalling some old tune. The rat in his lap, having just finished the corner of a saltine the boy had given him, now curled into a small crescent with its tail tucked under its head. The boy sat there with his pet in near complete darkness, save for a small collection of candles he’d found in the house glowing dimly in the corner, and picked away at his strings long into the night. Strangely, he found himself wishing that annoying, 5 foot-something girl every kindness in the world.

Despite a bed ten times more luxurious than the dingy cot he’d had back home- back underground, the boy still had no less difficulty falling asleep here than he’d had shivering hurdled under a tarp beneath the bridge the night before. When his body would tire, his anxious mind would race. When his mind would wear itself out, his body would jolt him awake. The same thing, every night since it’d happened. When both mind and body were finally too exhausted to continue their assault, his dreams would pick up the slack. Vivid- viciously precise visions of him. Of Laz. But not the reaffirming, soothing sight they should have been. He appeared as battered, broken and boot-stomped as he’d been the day he’d followed the boy up from the underground. His voice, no longer the familiar jovial music he’d grown accustomed to, but shrill, rasped and angry.

“Coward.” The spectre taunted him. “You could have done something.” He covered his ears, but there was no muting the words- seeming to be coming from someplace deep within the boy himself. The boy shut his eyes, but there was no escaping the sight of his broken face. Just as the apparition of his friend appeared before him, grabbed him by the collar of his shirt and prepared to shake him mad, the boy jerked awake with a gasp and was back in the bedroom. Glowing rays of light shone in through the windows, and the boy adjusted his vision to the rude awakening.

As the boy rubbed his eyes, he could have sworn he heard some strange noise from below; but shook it off. He stretched and hung his legs off the bed once more, before another sound sent his neck craning towards the door- there was no denying it this time. Then, the sound of some brutally loud engine starting up outside in the near distance startled him up and he began to gather all of his things together as neatly as possible in his panicked state. “Shit. Shit!” He remarked to himself as he heard footsteps pacing the halls below and around him. He scurried over towards the door, lifted his hand to turn the handle, and his blood went cold. A chill spilled through him straight to the roots of his hair and froze him dead in place. The knob turned on its own beneath his hovering hand. The boy leapt back and quickly crawled backwards under the bed before the bedroom door swung open, revealing a pair of dark work boots and mud-splattered jeans entering the room.

He laid there with a hand pressed tight against his mouth, stifling any slight noise his body might produce. He breathed slow through his nose as he watched the boots pace haphazardly around the room. A radio on the man’s belt chirped wildly with static and obnoxious beeping.

“Yeah.” The man said as he unclipped it from his belt. “114’s clear.” And he sauntered over to the corner where the boy had lit the candles. A wave of fear washed over him so strong he was nearly sick; the man knelt down and inspected the scene, before kicking the banjo rested up against the wall across the floor and towards the bed with a scoff. “Fuckin’ squatters.”

The boy put a second hand over his face, fearing even to breathe. The man was right next to him now. He’d need only kneel down, perhaps even just glance at the right angle, and it would all be over; he’d see the boy lying helpless beneath the bed and give him the same treatment Laz had gotten, or he’d call some others to do it for him. Wincing, the boy prepared for the worst, when the man’s radio went off a second time.

“You sure? That was quick.” A voice questioned through static.

“Look, do you know how many of these we have to get through? We’ll be here 4 more weeks if we do full checks of every room, in every house…” The man drew out his words playfully. “No. These bastards are stalling the job, trying to get a bigger paycheque.” And suddenly, his tone was grim. “That’s not happening.” And the director raised the radio to his mouth with alarming finality. “114 is clear. They’re all fucking clear. Get to work.” And the man turned and stormed quickly out of the room, leaving muddy footprints in the beige carpet behind him.

The boy let out a deep gasp for air and stifled a coughing breath. Utterly perplexed, he rushed aside and gathered up the remainder of his belongings, hanging the banjo strap across his shoulder and donning his now full bag over his back atop it. As he stood, adjusting to the new weight of his gear, the loud engine sound suddenly grew exponentially moreso, and the realization hit him like a fist to the gut. Before he could think, act on his revelation in any way, a thunderous tearing sound followed by what felt like the very floor beneath him shifting sent the boy reeling backwards.

“Oh no.” He repeated to himself as he began to run towards the door. Once again, before he could grip the doorknob the opportunity was stripped away from him, this time by another ear-splitting eruption so loud it made the very teeth in the boys’ skull buzz. The door, the frame, the entire wall before him suddenly burst apart into a disastrous barrage of splinters and snapped boards. The boy recoiled back and out of the way of the enormous metal wrecking ball as best he could, was sent sprawling back against the wall along with a good amount of debris. As the great metal sphere wrenched free of the jagged wooden mess before the boy, the entire night sky could be seen before him. They weren’t building a new development on the outskirts, they were demolishing one. As the tractor engine revved and whirred in preparation for another strike, the boy glanced to his side at an already cracked window. Having no such reservations as before, the boy raised his elbow high and slammed it into the glass, shattering the lot of it before he jumped through the window frame.

Just in time to avoid being annihilated along the entire remainder of the bedroom, the boy landed roughly down onto a small section of the roof before rolling off and into the bushes below. He painstakingly willed himself to his feet, no time to catch his breath, and patted his pocket to ensure Arcade was still there before barreling forward toward the edge of the fenced-in backyard he hadn’t even bothered to check yet. He jumped, scrambled up the wired fence while another ground-shaking blast went off behind him, sending planks of wood spiralling into his back and the fence around him. When he’d finally managed to haul himself over top of it and hurdled down onto the concrete path below, he didn’t even look behind him to check if he’d been seen. The boy just ran. Ran as fast and as far away from the construction lot, now considerably more populated with chattering vehicles hitched with dimly illuminated trailers, as he could.

When the boy finally reached the concrete embankment overlooking the site, he dropped to his knees rasping for breath. Shakily raising a bottle to his lips from his bag, he peered over the edge as he’d done upon arriving, surveying the scene. Seemed there wasn’t a soul alerted to his presence, all eyes still fixed on the demolition jobs at hand. All those homes, filled with food and furniture, dozed into the ground like garbage. Not that most of the bastards deserved it, but this lot alone could’ve likely fed most everyone he’d known underground for months. The boy cringed, shook his head at the waste of it all, and turned sombrely to continue west.

He made it a good few yards before his mind began racing again. And when it did, he was quickly hit with a debilitating pang of guilt. He remembered the girl’s words. She’d follow him to the construction site if he didn’t return. Walk right into the wolves den, as he had. And she might not get so lucky, though he hesitated to describe his recent situation as such with a new plethora of splinters and scrapes across his body. The boy gripped fistfulls of white hair in his fingers; the voices barely even needed to begin before he begrudgingly stopped in his tracks.

“No. Not again.” He spat, and turned on his heels away from the bright northern horizon and back towards the bridge to warn the girl. Even here, storm clouds could be seen gathering in the distance, and the boy sighed and raised his hood. Despite the thunder brewing, he let slip a faint smile as he set off. Already, it seemed the voices in his mind lessened with his action. While fully expecting to find himself under undoubtedly worse conditions than the night before, the boy looked forward to resting his head with the aid of one luxury he hadn’t been afforded in as long as he could remember: an eased conscience.

story by Derelict

mallory