CILTEV I; 491-B

below the path that leads to paradise, man swelters and boils and looks for deliverance amidst rats and dogs and feigns purpose. this is their reality and it is something that only they may know where others can not and should not

The first time Ciltev was beaten bloody was five years ago. At fourteen-years-old, he made the mistake of swinging on a scrap peddler who was twice his size and a head taller than him. He’d been punched so hard that he fell sideways onto the ground, and there was a scar on his temple from where the gravel had cut him. It took him a few years to get more of those, the marks that made him feel complete. Like he’d lived enough to know what was what.

And in the Underdist, it was a rite of passage for some people, who wore their scars like artwork. Scarscers, they were called. They made their living by trampling on one another; but only each other. That was the rule, if people weren’t wearing their marks, you don’t go after them. You don’t take their money. The only other rule was that you can’t kill each other, you can’t break any bones. The ones with the most marks didn’t wear shirts and brandished their skin like armor. And the younger ones, people closer in age to Ciltev, cut off their sleeves and made room to show off their scars like invitations. He did the same thing, displaying his wiry arms so that people could see the pinkened gashes and the scabs that were still in the process of healing. 

His most recent one was a slice along his shoulder, red and raw and bleeding. Flat on his back in some alley, his arms were sprawled out and he was heaving pained breaths. Ciltev closed his eyes and listened to the victor of their bout walk away. When he opened them next, it was because something fell onto his face. He didn’t know how long it had been, and didn’t bother moving. He groaned at the discomfort and the feeling of the sun on his skin.

“Sorry,” said a boy. He retrieved his fallen hat from Ciltev’s face. After a glance, Ciltev decided the boy must have only been around nine or ten. “It’s a little too big for me and falls off a lot. Were you sleeping?”

 “Something like that, yeah,” Ciltev grumbled. 

“What happened to your shoulder?”

“Lost a fight. Other guy had a knife. I didn’t.”

“Well,” the boy sat down next to Ciltev and started drawing lines in the dirt. “If there was a fight, and he had a knife, and he won, why wouldn’t he kill you?”

“Cause’,” Ciltev pushed his palms into the ground to sit up and winced. There was dried blood along the length of his arm. Good, the bleeding had stopped. Meant it wasn’t too deep, but he didn’t know if it would scar and felt a weight on his chest. If it didn’t scar, the whole thing would’ve been pointless. 

“Cause’ what?”

“Do you have any siblings? ” 

“No,” the boy said.

Ciltev got up only to sit back down against the side of the alley, leaning his head back against the wall. The sun felt nice on his face. “Okay, well, imagine if you did.”

“Okay, I’m imagining,” the boy said, still sitting in the dirt, still drawing his lines.

“Siblings bicker and fight. And they hurt each other, a lot, over stupid things. But they never really hurt each other, because it comes from a place of love—something like that.”

“So you’re saying that guy who beat you up loved you?”

Ciltev smiled and scoffed. “Yeah, sort of. I guess. He didn’t kill me. Just roughed me up, took whatever I had in my wallet. So he must have just a little bit of love for me, or I would’ve been gutted.”

“Okay,” said the boy. He turned around and dragged his butt in the dirt until he was sitting in front of Ciltev. “But.”
“But what?”

“But, well, why’d you fight?”

“He saw the scars, I saw his. If you wear them out, you’re challenging people. You’re saying, ‘Hey, come get me’. So we shook hands and agreed this alley would be the spot where it would go down.” Ciltev looked over at the boy and noticed he wasn’t drawing lines in the sand anymore, that he’d lowered his head a bit. He was staring at whatever he’d made down there.

 “Am I weak?” he asked.

Ciltev raised a brow, taken aback by the question. He stood up and crossed to him, and looked down. He saw a big smile in the dirt. “Yeah.”

“I don’t want to be,” said the boy, wiping away his creation. “But I don’t want scars either.”

“Guess you’re out of luck, then,” Ciltev shrugged and left the alley. The boy followed with both hands in his pockets. Probably thought it made him look tough. 

Around them, black smoke jutted out from metal patchwork buildings, wisping around flickering neon signage. The boy pointed out the Causeway during their trek and cooed at its massiveness. The arched bridge cut across the center of the Underdist. It was always watching them. The floodlights were its eyes, luminous and inviting. Sometimes people saw hope in them, tried climbing. If they didn’t fall they were shot by a bullet that came from behind the brightness. The boy’s poised finger and his murmur of excitement forced Ciltev to recall how desperately he wanted to climb it when he was younger, unscarred, and too stupid to know better. That’s when he thought if you could make it to the Causeway, you could make it to Central, where the tall metal towers and nicely paved streets made way for music, art, romance, and fizzy drinks. He didn’t think about any of that these days, about the paradise beyond the Green, and because he’d never seen it, he’d convinced himself it didn’t exist.

