Verse 8:

 INNØCENCE & DISCØNSCIENCE

Warren Roseraid.

The name sent spikes of sorrow through Gallow’s heart. All the noises of the city were drowned out by silence.

“Who is he to you?” the Spirit asked.

Gallow was slow to respond. He opened his mouth, but by the time any words came out, they were careful, thoughtful.

“If we’re up here… then this must be…” he paused, surveying the roof, with its cement ground and brick chimney. “Warren lived in an orphanage, here in Pettma,” he started. “My dad was… killed in action in the Andeidra-Demeena War; my mom did social work at this orphanage, so I spent a lot of time here when I wasn’t at school.” He stopped once more, blinking with a pensive concentration.

The day melted from noon to sundown, and soft, orange shades dominated the sky like a painter’s brush strokes, the perfect memory of sunset.The two boys sat side-by-side on the roof’s edge, short legs dangling over the side-alley below, where the light didn’t reach.

“Hey, Warren?” the little Gallow said.

“Yeah?”

“What do you wanna do when you grow up?”

“Uh…” Warren’s eyes drifted to the skyline, his voice trailing off.

“Even as a kid, Warren was special.” The distance behind them folded into darkness, the Spirit turned around to see the memories in his mind take shape. Framed behind she and Gallow was a new scene, erected atop the rooftop. The atrium of the orphanage was thrown up like a display, the front door, painted an apple green, the floor checkered with black-and-white octagonal patterns. On the left side, a black-painted iron staircase rose to the higher floors. A coat rack and umbrella bucket were placed together next to the entrance.

The front door opened, morning light streamed in, and the small Gallow entered with his mother. She was a spacey-looking woman with tired eyes; streaks of gray slashed her long, brunette hair, and her powder-pink and white-spotted dress hung down to her ankles.

“Elaine?” his mother called out, her voice bouncing off of the floor tiles. Upon receiving no response, she walked over to a door built into the side of the staircase and knocked.

“Elaine?” she repeated.

The door opened without a creak, and an older woman, dressed similarly conservative, answered her.
“I remember, my mom had volunteered a few times before, and figured she wouldn’t have to pay for a nanny if she brought me along.”

From out of the older woman’s office, a little boy walked out, holding close to her leg.

“He can play with Warren here,” Elaine suggested with a withered, sing-song voice. “It’s much better for him than helping me do papers.” With deliberation, Warren stepped over the threshold, dressed in an ill-fitting white shirt and stained tweed pants.

“My mom always made sure I was dressed well. She got some nice checks from the government. She always said it would make people respect me more if I wore nice clothes, but I remember Warren was always different. He was a lot poorer than even we were, he didn’t wear new clothes. It’s funny now that I think about it; other people would have looked down on him. For some reason, though, from the first time we met, he had this big presence. It was like an adult’s, when you know they’re keeping everything under control. He was calm- and really cool.”

Gallow sheepishly stepped out and stretched his hand to him.

“N-nice to meet you, I’m Ajax, Ajax Clarke.”

The Spirit peered at Gallow with a kind curiosity, and he winced at his own name.

“I mean, you could have guessed,” He muttered gruffly. “What kind of a name is Gallow?”

Suddenly, the memory trailed away, and various scenes of childhood melted into each other, a blur that was more of a collection of feelings than hard details. It was undeniable that Warren was not intriguing from the outset; he had piercingly blue eyes; his hair was blond, though the tips of his hair turned to a charred black color, as if his light follicles were burnt at the end. When he was left at the orphanage doorstep, he was an infant, and his unusual appearance was as mysterious as his parentage.

In a snap, all of the imagery and emotion vanished, and Gallow returned his thoughts to that memory on the rooftop, where their shoes dangled over thin air.

“Oh, I know!” Warren blurted.

“Yeah?”
“Well, we need to pray every night before we go to sleep…”

“Uh huh?”

“I don’t really like doing that all that much, but Sister Elaine told us that if we don’t, the Devil will tempt us in our dreams.”

Ajax nodded.

“So… it would be better if we didn’t have to be scared of him, right?”

Gallow’s brow furrowed. “I don’t get it,” he replied, bluntly.

Warren paused to articulate himself, his nostrils hissed as he retreated inward. After a moment of deliberation, he perked up and with bright eyes proclaimed:

“I’m going to go to Hell and kill the Devil!”

Ajax’s eyes widened.

“I remember his face when he said that, it must have been the first time he’’d ever put all of the thoughts together.”

The Spirit turned her gaze from the memory to Gallow, who was only staring ahead, deep in thought.

“I don’t think,” he began, “that he knew what that would mean.”

A gust of wind picked up, autumn leaves swept the skyline away and replaced it with nothing at all. The rooftop became an island in a sea of unconsciousness.

Years bled by the two ethereal onlookers, seasons passed from one to another, the two boys grew up. The bricks and mortar of the rooftop fell away and drowned in the void, replaced by the concrete ground of an alleyway. Gallow already knew where to look, down past the broken window, to where his younger self and Warren were approaching from the streetside.

“This should be…” Gallow thought aloud. With a sudden defeat in his voice, he whimpered, “Yes…”

The air was as heavy as lead, and the sunlight never seemed to touch anything. Time slowed as he reminisced on this time and place. “I remember one of these two buildings– I think it’s that one,” he gestured at the wall to their right. “That was a seedy hotel, and the other one,” he pointed to the other building. “That was a bar. I remember one time, when we were both fifteen, Warren tried to get in there and started a fight with the bouncer. He broke his nose and had to tell Sister Elaine that he walked into a pole blindfolded.” Gallow chuckled, but it was an empty expression.

