Un court message en préface:
Qui suis-je :
Je suis un algérien, vivant à Oran. Qui se plait à écrire et à lire (surtout à écrire ces derniers temps) durant ses heures perdues.
Pourquoi en anglais :
C'est une langue que je cherche à maîtriser ces derniers et que je commence à franchement apprécier. Je n'ai lu qu'une poignée de livres en cette langue (Asoiaf, et quelques bouquins qui parlent de science par exemple The Outer Limits of Reason ou encore The origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind)
Avoir des retours sur la qualité de l'écrit, si possible, serait vraiment appréciable!
Qu'est-ce que c'est que cette histoire:
C'est une histoire plutôt classique et cliché selon les dire de l'un de mes amis à qui j'ai envoyé des passages de cette histoire.
Cette histoire parle, grossomodo, d'un jeune adulte - environ la vingtaine - qui s'est perdu au milieu d'un désert. J'ai essayé d’imbiber l'histoire avec mes propres doutes sur quelques thèmes de la vie avec lesquelles j'ai du mal, comme la moralité, la mort, les choix... ça ne se voit que peu dans ce chapitre, mais lorsque je posterai la suite -si vous appréciez bien sûr- vous le verrez sans doutes.
Pourquoi envoyer directement le chapitre 3? ou sont les 2 chapitres précédant?
Ce n'est qu'un aperçu de l'histoire. Ce chapitre est le plus soigné des 7 que j'avais prévu pour le premier acte. Je fais de mon mieux pour que chaque chapitre aie sa propre histoire encapsulée. C'est à dire qu'on puisse à peu près comprendre ce qu'il s'y passe sans forcément se référer aux autres.
Merci énormément d'avoir pris le temps de lire, ainsi que pour les éventuels retours que vous allez donner. Je me suis personnellement très amusé en l'écrivant.
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The Sight
Hayden III
It was midday when he woke up, his head was pounding. There was still blood in his clothes… so it did happen. When he went out from his tent, the sun was hard hitting. It always was in this village.
“Hayden! Come! And share our fire!” A voice raised. It was the old man’s. And so he did.
“… and then they came both at me at the same time, I moved away, and slashed the man’s arm with my machete, you should’ve seen his face!” one of the men sitting by the fire said.
“you fucking liar” another one answered, drinking his cup, the old man laughed and greeted for Hayden as he came. He sat beside him.
They were all boasting about how glorious it was, and how they were all champions. It surely didn’t feel like it. At least they’re not pursuing her, wherever she is. He thought. But was it all worth it? If they’re truly slavers, they would have harmed her, sure, but they would never have killed her, she would have been safe with them, kind of… He wasn’t sure. He still had a brother to look for too. I can’t go home without him, I need to find both of them, Beth seems to be the closest.
he forced himself into eating the meat skewer he was given, but it was no use, all he could see was the blood pouring out from that man’s mouth, enough to make two days’ worth of hunger go away.
He sat looking at the flames, men were speaking beside him about what happened the day before. He heard some calling him craven or coward, but it was all jokes, he payed them no mind.
“Hayden, may I have a word?” a voice said, it was the tattooed man who came. “… in private”
The old man looked at him suspiciously.
He went with him for a walk around the village, they stopped around a tree, in the outer area of this place. They stared at some women at a distance.
“’Want one for the night?” the tattooed man said “You only need ask” He said
“no…” he answered, he felt weird talking about these women.
The women were bald, clean shaven, they hid their faces behind tissues, and wore long robes of black and grey. Some of them were skinning a deer, others were sleeping.
the tattooed man burst into laughter. “Loyal lad, I like it, but even if you wanted to, these women are the sisters, and they’re silent…. Good luck talking them into your bed!” He laughed
“the sisters…” Hayden wondered
“Yes, some call them the sisters of the grave. A bunch of whores, bandits, slaves and slavers, but now they’re under sacred oath and it doesn’t matter anymore. They swore a vow of silence, they do not talk to the living. Some say they can talk to the dead. They tend to the weak, heal their wounds but most of all they clean the dead and see that they’re buried with some dignity. It is a considered a great honor hosting this bunch” the man explained, his tone gone more serious.
“Men said you were a craven, and you couldn’t kill that man when the silver hand told you to, that true?” the tattooed man asked.
“yes… it is, I’m… I’m sorry” Hayden answered, he didn’t know what to say.
“Don’t be, you have done well not killing him. There is no honor killing a man in sleep”
You killed men in their sleep, hayden thought, and you threw that spear right through that man’s heart. He didn’t dare say it.
“… what we did yesterday was truly lame, I’m ashamed. I truly am, if we do kill men in their sleep in the middle of the night, we’re worse than those slavers, this is not our way.”
he said, grooming. “We found these when looting one of the cabins, thought you might be interested” the tattooed man said, handing hayden a bunch of paper.
he saw a list, names he couldn’t pronounce, some had a certain amount of gold – in ounces – written in front of them, some none, ransoms records he thought. In the midst of it, he saw the name of Beth, with a paid amount of 40 ounces of gold, paid by her parents whose names were written there too. It was the highest paid ransom of this list.