They walked on gravel and dirt and tried not to trip over the piping that grew out from the ground like still metal roots. Neither of them seemed particularly bothered by the echo of footsteps overhead, where people walked on the scaffolding that wove a web around the Underdist. People sat on ledges and drank from bottles, ate food, and laughed loudly. Among them, one spat, and it nearly hit them. Ciltev looked up, saw another big glob was coming, and moved the boy to the side.

“Ew,” said the boy, taking a closer look at the glob. “Why is it yellow?”

“Maybe he’s sick,” Ciltev said, widening his eyes, making himself look ominous. “Maybe he’s trying to infect you, and your skin will start to rot.”
“Stop!” 

“I’m messing with you.”

“Oh,” the boy shrugged. “Where are we going and what’s your name?”

“Ciltev,” he said. “And I’m going home.”

“I’m Veri, Veri Yrester.”

Ciltev walked some scaffolding-steps, brushing aside a few other people. He turned a corner, wafting away some of the black smoke from a poorly-placed pipe. Behind him, Veri coughed. “I’ve seen that on a sign, I think. Somewhere.”

“Yes,” Veri coughed once more. “My poppa fixes clothes and puts patches on stuff. Speaking of, I think you should wear something else, so you look less..” Veri circled around and eyed him up and down. 

“What?”

He tugged on Ciltev’s slacks, said, “Well that’s fine,” then pulled on his black shirt. It had no sleeves. “But this could use some work. And maybe you should grow your hair out! Your hair is so short, it makes you look almost-bald. You have to really squint to see your fuzzies.”

They reached a door, and Ciltev was in the process of removing a set of keys from his pockets. “Veri, go home. Your poppa is probably worried.” 

“We got separated, I got lost,” Veri said.

Ciltev bit the inside of his cheeks and looked down at Veri. He said it so seamlessly and without missing a beat, but Ciltev could see him for exactly what he was—a stray. If his parents patched up clothes, they’d done a shit job of outfitting their son with something passable. That stupid hat was too big, his sweater went down to his knees, and the boots on his feet had holes in them. Ciltev opened the door and gestured Veri inside with a nod. “Give me a second and I’ll take you back. Don’t touch anything. If you touch anything, I’m taking you back to the alley and leaving you there.”

The apartment was no more than a single room, half a kitchen and a bathroom. Veri sat on an unmade bed, twiddling his legs, and Ciltev kept the door to the bathroom open. He scrambled around to see if he could find something for his shoulder, ignoring the annoyance that sloshed around in his gut every time Veri started talking. “Roach, oh, oh, spider,” he’d say, almost songlike. “What’s moving in the wall?” he asked. “Did you get those posters from the other side of the Green? Are those bands? What does their music sound like? Do you have a hometoner we can listen to songs on? What’s in your closet? Do you have weapons in there? Better clothes? Do you have anything to eat?”

There was no gauze left or anything in his bathroom cabinet that would’ve helped with the slice in his shoulder. It wasn’t deep enough to scar, it just hurt. A sigh left him, and he pressed both palms on the counter, sagging, hunching. He popped a glob of red spit into the sink, washed it down, and looked at the mirror and the scar on his temple. It goaded him every time he looked at it. He could feel how desperately it wanted to split open sideways, to form a pair of teeth, to laugh at him, at how he turned out. It would’ve laughed at the sharp edges of his cheeks, beaten into place by fists and feet, like water slowly carving the face of a rock. It would’ve laughed at his brown eyes that almost always seemed black, half-feral and somehow less than whoever looked at him. Blood pumped into the veins around Ciltev’s fingers and he gripped the counter and his knuckles whitened. A hand wrapped around his wrist and tugged. He formed a fist, and nearly swung.

 Veri fell onto his rear and cried out, waving his arms in front of him. Ciltev told him it was okay, that he wasn’t going to hurt him, that he was sorry and didn’t mean to scare him. By the time Veri had finished squirming, the sleeves of his sweater had rolled down to his elbows. Old burn marks were scattered around his skin, pink and scarred and prominent, like a rash that would spread if touched. 

Ciltev tried to think of how it must have felt. He tried to think of the sensation, ash and the cinder against skin, how particular that kind of pain was, and when he couldn’t, he let that turn into anger, let it clog his veins, let it coagulate at different junctures all at once. In his chest; where the anger swelled and boiled. In his fists; so he could hold onto the anger to make his hands heavier. He thought of how this ash and this smoke would explode, and where it would go, who he would hurt, and how much he hated himself for calling Veri weak. “Who did this?” Ciltev knew, but asked anyway. 

