
Clouds
Christian Dystopian Romance
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In a new political machine where Christians are segregated and persecuted for their faith in the worst imaginable way, hope is dim and out of reach. Shiloh is the worst city in the nation, boasting the largest Christian ghetto in existence. Tabitha, a young Christian woman trying to hide her blind mother from the secret police while working as a hostess in an inner city restaurant, finds herself falling desperately in love with her new supervisor. Luke, the youngest son of the new chief of police of Shiloh, is disturbed by the blight of the Christians and feels especially compassionate for Tabitha, but he is nearly alone in his sentiments as all of his colleagues despise Christians with a fervent passion. Can they overcome the prejudices of the culture and keep their forbidden love a secret?
Excerpt from Chapter 1
The blue sky above her was devoid of clouds, but seemed to be filled with possibilities and hope. She basked in the sun’s glow, raising her hands high, outstretched to embrace the sun in all its glory.
She stood in the field, the tall blades of grass grazing against her thighs. The gentle breeze blew through the dense meadow, her white sundress and long golden hair rippling behind her. The bright sun was warm as it caressed her bare arms and smiling face. The dull roar of the wind whisked around her ears, but she could still hear the faint chirping of birds in the distance.
The peaceful countryside rolled on for miles and miles before her, stretching out over the land like a blanket. Nothing in the world could be compared to such a wondrous landscape as this. Above, a blue bird glided through the clear air, casting a brief shadow over her face.
Bright sapphire eyes opened to follow the bird through its graceful flight. How her heart soared with that bird, free and lighter than the air it flew upon. Her smile widened as it careened back toward her, flying just a few feet from her before shooting up once more to flutter away.
She watched the bird disappear into the sky, becoming indistinguishable against the blue atmosphere. The girl wondered what it would be like to fly away just like that bird, to spread her arms and take off with them. How magnificent it would be.
Suddenly, the harping of the songbirds faded and the breeze grew still upon the meadow. The girl swiveled her head around wondering what was wrong. And then it came, the dark cloud. It appeared, materializing out of nowhere to blot out the sun. The girl’s smile dropped from her lips at the sudden realization of it all.
Darkness covered the field, sopping up the radiant colors all around her. The air grew cold and damp, the heady scent of rain descending upon the field.
And then she heard shouts, not of joy but of anger and hatred. She turned and saw the dark silhouettes running, guns in hand. Her eyes wide with terror, she tried to run away through the grass. The mass of foliage was too thick and she struggled with each step as the fragile material of her dress snagged on thorns and groping branch limbs.
Glancing over her shoulder, she saw them quickly advancing upon her and she knew there was no way to evade them. Above, the cloud turned crimson, filtering what little light poured down to bathe the meadow in red. Turning her eyes skyward, a flag filled her vision. It was one she knew all too well. A red backdrop with a golden symbol in the middle, dingy yellow lines forming the image of a tower with three prongs protruding from the top like a pitchfork.
She tripped over a fallen log, launching herself face first to the ground as the yells of her pursuers overwhelmed her.
Tabitha woke up with a gasp, bolting upright in her bed. Her long blonde hair was in a mass of tangles against her back as her blue eyes quickly scanned her surroundings. She was no longer in the darkened meadow, but in the bedroom of her apartment. She had been plagued by the dream so many times, but each time felt more real than the last.
She pressed her palm against her pounding heart as she tried to catch her breath.
The bedroom was small, holding only two mattresses and a small chest of drawers in the far corner of the room. The mattresses were thin and worn, so much that when Tabitha laid down, her hips and shoulders would touch the floor and made for a very uncomfortable sleep. The walls in the apartment were bare and gray with age, while the floor was made of wood panels riddled with protruding splinters and creaked under the slightest shifting of weight. In some places, drywall had chipped away to reveal the wood structure behind them. There were no light fixtures and electrical outlets except in the kitchen where a small refrigerator was plugged up. Thin, worn sheets of fabric curtained the windows and were drawn closed at all times.
Very little sunlight slanted through these windows, as the clouds beyond had already stolen away what glow they could give. Dust particles floated in the air and gave the apartment a musty smell that would never go away.
Tabitha rose up from her mattress and treaded softly toward the window, peeking behind the curtains to look down to the ghetto street three stories below.
Its cobblestone sidewalks were moist and glistened with rain from the night before. The buildings around the apartment complex were all in desperate need of repair. There was not one house or building that didn’t have a few bricks missing or a window or two shattered. Some buildings were merely shells of their former selves with heaps of debris inside and around their foundations, making them uninhabitable.
