The Letter

Hey guys! Just a heads up: The letter is half-bold to emphasize the liquid on it smudging the words hehe

Enjoy!

 The Letter

By Savera Khan

Cedric Darkfire was a cleaner. Not just any cleaner. He was a space cleaner. His hair was silver with pulverized rock. His dark eyes were hooded on a pale, gaunt face. Nobody remembered the last time he had smiled.

He scoured the galaxies, cleaning the homes of his fellow space-travelers, unseen, earning a terrible wage, but enough to keep himself alive.

His dark, dust-flecked cloak billowed around him as he gazed out of the dirty windows of the raucous, bumpy shuttle. The sky outside was beautiful, yet concealing, as if the millions of tiny lights were trying in vain to cover up a dark secret. Beside him, an ancient mop hit the sides of the rusty metal bucket it was held in.

“Almost done,” he whispered, pulling out a chain from his neck and opening the locket that hung from it, “then we can both rest.”

It held a picture of two beautiful, laughing girls, with curly brown hair, bright green eyes, and many, many freckles. Cedric’s sisters, Alexa and Kairi, had left a gaping hole inside him when they died. They were all he had ever known.

The shuttle stopped jerkily, letting out great puffs of black smoke, and Cedric got off. As he passed the still-seated passengers, they stared at and whispered about him. He ignored them.

As his feet made contact with the pounded space debris sidewalk, he gazed at the house before him. It looked perfectly ordinary, just white with a few windows and a plain black roof. Then again, the cat had looked perfectly ordinary when Alexa and Kairi started petting it, and where had that led? To an orphaned boy alone in a strange, cruel world.

Sighing through his nose, Cedric trudged up the steps of the house, aware of his cloak, the Cloak of Secret Darkness, starting to draw towards the shadows of the house’s interior.

He allowed himself to be tugged through the wide opening in the window.

As soon as his cloak was one with the darkness, it became warmer, counteracting the chills that ran up and down Cedric as he realized what type of person he was cleaning for.

Cat-themed decorations were everywhere, from paintings on the walls to the fluffy carpet to the dishware set on the kitten-bedecked tablecloth. But there were no real cats in sight. His bucket fell to the floor with a clatter. He hastily picked up again. He was supposed to clean this woman’s house unseen.

Squinting his eyes so that he would only have to see a millimeter of the horrific decor, Cedric nearly ran through the dining room. He had enough reminders of Alexa and Kairi’s deaths, thank you very much.

The antechamber was no better. The cat chandelier glittered cruelly above, illuminating Cedric’s cloak, which felt harshly cold again. Clutching his bucket handle tightly, Cedric began to clean at top speed.

It was several hours before he had scrubbed almost the entire house clean. The only thing left was the attic. Cedric lugged his cleaning supplies up the rickety wooden ladder.

The attic was dusty, darker than any of the other rooms, and mercifully free of feline adornments. Cobwebs hung in thick clumps from the rafters, some of them also spiraling across the decrepit trunks that were crammed into corners.

Cedric set to work, sweeping the two inches of dust that had formed on the floor, then scrubbing it plus the pillars, and finishing off by beating away the cobwebs with his broom.

That was when it happened.

When Cedric’s broom made contact with a particularly stubborn web, a small book fell from where it had been placed in the rafters.

Exhausted but curious to see what secrets the book held, Cedric examined it closer.

It had an extremely weatherbeaten dark blue book jacket, and in tiny golden lettering that was so faded it was almost unreadable, was the word Journal.

Carefully, Cedric opened the book. The pages were musty, yellow, and loose. Some completely parted from their cover upon opening.

They were all blank. Surprised, Cedric rifled through the pages, until he saw one that had small, cramped writing all over it. Writing that was splattered with drops of blood.

Dear Carol,

You are in grave danger. The boy--Carl? Carlos?--he was born with a terrible darkness. He can control the Black Holes. Every last one of them. He can choose who to suck in, and who to leave in peace. He can control where they form! It will not be strong now, but as he grows older and older, the power will grow stronger and stronger. You must make him lose this power. I think you know how.

Annabelle

Cedric stared at the words for what seemed like a lifetime. Carol. He knew that name. She had been his mother before… before...

And all of a sudden, Cedric’s world upended itself, and the mystery of his black cloak, the deaths of his parents at the hands of a black hole, the reason that Alexa and Kairi hadn’t known why he had survived when his parents had not, all of it clunked into place.

That was when the attic door creaked open again, and a woman spoke.

“I see you’ve found my letter.”

Keep on dreaming!

--Dreamstar