Veri’s tears had not dried up. “Why?”

“So they don’t do this again.”

“They won’t, I left,” each word leaving Veri was faster than the next.

Ciltev sat down and leaned up against the bed. “How long have you been away from home, Veri?”

The boy hugged his knees and sniffled. “A while,” he said quietly. Long enough to be wearing rags. Long enough to stink and long enough to be so desperate that he was following around strangers with scars, probably looking for food or money or a place to stay. He was too trusting. 

Ciltev inched closer to Veri, who flinched at first, but settled. “Do you know Old Dresca’s scrapyard? It’s on a corner, closer to the East Gate of the Green. The one with the swings, and the tires, and the old slides that nobody goes down anymore because of the rust.”

“No,” he sniffled.

Ciltev pointed at his nose. “Yeah. Sorry. That was a stupid question, guess you wouldn’t, with the fences and barbed wire and all. Most people don’t even know about all that stuff, the swings. I’ll take you there if you want. You have boogers all over your face, though,” he said, slowly moving his hand closer to his face, seeing if Veri would allow this. He pulled his head back at first, but then kept still. Ciltev wiped them up with his hand, made a face and showed the green and yellow to Veri.

“Ew,” Veri tried hard not to smile. “Can we go to the swing now?”

“Yeah. We can go on the swing.”

✦ ✦ ✦

The scrapyard was fenced in by sheet metal, and it cut a corner out of the upper east side of the Underdist. On one corner was the typical patchwork, tightly packed buildings, tall and short, all metal and concrete, sewn together by bolts and pipes and rods. On the other was the thousand-foot-tall perimeter of the Cradle, solid, impregnable, rustless. Further down the thoroughfare was the East Gate of the Green, which had a fence of its own, barricades, and spotlights. Ciltev leered at the specs manning the guard posts. He couldn’t see them clearly, it was dark out, day-teetering-on-evening, but he knew those specs were watchmen of the Auxiliary. Sellouts with guns who kept their own people out of the Cradle.

Ciltev, readily approaching the entrance of the scrapyard, ran his fingers along the border areas that needed re-welding. To his side Veri watched with subtle interest, contently chewing on bits of dried dog meat Ciltev had bought on their way there. They halted one after another upon noticing the two street lamps on either side of the entrance. One of them flickered.

“Do we knock?” asked Veri.

A set of rusty doors waited for them and to the side of them was a chain. Ciltev pulled it, waited, and pulled again. He did this three times and pressed his ears to the door. Nothing. He kept pulling until he heard the locks and gears on the opposite side, smiled at Veri, and took a step back. Minutes passed before the doors opened, and by now Veri was tugging on Ciltev’s slacks.

“The doors are opening. Just wait, it takes a second,” said Ciltev.

“What’s taking so long?”

“Just wait.”

Creaks and echoes came out from the half-opened gate. A taller fellow with a gut and goatee had been the one to push it open, and standing just behind him was an older woman with a cane. Small and wrinkly, with a big set of magnified goggles that made her eyes look beady and bug-like. 

“Ho! Cil! Didn’t think I’d be seein’ you,” said the man, boisterous and gleeful and full of love.

Ciltev crossed to him and smiled, only to be lifted off into the ground and into a big embrace. “Easy, Breggs, easy!”

“Oh, put him down!” chirped the older lady, waving her hand around.

“Hi!” Veri bursted out. Each of them turned to face him, and the boy invited himself forward, waving with a small hand hidden by a sleeve that was too big. Ciltev dug his palm into Bregg’s shoulder over and over until he was released. The elder of the group adjusted magnifying goggles and asked him his name, and instead of asking hers, he looked to Ciltev, and said: “Who’s that?”

“Veri, you can ask her. Why are you asking me?”

“You can call me Ms. Dresca,” she said.

Ciltev had always taken to calling her Old Dresca. She’d never objected to it. They exchanged pleasantries, and Old Dresca said they should go to the warehouse at the center of the scrapyard. On the way there, Veri pointed out the swing set, the tire, and the old slide. All of it was nestled between heaps of weathered scrap. He wanted to go, and Ciltev said that they would soon enough. To that, Old Dresca turned and said, “Cil, if the boy wants to go on the swing, the boy can go on the swing.”

Breggs offered to push him, and Veri happily accepted. At the edge of the little clearing, Ciltev helped Old Dresca sit down on the big tire. It had been a few months since he’d last visited her, and she was bitter, he could tell, but not on account of any bad blood. They talked of the past, and she mentioned how much Ciltev had grown, and how she could never get used to seeing him as anything except for a kid. 

