#watchmans log

[towncalledkingdom]

Imagine you are not allowed to leave your home. Imagine that you are able to see what everyone else is doing, but you cannot call them. Imagine that the only human contact you have is when you wake up and feel someone else’s arm draped over you, only to realize that it is actually your arm and it’s just fallen asleep.

It’s as bad as it sounds.

And yet, I am not alone. Not truly. Through camera lenses hidden in renovated school buses and "closed" signs hung on business doors I can live a thousand lives. The Bug Man has tucked Cecilia in for the night and drifted off to sleep. Caracal and her companions have returned safely to their dojos. The three strangely dressed teenagers have chosen new identities and will begin their first days as Kingdom citizens tomorrow. Mercury sits at their desk contemplating the growing unrest of the Penitent. The Gravedigger has a well-earned evening to himself, one arm draped over the handle of his shovel while the other taps out a secret message on a wooden end table.

Town Square is quiet. Bard still sits on the edge of the stage, legs dangling as he picks quietly at his guitar strings. A light shines dimly from one of the high windows on the front wall of Fashi’s. Inside two women are wrapped in blankets beneath a table, comic books sprawling half-read all around them. And I watch. All of them, the people whose birthdays I celebrate, whose losses I mourn, and whose secret dealings I know about. Do they wonder about me?

Do they ever climb to the top of a tree and see the man in the Fire Tower drinking his third mug of coffee? Do they wish that they could speak to me when they drop food and toilet paper down through the vent in my ceiling? Do their children ask about me? I know that they do.

Wind bends the treetops over the sleeping town, the town I one day hope to visit again. Generations of Watchmen have lived and died in this tower. I wonder if the last one died on the bed I sleep in. Is any part of him still here? His dead skin? Lost strands of his hair? I hear his voice on old tape recordings, listen as the madness begins to set in. How many years can I wait before I face the same? I've lasted this long.

I turn back to survey my own little realm. The bed in the center of the room is comfortable and large. A shower stall and toilet are set behind a tiled half-wall on one side of the bed. On the other side is a kitchenette built into a bar-style counter. A sink and a couple of cabinets are built into one side, two bar stools are tucked into the other. Hilarious. I used to get so mad at that second stool. I kept throwing it against the windows, hoping I'd bust the glass but it always just bounced off. I've wondered where they got that glass. The stool is a little bent now. I still sit in the other one.

I haven't quite figured out how they get my water to come up here. Some kind of pump feeds it up from a spring deep below the tower. Where the used water goes is a mystery, I sure hope they keep the two well separated. A combination of solar and wind power my computer monitors thanks to the group of environmental researchers that wandered into town a decade ago. I think they're the ones running the research lab at Smoke University these days. Hard to keep track of so many people sometimes.

The truly ironic thing about Kingdom is our gate. The wall surrounding our town is built right at the very edge of the Line of No Return. Anyone who stops at the wall and thinks to themselves "Nope, creepy dark forest. Not going in there," can go back to their lives without inhaling Kingdom's Curse. But they can't resist the gates. I've seen hundreds of people take one look at that wall, turn around, and head straight back to Sherwood Road. But one glimpse of the gates and they're looking around to see if anyone's watching. I literally stood right inside the window and watched a guy squeeze through the iron bars last week. Same guy they beat up by Town Square. And get this, readers- he looked at me. He LOOKED at me. And then he kept right on going. I thought I'd spook him, thought the Gravedigger would be cleaning up another run-in run-out tourist. But he didn't turn back.

And what about those kids, the three dressed up in old knight and damsel clothes? Why does one of them keep looking into my cameras like she knows they're hidden there? I'm telling you readers, something is changing in Kingdom and I want to be part of it. I'll keep recording these events and lie low, keep cleaning this same goddamn prison until the time is right.

But I won't be dying here.

[towncalledkingdom]

I had not even been in the Tower for a week when my mind broke. The smell of the previous Watchman- so recently the indication of life, now the steady spector of decay- permeated every corner of the open room. I left his sheets standing in the wash water for days, sleeping beneath his old, thick blanket. A single crate of food was dropped through the ceiling trapped door the day after I was imprisoned, but I did not see who brought it. I lay as if dreaming on the mattress, fighting down paranoia and nausea as day and night passed unnoticed outside the thick glass windows.

It was hunger that finally dragged me from my stupor. I’d spent three days between the mattress and the toilet, occasionally sticking my face beneath the sink faucet for a drink. Old sweat and the stink of the same clothes I still wore made my stomach turn as I pried off the wooden lid of the crate. Dried meat and vegetables had been neatly arranged inside. I would soon learn that this would be my new diet- dried produce and meat, sometimes nuts. They would not be sending anything fresh for fear of rot in the Tower. I would not be brought down if I was sick; no one would set my bones to heal if they broke. Whoever was sending my meals would simply wait until I died and replace me with another Watchman. This, at least, was common knowledge.

