Drowning in Deception (11 page)

It was the older man on the
loveseat who spoke this time, the one with the disfiguring facial scars and the
beady green eyes. “If you decide to keep yourself out of the milk fog, you must
be discreet about it. Tell no one and keep your emotions in check.”

Clover wanted to cringe away from
him and his scary face. It looked so raw and pink, so unnatural. “But why? Why
the big secret? Shouldn't we all be happy that they're trying to keep
everything peaceful, keep everyone content?”

“She's still not getting it.” Sera
rolled her eyes and jerked a thumb at Clover.

“We've met before, Clover.” The
scarred man got up from the loveseat and walked to her, looking down at her
with squinting eyes. “You don't remember me, do you?”

She shook her head and swallowed,
and hoped she didn't offend him when she took a step backward.

“My name is Smith Hardwin. I used
to work at the school. You met me when Zander was taking some of my courses a
couple of years ago.”

Clover's mind flashed back to
when she had walked and met Zander after class a few times. He had introduced
her to his teacher at the time - a tall, handsome man, with beautiful, wavy
brown hair and soft green eyes. She searched the face of the man in front of
her. His hair was buzzed short against his head and his face was an absolute
mess. It looked as if the outer layer of skin had been put through a meat
grinder and then pasted hastily back on.

She shook her head, refusing to
believe that this could be the same man.

“It's him, Clove. It's Mr. Hardwin.”
Zander remained hovering in the background near the door. What a coward. She was
learning all about this from strangers instead of from the boy she thought she knew
and trusted.

“You see...” Smith took her
gently by the hands and led her to the loveseat. The boy sitting there moved
out of the way so that Clover and Smith could sit. “…when your body is free of
the drugs, most people are no longer able to simply go along with everything.
It isn't just about emotions as Sera mentioned. Your natural human curiosity
starts to come out. Suddenly you find yourself wanting to know why things are
the way they are, what happened to make things how they are, and you start to
wonder what you can do to change these things and make them better.”

She blinked. “What things?”

He smiled, which caused part of
his cheek to form an ugly, lumpy mound. He had a tender, gentle way about him,
and she tried focussing on only his eyes instead of the lumps of flesh.

 “Everything.” He whispered it
with such passion, such emotion, that she felt her heart shudder. He said it
again. “Everything.”

This was so much. It was too
much. And yet she found herself wanting to know more. She wouldn't be content
to simply walk away with a smile, thinking, 'I'm content with my new
knowledge.' He was right. She was burning with curiosity.

“You're wondering where I got the
scars from, aren't you? You want to know what happened to me.”

She nodded, but Zander hurried
from where he’d been hovering near the door and stood beside Sera. “No, Smith.
I don't think that's a good idea. Her...”

Sera nudged him in the ribs to
shut him up.

Smith took no notice of the
exchange between Zander and Sera, remaining focussed on Clover. “I stopped
drinking milk purely by chance. I didn’t give it much thought. But something
happened to me. I found myself wondering about everything around me, and I yearned
to soak up knowledge about anything and everything I could find. To be honest,
I didn’t put two and two together right away - the fact that I felt like a
different person after I stopped drinking milk. Anyway, it was liberating to be
able to ask questions, to learn and to know things that I hadn’t even
considered knowing before. It was a wonderful feeling, and I wanted to share it
with others.”

His eyes shone as he spoke, and
Clover could tell he was deeply passionate about what he was saying. “So, I
started teaching. All of the people in this room were my students. There were
many more, but the ones you see here are the ones who saw the importance of
what I was lecturing. They saw my visions and my ideas with the same hunger I
did.” His eyes scanned the faces of the others in the room with pride, but then
sadness took over his features. “But not everyone saw things the way I did.”

“Stop,” whispered Zander
helplessly.

But he ignored him. “Someone
found about my lessons, and I was forcefully taken away. I was told that what I
was doing was against the law, that my teachings were nothing but lies designed
solely for the purpose of creating chaos among the people.” His eyes turned
dark. “And I was punished.”

Zander threw his arms up in the
air and stocked out of the room. Sera watched him go before turning back to
Clover with an amused smirk.

Clover couldn’t believe what she
was hearing. It seemed like fiction to her. Something from a story in a book,
only a book for a much older audience than what she wrote her stories for. She
looked to Smith with a mix of sympathy and confusion. “And your punishment was
to be made to look like this?” she asked quietly as she softly scanned his
face.

“No.” He looked at her sharply. “My
punishment was much worse. I was stripped naked and tied down. My entire body
was tattooed with words. ‘Fallen God’, ‘Sinner’, ‘Sacrificial God’, ‘Monster
Snack’.”

Clover couldn’t believe the
horror of his words. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know any more, but he
continued. “My face, my back, and my chest, were all covered in these words.
And then they flew me over the Wall and dumped me in the wilderness.”

“For the monsters to eat?” she
gasped.

He nodded solemnly.

Clover got to her feet. She felt
nauseous. “Who would do such a thing?” she demanded.

Smith stood too and looked down
at her. “The people at the top of the Watch Tower. They’re the ones that
enforce the laws of Eadin. We’ve decided to band together - our little group
here - and see if we can come up with a plan to stop the drugging.”

 Her eyes flew to find Zander,
but he was nowhere to be seen. She found Sera instead. She was watching her
carefully with a triumphant gleam in her eye and a crooked smile.

