Here's number one :)
(This is why I only go to the races on very special occassions with someone elses money ;) )
Apologies for the rustiness of my writing.
Rats
The magma was pouring through the sewer drains thick and frightenly fast. The only thought in my head was the slightly hysterical one of ‘at least they’ll be sterilised now.’
Being homeless in this perfect city was not easy.
The magma was new though – I’d give them points on creativity for that one.
God it was hot. Didn’t they worry about the infra-structure weakening and making the buildings collapse above?
I guess not.
I’d managed to climb up into one of the air vents, pressing myself to the grill, as far from the magma as possible. I had air to breathe but I knew that my skin was turning red and blistering. I continued pushing and pushing against the grill, trying to make it give way and let me out. Unlike others who had tried to go out the manholes – and get shot by the soldiers waiting – I’d gone for the ‘chances of survival 1% route’.
It was better than the 0% chance all other options offered.
I kept shoving against the grill, my body getting weaker by the minute, my shoves getting more desperate as I realised I was getting more and more light headed. There is a limit to how much heat the human body could take.
Even as I began to pass out my fingers still clawed at the bolts, bloodying my nails.
‘Death by magma.’ I thought. ‘I never would have guessed this in primary school.’
And then there was darkness.
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Perhaps, while my body lies here dying, you would be interesting in how I ended up being exterminated like a rat in the sewers. Certainly my origins would never have given any hint to how I would eventually end up.
I grew up in the higher end of middle class suburbia. I had, if not everything I wanted, then quite a fair chunk of what a boy could dream of as long as it involved money and cars. I went to a decent school with people of my own status. I was well liked but not popular – a fact that suited me down to the ground – and I never suffered from bullying. That was reserved for the human rights activists – or ‘conspiracy theorists’ as we called him. After graduation I never heard of any of them again. I used to think that was odd. The important part being ‘used to’.
Everything was going well and easy, right up until my dad got caught doing something in business he shouldn’t have.
In our ‘perfect city’ there is no crime. Ever. Be it blue or white.
The Mayor cracks down hard on any crime. Very hard.
We never have to hire prison wardens as we have no prisons. A ‘waste of tax payer’s money.’
All we have is The Chair.
Now, I’m not saying what my dad did was in any way right. But, had he been in any other state or country, he would have done about five years max.
Here, he wasn’t so lucky.
Neither were my mum and I.
As traitors to the people, apparently for simply being related to my dad, everything we owned was repossessed by the council. We were lucky to get out with the clothes on our back.
And then we were abandoned.
Because there is no poverty in our perfect city, there are no need for homeless shelters, no need for charitable organisations offering aid or any form of support.
Using money I’d stashed away (when I stashed it, I had no reason to. I wonder now if some of the HR activists had even then made some sort of sense to my subconscious) I sent my mother, who was practically comatose with shock by this point, to a distant cousin in the country who swore that they would take care of her.
And I, well, I guess I stayed behind for revenge.
By this point I knew that our ‘perfect city’ was a complete and utter sham. For a distance it might look clean and pure but it was rotting in front of our eyes.
From research and information I had gleaned, I knew for a fact that the higher up officials had committed far worse crimes that my dad. In fact, what my dad had done seemed to be a common way of life in business here.
But to the others, he had committed the ultimate sin.
He had been ‘caught’.
That’s right, just like fashion magazines, reality TV and cupcakes – it was all about image, not substance.
Our city was full of the helpless, the desperate and the stricken – and everyone was too dazzled by the magic act put on by the council to see them.
And by now I was one of them.
My money had run out and being a pampered rich boy for most of my life had not prepared me for living rough. As I said the city not only refused to help, they actively sought to stamp out the ‘rats’. Someone up there must love me, as the fact that I hadn’t yet been ‘processed' by the exterminators was a pure miracle.
I was now emaciated, flea ridden and filthy – and I’m pretty sure half mad with it.
Powerless, helpless and crazy. I don’t know why I didn’t just throw myself into the magma and be done with it. I suspected others had.
But.
But.
The rage I felt when I watched my father put in that chair. The rage I felt when my mother held my hand and wept like a child as they tore our home apart.