As I ate my first meal my attention went to the room for the first time. I had been so focused on my fear, so absorbed in my own head that the physical space and objects had been nearly invisible to me. I saw them, then. The remnants of the Watchmen’s collective madness. Deep gouges lined the floor around the toilet and stories drawn in pictograph had been etched into the ceiling. Nearly every available surface was lined with them- the tales and observations of my predecessors. Some looked like cave paintings or hieroglyphic murals. It appeared that one Watchman had claimed a single floorboard and carved his story into it in tiny flowing script. Other, more stable Watchmen had recorded their thoughts in one of the hundreds of notebooks stacked beneath a desk. It was a black plastic object, however, that ultimately drew me back to reality.

A blocky tape recorder sat on the counter next to the old Watchman’s spoiling sheets, an artifact like any other technology brought in from the outside world. I’d seen one once before during a delivery visit to the Philosophist sector of the Church of M. Worshippers had crowded around the device then, fielding an endless stream of questions off of each other. What does it do? How does it work? Who did it come from? They’d found a way to power the device and pressed its many buttons until sounds began to emerge from its fuzzy speaker. Music filled the triangular room that day, and everyone grew quiet, reverently listening to “Overkill”- some rock n’ roll band from the outside world.

I assumed that I would again hear rock music when I pressed a button on my own tape recorder. I heard a click and the button flung back into place. I pressed a different button, one with a backwards arrow, and watched as the black ribbon of the tape wound itself onto its other wheel. I pressed play again. A man’s terrified voice exploded from the speaker, startling me so hard I nearly fell to the ground. I had not yet learned the value or purpose of the volume switch. Instead, I sat back on my bed and gnawed at my beef jerky, allowing the man’s words to wash over me.

“This is Stuart Wells, the Watchman,” the tape began after a long fit of coughing. “I am recording this because I don’t know where else to turn. I believe that someone is coming to kill me.” The man’s voice rose an octave and cracked several times like a boy going through puberty, though the body I’d seen had been around my father’s age. He cleared his throat again and tried to calm himself. “There is an armed man coming toward the Fire Tower as I speak. I know this man. He is carrying a Privateer tranquilizer gun and a small bottle of something on his belt. He is large and strong with steel gray hair and deep lines in his face. I would fear naming him, but at this point it may no longer matter. He is at the base of the Tower. No one should be at the base of the Tower in the middle of the night. No one should be climbing the ladder unless they are bringing my supplies. If these are my last words, let them serve as a warning to the one that follows me: find a way out. Don’t let Kingdom raise you up just to cut you down. Break down the walls if you can. Destroy the evil we have created. Don’t die alone in this wretched Tower!“

Stuart’s voice stopped abruptly. A light tapping came from somewhere in the distance. The trapped door creaked on its hinges.

“I don’t suppose it matters now if you speak to me, does it?” the Watchman shouted, probably more for the benefit of his recording than for the person listening.

Another man answered him, his voice low and cold, “This isn’t personal, Stuart. All these years climbing this same ladder, I wish we could have spoken before. I never wanted it to be this way.”

“And yet you turn the wheel,” Stuart sighed. “What are you going to do? Knock me out and put something down my throat? Claim I got sick up here and passed on? Then what, oh mighty Warden? What’s your big plan?”

The man’s voice didn’t change. "You probably saw me putting everything together before I began my walk over here. We can cut the debate. In another life I’d let you write down some last words, but you understand that I can’t.”

“In another life you wouldn’t have let that woman poison our land,” Stuart scoffed.

“Kingdom has always been poison. There is no happiness here.” The Warden sounded mournful, apologetic.

“That’s not what I’ve seen,” challenged Stuart. “You think because you’re life has gone to shit that everyone else’s happiness is irrelevant? You think that every laughing kid and every land-loving farmer feels the way you do?”

“It doesn’t matter how they feel, I have to do this. It’s the only way. I need… I need to replace you.”

The men were silent for a few moments. One began to sob quietly. Stuart finally found his voice. “And you think you can put someone in here without the Council’s permission? You think you can just blow right by the choosing ceremony and throw whoever you please in here?”

“The Council will do as I say,” the Warden bristled. “I’ve spent years guiding them toward this. No one will say a word about it.”

Stuart paused as if considering. “I don’t suppose there’s anything I can say to stop you.”

“No, Watchman, I don’t suppose there is.”

Something clicked. Furniture crashed to the floor. An object hissed through the air and Stuart cried out. “It was Monroe!” he screamed. “Warden Robert Monroe murdered me! He murdered me!” The Watchman’s voice slowed, quieted, and finally stopped. Metal clanged. Something heavy landing on the floor. Footsteps and then a horrible, muffled choking.