Only the children were naive enough to play outside in their torn trousers and patched-up shirts while their parents went off to work in the city. A garbage truck only came once every two weeks to the ghettos to collect trash, so in the meantime, it would accumulate and rot in piles on the sidewalks. The children didn’t seem to mind. They were used to it.
Tabitha sighed heavily, wishing the freeness of her dream were real. But her life was far from a dream and there was no freedom here.
She stretched her thin arms and arched her back to work the kinks out that had settled in over the night. Her body was thin, but she thanked the Lord that she was not sickly like many others in her neighborhood. With that thought, she looked to her mother that lay resting on the other mattress across from hers. The woman was curled up under the only blanket in the home. Nights were getting colder, but Tabitha knew her mother needed what little protection the blanket could provide more than she did.
Tabitha was the spitting image of her elderly mother, Elizabeth. If her hair hadn’t thinned and turned a soft white over the years and her skin were not wrinkled, they would be mistaken as sisters. Even though her mother wasn’t a day over fifty, her body had aged to a far greater year from the stresses of poverty and sickness.
Elizabeth’s sight began to fail a little over a year ago and became worse as time went on. Nearly six months ago, she had gone completely blind all together. No longer suitable for work, Tabitha took it upon herself to hide her mother in their small apartment while she worked as a hostess and busgirl at a prestigious restaurant in heart of the city. It was a meager job, but all that she was able to find at the time and it paid well enough for them to survive.
Tabitha turned back to the window and strained her eyes to see past the desecrated buildings and into the city of Shiloh beyond the brick wall. She could just barely distinguish the battlement-like shadows of skyscrapers and towering office buildings in the smog that blanketed the city. She would have to go to work there soon, amongst the people that hated and despised her.
“Tabitha? Dear, are you up?” Elizabeth’s voice crackled from the far side of the room, half hidden in the shadows. It was the voice she had heard so often growing up, but was now laced with the evidence of aging.
Tabitha looked over her shoulder and saw her mother carefully pushing herself up from the thin mattress. Her old bones creaked with the effort.
“Yes, mother. I’m up. Do you want me to cook you breakfast?” Tabitha asked as she walked barefoot over to a small chest of drawers.
“Yes, dear. But not right now. Maybe in an hour or two. It’s too early for me. When do you have to go to work?”
“At about ten. But it takes me about an hour to walk there, so I need to get going at about eight-thirty if I want to get there on time.” Tabitha pulled out a clean uniform and began changing. If it weren’t for the wristwatch her father had smuggled in years ago, they would never know what time it really was.
“Okay… What time is it now?” Elizabeth settled back down on her back and stared at the crusted ceiling with her cloudy, cataract eyes.
“Probably about seven o’clock. The sun just came up,” Tabitha said as she pushed her arms through her white button-up blouse after sliding on a pair of black slacks. She fastened the last button and looked to see her mother’s eye lids close slowly and open even slower.
Elizabeth did that often. When Tabitha asked about it, her mother answered that she did this in hopes that when she opened her eyes, she could see again. She admired her mother for her faith in miracles, even though she had long given up on such things. Miracles didn’t happen nowadays.
Tabitha then took her nightgown and folded it up on top of her bed before coming to her mother’s side.
“Are you alright, mother?” Tabitha took Elizabeth’s wrinkled hand into her own, letting her fingers fold gently over the fragile skin that was stretched too thinly over her bones. Elizabeth turned toward her daughter and smiled sweetly.
“Yes, dear. I’m just a little tired. This dog-gone mattress is just too rough on this old body and it takes longer for me to get a good night’s rest.” Elizabeth reached over and patted Tabitha’s hand reassuringly.
After some thought, Tabitha replied. “You can have my mattress. I can put it on top of yours and maybe it will be a little more comfortable.” Tabitha glanced over to her side of the room. There the mattress sat, and bowing in the middle where Tabitha’s body had made an imprint.
“Oh, no. No, you keep that mattress. I’ll be fine,” Elizabeth’s voice wasn’t convincing. Tabitha knew she would put the two mattresses together later, despite her mother’s wishes. Though she was only in her early twenties, she was still young enough that sleeping on the floor wouldn’t hurt her as badly. She could bounce back more easily than her mother.
Tabitha smiled, leaned down and kissed her mother’s forehead. Then, she walked out of their tiny bedroom into the only other room of their apartment to find her work shoes.
The main living area was not much bigger than the bedroom, cramming both a sitting area and kitchen inside the four beaten, peeling walls.
