Night Lights and Dark Places

Chapter Nineteen - Constricted

Elaine kept many secrets.

Thunder roared beyond the cave and the walls trembled, and she was curled in the dark, struggling to breathe. James was too young to remember the original nexus, where the families gathered beneath the sliver of sky visible through the cracked ceiling. Back then, they could light fires without fear of suffocation and slept in groups, swaddled in a warmth she never knew again after the room was destroyed. A storm, the worst she'd ever heard, poured rain through the ceiling and shook the cave with ceaseless ferocity until the walls gave way and the room caved in. They lost entire families in that moment and innumerable individuals over the course of several days as they slowly succumbed to starvation. Among the dead were her own grandfather and aunt.

Elaine herself had been trapped by the cave-in, pinned under a layer of rocks just heavy enough to immobilize her small body. She was freed almost immediately, as rescuing the young took precedence, but the terror and uncertainty stayed with her into adulthood. Loud noises and tight spaces terrified her, locked up her throat and left her gasping for air. No one in the colony knew, not even her mother. She'd be ridiculed for her weakness, maybe even punished.

Did it matter now? Everyone was dead. Christine wouldn't hold such a thing against her, she would gladly share her burden, but...

She managed a rasping half-breath, mouth dry and chest heaving. Dust sprinkled down from the ceiling of the cave as the world quaked. Deafening. Crushing.

Another breath nearly realized, and then a full one as she willed herself to calm down. Elaine sputtered, choked, rocked back and forth with her knees to her chest like a child. Then, somewhere in the loud dark, a foreign cough rattled the air and she bit down on the breath she'd tried to salvage, holding it in her chest.

Behind her stood her father, holding his hand in front of his mouth and looking particularly ashamed. He lowered his arm, softened his expression, and moved towards her, and instinctively she jammed her eyes shut and covered her face, but no impact came. He did not strike her, but sat beside her, hands folded in his lap. Victor did not look at her, just wrung his fingers with a sour expression.

"Is it the storm?" He asked finally. Elaine nodded, and he nodded back, both quiet. "My brother was like that. Sit up straight, you're blocking your own airflow."

She stared at him. What was happening? His expression turned annoyed.

"You're not going to get over it if you stay like that. Sit up."

Elaine did, with some hesitation. It didn't feel like it was helping, but then she took a full breath.

"When was the last time you ate?" He asked, sounding almost pleasant. She shrugged. "Your mother caught something. I don't know what it is, some sort of animal."

Victor said nothing for a long time and didn't offer any more comfort than he already had. He kept his distance and didn't look at her, and she didn't look at him. It was so awkward and bizarre that the general sense of confusion and vague unease it generated actually had more of a positive effect than his advice had. Her breaths became regular, easier.

"Why... did you help me?" She asked him eventually.

Victor clenched his jaw and inhaled sharply through his nose. "No one ever helped my brother."

"Oh." Elaine said. She couldn't remember her father's twin very well, only that he was undesirable because of his coloring. James once said the condition was called 'albinism' and that it wasn't the disability that the colony thought it was. "Do you miss him?"

"... Sometimes." Victor admitted, fingers laced. In the stillness, she took her father in. The skin of his hands was thick with scar tissue, and one of his fingers was crooked from having been broken and never healed properly. It was astonishing how similar he and his son looked, both quite gaunt and brow-heavy, though Victor's nose was at an odd angle after yet another poorly-healed break. He looked so much older than the last time she'd seen him; crows feet prominent at the corners of his sunken eyes and lips drawn wearily.

"What was he like? Before he left."

There was a long pause and Victor's eyes seemed hazier than they'd been a moment earlier. "Too soft, but loyal. Intelligent. Far more level-headed than I am. We didn't get along." He stopped and coughed briefly. Strangely, his coughs smelled bitter.

"Sounds like James."

Victor glared at her and wiped his mouth. "Abel was soft, but he was no coward. He accepted the way things were with dignity."

There was another pause as Victor began coughing again.

"It's been a while since you've been so forthright with me." Elaine said. Victor shrugged, looking uncharacteristically small and vulnerable. He seemed apologetic, but said nothing for a while.

"I am feeling... sentimental."

Elaine chuckled darkly. "Are you dying?"

Victor said nothing and his expression did not change.

Mirth turned to fear. "Dad. You're not."

"Something is wrong. Something that I cannot recover from. It's getting worse."

"Does Mum know?"

"She won't speak to me," He said, almost mournfully. "I'm sure she'll be quite pleased."

Her throat began to close again as her heart sank, chest tightening unbearably.

"Our family... our whole race... it's all over, isn't it?" She choked out.

Victor did not respond. They sat there in silence for a long, long time before Victor got up and left her there, alone with her thoughts.

The terrible weight of his impending fate crushed down on her chest, compressing her lungs until it was as if she'd never had the capacity for breath at all. Elaine laid back against the cold, wet stone floor of the cave, staring unblinking into the darkness, tears sticky in her eyes.

She refused to let this be the end.