Glass bottles glitter like stardust on the pavement. Along the road, debris; the remains of a telephone pole lies among scraps of burned cloth. Moonlight spills through the hostel window, the singular source of light when the street lamps have been smashed clean out. The clock to your right reads 23:47 in bright red, digital numbers flickering against a cracked screen.
The street is quieter than usual tonight. They don’t usually pass through here- opposite you, there are only parking garages crouched low to the ground; old offices in rundown buildings and restaurants with their shutter gates pulled closed. A little further down is the car dealership, precious goods hidden behind metal curtains. Luxury cars, perhaps. You roll the idea of driving an Aston Martin Vantage along the back of your mind, then put it away. The salary of a correspondent is far from enough to afford something like that.
Beneath your weight, the armchair creaks you as you shift. From far below comes the distant smell of smoke, a dumpster fire mingling with something chemical. Your lips purse, pressing thin as you peer outside. On the coffee table, opposite the TV, your laptop sits patiently, keyboard ticking like a minefield.
The half-written draft on the monitor is replaced by a red pop-up.
Warning – 10% Battery. Please charge.
Across the hallway, through the walls, you hear the thud as someone tumbles out of bed.
Tentatively, you move your head out of the window, craning your neck to peer down the rows of blacked-out glass. The moon is full tonight, hanging over grand, apathetic hills. Two teenagers lurk in the street below, dressed in black and sharing a cigarette. The darkness of their clothing is unassuming, their faces featureless. Your eyes take note of the shattered helmet at their feet and pass over them, sweeping along the street .
Some time ago, the street was filled by riot shields. A mass of bodies in the black; shouting in an unknown language. Men, treated like hounds; the crack of helmets against a baseball bat. You could only understand half of what they said, the rest lost both in translation and the noise of batons against bone. Now the silence has fallen across the street, acrid scent of tear gas lingering deep within your nose.
There are a thousand words for such an activity. Fighting comes first to mind. Riot, perhaps, protest. Violence your fellow writers had called it once, scribbling the word out on the draft as fast as it came. The laws seem to change as quick as the weather does, and beyond the public, there are other figures watching.
Hounds in the skin of men, barking out orders from the safety of a chain-link fence. (Hounds who could afford that Aston, ten times your salary.)
One of the pair looks up. The silence crashes like a wave across your back, throat pulling tight. Abruptly, you jolt back, darting away from the window as your shoulders pull tight. Your heart throws itself violently against your ribs, breathing reminiscent of a dog’s shallow pant. Your back presses against the armchair, fingers twitching as you close your eyes and pray yourself invisible.
The adrenaline bleeds through your system, each muscle wound tight on a thread.
Fear was not an emotion you had expected to know so intimately. Yet, you know exactly where it sits: in the hollow of your throat, in the nervous click of your heart. It seems to settle in you now, amber eyes wide open and peering out with curiosity. You have walked these very streets before. Now you can hardly turn the lights on. You cannot afford to be seen. You have been seen enough.
You sit there for a long moment, waiting with one hand on the blinds. When the outside is silent, you move back to the window again. Your breath shudders in your lungs before you turn away. A tiger on an old almanac paces its paper cage. Your work visa is expiring soon. You had never expected it to be so much of a problem. When you were young, you had never known such a problem at all. It had been in the time before identity, before words on a sheet of paper meant more than who you were as a human being. You had been born different, and as a result where doors were left open for your friends, they had been locked for you.
Even so, you had called it home.
When you moved out, your mother had made you promise to call every night.
Now, your cell phone is silent, face-up in the dark. The doors have stayed locked, even with a diploma. Freedom stays just out of reach.
You have tried every single key. Every single combination, everything you could possibly have done. But they stay closed. You have screamed, and shouted, and begged. You are still just slightly off. Not quite free, an inch from the exit door.
And here you are, watching the world pass.
It clicks when you sit down. What they are fighting for. They are fighting for the right to go through that door; to be free to choose. They are fighting, you think as your fingers drift across your keyboard, with one hand tied behind their back.
But they hope, still, that one of these days, it will be worth the fight.
Quietly, you find each instance of the word protester in your draft, and change it to person. The battery of your laptop flickers, then blacks out.