The only furnishings included a loveseat with a broken frame and flattened cushions, a small two-seater dining table with uneven legs and peeling veneer finish, and a tiny end table that held a single book with an old leather cover and a set of house keys. The kitchen was small with off-white vinyl flooring and yellow countertops. The cabinets were originally painted white, but over the years, the paint had chipped away to reveal the brown wood underneath. The only appliances they owned were a small, ancient refrigerator, a wood burning stove that allowed them to cook food as well as keep warm in the bitterly cold winters, and a sink that gave them murky tap water that they often had to boil on the stove to make it drinkable.
Tabitha turned to the right from the bedroom door and swiveled straight into their only bathroom. The flooring, counters and cupboards matched that of the kitchen, while the tub, toilet and sink were their original porcelain white, except for the blackened spots where the enamel had flaked off and the dingy amber stains along the inside. The mirror that hung over the pedestal sink had many cracks in its surface that distorted her image.
After glancing in the shattered mirror and seeing the chaotic state that her hair was in, she took the time to comb out the tangles with the brush they shared. Like many things they owned, it was old and passed down from her grandparents who had lived in this apartment before them.
The rising mountain of clothes in the corner of the bathroom reminded Tabitha that she would have to do laundry as soon as she got home in the evening. The laundromat didn’t open until noon, but she would be at work by then. She hoped that she had enough credits to afford a load or two. Between them, there weren’t many clothes to wash but it added up quickly over the course of a few days.
Tabitha found her black shoes, which the restaurant graciously allotted to her when she was hired so many years ago. She wore them nearly every day and the soles were littered with holes as well as gashes in the leather around the edges.
The restaurant reasoned that they could afford to give her new shirts and pants that old employees were done using, but shoes were too precious of a commodity to spare for people like her. They also explained that not many customers would look down upon her shoes. But, Tabitha saw them every day as she kept her eyes cast down in the presence of her coworkers and customers.
Tabitha slipped on the shoes and walked briskly back into the living room. On the wall near the door was a fixed coat rack. Upon its hooks hung her jacket and a long, blue piece of fabric. After she shrugged into her thin, tattered jacket she reached out her fingers to graze over the cloth. It was made of cotton and stood out brightly against the gray interior of their apartment.
She sighed as she took the cloth, folded it just right to make a headband, and then tied it over her forehead, knotting it tightly so it wouldn’t fall off. She couldn’t afford to lose it. The blue contrasted sharply against her silky blonde hair, but complimented her eyes nicely.
“Mother, I think I’ll go to the store and get some groceries. Do you need anything?” she called out as she made her way back into the tiny kitchen to survey what supplies they needed.
“No, I don’t believe so… Do we have any milk or bread?” Elizabeth asked, her voice hoarse and raspy from old age.
“That’s what I’m going to the store to get, along with some eggs and maybe butter if there is any.”
Their refrigerator was practically empty. All that remained was some left over food from the restaurant that Tabitha had brought home the day before - which would be her mother’s lunch -, a jug of cold tap water, some peanut butter, a few apples and a very special treat: a quarter of a donut that one of her customers gave to her at the restaurant out of charity.
Tabitha made a quick list of groceries in her mind, then walked to the dining table to shuffle through her credit vouchers from the past few weeks.
In a pile sat all of her credits from work. They were small, white plastic cards marked with color-coded circles to indicate how much they were worth.
Elizabeth told her they looked a lot like things called “credit cards”, which they couldn’t have, but a lot of people in the city did. Elizabeth said that the only difference was that there wasn’t a black bar on the back, which would be “swiped” whenever you wanted to charge it for something. But on the backside of her credit vouchers, her supervisor signed on a line, authorizing that they were authentic vouchers to use for purchases. Tabitha got paid about forty credits every week, earning one credit voucher per hour of work. However, she normally always worked longer than forty hours a week, but she was never paid for it.
Tabitha counted out the ten credits she had left and shoved them into her jacket pocket.
“Okay, I’m going out. Stay away from the windows and doors and I’ll be back soon. I love you!” Tabitha shouted back to her mother as she made her way toward their door, unlocking the four dead bolts and grabbing the keys that sat on the end table by the couch.
“Alright. Be safe, Tabby!”
Tabitha closed the door behind her, the hinges squealing against the metal, and locked her mother inside the apartment. She didn’t like doing it, but it had to be done for her own safety. The numbers 306 were carelessly painted on their door in white and other doors in the hall matched hers with their corresponding number. In other apartment rooms, she could faintly hear the crying of an infant and a few murmured conversations of the other inhabitants. She didn’t know any of them and she doubted that any of them knew her.