Smith continued. “And if we can
accomplish that, then we want to help the people of Quell. They…”

 “No!” she screamed. “I don’t
believe it. You’re all liars! They would never do something so hideous, so
evil. The people at the top of the Watch Tower are our protectors, our heroes. You’re
making it all up.”

She glanced around the room in a
panic, seeing only solemn faces, with the exception of Sera’s smirk.

“I assure you, it’s all true,” Smith
told her, his voice as soothing as honey. “I’ve burned and sandpapered the
words off my skin, and that’s what left these awful scars. You must believe me.
I could never make something like this up.”

“No. It’s all lies,” she shot and
headed for the door. The burning, squeezing sensation in her belly and chest was
rapidly returning.

She turned one last time to look
at them all as she opened the door. They appeared almost sad, especially Smith.

Sera had one last thing to say
before Clover left, and Clover saw the shock in Smith’s eyes as the words
registered in his mind.

Sera announced, “Clover’s
precious daddy is the boss on the top floor of the Watch Tower.”

Clover slammed the door behind
her and ran blindly down the street as tears bit into her cheeks.

She ran hard, sickness sloshing
madly in her stomach. Her mind raced, trying to find a place within where all
of this would make sense. Drugs in the milk, emotions, curiosity, punishment,
and her father the leader of this horror… It couldn’t be true. He was a good
man. He was her hero.

She ran recklessly, the frigid
air mixing with the moisture on her face and piercing into her skin like shards
of glass. A pale layer of white now spread across the ground as if attempting
to soften the pain in her heart.

Eventually she found a cluster of
tall trees near a park, and dropped to her knees in the damp grass there,
sobbing. Her head was hurting again, from all the spinning. She wanted for this
all to be a dream. A bad dream that she would wake up from and find everything
normal again. How could things like this exist in her world and how could it be
that she was completely unaware?

She looked up at the sound of
heavy breathing. Zander stood above her, panting to catch his breath. After a
moment he bent in front of her and sat, unmindful of the wet beneath him. She
wasn't certain that she even wanted to talk to him. How could he be keeping
secrets like this from her? Did the drugs in the milk really leave her in such
a fog that she was blind to all of this? Was everyone blind to all of this?

“Clove,” he reached for her hand,
but she yanked it away.

“Don't touch me.”

His posture slackened and he
pouted.

“Why are you even involved with
these people? These…these liars.”

He sighed. “I know you, Clove.
And I don’t think that you would be this upset over a couple of lies. You’re
upset because you believe that there’s at least some truth in it.”

“You don’t know me at all. How
could you when I’m not even sure I know me anymore?” Tears gushed from her
eyes.

He tried again to reach out for
her, but she shoved him away.

He gave her a moment to compose
herself before he spoke.

“Are you sorry that you know the
truth?” He practically whispered the words.

“No. Yes. I don't know. I’m not
even sure that it is all truth. I don’t know what to think. It's hard to
believe that the entire city of Eadin is being drugged and the majority of the
people have no idea.”

He fidgeted with his fingers. “But
you must believe it. You can see how different you feel without the milk, can't
you?”

She reluctantly nodded. He was
right. Although she much preferred feeling content to this new anger and
outrage, she could see now how everything had been foggy in front of her eyes
before, as if looking at the world through a strange window that distorted ugliness
into beauty.

“If I had told you about the milk
before, you wouldn't have believed me. You would've laughed it off and told me
to enjoy my silly games with my new friends. And I thought that if I had asked
you to stop drinking milk, that you wouldn't do it, that you would have told me
I was being foolish. You know, milk keeps you healthy and strong and keeps you
from becoming a criminal and all that crap. And plus, your dad, he’s…” He
trailed off, watching her carefully.

She looked back at him, her eyes
locked onto the face of the boy she always thought would someday be her
husband, and the father of her children. Now she wasn't so sure that was what
she wanted. Yes, they had a long history, and she still saw him as an attractive
boy. But something was gone now that had been there before. These thoughts
confused her and made her sad, because never before had she so much as
questioned her relationship with Zander. It was always so reliable. It was a
given that they were made for each other, and now she realized that maybe they
weren't, and she had no idea what to do with these new feelings.

To top it all off, there was
Sera. They hadn’t even touched on what was going on between Zander and that
nasty girl. Clover had been through enough emotional turmoil for one day. She
decided to leave that subject alone for the time being. She needed time to
think. Did it really matter what was going on between them if she didn’t even
want Zander anymore?

“You're right, Zander. I wouldn't
have believed you.” Her voice was flat.

“I know you're angry with me, and
I don't blame you. But, Clove, you have to promise me something. Don't tell
anyone about this, please. Especially your parents. And you have to keep your
emotions under control. You have to act like you're still on the drugs. Don't
let them find out you've stopped drinking the milk. Your dad...”

She stood, horrified. “The milk
is one thing. But I don't believe Smith's story. My dad would not have allowed
anything like that to happen. His job is to protect people. He wouldn’t hurt
anyone - ever.”

Zander stood too, shaking his
head in exasperation, his eyes pleading. “Smith is supposed to be dead. If
anyone finds out he’s alive, we could all be punished. Please, Clove, please...
Promise me.”

“You've known my dad most of your
life. How could you even think that he...?”

“Please, Clover. Promise me.”

She flung her hands up with a
frustrated growl. She gave him one last hard look and stomped away.

“Please...” he called after her,
weakly, but he didn't follow. He let her go.

When Clover arrived home, her
mother was finishing supper preparations in the kitchen. She took one look at
Clover and rushed to her. “You don't look well, and you've been crying. What is
it? What's happened?”