“Hello, Eli,” said my father, speaking to me through the tape. "I have to say I didn’t expect things to work this way, but I did what had to be done. Things are getting bad with Eleanor, worse than you will ever know. I’m not a good man, son. I’m a terrible father, I know that. But I want you to live. I want you to understand this place, and if there’s anyone alive who can reverse this downward spiral, it’s you. Kingdom must survive, but first we have to break it. We’ve become backwards, comfortable in our ignorance. Our culture teeters on the verge of the abyss and we blissfully dance along it. I don’t know how events will play out in the weeks to come. I don’t know when or if you will listen to this, it may be the last time you hear my voice.”

Emotion choked my father’s voice for a moment and passed as if it had never been. “I am leaving you two gifts, son. After I leave you here it will be your responsibility to live, and to decide what to do with what I’ve left you. You will find the first sitting on the uppermost shelf in the cabinet. It is notebook with a list of all of Kingdom’s leaders and their spheres of influence, their attitudes toward each other as best I know. I’ve filled the rest with every detail I could think to write about our town. With a little luck you can join my knowledge with the documented information passed down by previous Watchmen.”

“My second gift is highly illegal and must be used with caution. Look at your bed. With your eyes trace a straight line from where you would lay your head to the wall beyond. I am installing a speakerbox there. I am leaving you a gift no Watchman has ever been given before- the gift of communication. I’ve arranged things so that no one will visit the room after I leave, this should be fairly easy to get away with. The box will only reach one person in Kingdom, son. It is up to you and that person to decide how you will proceed. Do not try to contact us. Do not try to contact your siblings. The person has been given strict orders to ignore such liabilities.”

“Phylla holds power because of their physical prowess. Eleanor and I control trade and the loved ones of many of Kingdom’s elite. The Church of M can often move the common man to their will, they can inspire a simple farmer to revolution should they wish to. Smoke University guides the town’s narrative and aims research for Kingdom’s future, and the Apothequarium may be the single entity standing between a person’s life or death. Most know and respect the workings of these factions. But they will not know you. They will look into the cameras hidden in their homes and wonder if you are staring back. You will be the phantom in the alley, the shadow in the woods, the tapping in their ceilings. You will rule coincidence. You will be the eyes of an intangible being, Eli, but eyes are useless without a body. I will give you the first piece of that body- I will give you a mouth. Find the other parts. When you are ready, when you have found your mind once more, go to the speakerbox and whisper a single word: Mercury.”

[towncalledkingdom]

I was fifteen when The Watchman died. I’d never spoken to him, of course. No one had. We went about our lives knowing that he could probably see us. I guess when you assume you have no privacy you just stop caring. The fear of being watched can, for most, be absolved by the knowledge that whoever is watching you cannot enact consequences on your life.

It was my father who pulled the man’s body from the Fire Tower. He had urged me quietly out of bed at 4 A.M., whispering “Come with me, son” into my ear. When I stepped out the front door he handed me a strange saw and a metal bar. He carried an enormous coil of rope over his shoulder. We walked for hours, stopping for a late breakfast in the forest. My father looked at me as we ate. It felt like the first time he’d ever seen me.

My relationship with Eleanor had been in rapid decline in the years since my brother had walked out. His face still haunted me when I tried to sleep. That look of anguish and betrayal, the final snapshot of his miserable childhood played over and over on the backs of my eyelids. I stared into the trees, searching for traces of him as my father searched my face for traces of me. Somewhere out there was a thirteen-year-old boy with milky eyes scrounging for food. Or maybe he had made his way into one of the other factions. Judging by their growing disdain for the Privateers, however, I doubted that. I heard rumors about him at school sometimes. Some said a wild boy stalked the shadows at night in search of anyone trying to escape Kingdom. Others spoke of an orphan, cursed to dig a thousand holes around the border wall or forfeit his soul. My father never mentioned him.

Things had been strange with Madison since the night two years ago when we’d met Fashi in the cave. Eleanor strictly forbade us to speak to each other, and often sent me away from home on long errands. We were never left alone together. Madison continued to sneak out a couple of times a week to see Fashi. She brought back little notes from her and snuck them into my pants pockets as she passed me the following day. They said things like “Cards still dry” and “See you again someday?” They were simple, but they kept me going.

Eleanor couldn’t keep Madison and me apart at school, however. Though we attended different classes, we managed to speak to one another for five or ten minutes every day. The bullies had left me alone as I grew taller and stronger, but they’d come down hard on Madison. They hid in doorways and behind waste bins, rushing out to try to pull her into the shadows. They taunted her in muttered breaths as they passed her in the halls, a never-ending conga line of tripping feet, low jabs, and hateful sneers. Madison never spoke about the abuse she suffered. She learned to tame her temper, to catch fists and force stronger kids into rapid submission. She frequented the dark places in the halls more and more as she grew, transforming from prey to predator. Her eyes scanned the world around me for danger whenever our paths crossed.