The rage I felt when I knew everything they had ever told us was a lie.
The rage I felt when I understood that most people just swallowed all those contradictions down with a smile.
That rage was more than hot enough to equal the magma.
And I think that is how they found me.
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Amazingly I came to.
On regaining consciousness, I thought first, how much I wanted to be unconscious again and second, that this would be the last time and a brief one at that. I could hear my skin crackling and my lungs seemed to be making this awful wheezy sound – and I couldn’t get enough air in with them.
Also, I was pretty sure I was blind.
So, blind, trapped in a sewer with a load of corpses, magma and unable to move.
I couldn’t help it. I started to laugh. It was sheer agony but that only made me laugh harder.
And then my blindness, undulated. I blinked and stared again. Yes, my sight appeared to be pitch black but it also seemed – layered. And moving. As if I was looking at the sea at night. I experimentally tried to move my eyes towards my body – seeing if I could see my hand. And I could – if extremely blurry and faded. As if I was looking at it from underwater.
If I hadn’t been so close to death’s door, if I had been whole and healthy and not spent the past year having everything I ever believed in destroyed, I might have been freaked out.
As it was, when the whispering started, I didn’t even bat an eyelid.
It was soft and rustling, like waves breaking or the sound of a small mammal in a bush. The contents however, were like razor blades in candyfloss.
“Murderers…thieves… I want to go home……liars... i want to go home…stole my mother…murdered… my home…life eaters…thieves thieves…death chasers…cold….i’m cold…I want to go home..I want to go home…I want to go home!!’
“Are you ghosts?” I called out, not expecting a reply.
“We are shadows, we are rats, we are remnants. We are the coffee dregs that they tried to flush away, we are the rats that they tried to exterminate, we are the drifters, we are the helpless, we are the homeless
They took our homes they took out lives thieves thieves liars killers
We will clog and destroy their plumbing; we will chew their ropes and despoil their food
We are injustice, we are ignored, we are murdered, we are killed
Murderers homewreckers despoilers liars greedy greedy thieves
Rats rats rats rats rats rats rats rats rats rats
“What do you want?”
The shadows seemed to pause a moment, and then with a concerted effort they spoke unanimously, as if they had reached a decision.
“We wanted warmth when we were alive, we wanted home, we wanted to live. Now we are shadows. We will never have warmth. We will always be cold.
We want vengeance.”
I laughed again. “The same thing I’ve been chasing huh? I hate to break it to you but it’s not so easy to get. I’d love to help but, as you can see, it won’t be long until I’ll be just another one of you guys.”
“You will help us.”
“I would if I could since our goals align. But like I said, my body is about to give up on me.”
It was already happening, I could feel it. My lungs were getting weaker and weaker and my head was getting lighter and lighter. I could feel myself drifting away.
“You will help us. We need a body to go into the world above, our shadows cannot go by ourselves. You will be our Pied Piper. We are dregs but we are many.”
And with that they poured themselves inside me.
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The mayor lives at the top of the fanciest high rise in town. It has those posh mirror windows that reflect the sky. So far it’s killed hundreds of birds.
I looked at my reflection. Well, I had tried to doll myself up for this important meeting – I’d had a wash in one of the park fountains so I was clean and didn’t smell.
At least, I thought I was clean.
It was hard to tell since my skin seemed to be nothing but a clear covering, holding pitch black shadows that surged and undulated underneath – like the sea at night.
It had been a long while since I’d looked in a mirror – so I wasn’t sure if the shape of the face that looked back of me was completely my own. It also seemed to change subtly from moment to moment. As did my voice.
Everything about me was now pitch black – face, body, hair, mouth.
The only thing not black about me were my eyes.
They were the deep glowing red yellow of magma.
Or perhaps rage.
I heard a stirring behind me from the bed – at last the cool breeze from the open window was waking him up.
I turned and gave him my biggest smile as he sat up, still groggy from sleep.
He froze, like a rabbit in headlights, like a convict before the executioner.
I walked towards him.
“Hello Mr Mayor. You can call me The Piper.”
And then he started to scream.
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