Roake

Guyungh fits the page under the blade, lines it with the notch on the ruler, and snaps the sharp edge down. The knife crunches through the paper, and the loose piece flutters away to the growing pile of scraps on the floor. He rotates the page, his movements quick and deft, his gnarled hands driving the paper precisely where he wishes. He flicks the blade down again. Crunch. Exact. Confident. Not like the apprentice.

The apprentice slides his paper under the blade and presses the page until his fingertips whiten. He grasps the blade and eases it down. The blade grates through the paper. Painful. He doesn’t seem to realize that cutting slower does him no good. If he lines the paper correctly with the measurements, it doesn’t matter how fast or slow he uses the blade. It will always cut what he tells it to.

Of course, he is still learning. Dirty, tattered bandages wrap his hands. They unravel a bit, revealing scrapes, scabs, and red score marks. Like I said, he’s still learning.

Guyungh has done this since he can remember. Every day, he goes to work. Cutting. Endless days, endless papers, endless crunching of the blade. Growing scrap piles. In this Neighborhood. He’s a Cutter. His father was a Cutter. In this Neighborhood. And his Grandfather. Also, in this Neighborhood.

Today, the sky is slate gray. Dark clouds tumble on top of each other, some lighter, some darker, but all gray. Flecks of snow drift down onto the things: bare, gray dirt; leafless trees with gaunt, gray branches; gray bark. Different hues. But all gray.

Barbed wire fencing raises around the perimeter of the Neighborhood. The tops coil round and round, and every few hundred feet, a four-legged tower rears above everything. Those are brownish gray. The four legs splay out, supporting a floor perched about a quarter of the way from the pointed roof on top. Back and forth, in the nearest tower, the silhouette of a Watcher paces. His AK-47 blots out the sky like a stick. A dangerous stick.

The Neighborhoods are perfect. Perfect squares, perfect patches of land, all protected with towers and Watchers. Watchers in stiff, greenish-gray uniforms. The Neighborhoods stretch as far as I can see over the landscape, and they crawl up the gravelly mountains and hills, never breaking their exact, square perfection.

I cough. Burning rasps from my chest and up my throat. I hack again. The metallic, nauseating taste of blood fills my mouth. I’m sick. Like everyone else. That’s why I’m with Guyungh today. He will take me to the hospital for an IV when he’s done cutting his quota.

He spins the last sheet around, and with four confident chops, slices the last piece into its required dimensions. Without a word, he sweeps the paper scraps into the corner, then turns to me. He takes me by the arm, and we step through the open door and pace our way down the street. We don’t talk. Not if we don’t have to.

Inside the hospital, I wait for the nurse. She pulls the IV needle from someone’s arm and drops it into the stainless-steel bucket at her feet. She picks the bucket up and, holding it against her torso with one hand, uses her other to mix the contents around. She walks to me and sets the bucket on the floor. Hundreds of needles float in water, and she stirs them around with her hand. She pulls one from the swirling mass and fits it with the coil from the IV bag.

She pushes the needle into my arm. It pinches, then releases. Prick marks and greenish-red bruises mottle my arm from the other IVs. We wait for the bag to drain into me. We don’t talk. It’s the same reason Guyungh and I didn’t talk. Wouldn’t want to say something that the other one would report us for.

I’d hate to know what the rest of the world is like. The Watchers say we have a lot to be grateful for here. I suppose so. We have fences. We have Watchers to keep things out. And we have hospitals. That’s good.

You see, I live in Roake.