There was a single, terrifying day when all of the adults went missing for over an hour. I still don’t know where they went. I stepped out into the hallway after sitting for fifteen minutes teacherless in my classroom. I heard shouting from somewhere down the hall and ran toward it. I came to the door to Madison’s class and tried to turn the handle. It was locked.

Terrified, I slammed into it and it gave way, ill-fitting latch submitting to the force of my body. The stone-faced students inside looked like a cult gathering for human sacrifice. A muscular boy with the first traces of a mustache held his hand firmly over Madison’s mouth. She stood still in his rough embrace, arms held painfully behind her back by his other hand. Her long green scarf hung limp from her neck. Another boy was unscrewing the leg from a desk as the rest of the class watched. He dropped it in a moment of panic as I burst through the door. That was all Madison needed.

The back of her head broke her captor’s nose on impact. Her heel cracked down like a lightning strike on his right foot and he fell. Madison lunged like a cat toward the other boy, knocking him backward as the weight of her body came down on him. Her fists made a popping sound as the knuckles punished his eye sockets. She snatched the loose leg from the desk and sent it shattering through the classroom window. The other students scrambled to clear the area, casting fearful glances over their shoulders at her like she was a monster. She walked out of Morty’s Middlegarten and never went back.

The staff must have been outraged, but I didn’t really hear about it. Eleanor wouldn’t let any of us go back to school after that. Somehow she managed to get the lessons from Morty’s delivered to us at home, but we were rarely given time to work on them. Madison and Roland joined dozens of other young privates for training at The Dungeon, an alternate educational path for teenagers who wanted a career as a Privateer. Eleanor’s children weren’t given a choice. Neither was I. I was left to take care of the house or to run deliveries from the Privateers to the other factions. I was not allowed to visit The Dungeon. Roland and Madison would return most days empty-eyed and silent.

I hardly saw my father during this time. We all generally slept at home, but worked our various jobs during the day. That’s what had been so strange about the morning he woke me. As I had been running deliveries, I was used to carrying things for long distances. Regardless, by the time we sat down for breakfast my legs were starting to complain. My father finally broke off his stare and cleared his throat.

“Son,“ he began. “Son, I know we haven’t always been perfect parents.” Perfect parents? The words didn’t register. “You don’t know what we’re dealing with at work. Your mom and I-”

I cut him off. “Eleanor isn’t my mom.”

He remained silent for a moment, then returned to his thought. “We’ve done a lot for this town. We’ve given everything we had for it.” Everything? Maybe. They’d definitely sacrificed their health, decency, and relationships for their work, but something told me that wasn’t what he’d meant. I just nodded.

“I think-” he stammered. I’d never seen him so out of his element. “I think you need to leave soon.” His face was reddening. Was it shame he was feeling or impatience? If it was impatience, impatience with whom?

I had no words for him. I, his one true remaining child, needed to leave? I, the one who watched my mother walk away, the one who watched him exile his youngest son, the one who silently weathered Eleanor’s tirades for years, needed to leave? “Why did you bring me here, dad?” I asked.

He ran his tongue across the back of his lip and turned to face the distant Fire Tower. “The Watchman is dead,” he answered. “I don’t think I can stay him out of there alone.”

I nodded and followed his gaze. “Almost there.”

It was the first time I’d seen the Fire Tower up close. My father or one of his men had often been the people to deliver food to the Watchman. They would maintain the long central pipe, ladder, and the solar panels on the roof, keeping daily tabs on the man in the tower. “Rapunzel Boy” they called him. There was a narrow ladder built into one of the Fire Tower’s spindly legs, and my father ordered me over to it. The moment my hand touched the first rung I realized why he’d brought me.

We climbed to the top of the Fire Tower without a word. I carried the saw and metal bar up the ladder, my father following behind me with the rope. Together we sawed through the lock on the trapped-door in the ceiling, the one someone had padlocked before destroying the key. Kingdom tradition, that.

The Watchman’s corpse hadn’t had time to rot when I entered the room at the top of the Fire Tower. The room didn’t have any doors aside from the one in the ceiling, and even that didn’t have a ladder leading down. My father lowered me down using the rope he’d hauled up with him.

Apparently the Watchman had been washing his bed sheets in the sink at the time of his death. They were still in there. The room smelled musty, like distant urine and old wooden furniture. Monitors flickered dimly against the wall. I tied the rope around the Watchman’s body and gave it a firm tug. My father pulled the body out through the ceiling and, looping the other end of the rope around a solid steel spike in the ceiling, began gently lowering it to the ground. He ran out of rope just as it reached the earth below. He let the rest fall behind it. In that act, he finally severed our relationship. He kept his back to me as I glared up at him.

