UPDATED

!

So here's the short story I wrote.

It's kinda dark and Ominous and a bit sad.

but I think it's a damned fine piece of writing so I'll post it here for everyone with a decent internet connection to read.

that's like, millions. So I'd like some feedback cause if I do this as a career I don't want you guys lying and saying it's good if you think it's shit and then me being like 'shit, bad career choice' so if you like it, like it, if you don't, be honest.

but I'm pretty sure it'll knock your socks off.

just so you're not like, "HUH?" it's an apocholiptic story about this guy and how he deals.

Oh, and if you're gonna skim it don't bother starting, it'll be a waste of your time and mine if I have to explain every little thing cause you didn't read it carefully.

enjoy.

ps. the prolouge accually happens after all the main stuff.... yeah, not gonna spoil it... but chapter 1 happens before the prologue and everything else leads up to the time that the prologue occurs, and then past it.

Just clarifying that

T.S Elliot, The Waste Land. (lines 19-30)

Call me what you will, names hold nothing now. This time – not too long ago- in the great halls and once populous classrooms of a certain secondary school, I, being young in years and of that certain teenage maturity that causes anything at all to be possible, took it upon myself to survive the rigors of the school system and emerge (at least) socially acceptable. But that was before; before all this happened. There are only a few cans and bottles left, but I won’t dwell on that. When the acrid fumes become too much I seal myself away in that special corner, under the foundations, in which I will sit for hours before I say an insincere prayer, more for myself than to a higher power, and, crying softly, take my leave from the conscious world and slip into forgetful tremors that are the closest form of sleep I can attain.

Look! There it lies now. I see it hunched, more than sitting or standing at least, in the way that a wounded soldier would, trying to hide a grimace from his comrades: the remains of an auditorium. This auditorium once held Shakespeare and Beethoven in its old arms. Cradling students in its padded concrete lap; the works of countless forgotten artists and composers blown away in the timeless wind. Now if you’ll turn this way, sidestepping the fallen rafters and ignoring the screams of the carrion, through this blasted out excuse of a box office (for all the doors are impassible), climb on through and into this side hall.

Look on towards the left; a gym caved in, useless except as a silent reminder of the past. But our real goal lies not left, but ahead. A less structurally damaged hall lies ahead with its own set of lessons and memories. I like to fancy myself as the keeper of these burnt and lost halls, open to the elements above and the demons below. But look, another hall of sorts ahead, not narrow or laden with many doors like the ‘hall’ you may be fond of, but a wide and spacious thing with few doors and crumbling floors.

These portals of the mind, if you will, each lead to their own facet of the arts. Left¾ an open hole where the door once was leads to a large, crumpled chamber. Dashed trophies of long ago, and bent, crushed dirty things, that at one time were cornets. The music stands lay strewn across the broken ground, but one stand (belonging to the director) still limps motionlessly in space on its three-pronged talons. Decades, this room held daily rehearsals, now only ecclesiastical mutterings that echo from the sighing wires that hang from the ceiling. ‘What’s the use?’ They ask, whipping and sparking and snapping at the shattered bulbs that lay entombed in that fallen ceiling. But turn away from the maw of this desolate place and take a peek into the Hades of a recital hall to your right.

This once held plays and players, not as the auditorium did, this place was a classroom. The students were here, some in the twisted chairs and the balcony and others holding up and rearranging the sceneries that were, just then, freshly painted. The ancient, crazy lady who was Queen of this now silent place could be heard throughout, shouting and yelling at the middle-school students who thought it would be fun to be in theatre. But the scenery! –look now at that befuddlement of a scenery and wonder what it once represented.

