Reading through Geary's 3 hour story made me think of the assignment I had to write for English class. It had to involve "Madness" in some way, either through Repression; The Oedipus Complex; Freud's Id, Ego, and Superego; or Jung's Persona, Shadow, Anima. Gaaaaah. Short story very loosely based on "Dirty Snow" by Simenon. I tried to make this story as CLEAR as possible.
((Note: Some swear words are CLEARLY edited out. Use your imagination))
Orders
Lelane raised his head from the chart for the first time that day to ask, “Where’s Myelka?”
Roes coughed and smirked a bit at the question. Everyone always knew where Myelka was. If the official knew as well, since the official was part of everyone, why did he always feel the need ask that question at the start of every one of these meetings?
Roes had become very bored with these meetings. He didn’t always answer when he was asked a question, and he didn’t always do exactly what he was told. He tried to think back to a time when he used to be able to follow orders and answer questions without thinking about them. When it used to be simple, yet unboring.
It was two months ago. The day Roes was standing guard as everyone else stood in line. He was in change of making everyone else stand in single file. Lelane told him that if anyone got out of line, he should shoot them.
In the line stood a mother with her daughter. The daughter stood beside the mother, so he shot her. When the mother stepped out of line, he shot her too.
There was nothing wrong with what he did. But there was nothing right, either. That’s just the way things were. Those were orders.
But what if there could be something right and something wrong, rather than just something being ordered or not?
So, Roes decided not to follow orders anymore.
After he decided upon this way to live, he found the violin player.
Roes and Myelka were ordered to escort the violin player to the streetcar. The violin player was part of the Resistance. He had killed an officer, so he must be arrested. If he tried anything to resist the arrest, Roes was ordered to beat him. Roes would need to take his gloves off in order to do that properly, though. His gloves were such a hassle, but everyone was supposed to wear them.
Roes and Myelka stood outside the frozen door of the violin player’s apartment. Myelka kicked the door open, and Roes charged in. The violin player reached for his case, but Roes was far too quick for him. By the time the violin player had his hand on the case, Roes loomed over him and turned the butt end of his rifle towards the violin player’s head. If Roes hit him, the man would be very injured and might have trouble walking out to the streetcar. Since Roes didn’t want to carry him, he stopped right before the rifle hit his head. The violin player cowered to the floor, and Roes kicked the case to spring it open and reveal the weapon inside.
Myelka and Roes escorted the violin player out into the cold. Both Roes and Myelka had ample clothing to wear off the cold and snow, but the violin player shivered from his torn shoes. They took him out of the building to wait for the streetcar to take him away.
Roes took his gloves off and told the violin player to hold them. Those gloves were such a hassle. It was far better to simply go without them.
As the streetcar took the violin player away, the violin player waved to Roes from inside the car. Myelka said, “I hate you, Roes. You know that?”
“Okay,” Roes replied.
“You know why? Because you’re always perfect. You always do everything perfectly. You know what I think? I think you’re a phony. I don’t think you actually love your job. You don’t actually love following orders,” Myelka tightened his gloves and walked away.
That’s when Violet came.
Violet was an expert at trudging through the snow. You could look one way, say hello to a far-away friend, and look back to find she was a mile off. The snow was no obstacle to her. It might have been due to how she was so small. She was small enough to fit in a fireplace. It could have been her eyes. She locked eyes with Myelka as he left. It could have been her hands. She had an icy-blue scarf over her hands, so if she fell, she would fall face-first. But she couldn’t fall. Her eyes were too focused, she was too small, and she traveled too fast.
“Hello. My name is Violet. What’s yours?”
“Roes,” because he had decided not to return to his base on time, he decided he would talk with this girl.
“Why did you do that? Aren’t you supposed to hate the Resistance members because they’re trying to kill you?”
“I didn’t want my gloves anymore, and I don’t have to follow orders.”
She came closer. Roes couldn’t tell she had stepped closer; she just was closer.
“Will you help me?”
“No,” Roes was done with following orders.
A voice came from above, “Violet! Get back here!”
Violet stood in the snow, looking down at her scarf-covered hands. “I had better go.”
Roes turned around and looked up at the man who yelled for Violet. He could see him clearly, and he looked like the violin player, only less pale and gaunt.
By the time he looked back down, Violet was gone.
So, of course Myelka was late. He ran in flustered and hid in the back until the end of the meeting.
“She asked about you again,” Myelka told Roes.
“Okay.”
“Don’t you even care? She loves you.”
“I don’t follow her orders.”
“If only her freaking father wasn’t there…”
Myelka stopped wearing his gloves a while ago. Roes and Myelka were the only two without gloves.
A tip from a friend of a friend led them to an apartment building adjacent to the one where they captured the violin player. A stash of weapons for the Resistance had been collected inside A charred elevator shaft stuck out the top of the roof, letting the cool air circulate throughout the entire building. Roes and Myelka had to go in first, as usual. When they opened the door, Violet was waiting immediately inside. She had gloves over her hands and an icy-blue scarf wrapped around her neck.
“The basement,” she whispered. Her breath exhaled to a cloud of mist even inside the building.