"This was your plan?” I shouted up at him. “This is what you want for your son?”

“I never wanted things to be this way,” he said without turning around.

“So why not change now? Why not bring the rope back up here? You could leave Eleanor. You could finish raising me.”

He sounded broken when he finally turned to me. Tears burned in his eyes. He didn’t speak. He took the trapped door in his hands and slowly, slowly, ever so slowly closed and locked it as I screamed.

[towncalledkingdom]

The first time I rebelled I was thirteen. I waited until I heard my father’s snores from the bedroom and saw the final light go out. Eleanor walked in through the dark, as she always did, to stand over us for a few minutes to make sure we were sleeping. My little brother’s breath whistled in and out of a nostril. I did not attempt to fake sleeping noises. Instead, I did what I always did. I kept my mouth shut and made sure not to move my eyes behind my eyelids. The hyperconsciousness of my facial muscles always made me nervous. I fought to keep the tension from my jaw.

Eleanor stood there for a long time, giving me the distinct impression that she was considering taking my life. Finally she turned and left, leaving the door open behind her. Footsteps. The bedroom door at the end of the hall opened and closed. I continued to wait. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Twenty. The door opened and shut once more, quieter this time, confirming my theory that Eleanor had been attempting to lure out any stray children that might be waiting for her to enter her bedroom. That was the trick with her- you could never stop playing her game. You had to be forever one step ahead, forever planning for the next layer of danger.

I waited another hour and then crept silently out my window into the chilly night. I shouldn’t have left, really. What I wanted wasn’t worth risking Eleanor’s wrath should I be discovered missing. I had sewn a secret pocket into the inside of my pants, a place to stash items I feared she might take from me. Needless to say I never washed these pants. I put them with the rest of my dirty clothes and removed them just before wash day. Three Phylla Fighter cards wrapped in protective plastic tapped lightly against my leg as I crept into the trees. I was continuously glancing back at the house, ears straining for the slightest indicator of trouble.

There was a little cave I had discovered just beyond the edge of the forest near our house. It’s entrance was in the side of a large hill, almost entirely concealed by an outcropping of rock. What appeared to be a thin crack in the stone veered off sharply toward the back, opening into a chasm only accessible by a small body. This is where I stashed my treasures.

I stopped midway into squeezing into the crack when a sound spooked me. A voice was coming from inside.

“I can’t believe it’s really you!” whispered the voice urgently.

“I can’t believe you found us. What on earth are you doing here?” whispered another. This voice I recognized. I pushed myself the rest of the way in, stumbling as my foot stuck in the narrow cleft in the floor.

The first speaker let out a startled yelp as I tumbled in. The second voice was unforgiving. “What are you doing here?” It demanded.

“Madison, please, I didn’t know you guys knew where I was putting my things,” I said. She stared at me blankly, illuminated by a dim lantern she held. “Your things?”

“Nevermind,” I stammered. “What are you doing here in the middle of the night?”

“I asked you first.”

I sighed. Madison Washington, my stepsister, had only traces of her mother’s fierce features. The sharpening at the edges of her eyes, and the way her brow quickly sunk when she was about to make demands was all Eleanor. Her dark skin, curls, and ability to smile without being terrifying must have come from her father.

A girl I had not met stood next to Madison. She was short and wore an enormous pair of circular glasses edged in thick white plastic. A tangle of curls spilled from the top of her head, bouncing as she glanced between Madison and I. A heavy backpack rested at her feet, torn in several places and covered in bits of bark and dead leaves. She flashed me a nervous smile. “Hello, cousin!” she ventured, reaching out a hand.

I stared at it, unable to register the greeting. “Hello,” I managed with a nod. She left her hand in the air.

I looked at Madison. She looked at me like I was an idiot. “It’s called a handshake,” she said, slowing the syllables around “handshake” to make sure I felt adequately stupid. “Polite people shake it.”

I blushed furiously and shook the girl’s hand, wiping the sweat on my pants as soon as I let it drop. “I, uh. I need to hide something in here,” I said. “Close your eyes!”

Madison rolled her eyes but raised a hand to her face. “Fine. You have thirty seconds.” The other girl made no move to cover hers.

I scrambled over behind a large rock, located a smaller rock and moved it aside. Beneath it a hole had been stuffed full of plastic bags and oddities. I placed my new treasure directly in the center, hoping to reduce the odds of moisture damaging the cards. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew they would be destroyed anyway.

I began to rise and was startled off of my feet as I came face-to-face with the girl. Her eyes shone in the dark. “Trading cards?” she asked.

“Shhh! Just stay away from my stuff." She pushed past me, ignoring my indignant protest, and moved the rock that hid my treasures.

She sat down, butt right in the dirt, and began rummaging through it all. "What's this?" she asked, holding up a poorly drawn sketch of a scantily clad woman.