After a while she rested her head on his shoulder and he winced. She noticed the cut on there, exhaled, and lifted her head. She had plenty of things to say about what he did, how he got his money, but spared him the lecture. He’d heard so many of those growing up with her that he imagined she was tired of telling him what to do, what was best. She mentioned Breggs was doing good and Ciltev smiled at that.

“What’s his deal? The kid,” she said.

“He followed me home. I don’t know what to do with him.”

Old Dresca scoffed. “And you think I do?”

“You knew what to do with me, and Breggs, and Trishi.”

“I was younger than I am now, a sap,” she grumbled. 

Ciltev hugged her with one arm, let out a wince on account of his shoulder. “That’s not such a bad thing to be.”

Old Dresca leaned into him, careful not to touch the gash. “You haven’t asked about her.”

“Don’t want to know.” Last he’d heard, she was due to join the Auxiliary. That was a few years ago. Trishi was probably on the Causeway by now, shooting at the climbers from behind the spotlights. Could be at the East Gate, the West Gate, ferrying people into the Green to work the fields for the day. Either way, in a decade she’d qualify to become a citizen, jump ship to Central, and never look back.

“Well.” Old Dresca glanced at Veri in the distance. The boy was laughing because one of his boots had gone flying off into a pie of junk, and at Breggs, who by now had taken Veri’s stupid hat for himself. It still looked ridiculous even when it fit right. “Suppose one more won’t hurt. Should stay with us for a bit, Cil. I’m sure the kid would like it.”

“I met him today. Wouldn’t say we’re all that close.”

“Sure you are. Would’ve told him to piss off if you weren’t, but here you are, passing him onto me. Could’ve just left him where you found him. Plenty of tykes like him in the Underdist, hungry little things, little birds looking for breadcrumbs. Don’t see you bringing any of them round here.”

“It’s different.” He wondered why it was. The scars, maybe. He felt closer to Veri because he’d seen them. It was the first time he’d seen any that weren’t on people like him, scarscers, the people who wanted them, who sought them out on a whim. More meant good and more meant you were stronger and more meant you had a better chance of leaving a fight with a new trophy and more money to your name. His eyes drifted to Veri, and he felt a swaying in his gut, guilt, maybe, for knowing that even after seeing Veri’s marks he’d still want to acquire more for himself. 

“How is it different?”
Ciltev ran a thumb along the calluses on his opposite hand. “Someone hurt him.”

Old Dresca mumbled under her breath. Close as she was to him, he couldn’t hear her. She was stewing on her words, and it came out as half a grumble teetering on unspoken disapproval. A huff escaped her and she stood up, moved in front of him, and pushed a finger into his chest. The layers of magnifying glass in her goggles made her eyes look brown, just brown, with no white. These were knowing eyes.

“What?” he asked.

“Okay, someone hurt him,” she repeated. “It’s not going to change anything.”

“Yes it will, he’ll have somewhere to stay, where nobody is going to hurt him. I know you’ll take good care of him—”

“You idiot,” she spat. “I’m talking about what you’re going to do once you leave my scrapyard. How do you know who did it for certain? What if you go after the wrong person? What if this person, wherever they are, lives closer to the Gates? What if the Auxiliary sees you? What if someone reports you?”

 Ciltev was silent.

 “And what about all the other kids out on the street, mm?” Old Dresca continued, “They’re hurting, yes, Cil, in ways that you don’t even know. Ways you’re ignorant to, hurting in ways you want to ignore. I know you. I know the anger you hold, how it sits right here,” she pointed to his chest again, once, twice, and a third time, “and I know that you think it’s going to get better if you do something you think is for the better. But do you think the kid wants that?”

Ciltev brushed her hand away and glared, and she reeled back, not at the force of his movement, but the hunger in his eyes. The wanting. “I need this.” Old Dresca opened her mouth and closed it. She waved a hand, grumbled again, and swayed her head from side to side. Frustration swelled in Ciltev’s brows and in his hands. He sat back down, rested his face in palms, and spoke in muffled tones through the gaps in his fingers. “I’m gonna’ go. Thank you for taking him in.”

“Look, I’m not doing it for you, Cil. You’re right, to an end, about the kid. He needs a place to stay, and I’ll give him one, sure. But this is it, aright? No more of this. I don’t want to see you around here if you’re just gonna’ show up to drop off people to stay here. That’s not fair, and you know it.”

