Free Reads!! Wednesday Briefs – Innocence & Carnality Part 9

Welcome to the next part in my Wednesday Briefs flash fiction serial, Innocence & Carnality! Each chapter has to be between 500 and 1,000 words and this week I chose the prompts, use “Let’s play a game…”

Nathan has to make a final decision about his life.

Click here to start from the beginning

Part 9

“Isn’t she a beauty?” Rother cried out as he stepped off the stagecoach, a childlike awe enveloping him. Several stories above us, the airship rested atop the shingled rooftop, accessed only from the iron stairwell attached to the side of the brick and mortar tower. Passengers mulled about the deck, waving to the people below. The ship itself was a mechanical dream. Held aloft by a canvas hot air balloon chained to the hull, a series of side fins and rear propellors provided thrust to the clockwork marvel. I’d seen the engine schematics in the past, and knew the intricacies of its construction.

Under normal circumstances I would be as fascinated as Rother.

As the cobblestones clicked under my boot, I realized this could be the last time I set foot in my homeland. Merchants plied their wares, and tipped their hats to our party as they passed. The smell of the city, a mix of unwashed youth and factory steam, connected me with the life and pulse of Victoria. I hadn’t been on this side of the city since I was a child. My brothers and I snuck away from our governess during a trip to quell our curiosity. We found the blacksmiths working alongside the clockworkists to forge a machine for the assembly line, and I sampled fresh peasant pastries for the first time. We suffered a harsh scolding when we returned, but we were staunch in our support of each other.

Those days when my family were happy seemed like ages ago.

“Blythe! Get us underway!” Rother shouted. “The ship is leaving in five minutes with or without us. I don’t want to spend one more minute in this damn country than I have to.”

Blythe’s voice held the urgency of a cracked whip. “All right! You heard the man! Move it!”

Harston jumped from the carriage and began hauling our luggage up the stairs with the aid of stewards from the ship company. They moved quickly, directed by Blythe as he paid the attendant for our tickets. Rother was nearly at the top already.

I couldn’t bring myself to step forward. My family, as awful as they could be, were all I knew, my privileged station all I knew how to be. And I was expected to abandon it all. Everything I knew was ghosting away whether I approved or not. I couldn’t help but grasp at the memories to gain some control over my life’s momentum.

A shadow loomed over me, and it turned out not to be my mood.

“You need help, Nathan?” Blythe asked.

Blocking the sun, my eyes were level with his swollen chest. The seams of his shirt and vest appeared ready to protest the stress on them. His graveled tenor matched the shaved head and coarse jaw he sported. A twisted scar ran up the left side of face, giving his rugged appearance a kind of permanent sneer. The tension in his stance screamed impatience, which didn’t help alleviate my anxiety.

Blythe pulled out his watch and snapped a quick view of the time. “Rother will have our heads if we miss this flight.”

I kept looking to the ship, to the carriage, to the city. My future was at a crux of choices and I couldn’t form a solid decision.

“I… I’ve never left Victoria before.”

“It’s a new adventure. Let’s go.”

I didn’t know how to express myself. Everything came out in a muddled stammer. “I can’t… I don’t… My family…”

Blythe’s shoulders sagged as he rolled his eyes under his heavy brow. “Fuckin’ hell. Tell you what. Let’s play a little game. You get up those stairs before time runs out. That’s the whole game.”

My father could only wish to possess the level of dominance Rother’s man exuded. But for all his strength, I found myself frozen, staring at the ship that would end my Victorian life.

“Son of a bitch…,” he growled. Snatching a fistful of my jacket, he dragged me across the lot. My heels scrabbled on the pavers as I tried to stop him. The brute ignored my attempts to peel his hand away; his grip was a vise.

“Unhand me! When Rother finds out—”

Blythe halted, yanking me close enough our noses nearly brushed. His annoyed breaths puffed across my face.

“Don’t think for one second Rother will raise an eyebrow over me rumpling you a bit to keep from missing that flight. We only came to this fucking place for the only thing he cared about: you. Why you’re pining over this place or that sad lot you call a family, I’ll never know.”

My face heated. “You don’t know what you’re talking about—”

“Even I can see they treated you like shit and you’re better than the whole lot of them. Stop acting like a boy. It’s time to move on.”

I cringed at his coarse language, but being treated this way by the help only underscored the flaws in my upbringing. Twice now I’d been called out. First by Rother and now by Blythe, both men supposedly beneath my social status. I was tiring of these revelations. Especially when they were right.

We stared each other down as I tried to stamp down the mixture of shame and anger in my chest. Passersby watched the scene, and I was only too happy to end their entertainment.

“I can walk on my own two feet.”

Blythe released me and I nearly fell, not realizing he’d lifted me off the ground. I squared up my jacket, trying to reassemble some fragments of my dignity and stalked to the stairwell.

“Good. Then I won’t have to carry you over my shoulder like a dead man wrapped in a carpet.”

I wasn’t sure what unnerved me more: the fact I stepped onto the aircraft, or the conviction in Blythe’s word choices.

Check back next Wednesday for the next installation… Be sure to take a read at the other briefers free reads this week here: Wednesday Briefs