Logan: In The Morning

Collection: Submissions//the Halleaux
Chronicled by Logan

​A crippled old man laid in his bed coughing blood into his white neckerchief in a black room. Then his dried lips moved from their position to speak, his jaw moved down slowly to speak something. “And he decides who to free and who to blame, everybody won't be treated all the same.” Then as his lips move back into place Logan moved to the bed and just stared down at him, “I’m leaving”. Logan’s eyes flashed to life with a small burst of green light, but not bright enough to be noticed. He swings his feet forward off the bunk, then looks down the long row bunks with only a few people in them still. And then he put his hands on his face to wake up, he has no gloves on. This exposes his metal hands with painted green circles. A stripe of green paint also goes up to his arm, but the stripe on his metal arms are cut off about halfway due to his shirt covering the rest of the faded paint job. After spending a minute of relaxing something dawned on him. He was late, so he quickly took his hands off his face to reach for the rest of his clothing. He stood up, rolled his sleeves down and put on a leather jacket. He reached into his leather jacket and pulled out gloves to conceal his hands. Then he reached under the mattress and pulled a rolled piece of cloth meant to conceal something. He stuffed it in the inner pocket of his jacket.

He quickly looked down to his legs to find he doesn't have pants on, and then decided to put his head back and groaned for a little. As his head lunged back his esophagus was exposed showing that it was replaced with a metal mesh with a green light emitting from it. Then after groaning, he looked back down to his basketball shorts he’d had slept in the night before. He looked past his shorts to his legs, his feet are metal. Then he moved up his calves and admiring the flesh and bone that was still there, only to look up a little further to see the rest. The disappointment of his thighs and how they were made of parts jumbled together to make his whole bottom half of his body work. He looked up and around his bed for his pants, which were nowhere to be seen. He quickly heard the giggling of children and loud footsteps of small feet.
He quickly saw a dresser and opened it, and was overfilled with horror when he opened it. The only thing to wear was an ugly pair of brown corduroy pants that looked to be dirtied on the inside. “WHY IN THE BLOODY…..ok Logan." He quickly dropped to the ground to squeeze on the corduroy pants, He quickly learned that he wasn't a size 11. He got up, and with awkward squeezing calves, he started running for the exit. He saw the kids go into the crowd of people who were congregated in the main courtyard. And when he saw them go into the crowd of people he briefly paused and groaned. The kids were heading to a civilian section of the base for refugees, Travellers, and Gypsies. By the time Logan had crossed the sea of people the crowd was dispersing to go to their designated stations, Logan passed Marius on the way to the civilian sector. A loud yelling started, “HEY THOSE ARE MY PANTS, THEY AREN'T CLEAN STOP, STOP, AAAAAAA!” Logan ran a lot faster after hearing that, so fast he started ripping the pants and broke the button. Marius eventually fell behind due to Logan being too quick to keep up with. Logan saw the kids run into an apartment building and try to lock him out, but Logan lunged his foot into the door and partially broke the wood door. He quickly threw the door open and grabbed his pants from the children and said: “No, nice try though.” Logan quickly walked away from the door to find a bathroom to get the pants off. He was in the bathroom for 3 hours trying to get the small pants off.
When he finally got out of the bathroom he was basically infuriated beyond belief and to the point to where he was murmuring to himself on the way back to his bed. And on the way back Marius stopped him in a courtyard, “Ah… Excuse me, but my pants." Logan responded in a quick snap towards him.
“You mean that thing, that thing that isn't living anymore?”
“What?”
“Marius they are dead, I burned them in a trash bin after I was done talking them off.”
“And you know my name now, have we met?”
“No.”
“And..?”
“And what, your name was in the pants!”
“What is your name, I'm going to have to report you.”
“Isn’t that Petra’s job?” Logan pointed out.
“Sir your name?”
“Maybe Ren’s?”
“SIR!”
“I don't know, they are both pretty crazy.”
“SIR ITS NOT THAT HARD, YOUR NAME!”
“It’s Logan.”
A dead silence fell over the courtyard, and Marius spoke one more time. “Bye.” Then Marius broke into a sprint to the main Administrative office across the courtyard, he ended up falling because he was running too fast. Logan simply watched and let him run, realizing he was going to sound an alarm.
“'Bout time.”