Progressing Work - Post-End... - Darkforum.com - Dark Stories, Dark Art, Poetry, Photography, Debates and Discussions

Firewall

I figured I'd post some of my stuff here, what the Hell, why not. It's a work in progress, so I'll update it once in a while if anyone fancies reading it.

Here's some of it for now...

The gutters were filled with rubble. The kind that was broken from the walls and rooftops during the war. It had been forgotten, this city, with its blackened tarmac skies that sneezed out rain almost every day. New kinds of people had flooded into the city as the old residents vanished without trace. Most of those who questioned the whereabouts of the families that used to decorate the city with values and community, were turned hastily into answers of “seeking havens” or “following each other to a better place”. The air of New Barnum burned the lungs with its strong scents of vomit and smoke. The smoke is what made the sky a constant black. It wasn’t the usual smell that came with smoky skies, that stinging wood stink that would drift along campsites in summers long passed, summers where the sounds of the happy yelling of children and their cries for staying out late would be heard for miles. This was a different smell, something foreign to everyone who questioned it, a smell that would cause anyone to hold their breath until they realized it was all around them.

Clay knew the ins and the outs of New Barnum like it was etched onto his brain stem. He knew where to go, and where to stay clear of. He has been in the city when the skies were blue and it seldom rained. He had been there when the sounds of cars and laughing voices echoed off the walls, walls that didn’t then have portions missing from the explosions. Walls that weren’t stained with crimson from the men who had chained themselves to the bombs in the war, men who didn’t know what else to do, so gave their lives for a cause that they were told was a fine one. His memories seemed infinite as he stood on the corner of Conrad Avenue, his eyes staring at the floor as he squeezed between his eyes. He would journey back in his mind to the times he would spend in the coffee shop that stood, now boarded and bricked closed, coated with graffiti symbols. Times where he would sit and gulp down a great cup of coffee while he waited for Mary to finish work, he would smile, looking at his watch, knowing that each passing minute he was closer to seeing her again. It was almost 10pm, Clay looked at his watch. It had belonged to his father when he was alive and was the only item that Clay had left from his past. He had hidden it so many times to avoid it being taken from him. His mouth, his stomach and his anus were the usual safety boxes for it. It reeked of dirt but still glittered in the light of the dim streetlamps that swayed on the roadsides. The sirens would be sounding soon, Clay could see the lasers lighting up the sky above the buildings. These buildings that used to be bakeries, video game arcades, even the old adult video store that Clay used to work at part time still stood pointlessly with its original lightless neon tube signs. The sirens were one of the laws that had been passed soon after the war, 10pm was the time when the electricity of New Barnum was switched off, all light was removed, and any resident of the city who valued their life would have to find some place to spend the night until the lights flickered on the following morning. It was often thought that the original residents of the city had fled because of the things that happened during the black-outs. The rumors were rife and never an attractive thing to hear.

At one time, before the war had driven the planet into moral, visual and financial peril, before money and life had been written off as pointless, and when people followed a code in every day life, New Barnum was a popular city, actually, it was a few popular cities, with culture, history and energy. A time before each city, state, country and ocean was turned upside down and inside out to the point of geographical insanity. The time where thoughts of the Earths crust being broken apart and rearranged would have been brushed away as madness. The war had broken apart the Earth, torn down the monuments, erased the green grass and trees, murdered billions of people, and the end result was New Barnum, and cities a lot like it across the globe. Nobody knew where they were anymore, it was commonplace to run into a number of cultures and nationalities just sitting by the roadsides, evaluating their lives and trying to come up with the next step they were to take. People who had traveled constantly since the war and were still traveling. People who had lost dozens of relatives and didn’t know how else to carry on with life. Some didn’t carry on, the roads were littered with corpse after corpse, some with notes, unread, unreadable. It had become ordinary to see people killing each other for scraps of food, clothes or even as a release of anger or complete confusion.

