The journey itself, is freedom
by Ainzfern
11
Time is subjective.
Enif had heard that phrase many times before in his short but event-filled existence and, he had to confess, that he had never paid much mind to it. Probably – and Enif would be the first to admit it – he had never spared it much thought because he'd never really understood the context or the abstract meaning behind the words.
But he understood perfectly now... because right now, standing at the rear of a descending lift, his face ashen and his heart hammering fit to burst, Enif was experiencing the longest two minutes of his life. Because in front of him, not two feet from him, as tall and as coldly beautiful as ever, was a terrifyingly familiar Elite. Flanked by his Pets and talking into his ubiquitous cell phone, just as he had when Enif had belonged to him, was Kyle Li.
To say that Enif had been unprepared to run into his former master would be the gravest understatement. Having left Riki's apartment only moments before, heartsick and filled with bone deep sorrow, Enif had only barely registered that the lift he was in had slowed at one of the upper residential levels of Eos Tower.
Nothing could have possibly hurt the young ex-Pet more than the bitter finality of Dian's death. But Enif could not deny that seeing Kyle Li upon the heels of that awful moment came a very close second. And the terrible irony only compounded the pain; that having now carefully planned his visits to Eos Tower to occur within the working week thus lowering the chances of even seeing an Elite, Enif should unfortunately beat those odds today of all days.
Mercifully, the descent did not take long. Kyle swept out of the lift into the lobby-level anteroom, still delivering a complex set of instructions and expectations into his cell phone. In his wake, carefully walking the appropriate few steps behind their master were Kyle's current Pets; one tall and sleekly built, and who darted a rather wary, even hostile little look at Enif with beautiful eyes as he stepped out of the lift; with the other two Pets being smaller, more youthfully pretty in their appearance. All of them, however, were affecting that peculiarly sullen and sultry expression that Elites such as Kyle seemed to appreciate.
And then they were gone, leaving the lift to descend to the basement lot... and leaving its sole occupant, visibly trembling in every limb, to descend along with it.
Enif's mind had almost blanked out with the sheer emotional horror, the dreadfully intimate sense of shock he had felt when the lift doors had opened to reveal Kyle Li and his gorgeously attired entourage. Already struggling with the weight of his renewed grief and desolation, utterly ill-equipped to face this particular Elite at the best of times, Enif had simply frozen in dread as his past life personified stepped into the lift, dismissed him as unimportant with a single indifferent glance of those cold blue eyes before turning to face the lift door, flipping open his cell phone and quite obviously contacting a colleague in his department.
For one awful moment Enif had actually felt his bladder spasm, so great had been his fright and distress. Fear had filled him. Fear that Kyle would recognize him, would demand an explanation for his presence, even his very existence; that the horrible nightmare of his abandonment would have to be relived.
But he needn't have worried. Kyle showed no more interest, no more recognition of him than he would have any common stranger. From Kyle Li's perspective, Enif might as well have not even been there.
Enif certainly wished that had been the case. As the lift doors now opened into the basement level and the deeply shaken ex-Pet stumbled out, the effects of the emotional devastation, the shock and the fright that Enif been forced to endure in such a short space of time, were continuing to take their inevitable toll.
Reaching his bike, Enif barely had the presence of mind to take a couple of staggering steps to one side before he dropped heavily to his hands and knees and vomited, his stomach helplessly emptying itself of its contents in a series of convulsive rib-creaking heaves. He was cold, his hands oddly numb, his skin clammy and damp with sweat. As the retching finally ceased, he realized with a deeply personal sense of shame and loathing, that he had indeed wet himself a little back in the lift.
Venting a soft and strangled sound of misery from deep in his shuddering chest, Enif rose shakily to his feet and rubbed both hands roughly over his face. Now moving in a kind of blank-faced daze, he pulled in a deep breath, unhooked his helmet from the hover-bike's left handgrip and pulled it on. He mounted the sleek machine, kicked over and gunned the engine and – quite incredibly considering his terrible state – managed to successfully navigate his way out of the basement lot and into the streets of Eos Central.