“Yeah, I hear you,” Ciltev stood up and wrapped his arms around Old Dresca. “That’s it. Promise. I’ll see you when I see you. I love you, tell Breggs I love him, and tell—” Breggs approached with Veri sitting on his shoulders. The boy had grabbed two tufts of Bregg’s curly hair and was half-pretending to steer him around. A ways off, in the scrapyard’s clearing, the seat of the old swing set was swaying back and forth.

“Can we go on the swings now?” Veri looked down at Ciltev, eyes wide with excitement.

“No, Veri,” he said. “There’s rust on it.”

✦ ✦ ✦

Plumes of smog and the shimmer of neon surrounded him. It was dark now and the cursory floodlights of the Causeway had woken in the distance. From where he was walking, higher up and alone on a scaffolding path, they looked like floating orbs in the sky. Spirits or ghosts lined up along a five-mile stretch of solid steel, haunting the night dwellers of the Underdist. But that’s all they could do, the lights, and Ciltev took comfort in this. They wouldn’t see him. 

He made his way down rows of shoddy steps until he reached the main thoroughfare on the ground and waited until he saw an opening into the hundred-headed crowd. People crowded vending stalls, musicians with junk instruments expected money for their off-notes. Others drank and smoked and gambled. Ciltev saw other scarscers in alleys beating each other out of the corner of his eye. The ones that weren’t already fighting looked to him, offering invitations by way of nods and waves. 

He ignored them and looked at the sides of walls and the front faces of buildings, stopping in his tracks when he saw the pale lettering of Yrester & Son Garment Repair over the top a door. A sign read ‘closed’.

No lights were on. Ciltev pulled the handle, knocked, and yelled. No one came. He stepped back onto the street, and when he peered inside the bar-covered windows, he saw only darkness. He shouted out and told whoever was inside to come down. Overhead, sepia light trickled out from a small window, and Ciltev returned to the door to knock, and knock, and knock until the skin of his knuckles shed against the wood. He went to pull the handle again and felt a tug from the opposite end of it. Lock notches moved and chains slithered and clanked, and Ciltev stepped back, waiting for the door to open. The briefness of the act felt stretched out, and his brackish eyes widened in anticipation. 

The man in the frame was twice his size and a head taller than him. He wasn’t large like the scrap peddler from five years ago and he wouldn’t leave Ciltev with any scars. He asked Ciltev who he was, what he wanted. He didn’t answer and he didn’t ask anything. He didn’t need confirmation and he didn’t care to talk. There was only burning. The burning was all and it was everything and it was everywhere, flowing into his tendons and his muscles. Anger or rage or something else entirely. And the man in front of him all noise and clamor. He buzzed and droned and Ciltev saw how his patience thinned in the silence. 

Before the door could be closed Ciltev stepped on his foot. A groan left him, but it was muted by two punches to the abdomen. Saliva was forced out from his mouth. Sickness from winding. He couldn’t breath, and he flailed. Ciltev punched him again in the same spot, and the man stumbled back into his shop. Tired and dazed, adrenaline failing him. He was too slow. He was weak and had no scars.

Crouching now, the man’s face in his hands, weeping, trying not to choke on the spit and the blood; stops and waits and whys and at the end of each exclamation another strike to the face or body. Aches filled Ciltev’s fists and he grit his teeth. Anger swelled in his brows. He hated himself for the fragility of his flesh. Scraping and blood and the threat of fingers cracking from force. A body holding back the burning. It filled him completely and he wasn’t sure when it would leave him or if he wanted it to. The man cried out for his son and apologized because he felt like he was closer to death. It wasn’t sincere and Ciltev wasn’t looking for a confession, but a furnace, and he wasn’t Veri’s father anymore. He was a canvas of skin meant to catch the fire. 

Ciltev’s most recent strike rendered him unconscious and it was only now that he felt hesitation. It was only after he was on the floor with his arms sprawled out, barely breathing, did Ciltev wonder if he could kill somebody. Veri had given him a reason he could hide behind. Violence and redemption conjoined into a self-delusion of justice, enough of it in excess to douse the flames. He didn’t know they existed before. He knew only the feeling; the festering that Old Dresca knew of. She’d always known of it and how it simmered in the pocket of his chest next to his heart. So many scars to show on his arms and his face and his chest and so many of them amounting to nothing. Their permanence was temporary. His hands wrapped around the man’s throat. Teardrops left Ciltev’s face and fell into the man’s eyes, mixing with his own. Whimpers leaving Ciltev turned into bellows of anguish as he tightened his grip and bashed the man’s head against the floor. He sat on top of his chest, wallowing in the stillness and the anticipation of a release, staring down into the eyes of the human shell beneath him. 

He waited for the death of the burning but it did not come.