A woman screamed, gripping at the clothes of the man in front of her, as he forced his shaking hand through her brittle chest cavity, while he cried and pleaded with himself to stop, to somehow find the power to hold her, and regret what he was doing. She had no food or items on her, just the rags that hung from her malnurished body, and he knew it. He sat beside her as she twitched with her final breaths, and he held his head in his hands, the blood of the woman being diluted by the sweat and tears that were dripping from his face. Clay leaned against the wall, a mere few metres away from the scene of murder he had just witnessed. He had seen it a hundred times or more, and it had grown used to seeing such human atrocities with each one he saw. He had seen babies snatched from blanket filled boxes and used as firewood. The death had once sickened Clay, but it had been seven years since the war had reached its end, and sadly he had become desensitised to the horror that humankind had become.

It was almost 10pm and Clay wandered to his apartment. He had already called five different places his apartment in that week alone. It was easy enough to find a bare room to live in for a couple of days, then the gangs would claim it, and it would be time to move along to the next, if you were lucky enough to be allowed such a rare priviledge. As he approached the dirty walls of the old bakery that now held soiled mattresses and torn, stained blankets, he squeezed through a hole in the bricks that had been made from the explosions and bulldozer tanks that had destroyed the city in the past. Most of the buildings in New Barnum had their doors bolted and cemented following the extremist battles that were waged. The inside of the old bakery smelled of shit and sex, a stink that would have been vomit inducing before, but was now so familiar, it was almost welcome. Clay choked on the smell for a second, and then forced himself to breath it in, which wasn't a great chore anymore. The walls were so dusty that it was impossible to see how the place would have looked years ago. He sat down on the filthy bed he had been sleeping in, as so many others would have before him, and he sighed, "Fuckin' pigs".

It was like a high pitched screaming, almost like a fearful shriek repeating itself. The siren sounded for fifteen minutes constant, and that was the warning over, if anyone ignored it, laws no longer applied and the city wouldn't be held responsible for anything that might occur. It was a rule that instilled fear in the hearts of most who still lived in New Barnum, a rule that had been passed by the enforcement charge of the city, a man who liked to be called the Mayor, but never showed his face to the city that he claimed power over. Mayor Tom. Very few people knew anything about him, let alone his real identity. The gangs in New Barnum had labeled him as "The Silver King", a name drenched in rumour regarding its roots. Rumours surrounding Mayor Tom, and his way of life and such, were easy to come across on the streets, rarely would you find a person who hadn't at least heard tales of "The Silver King".

"Sir, it's done", spoke Balias, one of the Mayors many lackeys who made sure he had every comfort he needed. Balias waved his hands slowly at Mayor Tom to garner his attention, and he nodded his reaction. The Mayor reached and yanked two ear plugs from each ear, and shook his head quickly, almost as if it would help him hear better now that his ears were unplugged. "Thankyou Balias, that fucking siren, never gets easier to listen to, even after so many years". Mayor Tom was a heavy set man, who's greasy and greying brown hair hung across his forehead messily. He wore black suits and shiny black shoes, seldom seen in New Barmun anymore. His wrists were decorated with diamond bracelets and gold watches, and his fingers coated with silver and gold rings, some filled with blood red ruby's, others made from the rarest of metals. A mean and sweaty shell of a man who used to hunt deer with his son, a man who used to read fairy tales to his daughter, and a man who once knew the difference between fantasy, reality, morality and immorality. "Send them out, I aint waitin' tonight", Mayor Tom snarled at Balias, his flabby chin rippling with each malicious word he spoke. "Yes sir, I'm on it", said Balias, who's thick neck held a head with vacant eyes, almost robot like in their coldness, he went to the telephone and called each gang leader one by one.

Jordyn · 05-26-06

it has potential, i'd like to see where you're going with it.

Firewall · 05-31-06

Thanks. Here's an update to it. Thanks for reading, I appreciate it, any feedback is also appreciated.