He would never, no matter how hard he might try, be able to remember that trip home.
Some time later, in his small but neatly ordered apartment which was located along the space port road just outside the main entrance gates, the first place that could truly be called his own, Enif paced restlessly from room to room. He would sit for a moment on his sofa, before rising and completing yet another agitated circuit of the apartment, picking up items at random, looking perfunctorily at them before putting them back in their place once more.
He had gone through the motions upon reaching the relative safety of his apartment complex; parking and securing his bike, calling Riki as promised, taking a long shower under water nearly hot enough to scald. Then, once again dressed in clean clothes – the cut of which was plain and simple, even modest, as was now his almost unconscious preference – Enif walked over to the converted warehouse that served as the temporary residence for those Pets and Ceres ex-pats awaiting transport to Hepstra and hope... just in case anyone had mysteriously arrived in his absence and was now waiting at the door of his annexed office just outside the dorm.
Nothing. The place was, as expected, empty. At least for now.
Returning to his apartment Enif stood for a moment, staring almost blankly down at his small dining table, at the items he had tossed haphazardly onto it upon first returning home. He found himself cataloguing them... the keys to his hover-bike, of course, the access pass that Riki had given to him for the basement of Eos Tower, his wallet – plain and unadorned leather – which contained his credit access card, his Federation Citizen ID papers and a small amount of cash.
He shook his head, trying to clear it, trying to settle the whirling maelstrom within it. His ears hummed with a strange low buzz and his immediate world seemed to have narrowed down to simple details, stark and sharp along the edges... almost painful.
The table. The items upon it. The ageing afternoon, the deepening sky. The walls around him. The faint scent of steam and soap from his shower lingering in the air. Dian's death... a detail. A fact. Dian was gone. Dead. Enif would never see him again, never touch his warm skin or kiss his soft lips or hold him tightly and feel that precious heart beating next to his. A detail. A pitiful epilogue to an ill-fated story that could never have had a happy ending. He was alone.
Another detail. He had seen Kyle Li, the one Elite he feared most of all... and Kyle Li had seen him.
A fact. Enif's presence, his face, had not even sparked so much as a single glimmer of recognition in the Blondie's eyes. To him, Enif had not been worth noticing, probably barely standing out from the background.
A tiny strangled sound rose up from his chest. With his expression suddenly changing, his face twisting into a profound grimace of pain and frustration and helpless empty loss, Enif turned and stumbled towards his living room window. Resting his hands against the glass, he stood, breathing harshly and staring with shadowed haunted eyes out at the day as it faded towards the sunset.
Kyle Li.
Enif's brows drew together in a deep frown. How many times, in the pit of the night, in quiet moments, had he thought about that man? That Elite. If he was honest about it, Enif might even admit that somewhere in his background thoughts, every moment of the day, the specter of Kyle Li's memory was always there, waiting to come to the forefront of his mind in less than an instant.
Enif had loved him; adored him, even. His beauty and his remoteness, his token gestures of affection, the soft silky sound of his voice. His orders, his rules, his impenetrable walls. His emotional distance and his rare flashes of irritation. As his Pet, Enif had done everything his master had demanded of him, up to and including 'putting Iason's dreadful mongrel in his place' – or at least trying to – at a Pet show in Apathia. At the merest quirk of a pale brow, Enif could be directed or summoned, so attuned to his master's wishes had he become.
And, as a reward for his absolute compliance, Enif had been cosseted and spoilt, showered with fine clothes and exquisite jewels, and expensive perfumes. He had even been given his own suite of rooms in Kyle's grand house in Apathia.
But then, Kyle Li had grown tired of him and had thrown him away.
Kyle's Furniture, a taciturn man named Deel, had carried out his master's wishes as he had done so many times before. In spite of the fact that he had looked after Enif for nearly a year, had guided him into the household, cared for his needs, comforted him as required and even shown affection for him, at a single curt instruction from Kyle Li he had set all of that aside. He had dealt with Enif's removal from the household with cold efficiency... as he would have any irritating problem.