She walked down the dusty hallway, down the three flights of stairs, out the front door of the apartment building and into the ghetto streets. The stench of trash and filth assaulted her nostrils and the clatter of daily life was everywhere.
Some adults were just now heading to work or running to the grocery store around the corner like she was. Tabitha preferred to keep to herself and not interrupt the other people who were going about their busy schedules.
They all wore similar blue cloths, but they were worn in various different ways. One woman wore it in such a way as to keep her hair back. One man wore it like a neckerchief. She saw a child running in the streets that preferred to wear theirs like a wrist band, wrapping it several times around their wrist before tying it off. Everyone had to wear the blue cloths, even the children and some infants too. Seeing the cloth invoked the same tight-chested feeling inside that they would never be free. But, at the same time, it encouraged her that they were never alone in their struggles.
No one who lived in the ghettos ever really worked in the ghettos. The people who worked in the grocery store, laundry mat and other places within the ghetto walls were either government employees stationed there, or people who got a waiver to stay within the ghettos and work.
As Tabitha crossed one of the streets that led to the store, she could see down the road to the north gate of the ghetto. There, armed guards, known as the Gyad, stood just outside the walls.
They wore black uniforms, decorated with patches and polished buttons to show their rank, topped off with a black police hat to match with a golden band wrapped above the visor. Each soldier wielded standard issue loaded assault rifles. Wrapped around their arm was a red band with the golden symbol Tabitha had seen in her dream. She shivered at the sight of it.
The Gyad stood vigilant guard at the gates, scrutinizing those who were walking out of the ghetto to catch a bus that came at selected times and to only that gate during the day. No more buses came after eight o’clock in the evening. Then, the gates would close for the night and the ghetto’s inhabitants would be locked in for curfew.
Tabitha saw one of the morning buses roll up to the gate to begin letting passengers on. She slowed her pace to a stop, watching with strange interest as men, women and some teenagers boarded the bus. They looked frail and exhausted, but she couldn’t blame them. Sometimes Tabitha wondered what side of the wall was worse to be on.
She was almost knocked over when a middle-aged woman came running down the street toward the gate, shouting for the bus to wait. The woman was in a panic, trying to fix her work shirt and tie her bandana on tighter.
Half way to the gate, her bandana came loose from her arm and landed in a puddle in the street. She turned around, picked it up even though it was dripping and kept running. But it was too late. The bus pulled away from the curb as soon as she exited the gate and didn’t slow down.
Tabitha watched with pity as the woman burst into tears.
“Please, call another bus quickly!” she exclaimed to the two Gyad guards. She thoughtlessly tugged upon the black sleeve of their uniform, but they shrugged her off and shoved her back with the edge of their machine guns.
“You’ll wait for another bus,” one guard barked at her.
“But,” she sobbed, “the next bus won’t come for another hour. I’ll be late for work.” The woman wiped her running nose against her arm. “If I lose my job, how can I provide for my family?”
“That’s no concern of ours!” the Gyad shouted at her, quickly losing their patience.
The other guard grabbed her by the lapel of her shirt and threw her back inside the gates. The woman stumbled clumsily over herself and fell into the same puddle into which she had dropped her bandana. Dirty water splashed over her work uniform, leaving darkened splotches in the material.
The two guards pointed and laughed at the woman’s misfortune before returning to their posts on either side of the gate. Tabitha looked around and saw that no one seemed to even notice the blight of this woman.
Without a second thought, she rushed over and took the woman’s arm to help her to her feet. Through the whole affair, she had not stopped crying. Tears ran down her face in torrents and she was almost too dazed by grief to respond to Tabitha’s efforts to help.
“If the bus won’t come for another hour, you have plenty of time to go home and change,” Tabitha said gently to her as the woman regained her footing. “You should probably do that.”
“I’ve been late twice to work already,” the woman managed to blubber out. “If I’m late again, I don’t know what my boss will do to me.”
Tabitha gave her a weak smile and led her back in the direction she was running from. “I’ll pray for you,” was all she could say before the woman hobbled her way back to her apartment building.
Tabitha breathed a quick prayer for the poor woman and walked to the grocery store down the way. As she entered through the doors, she grabbed a hand basket and began her shopping.
There wasn’t much on the shelves. This store was the only one in the ghetto, but the shipments of food and supplies that came in every week or so were never enough to satisfy the needs of the people. When a shipment was late, they went hungry.
(End of Excerpt)