Killtrain, the gang leader of the East of New Barnum, a man soaked in an unknown past, his brain damage helping him to forget his values and his history. His gang would flood the East with violence, snatching babies to raise like wild animals and taking anything of value from anyone they came across. Mr. Black, the leader of the gangs in the North of New Barnum, perhaps the most feared. He would preach to his gangs, waving his hands and screaming with belief in every insane word he said. His gang, over a hundred men and women, would nod their heads in agreement, some would nod because it was the only place they had left to be part of a community or something they could feel and stand up for. Finally, Balias called the gang leader of the South of the city. Murphy was wild, his hair hung beside his Jesus-esque beard, and his wild green eyes immediately told you that nobody was home anymore. Murphy was an Irishman; he had travelled to New York, like many before him, with his family before the wars. Now he didn’t even remember his family. He would have his gang find any luxuries, be it alcohol, food or tobacco. They would brawl in the streets with anyone who hadn’t found shelter after lockdown, laughing and shouting. There was only one more structured and recognized gang in New Barnum, Balias lead it. Balias was feared by most people in the city, it was probably because of his being so close to Mayor Tom.

The confusion of the city prevented anyone from speaking out against “The Silver King”, in fear that their complaints would lead to their demise. There was a man, a couple of years after the wars had ended, who rebelled against the Mayor and his newly founded city rules. His name was Vincent Lee, a brave warrior to some, and a fool to others. Before the wars that destroyed the planet, Vincent Lee was at the top of the chain, he called shots that turned into big political decisions. A lawyer by trade, he knew how to read a criminal mind, and so he attempted to read into the psyche of Mayor Tom. Vincent spent months looking into the past of Mayor Tom, finding out things that no one had ever had the guts or the motivation to before. Thomas Bailey, a local hero in the South of the old United States, a renowned police sergeant, heroic and dripping with integrity. What made a man go insane? Vincent delved further into the life of Mayor Tom, his police past, his family, and his reasons for corrupting and putting fear into an entire broken city.

Vincent would spend his nights reading old newspapers he had collected from old law firms. Places once bright and busy, hectic with people working morning until sunset, now boarded up and locked away with sheet metal and wood. Vincent would spend nights looking for those buildings, and he would spend a few days in each, researching and discovering things about the wars, about the people who were the most responsible at the beginning, and about Thomas Bailey. It was a long job, tiresome and frustrating, but eventually, after searching twelve buildings and hundreds of files, Vincent Lee found what he had hoped to find. Proof that Mayor Tom was twisted and broken apart from the man he once was. Vincent held the thought that he would be able to slay the dragon, take down "The Silver King" and free New Barnum, the broken city, the biggest city on Earth. Vincent climbed the towers for days, talking his way past the gangs, talking his way past the guards. Eventually he made it to the face of Mayor Tom, and he shouted from the top of the clock tower. If only Vincent had told someone else what he knew, if only he knew of someone he could have told. The clock tower became a murder scene; it wasn't more than five minutes after he reached Mayor Tom that he was stabbed in the heart.

The wars had long ended; the dusty skies had become black, but no longer dry. Storms were commonplace; the sky would light up only when the lightening struck from it. The ground was wet but dried very quickly; it had never been so hot before. Some likened it to the hottest desert; others said it was worse and that they felt their insides melting a little more everyday. Old memorials and grave sites were no longer celebrated. The gravestones were used as shelter, as weapons, and in some cases, even food. Memorials were broken, their memory raped with spray painted words and blood. The graveyards were now homes, and at the same time they were garbage sites for dead bodies and dirt. People would run, shaking and crying, to the graveyards after lockdown, if they hadn't found a shelter. They would climb under the bodies, some people would scream, realising they were being sheltered by a friend, a brother, a wife. Some would sleep for days, and pass away slowly beneath the heaps. Clay had woken up inside the old bakery, the smell hitting him in the face like a baseball bat; he grimaced and held his hand over his mouth. He looked around, his eyes steadily getting used to the dark room that he layed in. The walls smeared with shit made him vomit into his hand a little, he sat up quickly and coughed, threw his hand to his side and wiped it on the dirty sheet he had just slept on. The rain was hitting the windows hard outside, water was dripping gently through the cracks in the bricks and wood. It was almost beautiful, like a river might have looked. He couldn't remember, he didn’t want to remember, it was too painful to go to that place too often. He stood up and straightened his clothes. He smiled, why did he bother to straighten such ugly and stained rags? Clay walked to the window and peered outside, looking for gangs, wondering if the black sun was going to rise soon. It would be safe then, he smiled again, "No fuckin safer", he whispered to himself, and he squeezed through the door and left.