My face felt so hot it could steam. She didn't wait for an explanation, just laughed and put everything neatly back in it's place. Madison approached slowly and put a firm hand on my shoulder. "My mom can't know she's here," she ordered. "If you tell her I will make sure you never see your things again." I knew she was telling the truth.

"Yeah, ok. I won't tell her. But what's going on here?" I turned to the girl, who still sat on the ground. "Who are you and how do you know Madison?"

She laughed. "I'm the only person who kept looking for Aunt Washington and her kids after they disappeared," she said proudly. "Everyone gave up the search just a couple of weeks after they went missing. They didn't even want to drive on Sherwood Road."

"So how did you get here? There's no way you're older than me and Madison. What, they let kids drive those deathmobiles now?"

The girl grinned. "No, no one 'let' me borrow their car to hunt down my missing cousins. But I didn't really ask them."

I gaped at her. She rose to her feet. "Madison tells me we're related now. I think I'm going to stick around for a while, probably stay here in the cave until I can figure out a better place to sleep. A couple of people around Town Square told me some places. There's a really great neighborhood you can move into if you have money, but I don't. Some kid with a guitar said that if you go to this old town a person there will make you a citizen and you can go to school."

Madison turned her iron gaze to the girl. "Don't go to Morty's," she commanded. "If my mom sees you around she'll make sure your life is hell."

The girl nodded, "No worries. I'll keep to myself."

I kicked a pebble toward my hidden stash. "You can have the trading cards," I said awkwardly. "I'll see if I can get some better ones for you at school."

The girl beamed, "Come back and visit, maybe I can trade you something cool for them."

Madison slapped her forehead, "Damn, we need to go home," she said, panic rising in her voice. "We can't be gone at the same time." She clenched her jaws and muttered to herself as she pulled me toward the cave entrance. "Fashi, I'll come back as soon as I can. Stay out of sight and make sure you find something to eat. It might be a little while before I see you again."

Fashi gave a sarcastic salute, but her eyes were laden with concern, "Be careful," she said. "I'll be fine."

...

I rushed from the cave behind Madison, sweat already making my scalp itch. "You shouldn't have left," she snapped at me. "Shit! What are we going to do?"

"We can just sneak back in through the window," I said, still feeling like I'd missed something in her words.

She stopped suddenly and I collided into her. A light shone from my bedroom window, casting the long shadow of a woman out onto the grass. We heard her accusations from where we stood. I crept closer and peeked inside.

Eleanor was dragging my little brother bleary-eyed from his bed. It didn't look like he was awake enough to follow her tirade. "Where did they go?" she screamed, putting her face inches from his. "Where did they go?"

The louder her voice went, the harder my brother's eyes became. The lines of rage deepening on his face were far too permanent for an eleven-year-old. She continued to berate him for several minutes as his hatred for her mounted. She reached an arm back as if to strike him. He shoved himself free, throwing Eleanor off balance as she shrieked. His hands flew to protect his face, muscle memory in overdrive. My father stood in the doorway, arriving just in time to see his son shoving his wife to the ground. He grabbed my brother bodily from the ground, smacking him hard on the bottom and carrying him to the front door. He threw him out into the night, grabbing the worn shovel from where it hung on the wall and throwing it out after him. "I want a hundred for this."

Outrage flashed across my brother's face, welling up and pouring from his bloodshot eyes. My father's face was pitiless. "One hundred." he repeated. Throwing the shovel over his shoulder, the eleven-year-old boy marched off into the night, leaving behind the family that had never wanted him in the first place.

"You other two better be able to hear me right now!" my father bellowed from the doorway. "I'm going back to sleep now. If you aren't here when I wake up you might as well just not come back." Eleanor approached him, stammering something about searching for us. He gave her a withering glare, jaw jutting forward in rage. "Are you happy now?" he demanded.

She raised an indignant hand to her chest. "You're blaming me for this?" she cried. He ignored her and walked back toward their bedroom.

"I've had enough for tonight," he said, deflated.

Eleanor changed tactics, "I'm sorry you had to see that. I've been trying to get him to behave but you saw how he treats me." She followed him into the bedroom, casting a final glance out into the night before closing the door behind her.

...

Eleanor made a big breakfast for us the next morning. Roland and our oldest brother ate silently, eyes fixed on their steaming plates as if to avoid being lured into conversation. My father shared their blank stares, cutting angrily into his food but avoiding eye contact. Eleanor searched our faces, a predator poised for a vulnerable moment. When neither Madison nor I took the bait she cleared her throat. "I don't want you two sitting next to each other," she said.

"What?" I asked.

"One of you needs to switch seats so you aren't together," she clarified.

Roland was already on his way over, dropping into Madison's seat just as she scrambled out of the way. She took her plate to my little brother's empty chair and sat down.

