Work Text:
12/10/2018
Journey
The smell of piss, sweat, fear and regrets was so strong that it could go to your head. It tackled the nose, filled the lungs, it made you feel like you couldn’t breathe anymore.
In the tiny room filled with bodies, body fluid and desperation fluttered all around like a curse.
From time to time some moan let you understand who was still alive, a hand moving, a cough. The bodies, completely defenseless were regularly removed, to let someone else take their place.
Moving his weight from one leg to the other, Kadaj waited for his turn to enter.
The freezing air, harsh, of that winter without hope was cutting his face. No matter how he held his torn little coat around himself, he could not warm up. His hands, little and pale as bones, were trembling, and automatically rubbed against each other trying to gain warmth.
Big green eyes, devoid of any light for too long time, wandered back and forth, behind the man that blocked the entrance of his heaven.
How long did he still have to wait?
Somewhere, far, he heard the ring of a bell: another hour had passed.
Hopeful, Kadaj observed in silence the man at the door turned to talk to someone behind him. He tried to hide his excitement, but even if his skinny face looked quiet, inside his heart started pounding like crazy.
The man gestured at him, reaching out a hand, and the boy almost jumped in happiness.
He tossed the necessary coins into the man’s open palm, crushed, hard-hearned, probably obtained with a theft, and got inside.
The air was unbreathable but below that dense layer of dirty human effusion, Kadaj deeply inhaled the smell of laudanum.
Every time was like the first, so he liked to think, without knowing that his body and his mind were slowly consuming, slipping to the drugs’ oblivion.
He settled in where he found a place, next to two Englishmen with their greasy shirts.
The opium den’s pipes were available to whoever entered, the same with the opium to smoke, you just had to have the money to get in.
Kadaj’s hand were trembling, euphoric, while his hungry eyes run to the men and women laying on the ground. The luckiest had been able to obtain a mattress to lay on, the others had to settle for a square of cold ground.
Beyond that world, beyond that reality of human suffering, Kadaj knew that everyone of that people was on a journey. A journey towards unknown places, towards loved ones, towards a better life.
This was opium’s magic power.
Since the man beside him wasn’t moving, Kadaj took advantage of his dose too, rolled out of the pipe, half burned. If he put it more, it would have lasted longer, right?
Even if a part of him was already starting to wondering when he could have come back to the opium den next time, his conscious mind was focused on the smoke that came out in white rivulet from his pipe.
The first drag always tasted like something burned, it made his eyes water and he almost rejected that bittersweet taste, but then his body relaxed, it recognized the consistency of the smoke on the palate, in his throat, in his bronchi, and then he could have another drag.
The moment he liked the most was when the journey began. It was gradual, so slow that it made him grit his teeth around the pipe’s stick, and every time he had the feeling that it struggled to work.
He always feared that one day all the opium in London wouldn’t be enough to take him away from his miserable existence and then…then it began.
The whiteness of the smoke gradually blurred the outlines of the big room, it made the sharp smell of deteriorating souls disappear, it blurred his vision with light and shadow games until he blinked.
He wasn’t in the opium den anymore, he wasn’t even in London anymore.
In the universe that the opium created for him it was always springtime , there was a field of flowers that expanded as far as one could see, and most of all there were his brothers.
Yazoo hadn’t died of pneumonia, his slim body was healthy, his eyes of a shining green, and his beauty untouched; Loz hadn’t lost an arm and then his life because of the sepsis, and his strong chest was warm, his heart beating intensely.
Kadaj hurled himself at them, squealing in pleasure as he found himself in their arms. He felt Yazoo’s thin hands caressing his hair, Loz’s callous and rough ones keeping his back warm.
They smelled like flowers just picked, and the white soap mom used to wash their clothes with.
« Kadaj. » Yazoo muttered, a smile just barely hinted on his rosy lips. « You’re back! »
« Yes! » was his excited reply, as he rubbed his head against his brother’s shoulder.
« We missed you so much. » Loz added, a sad undertone in his voice, like he was gonna burst out crying.
« I’m sorry. It’s been hard finding the money this time. »
« We can’t stand watching you go again… » Yazoo sighed.
He distanced himself from his little brother, just so he could look at his face. Contrite, his eyebrows furrowed, he looked younger than he used to, even if Kadaj didn’t have memories of their childhood, not so clear to say how his brother used to look.
« Me neither. » the little boy bit his lips.
In the blue sky white cloud were sailing, like the smoke on the opium den’s ceiling.
A journey, even so beautiful and intense, sooner or later ends up with going back home, Kadaj knew it very well. But that world, that calm, his brothers…
« I could stay here with you. » he tried, without looking at them, his eyes staring at the sky, and then at the flowers’ stems as they bend under the blow of a slight wind.
Yazoo and Loz looked at each other, giving the impression of talking without using words.
Loz extended a hand to grab his little brother’s one. It was so much bigger and so much warmer.
« If you decide to stay here you won’t be able to go back. »
« I don’t want to go back. » muttered, sulky, the little boy.
Again, the brothers looked at each other, then also Yazoo held his hand, intertwine the fingers with his.
« Are you really sure? There are still so many things you could do. »
« I just wanna be with you. »
His elder brothers sighed, then Loz smiled and stretched out his arms.
Kadaj jumped in that hug, inhaling the good scent of his clothes and gladly accepted the caresses on his head.
When the bell rang he didn’t distanced himself from that hug, like he usually did. That toll, vague and far reminded him that his time was up and he had to go back. Not now, not this time.
In the warm hug with his brother he listened to the ringing as it became lighter and lighter, until in the hair the only noise he could hear was his brohters’ hearts.
« Now we will be together forever. »
The smell of piss, sweat, fear and regrets was so strong that it could go to your head. It tackled the nose, filled the lungs, it made you feel like you couldn’t breathe anymore.
Someone took care of the deads' bodies, throwing them out, on the cart headed to the mass grave, to let the others take their place.
The man that was throwing the corpses still warm and full of smoke on the cart was aware, rapacious, and even if the little coat that the boy was wearing was old and full of holes, it surely would have fit his daughter.
He gave a pat on the cart’s side so that the charioteer spurred the horse to leave, while he observed the coat as if it was a precious treasure.
Green eyes wide open and dull was staring at him from the back of the cart, Kadaj had left for a long journey.
The longest one.