to this.
“Ridley Mulligan?” a petite woman asked, her hands fumbling through a stack of paperwork. She was dressed in a green, cotton dress. Her wavy blond locks were tied back in a loose braid, which lay over her right shoulder. The small screen attached to her dress identified her as Claire Phillips, Head Matron of the Order.
I nodded my head in response and cupped my hands at my waist nervously. It was all becoming too real; the fact that, for the next two years, I would have to let go of everything that I knew if I stood any chance at surviving.
“Well, come along then. They are awaiting your arrival in Compound One,” she stated, turning to open the car door. I watched as she climbed inside of the vehicle and scooted over behind the driver side seat, leaving room for me to move in next to her.
I spun around, taking one final look at the place I’d known as home; at the small, concrete house that I’d spent the past seventeen-years in, at the residents I had once considered my family, at my parents who couldn’t stand to look at me. And then my eyes darted to the fields, the tall fields that shone brightly beneath the sun’s rays, the last place I’d seen Kieran before I was brought before the Council.
I recalled the panicked look in his green eyes when the guards found us lying beside each other, gazing up at the night sky brimming with stars. When they’d asked for our identification cards, I knew what would follow. I wasn’t his match, nor I his.
I wasn’t Rena Phillips, and he wasn’t Colin McKenna.
It was as simple as that.
We were brought to nearby cells, left to await separate hearings before the Council all because we’d found something in one another that couldn’t be manufactured – we’d found love.
The Council didn’t care how we’d felt about one another. No matter how much I wanted to try to explain, to reason with them, I knew it was pointless.
Natural love in our society had long since ceased to exist.
From what we’d been told, our world had fallen victim to some sort of plague, taking with it any bit of stability our people had once known.
It took time to rebuild our world as the government struggled to establish compounds throughout the plague stricken nation. Even now, thirty-years later, we were still struggling to exist.
Eager to regain stability, the government drew the Caiden Act, which made it so that residents were to be matched upon their seventeenth birthdays. Matches were expected to spend six months getting to know one another before they were expected to participate in a Promise Ceremony before the community.
Colin and I had been matched five months ago.
Our ceremony had been scheduled for the following month. But now that I’d been sentenced to serve two years in the outer compounds, he’d be matched with someone else.
I knew that I should be hurting; that I should be jealous even, but the truth was that I didn’t care. I didn’t care because he wasn’t Kieran. I didn’t care because it wasn’t him that my heart longed for. It would never be him, and I knew that.
“Ridley, we do not have all day,” Claire called from inside the SUV, forcing me out of my head.
Except we did – or at least I did.
I had two years to waste away; I wasn’t in any rush to meet my fate.
Accepting that I no longer belonged here, to live among those who believed in our system, those who welcomed lives constructed for them, I made my to the SUV, climbing in beside Claire.
“You do understand what will happen, correct?” She asked, reaching for my hand. She secured a thin metal bracelet around my wrist – one of many trackers they’d place on me before I arrived at the compound.
“I understand that I will serve as a Matron of the Order and that I will do as is expected of me,” I said, trying to blink away the tears that were beginning to form. “And I understand that the compounds are not meant for the weak – for people like me.”
I waited for Claire to
“Ridley Mulligan?” a petite woman asked, her hands fumbling through a stack of paperwork. She was dressed in a green, cotton dress. Her wavy blond locks were tied back in a loose braid, which lay over her right shoulder. The small screen attached to her dress identified her as Claire Phillips, Head Matron of the Order.
I nodded my head in response and cupped my hands at my waist nervously. It was all becoming too real; the fact that, for the next two years, I would have to let go of everything that I knew if I stood any chance at surviving.
“Well, come along then. They are awaiting your arrival in Compound One,” she stated, turning to open the car door. I watched as she climbed inside of the vehicle and scooted over behind the driver side seat, leaving room for me to move in next to her.
I spun around, taking one final look at the place I’d known as home; at the small, concrete house that I’d spent the past seventeen-years in, at the residents I had once considered my family, at my parents who couldn’t stand to look at me. And then my eyes darted to the fields, the tall fields that shone brightly beneath the sun’s rays, the last place I’d seen Kieran before I was brought before the Council.
I recalled the panicked look in his green eyes when the guards found us lying beside each other, gazing up at the night sky brimming with stars. When they’d asked for our identification cards, I knew what would follow. I wasn’t his match, nor I his.
I wasn’t Rena Phillips, and he wasn’t Colin McKenna.
It was as simple as that.
We were brought to nearby cells, left to await separate hearings before the Council all because we’d found something in one another that couldn’t be manufactured – we’d found love.
The Council didn’t care how we’d felt about one another. No matter how much I wanted to try to explain, to reason with them, I knew it was pointless.
Natural love in our society had long since ceased to exist.
From what we’d been told, our world had fallen victim to some sort of plague, taking with it any bit of stability our people had once known.
It took time to rebuild our world as the government struggled to establish compounds throughout the plague stricken nation. Even now, thirty-years later, we were still struggling to exist.
Eager to regain stability, the government drew the Caiden Act, which made it so that residents were to be matched upon their seventeenth birthdays. Matches were expected to spend six months getting to know one another before they were expected to participate in a Promise Ceremony before the community.
Colin and I had been matched five months ago.
Our ceremony had been scheduled for the following month. But now that I’d been sentenced to serve two years in the outer compounds, he’d be matched with someone else.
I knew that I should be hurting; that I should be jealous even, but the truth was that I didn’t care. I didn’t care because he wasn’t Kieran. I didn’t care because it wasn’t him that my heart longed for. It would never be him, and I knew that.
“Ridley, we do not have all day,” Claire called from inside the SUV, forcing me out of my head.
Except we did – or at least I did.
I had two years to waste away; I wasn’t in any rush to meet my fate.
Accepting that I no longer belonged here, to live among those who believed in our system, those who welcomed lives constructed for them, I made my to the SUV, climbing in beside Claire.
“You do understand what will happen, correct?” She asked, reaching for my hand. She secured a thin metal bracelet around my wrist – one of many trackers they’d place on me before I arrived at the compound.
“I understand that I will serve as a Matron of the Order and that I will do as is expected of me,” I said, trying to blink away the tears that were beginning to form. “And I understand that the compounds are not meant for the weak – for people like me.”
I waited for Claire to
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