"I'm taking you to the Apothequarium," she said, pointing a raised fork at Madison. She turned to me, "and you aren't to speak to her any more."

"How am I supposed to do that?" I sputtered, "We live in the same house!"

"I don't care," said Eleanor, "If I see you speaking to her I will make you hate your life."

"I already do," I thought.

[towncalledkingdom]

By the time my father knew he’d made a mistake he was in too deep. He started trying to get us away from her as much as possible. One morning when I was nine he came in, shook me, and handed me a set of tattered work clothes. “Put these on,” he said, “we leave in fifteen minutes.”

I rubbed sleep from my eyes as we began our trek to Smoke University. My father had been repairing some of the brick pillars that were losing their mortar. The morning was thick and foggy. The sun was on its way, but not quite visible from where we walked. “I’m going to show you how to mix mortar,” he told me. He led me around to the side of the main hall, where a pile of sand had been dumped. Buckets of gray looking dust had been placed in lines a few feet from the building. He pulled a shovel out of the pile of sand and handed it to me. “Three shovels of sand, one shovel of that.” He pointed to the gray powder. “And enough water to make it creamy. Not runny, not like a loaf. Creamy.”

I ruined the first batch. I ruined the second batch. When I started the third batch he came over and took my shovel away. He furiously mixed himself a batch of mortar and thrust the shovel back into my hand. “I don’t have all day,” he said. “Scoop this up and bring it over to me.” I scooped the mortar. It was heavy in my nine-year-old arms. He stood about fifteen steps away, watching me as I spilled most of the mortar onto the ground before finally throwing the half-scoop down on the board before him. He ignored the flecks of it that hit his pants. “Another,” he said. “Another,” he kept saying for the rest of the day.

We did not stop to eat until 2 P.M. By that time I had already missed my classes and felt as though my arms were going to detach themselves from my shoulders. My father pulled a couple of cold baked potatoes from a pack he had brought and we ate them in silence. When we returned home that night around 9 P.M. my legs could no longer function right. It felt as though my every muscle had been torn. I didn’t want to bathe, I just wanted to sleep.

I made it through the good-nights and a bath before falling flat on my face into bed. I had never been so happy get to sleep. The world fell in a heavy velvet blanket around me.

Rough shaking on my shoulder jostled me into begrudging wakefulness. “Get up!” ordered a voice. Barely comprehending the voice, I rolled over and rubbed my eyes before swinging my legs over the bed and walking out.

The light of the living room burned my eyes. We were all there, all of us kids. I could hear my father snoring from behind his bedroom door. Eleanor stalked around the room, stooping until her face was level with whoever she was addressing. “Who did this?” she demanded.

“Did what?” I wonder aloud, immediately regretting speaking up.

“Tracked dirt on this carpet!” she cried.

My eyes were still having a hard time adjusting, so I squinted at the carpet, trying to find what had her upset. I saw nothing.

“It might have been me,” I admitted.

Eleanor bristled. “You’re not going back to bed until you get that cleaned off,” she ordered.

I scrubbed that carpet on hands and knees for four hours before she let me go back to bed. I never once saw the dirt.

[towncalledkingdom]

I remember the first time I knew something had gone horribly wrong. I was supposed to be in class at Morty’s Middlegarten that day, but I convinced my teacher that I was sick and needed to leave. Aside from my youngest brother, the rest of my siblings would still be in class for the rest of the day. My father would be hard at work on some new building project or overseeing the inmates at The Dungeon. As Warden, I guess he should have been there every day. More often he’d hand things over to Eleanor and go to work for someone else in Kingdom. I thought she would still be working there when I got home.

Our house stood alone south of Town Square, not a difficult walk from Morty’s. Travel from our house to The Dungeon, however, took significantly longer. Many nights we would come home and set in on the list of jobs Eleanor always left us, but things weren’t so stressful when she wasn’t actually there to watch us do them.

The front door was locked when I got to it. I opened it in my usual quiet way and slipped inside. I hadn’t taken but a few steps when I heard Eleanor’s muffled voice coming from one of the back bedrooms. I crept closer.

As I approached the cracked bedroom door, I began to understand what I was hearing. “Rebel,” she commanded. The sound of splashing water and sudden gasp. A fit of coughing. “Rebel!” she ordered again. I could feel the panic rising at the front of my rib cage, paranoia breathing lightly at the back of my neck. “Rebel!”

I peered through the slight crack in the bedroom door. Eleanor held my youngest brother roughly by the back of his shaggy hair, inches above an aquarium full of water. “Rebel!” she commanded him. He was struggling for breath. She shoved him under the water again, holding him as he tried to rise. “Rebel.”

This time he did.