In the space of one night, Enif had lost everything, even the fine satin sleepwear he had been wearing. Deel had made arrangements for him. Unfamiliar, heavy set men with rough hands and grim harsh faces had come to the Apathia residence to collect him. They had dragged him from his bed, tossed a plain and shapeless overall at him and told him to put it on.
Of course he had refused, as outraged as he was frightened at the sudden appearance of these dreadful strangers in his room. He was halfway through a warning to the pair of brutish interlopers about how furious his master was going to be when one of them struck him across the face.
Shocked, horrified, Enif had been stunned to realize, at that very moment, that Deel was standing in the doorway of his suite, watching the scene unfold, but doing nothing to intervene. Confused, and rapidly becoming filled with panic, Enif had called to him, reached for him, but Deel had simply shaken his head.
"I'm not in a position to help you anymore, Enif," the Furniture had told him. "Master Kyle had instructed me to get rid of you, and that is exactly what I am doing." Deel's expression had changed then, some of the cold rigidity leaving it as he sighed. "I've at least made arrangements for you to go to a place where there will be food and shelter... if you behave. The other alternative was to simply take you into Lower Midas and leave you there."
Enif had shaken his head, the fear rising inside of him far more profound than anything he had ever felt before. "But... but this is my home, I don't—"
One of the huge men flanking him had gripped the back of his neck with a powerful calloused hand, shoving him down onto the floor to land gracelessly on his hands and knees beside the overall that had been dropped there. "Stop wasting our time. Put that fuckin' thing on now."
"This isn't your home, Enif. It is Master Kyle's," Deel had told him then, his voice sorrowful enough, but nevertheless very matter of fact – as if this scene were something that Deel had witnessed many times before, "So are the clothes you've been wearing and jewels you liked so much."
Enif had shaken his head in helpless denial, tears coming to his eyes his entire body shaking with terror and distress. He had felt a booted foot nudge him none-too-gently in the thigh, once more urging him to hurry up, and he flinched from it, looking up at the Furniture with tears streaking his pale and upset face. "Why?" he had cried out hoarsely, desperately, "Why?"
And Deel had shattered his heart, his entire safe and predictable word, with his next words.
"You bore him, Enif," the Furniture had lifted his shoulders in a terse shrug, "You're just too old now."
From the corner of his eye, Enif had seen that one of the big men standing over him, the one who had hit him, had begun to smirk, Deel's remark obviously amusing him. Enif had not, of course, known it at the time, but that man had been Karden Maxx, the factory manager who would be the architect of the darkest and most misery-filled years of Enif's young life. Deel had made 'arrangements' all right. He had arranged to hand Enif over into the hands of a heartless brute.
Now, standing in his darkening apartment, staring out at the sky where the sun was dipping towards the horizon, Enif pressed the heels of both hands to his eyes, his breath rasping between his clenched teeth as he struggled to calm himself, to make some manner of sense of the images and the memories in his head. Only one conclusion emerged, over and over, like a silent mantra in his mind.
Unfair. Bitterly, utterly unfair.
All of it.
His feelings, conflicted and jumbled, raged against each other. He wanted to weep, to scream, to tear at his hair and curse fate, curse life, for letting him down so badly, for robbing him of Dian, for stealing the joy that should have been waiting at the end of his suffering. He wanted to rage, to strike back... to hurt someone as much as he had been hurt. He wanted to run, to flee from it all and hide in the shadows until time was over and with it, the pain.
He could not stay here right now. He couldn't be still right now. He felt so desperately unhappy, so terribly strained and restless that he imagined he might claw his way out of his own skin. He had to move, to get out of the four walls of his apartment, the walls that now seemed to be closing in on him. He needed to go somewhere, anywhere.
With another soft cry, a frustrated and agonized sound, Enif suddenly moved. He lunged towards his dining table, snatched up his keys and literally fled for the door, barely remembering to close it behind him as he darted out into the fading evening. A moment later, the muffled growl of an old but well-kept hover-bike engine rumbled through the empty apartment and, as the bike was gunned and ridden off into the distance, the sound dwindled, faded and then was gone.
The journey itself... – chapter 10 << >> The journey itself... – chapter 12