Propped up against a black wall next to the shattered glass it stands: void of shape –for it has none- dark and greasy in the oily, concealing way that makes certain, guilty men shudder. There are shapes, the meaning of which is not quite discernable. At a fool’s first glance it would appear to be a meadow, though not one of the rolling moors and shires that you would be accustomed to, but a nocturnal place, sparsely filled with ancient ruins. It seems to be filled with a few too many trees (if trees they are) that are flailing their branches in a malicious sort of way, with red eyes and evil intentions. But as you look at this interpretation it shifts ever so slightly, almost unrecognizable at first then growing to images of a saurian museum. Giant bones of the terrible lizards line the aisles. Bleached and powdery things which crumble into piles of ashes before your eyes. So large, stark-white faded to a lichen gray. Now, before your steady eyes the scene becomes something different entirely, slowly at first, then accelerating as your mind fits itself to the new apparition--- a church. It is overgrown with mosses and worn gargoyles that seem to sneer and look up (or down) from the tile indignantly, where they have come to rest until the rest of the floor falls in to itself and the great hole that swallows the heart of the great cathedral, as the secret crypts and catacombs peer from that infinite dark portal to damnation and the Under Realm, while the skeletal screams of forgotten sinners are caught and skinned and buried in the empty air. How can something like this be interpreted, furthermore used in a production suitable for a high school audience? You ask. This scenery is the very scene it portrays; once a majestic rendering of a world empire, now a lost ruin. Once it was a prehistoric place filled with the great leviathans, now a lost exhibit; once an opulent celebration of the Almighty, now a decrepit hellhole filled with the rotted carcasses of the clergy. This scenery was once a celebrated part of a now forgotten play, which twists and ages into a corruption and an abomination of what it once was, and spiraling down into a ever-shrinking loop of existence it extinguishes itself from all knowledge and subsequently reality. It slowly crumbles, kept company by the formless, blue plastic chairs hanging from their metal frames, warped by fire. Slowly as it falls through the patchy holes in the charred, carpeted risers the idea is destroyed, again, three feet down.

Here was a place of education and the Arts, a school of music and reason, now- a shell of desolate fumes. Where do they go when the light are out, and an open sea of stars and moon are the only Lights-- blotted out by the cloudy forecast that would stretch to Eternity, if Eternity would have it.

The beginning of late Fall, when the Summer’s echoes finally fade, and the one groove that runs through deep is finally rerailed as Will takes a bow to Habit (in a sniveling way that says ‘please don’t hurt me’), and Habit, having been usurpingly deposed, promptly chains the other away in a dark dungeon of the heart, for the short winter days and the long winter months. The hands begin cramping from being overworked and the walls close in, not to smother, but to keep the heat from running through the cracks like warm, white vinegar or certain hive-minded insects, which, being no larger than pinholes scurry into the sealed paint as easily as the cremated remains that the whittled, knarled fingers of a once cognitive seamstress try so hard to keep from slipping from her ancient hands.

I entered the room; chairs and desks in not quite even rows, but hardly appreciable realistically, matching precisely only when the obsessive mind tries to make straight a hopeless situation that in its minuteness only seeks to madden the tortured psyche further. Hopeless--- by the fact that there are two desks, one either side, and an attempt to salvage one upsets another and another and another… this loop of madness contained in the small, polite, trembling, unconfident, repressed and otherwise involuntary words: “could you please move you desk a bit, you know, just a tad to the back, thanks.” But the urge is not correctly fulfilled¾ (only by several millimeters)¾ and the mind is driven closer and closer to a pure oblivion of unbridled rage that once released would destroy a small Eastern-European country from the ground up; an unbelievable show of self-control by the thin, itching boy when he asks to be excused from the class for a short amount of time.

I sat down next to a certain fellow, who had some lovely fireworks in his possession, not the fizz’ling little fountains that hardly melt a penny, but the loud ones that would take your digits if not thrown quickly enough. Firework boy and an empty space to the right.

The bell rang. But not loud enough, because the chatter continues and the teacher is absent.

No one noticed the little man walking in from the door, methodically wringing his hands, though not nervously, but an almost sad and powerful sense. He wrinkles his brow and in a measured and practiced flourish allegedly penned an assumed name to the board (not visible yet, but you just wait). Nothing would please this man more than the silent respect of the mindless roomful, but he, being a substitute for a day would only be remembered in passing nostalgia as “that Chaplin fellow” had he been seen at all.

Now, when I say he was ‘that Chaplin fellow’ I mean he looked like the actor, but without the moustache; he had a thin yet round type of face not sun-burnt or tan or especially pale, but the nonshade that could slowly blend in with whatever surrounded it. He paused after taking a breath, perhaps to address the class or mutter a useless logarithm of sorts--- but a useless gesture at best, for neither was the case and his heavy sigh bore no weight as it was caught into the rowdy swirl of the class’s twister of a revelry. How long he stood there with empty words in an empty mouth, I know not, for I had become swept up in the revelries. We had gotten many sharpened pencils stuck in the foamy ceiling panels, and everyone had a great laugh, and we continued to be loud and boisterous, for it was almost Thanksgiving time, and the whole lot got a couple days off because of that little holiday. The Chaplin fellow was gone by the time I looked back, and in fact might have been an illusion for only me, had the blackboard not read: “The Third Trumpet“. But no one cared----not yet.