“That was the first time I ever saw him do something that got me worried,” he continued. “That was a few weeks before this day; I remember seeing we were in this part of town, and I got a bad feeling. For a moment, I saw the bar and I got a little relieved- maybe he was just going to get in a fight again; I mean, not like I wanted my best friend to get hurt, but maybe I could prepare myself. I was a weak kid.”

Gallow turned his attention back to the memory, which began to reenact as it existed in his mind. The worry on his face was deep set, as if it had been just below the surface and merely resurfaced.

“So… who are we meeting here, again?” Ajax wondered with a cautious lilt in his voice.

“Just a friend,” Warren replied.

Down the alley, a boy who was a few years older than both of them was leaned against the wall, dressed in a long overcoat and a bowler hat. They made eye-contact, and Warren slowed down to approach him.

“Hey, I’m Warren, you’re Jemin?”

The older boy looked the two of them up and down, slowly piecing together an impression of each through their expression and body language.

“Yeah, I’m him, are you looking to buy?” His analysis was apparently completed. It was easy to tell their dynamic, Warren was the more dominant personality and Ajax was his meek follower; if he wanted something, there was nothing the latter could do about it.

“When he said ‘buy,’ I had all these alarm bells go off in my head.”

The older boy opened up the long coat draped over his shoulders to reveal rows of pockets, each  filled with individual bags of powders of varying hues.

“What d’ya want?”

“I could feel it, it was palpable, that this was a bad place to be. No matter what happened, this would be a disaster.”

Warren raised a finger to point out a bag.

“Here.”

Jemin peered at his selection, nestled in the folds of his coat, and promptly stated “That’s 80 for an ounce.”

“Hey!” a shout echoed from down the alleyway.

“Disaster.”

All three of the boys’ heads snapped to the direction of the shout. From the other end of the alley, the one closer to them, two policemen stood cast in shadow.

“Get out,” Warren commanded. Gallow stood perfectly still, frozen by a wave of shock. He had never had any run-ins with law enforcement, and his mind was inundated with dreadful thoughts.

The dealer sprinted off in the opposite direction, Warren followed suit. However, after only a few paces, he stopped and turned back to look at Gallow, frozen in fear.

“Come on!” Warren called; the patrolmen would catch up to them any moment, but Gallow’s body couldn’t move. He slowly turned to face his best friend.

“I-I-” Tears were already leaking from his face, his voice faltered.

The alleyway was swept by darkness which, upon passing, revealed to the two observers a jail cell where Ajax and Warren sat on hard stone bricks.

“This was the scariest moment of my life, I still remember how hard the floor was.”

Four grey cement walls loomed over the teenagers. The evening sky was visible outside a high barred window; they sat on either side of it opposite the barred cell door. Ajax’s expression betrayed the agony of panic and boredom he was mired in. Warren, on the other hand, sat cooly, contemplating the situation unperturbed

Cautiously, Gallow’s face tilted to his friend’s direction.

“Why did we do this?”

Warren turned to him, his expression unchanging.

“And I’ll never forget what he said to me.”

“In the Holy Book, do you know why the Saviour died in front of a salamander?”

Silence hung in the air.

“No.”

Warren pulled his knee up to his chest. “Because in the ancient region they lived, the salamander was revered for its ability to regrow its tail. The verse reads ‘And he fell to the ground before a salamander, and his body was covered up by the Earth, and his spirit became endowed by the Earth as its new life.’”

“Yeah?” Ajax was familiar with the script, as he’d heard it every week at church.

“The secret to true life lies after death,” Warren eyed him with an almost ravenous gaze. “The Saviour created the Heavens from Hell, but died before the pilgrimage could be completed. I’m going to finish it.” He flashed a smirk that, for the first time, made Ajax uncomfortable.

Warren got to his feet and cast his gaze out of the window above them, pointing outwards toward the sunset. Rays of orange light cascaded down from Heaven.

“I want to be the Salamander.”

Ajax trained his eyes on his best friend; his heart was quaking, but he couldn’t tell why. “Where did you get this?”

Warren lowered his hand, his hair glimmered in the sunset, his calm stare pierced Ajax’s head.

“These thoughts fell down from Heaven, and I picked them up.”

Silence filled the room once more, like a vacuum of existence, utterly unreal. Slowly, Ajax found the courage to speak.

“So why are we here?”

Warren cast to the ground and replied with a jarring, pitiable inflection.

“Because I’m going to go to Hell. This is a minor setback for a minor step.” His voice was cold and hard, a departure from the sort of grandiosity that it oozed just a moment ago. “The law only exists for people who are too weak to free themselves from the chains of the World. Prisons are meant to strangle repentance out of people like that. I’m not looking for forgiveness, this is useless.”

He paused for a moment.

“Will you come with me?” he asked. “To the place I’m going?”

Ajax felt like he was being shoved around by Warren’s tone. In an instant, it was tender and filled with sweet longing.

“I-” Ajax had to choke the words out. “I don’t think I can.”

Silence set in between them, and Warren turned away to stare off into the corner.

“Shame,” he said. “This world is lonesome enough.”