“Thank you Violet,” Myelka subtly kissed her on the forehead, and then she turned back inside and up the stairs. The squad, on the other hand, went down. At the bottom of the stairs, a key lay in front of an obviously locked door. Myelka picked up the key and tried to turn it in the lock. As he fiddled with it, footsteps came from upstairs, going up, going down, or going nowhere. The steps going nowhere were just there to intimidate them.
Roes shoved Myelka to the side and turned the key in one flick of the wrist. Myelka shined a light into the room, and it was practically empty. Just three or four large crates. It was all relative. It was not that there were too few weapons, but that the room was too big, too spacious, too empty.
Roes and Myelka stood at the front of the building while the others clumsily hauled crates up the stairs. It took four of them to take just one, so it would take two trips. But Roes knew that those two trips were one trip too many.
Myelka was the first to go down; it was inevitable. Roes was far enough away to retaliate, but by the time the building quieted down, three people were bleeding out, their blood freezing on the tiled floor.
There was nothing anyone could do about that. The rest of them simply carried the remaining crates out to the truck.
As Roes was about the leave, Violet stood by the entrance, in her over-sized soldier gloves and icy-blue scarf. The last thing the soldiers had to take from the building was Myelka’s corpse. But before they could, Violet dropped her gloves on it.
Only Roes had noticed. He picked up the gloves to hand them back to her, “You dropped these.”
She looked as if she didn’t care, but Roes knew she did. She couldn’t hide it. It came through on her breath. Roes decided he would get her to take her damn gloves back. He told the other soldiers to go without him; he would find his own way back.
He followed her up the stairs. It felt like such a long way that they just might reach the top and see the elevator shaft.
She stood outside the door with her keys in her ungloved hands.
“I’m just giving you your gloves back.”
With one sweeping movement she unlocked the door and walked in. Roes followed her, of course. She needed her gloves back.
However, there was another man inside as well.
“Violet! What the hell are you doing?” he had the same voice as the man Roes heard shouting at Violet earlier.
Violet didn’t answer. Roes stood in the doorway, holding the gloves.
“And so what do you think you’re doing? You soldiers with your freaking guns, your freaking uniforms, your freaking accents…” he went on for what seemed like an eternity.
“Let me tell you this: stay the hell away from my daughter.”
Roes looked down at the gloves he held in his hands. He thought of the violin player. The violin player was probably wearing his gloves right now.
Then Roes looked at the man’s eyes. He loved her. He was her father, so that was only natural, he supposed. But Myelka had said that she loved Roes, who was hated by her father. They stood there in a triangle, none of them knowing quite what to do.
“I’m just here to give your daughter her gloves back.”
The father would always believe Roes was evil. It was only natural. Everyone else believed that. But he didn’t have to stand there and listen to the father. Roes didn’t have to take orders from anyone anymore. He left the gloves on the floor.
Roes began to realize something. Without Myelka, no one recognized him anymore. He didn’t follow orders like he used to. Back then, everyone knew his name. It was always “Roes, do this!” or “Roes, do that!” But now, since those phrases didn’t work anymore, everyone had forgotten his name.
Nothing happened, but everything happened all the same. Roes was finally free. He didn’t need to do any of it, not just because he had decided not to, but because no one requested it of him anymore.
So, he walked the streets, free. Free from orders, free from restraints, free from restrictions, free from everything. And yet, every day, he walked by Violet’s apartment. He knew that Violet had to stay there, but that her father had told him to leave.
Roes didn’t care. But he had forgotten about the father’s orders. For that reason, he had to go back. He couldn’t let that man give him orders that he would follow. How could he make such a mistake like that?
When he returned and he knocked on the door, Violet was the one to answer. This is what Violet had been ordering him all along. How could he make a mistake like that?
There was no way out. Orders were the way of the world. He would always have to make a choice. He had to follow someone’s orders.
He decided to choose Violet.
“Who do you think you are, coming back here?” the father screamed.
“My name is Roes, and I’m choosing your daughter.”
“Like hell you are!”
He grabbed the father by the neck and swung him into the wall.
Roes didn’t have to follow the father’s orders; only Violet’s. If Violet so much as gave the signal he would crush the father in his palms.
“…st-…stop.”
“Roes, stop!”
Any command, any order. Roes let the father fall to the ground, gasping for air. It was only natural, he supposed, for Violet to take orders from her father.
“If…you…” the man coughed, “…want her just remember to…listen to her. Do whatever…she says.”
Roes already knew he took orders from Violet.
But what if he took orders from the father, too?
“I will take care of your daughter,” Roes said.
Both of them now received orders from Violet.
“Father…” Violet said. She ran over and gave her father the biggest hug Roes had ever seen. She took orders from the father, too.
That’s what it was. Roes had heard this word a lot, while taking orders. Everyone said it to him, especially Myelka. “You love your job,” he was always saying.
If Roes took orders from Violet and the father, and the father took orders from Violet and Roes, and Violet took orders from her father, there was only one line left.
“Violet,” Roes asked, “Do you love me?”
“I’m pretty sure,” she wiped the tears from her eyes.
Love. Orders. They weren’t different; they were one and the same.
Then it was the three of them. The occupation had long since forgotten the soldier they once knew. The three of them were all in love, all following orders, even the orders they dared not to say to each other. Now that he had learned how to follow orders again, he would start with these two. But, gradually, the world would begin to know Roes once again.
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Question: Do you know someone that you take orders from? Do you follow the orders of anyone without them telling you to follow them?