*DING*

Teachers, Please Secure Your Students In Your Classroom Immediately. All Students Report Directly To Your Classrooms And Ignore Any Fire Alarms.

The students looked around nervously at first, then growing Curiosity lead to a lively, although still nervous discussion. Skipping around like an inexperienced firewalker, who, being new to the profession realizes the heat and can no more step calmly on the coals then he could break-dance over such flames: bouncing around like droplets on a greased iron skillet, fizzing and evaporating into hot gases of thought, the students buzzed with a startled excitement.

A couple of them left the room, eying the halls, under the pretense of getting a drink of water.

The words: “The Third Trumpet”, left here by the Chaplin fellow, were a topic of discussion for some; given a new significance by the Announcement. Several had left, others didn’t care: they just listened to their music, a sad, melancholy, yet an impersonal and neglected kind of thing; driving, unresolved. But they liked it.

Now so that you might observe the strangeness of this situation for yourself I shall provide a summary of the classroom: the walls are white, although not visible at first. You would have to tear through an assorted collage of posters displaying trite, little catechisms, which, having been looked over will give the observers a strong desire to show up on time, do their absolute best, become the best student incentive can buy and other self-contained improvements. The Walls are White no longer. Corrupted with morale; the stark nothingness glossed over with tepid phrases that don’t really matter.

There was a beauty in these white, unblemished walls, should they ever be torn down ‘twould be a shame. But not really, because that would forever solidify the beauty of its nothingness, at least in memory. But even a remembrance would not credit these walls¾ in their Whiteness. These walls are even a corruption of themselves in their nothingness; bringing into existence a less-than-perfect White. For who can mix a coat of perfect White? White is the color of naught.

The teacher, not present now, was a confident man in all respects, except one: The White. The White startled him in an unfound way, and once his head started leaking (with posters, that is) the crack in the dike grew exponentially until the walls were filled, but never satisfied. No Thing can fill Nothing, and have it content; the infinite nothing starts pure and empty, then it mutates. It feeds on the posters making them nothing as well, and the vacuum of madness eats away the flesh. But pardon me for startling you, that is not my intent. I only inform in a way that would open for you the beginning of an understanding, that when reached would dash us both into an oblivion. A warning, if you will, lest you unwittingly stumble into madness; the obsessive mind that consumed this teacher.

Back to the room… did I mention the carpet? No, I suppose not. The carpet is abhorrent. It crawls. If you focus too intently it will creep about with many faceless bugs lost in a sea of their own vomit. I hate the carpet. I might once have been a wonderful rug spanning wall to White wall, worn down over the years into a ugly, clashing thing. It clashed with the White and crawled in a way that made the posters inviting: holding out a hand with a false smile that shrouds the bleeding gums, the loose fangs, the mouldy tongue.

I’ve already described the carpet and the walls to you, and the desks have been recounted to a lesser extent, but they are all of madness. Now the plane of slate, green, not black as the misnomer would suggest, is cleaned maybe weekly. All the dust and white, chalky sin is wiped clean by some person you hardly see anymore, only to be sullied by an impure calcification that poses as knowledge--- again.

All these things, the room and all its trapping, are fuel for the reflective fire that will be considered a relief for some and destruction for others.

Those students, the ones who left for a drink of water, came back changed. Their whole manner was different, somehow unknown. Had I not been so well versed in the ways insanity takes hold, I might have let it bother me. I mean, so what? It’s not my problem. Is it? I shouldn’t let it creep in like this; pry open a seam with dirty fingernails. It starts with an uneasiness in the stomach, not painful or of illness, but a small tickle that can not be fed or calmed. Now it grows in scope, the sweaty palms¾ imagined images running in a loop; projections of a possibility. The world changes, or is it me?

Those certain students, even now before my eyes are changing, dying. The screams as they watch their own flesh corrode and wither are unbearable. The whole class is crying and screaming as their fellow friends die of some foretold disease. Unable to bear any more the still living students flee the classroom. Whether or not they also succumbed to the disease, whatever it is, I do not know because I can’t move.

I can’t move. The utter shock petrifies me. I can’t even look away from the bodies. Oh, the bodies! More screams I can hear throughout the school. Is this what the lockdown was about? Is it contagious? They died within several minutes of their insubordinate water break. Am I infected too? I can’t be infected. I didn’t leave the room. But I can’t stay here. I know where I can go: my shelter under the school. In that place under the foundations I will wait it out. But Dammit, I can’t move.

