Season 02 - Episode 27

‘let alone answer’

Ny sits quietly. It's really all he does. His chair is old and uncomfortable, moulded out of shape by his neighbours sitting in it. The chair beside him is empty. It also used to hold a shape, a special shape but now that's gone too, crushed under the weight of visitors.

He holds the stump of his right forearm in his left hand and stares at nothing. The stump throbs terribly, the pain is constant and exhausting and yet somehow feels a long way away. Ny accepts the pain, allows it to flow over and through him. The pain feels right, it feels like what he deserves.

He is a fool.

Just because he was lonely, just because he was bored. He blundered into his stupid little game of handyman like a child. Dragging everyone else in with him, naive, blind, stupid! It was only a matter of time before they were discovered, if not by The Disciples then by GovCo. This was always going to happen. Of course it was.

A gentle knocking sounds at the door.

“Ny?” calls his neighbour's voice. “Ny, it's Es. Please open the door.”

Ny scowls at the floor and squeezes his stump, making the pain sing higher.

“Please, Ny,” calls Es from the corridor. “We just want to make sure you're alright.”

“Go away!” cries Ny, his voice cracking. He slams his fists down on the arms of the armchair though of course only one fist connects. The other one isn't there. Instead there is only a pain filled void that howls even louder at the impact.

He cradles his arm and whimpers to himself. Es gives up for the day and the empty hours slide past. Once or twice he hears heavy boots and raised voices howling out in the corridor. His body clenches, terrified of the Disciples returning to finish the job. His mind doesn't care however, even wishes them in, longing for an end to all this, an end he knows he's too weak to find for himself.

The Disciples took the tools, the new ones he'd made, the old ones he'd loved. They took all the food, all the equipment, trashed his food hatch and his vidscreen. He has nothing, even less than before and now he's going to starve to death anyway.

Time passes.

Ny's bladder, stomach and stump all cry out for attention but he ignores them. He wants nothing now, nothing at all. More of his neighbours come to his door. He doesn't blink, let alone answer. Finally, the corridors quieten and he is left in silence to wait out the night. Staring at nothing and hating himself.

Then, later, more knocking.

Ny realises he has been dozing and sits up straighter to listen. The knocking is quiet but urgent and persistent.

“Go away!” he shouts.

The knocking stops and Ny is settling back to seething when a voice comes instead.

“Please!” hisses the voice. It's not one he recognises.

Grumbling and cursing, Ny drags himself to his feet, cradling his ruined arm against his chest. He approaches the door with the same attitude, opening it just a crack. In the corridor outside is a small, slender man, wrapped in filthy rags.

“I've heard you help people,” whispers the stranger.

“I don't do that anymore,” says Ny harshly before glancing at his stump. “I can't.”

“Please!” gasps the man, almost in tears. “I have nowhere else to go. They'll kill me!”

“I can't help you,” insists Ny. “Even if I wanted...”

The man in the corridor has opened the front of his rags, revealing to Ny his clothes beneath.

“But...” says Ny, momentarily forgetting his stump and his anger completely. “I heard you were all dead. Wiped out.”

“We were,” says the man, his voice thick with emotion. “I'm the only one left.”

“Come in,” says Ny quietly. Still wide eyed with shock, he opens the door further.

The young monk covers his robes again and quickly slips inside.

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