He grasped the edges of the aquarium with all his strength, pulling it backward off of the table it sat on. Glass shattered around them. He cried out, sputtering for air and shocked by the sudden sensation of falling. His arms smashed into the floor. Eleanor started toward the doorway. I was already gone, closing the back door when I heard her screaming.

That night my father called us all together to talk. My oldest brother sat silently on the floor, back to the wall. The next perched on the far edge of the sectional fiddling with a half-assembled pellet gun. My sister- well, step-sister, sat beside me in the old brown recliner, absent-mindedly twisting a green ribbon around her finger. My little brother stood in the center of all of us. Bruises had begun to form on his arms where he’d fallen. His clothes were still soaked through. Rage boiled across his face but he remained silent. Eleanor sat next to my father, holding his hand.

“Your mom tells me you threw a tantrum again today,” said my father. He sounded like he didn’t want to be around any of us right now.

“She’s not my mom,” he whispered.

Eleanor sneered. “After all I’ve done for you. After I took you in as my own when YOUR mother abandoned you. After I walked you to the Apothequarium time after time to figure out what was happening to your eyes- not your mom? Don’t be so disrespectful.”

He remained silent. My father got up, walked over to a utility closet by the front door and removed a worn shovel. “Two holes by morning,” he said, shoving it into my little brother’s waiting hands. “Finish or you’ll dig two more tomorrow night.”

He turned his fading eyes on me as if he knew I’d seen what happened.

I remained silent.

[towncalledkingdom]

Citizen Application

All citizenship applicants are required to complete the following questionnaire. Please answer each question to the best of your ability in legible black or blue ink.

1. GIVEN NAME:

2. COUNTRY/STATE OF ORIGIN:

3. DESIRED NAME:

4. In general, the diety/deities I worship is/are (circle one):

Loving Wrathful

Mysterious N/A

5. Skills (circle all that apply):

Agriculture Law enforcement

Climbing Espionage

Combat Pest control

Digging Inventions

Education Food service

Research History

6. If ordered to execute an unknown individual would you? (Y/N):

7. On a scale of 1-10 how important is your privacy to you? :

8. Favorite animal? :

9. Sexual orientation? (That question is legal here):

10. Favorite book? :

[towncalledkingdom]

There is a large wooden sign at the bottom of the Fire Tower by Kingdom’s East Gate. It reads, “Do not speak to the Watchman. Do not wave to the Watchman. Do not look at the Watchman. Please return to your home.” The letters are wearing away at the edges, old paint from a dead hand.

There is no stairway leading up the the Fire Tower, just a long tube running all the way down the middle. Sometimes at night a faint glow can be seen in the enormous window-walls at the top of the tower, and rumor has it that occasionally the silhouette of a man can be seen against the thick panes. Usually I’m holding a cup of coffee.

Confused? Not surprising. Most people are when they first wander into Kingdom. Here’s what I’ll tell you- I’m the guy that lives in the Fire Tower. The one looking out through three hundred cameras hidden all over town. I’m not the first one doomed to this life, but if things keep going the way they seem to be I may just be the last. See, I exist to ensure that Kingdom isn’t forgotten. I write down pieces of our story every day so that if we ever do figure out how to leave this little slice of Hell we’ll have some semblance of a history. I have video recordings and voice memos, handwritten recipes and stacks of photographs. And now I have this laptop I've been writing on. I’ve been trying to connect to the “internet.” No luck. I can only hope that by the time you read this I will be long gone and not responsible for what I’ve written.

There are no doors in the Fire Tower, just windows. One citizen climbs up to the roof every couple of days and drops food down through a small, shuttered vent in the ceiling. Every time a Watchman dies they have to cut a hole in it and pull him out. Stick a new guy in and seal it again. Haven't had to do that in a while, though.

There are a ton of screens in this place. They're everywhere. Attached to the wall. Sitting on the counter. Sprouting up from the desk. I can't move without seeing someone doing something somewhere in Kingdom. And I can't stop it. I can't turn the screens off. If I see someone getting hurt I can't help them. I can only write it down and hope karma kicks them in the nuts. Speaking to the Watchman is a crime punishable by arrest, in rare cases even death. And so I wander my glass box and try to forget I live in my body. I'm the Rapunzel boy of Kingdom, the creepy watcher of everyone's private doings. I'm such a constant part of life here that most people forget I exist.

Not her, though. I noticed as soon as I saw the van swerving off of Sherwood Road. I saw her through the glass, face pressed against it as they smashed into solid treestruction. She wasn't scared. She was ecstatic.

I noticed when she pulled the half-visor off of Berwald's headset. She looked directly into it and said, "Not too long, now" before pocketing it. I noticed as she stopped briefly by every tree hole and planted rock, as she looked directly into the Gravedigger's shovel handle. She knows I'm watching her. Maybe she doesn't know I'M watching, but she knows someone is.

I'm starting to fear she'll find me.