“her parents paid the ransom, so those men were taking her home...” hayden guessed, troubled. “Don’t be a fool, this gold is just a nice tip. None of the men of this list were going home, she was going to her slaver, who paid for her too.” The tattooed man answered.
the fucking bastards, he thought. Maybe they deserved to die after all. “she was going to a certain Golag, he holds a brothel in west point.” The tattooed man said, looking at the papers.
“She’s not going there anymore.” Hayden said, his mood gone dire. Damn it, how I’m I going to find her now? “Thank you for yesterday. you went there helping me in the middle of the night. I’ll never forget that…” Hayden said, he still didn’t know his name.
“Kiaan, my name is Kiaan” the tattooed man answered.
He kept thinking, sitting in his rock by the beach, what should I do, he asked himself. The old man joined him as usual, kept telling him stories from when he was young, the time he was working as a private mechanic for a wealthy man in New York, and how he despised and hated his job.
“This place saved me” he told him, talking about the village. Come to think of it, Hayden wasn’t sure what to do too, he just did what he was bid, went to college because other people went to college. But he didn’t feel important, he didn’t feel like it was his place, if ever he went missing, other people would take his place anyway, the more talented and more passionate would replace him, and no one would feel that he was missing in the first place. “this place was made for me, I built it from the ground up, this holy ground is the reason I live” the old man told him. Hayden wondered what’s his reasons to live, if he had any.
the old man was always pretty talkative, but he never spoke a word about why nor how he was maimed, and never explained why men called him the silver hand. A story for another time he kept telling him.
Hayden told him about Beth and his brother, and told him how she was sold to a brothel before she escaped. “I don’t know what to do now, and I don’t know how to find them…” hayden complained.
The old man kept silent for a moment “I don’t know where they are either, but I can show you the way to them” The old man said. “how?” hayden answered, his words full of doubt.
“there is a special concoction, made with herbs and flesh, we call it the potion of sight, or the dream maker. It grants visions of truth”
What the hell is he talking about “so you’re gonna get me high with ‘herbs’, that’s your plan?” He told him, laughing.
the old man told him that this ‘potion’ would do him no harm, that adults and children alike would take it to find sleep, and make sweet dreams out of it. He had given him a glass of it, right beside his bed in his tent. It didn’t have any color, some might even take it for water, but it had a good smell to it.
How is it going to show my brother, or beth? Is this really going to help?
He wondered why, but he took it, drank it in one go. it tasted good, honey like. And it did tired him enough to get him asleep.
He was back home, right in front of his doorstep. “Mommy, I’m Home” He announced, he tried to grab for the doorknob, but his whole house went away from him, he tried to grab it once more, it went further away, and on and on and on. Sand was rising from the ground as he approached the ever moving house. It got up to his knees, he couldn’t move anymore, or barely, his breath went intense.
The whole neighborhood was swarmed with sand, soon enough they’re won’t be anything else, he told himself. The sand was up to his neck by now.
Moments later, he found himself in the middle of a desert, apart from the sand, it was a great waste of nothingness, spreading as far as his eyes could see.
Hayden kept walking straight, not quite knowing where he was going, or why he kept going, but he kept walking anyway.
He could feel the sun hitting his back like thousands of whips, over and over again as he walked. The whips hitting even more fiercely as he went. His legs grew sour from the walking. He fell, kneeling to the ground, he tried to get himself back up, no use. He stayed there for a moment, he could almost see himself in the sand, almost, but it seemed like it wasn’t him anymore.
when he finally managed to get himself up, he saw a table, people were sitting around it. There was an empty chair, right infront of him. He sat there, after all, he was tired from all that walking, he could use a moment of rest to catch his breath.
The people sitting around the table were no ordinary people. They were men with heads of beasts.
One of them was truly horrifying. It had the head of a roaring tiger, and yet it made no sound, its mouth was wildly open, its left eye socket was empty, he couldn’t even see the bone, it was only black and dark. But blood poured out of it, abundantly in a constant stream of red. It seemed to mimic him, it looked where he looked, it moved as he moved. And if Hayden stared at it, it stared right back. It made it even scarier.
At his right, he had a man with a snake head, it whispered sweet words at his ears that he couldn’t understand or remember.
And the last man at the table, was a man in a fancy suit of light brown, with a tucked shirt and nice shoes, classic. He was smoking cigar, somehow, with his eagle head. It looked mighty and beautiful.
In a moment of absence, everything was gone. He found himself in this desert again.
But in a distance, he saw him, the eagle man. It called for him, and yet it didn’t speak, the words seemed to echo inside his head. Find me, it said. He knew it was him, it must be.
Find me, it kept saying. As he reached closer to him, it disappeared, it went further in an instant.
Find me, it kept saying. He could feel the scent of the air turning foul as he kept going, trying to catch that man who called for him.
He could see a beach in a distance, there he was! giving his back to the waves, and waiting for hayden to catch him.
Find me, it said, the stench of the air grew more intense, dead men’s stench, it filled his lungs, he could almost choke on it. It was hard keeping up, but he kept going, he kept following that eagle man who called for him. Waste and corpses rose from the ground, it filled everything infront of the beach, there were nearly no sand to be seen, only the water, turning red from the dead. That and the ever-appearing corpses.
Find me, he said, as he rose above from a tower made of limbs. In an instant, the eagle man pulled hayden toward him. All hayden could see was the eagle face, an inch from his own. Find me, it said one last time.