*BANG*

The pencils fall from the ceiling tiles making a noise the could wake the dead, although that is not the case. Screaming I jump up. Now I go; the windows are not locked. I need to calm down. How can I find the shelter when my eyes are burning with tears?

Brushing past a thorny bush, I slide down the hole. Me and my friends found this chamber and set it up as a meeting place if something like this ever happened. We were all paranoid and told each other scary campfire stories about axe-murderers and crazy old freaks, but nothing like this. They’re all gone now. I’m the only one left. I must break the terrible silence. Ah, here’s the radio we found, weird how it gets reception down here.

*Click*

“… are warned to stay away from any open water, such as lakes or ponds. The National Guard is conducting an evacuation of all the surrounding counties. So far what ever this is has a one hundred percent mortality rate. Drink only bottled water. Whatever this infection is, it is in the local water supply and it is spreading rapidly. The affected county is under an immediate quarantine and there are snipers at The Perimeter. Anyone who is within range will be shot on sight, until we can determine the contagiousness of the infection.

In possibly related news, the meteorite which scientists have been studying, codenamed ‘Wormwood’ landed in a water reservoir several days ago in a rural part of the affected county. Scientists are considering the possibility that this infection was brought in from the center of this falling star, which appears to be the case. The current number of casualties is estimated anywhere from 500 to 2,500 people. Anyone who has drunk from the tap is probably dead. Research is showing that the only way to retard the infection is with fire. All our antibiotics and antiviruses have been found useless. If you are in the quarantine zone, God be with you. More information can be¾ ”

*Click*

I cried myself to sleep. All the unexplainable anguish; everyone I know is dead or just as good as dead. Such unspeakable grief and sadness rolled into an almost inhuman scream. It feels like my innards are being torn and dug out by the same dirty fingernails that drove me crazy in the first place.

I awaken with dreams of fire still burnt into the back of my eyes. How much time has gone by? Minutes? Hours? Days? I still ache and the suddenness of it all is still a shock.

What woke me up? I thought I heard screams. There it is again¾ the screaming but from something hardly human. The Demons are in the air, though these demons are manmade and jet-fueled. They make another preliminary swoop, and I wait, holding my breath for what seems like hours. The water is tainted and I am alone. The dripping concrete is. Periodic pillars support the school. All is dark and quite now.

The screams continue¾ broken by explosions and undulations of heat. They’re burning the world, my world. Several yards away a portion of the foundations crumble. Luckily my stash of provisions¾ bottled water and cans of soup¾ is not harmed.

They’ve wiped everything out. They cauterized the wound, the gangrene of this world; thousands dead for the lives of millions. I think if I was infected I’d know by now.

But I also can’t hide down here forever. I’ll put the rations in my backpack and observe the damage. Maybe the fire-demons will make a second run, just for me.

I crawl up through the hole, up through the twisted, burning wreckage. I crawled on my hands and knees. Who’d guess that you’d need to climb up to reach Hell? Careful where I step now, there are bones all about. I stand up and survey the school.

Look at the flames! This is a Hellish scene. Everything stops as the piercing cry cuts clean through the atmosphere. Someone is still alive.

“Oh God! Please kill me now!”

The scream again.

“Have Mercy on me the burning is unbear¾ ”

The scream again.

Somehow this man cries through his weeping scream: “Lord have mercy!”

The scream again. I run to the man. He is burning alive.

“You! You are an Angel! Won’t you¾ ” the scream again, “Won’t you kill me please?” The scream turns into a teary, half-screaming plead. “¾ Please, kill me, there’s¾ AAAIHG¾ there’s a red rock over there that will get the job done.”

I ask him if he wants a drink of water.

The scream, “Not if it’s bottled, sir. Just gimme some of that tainted stuff¾ Everything’s gone. My family, gone. Ease my pain. For the Love Of GOD! KILL ME!”

The scream continues.

I’m crying now, we both are.

“Kill me!” screaming.

Crying, I say no.

“Kill Me!”

Crying, I can’t.

Now I’m the one pleading. Weeping I lift the cinderblock. I raise the stone higher… The stone falls heavy.

“KILL ME!”

“ I CAN’T! WHY DO YOU TORTURE ME? Don’t You Understand I Can’t?” my speech is broken with sobs and gasps, as are his screams. “I’m so sorry, I just couldn’t¾ can’t do it.”

“NO¾ ¾ ” His screaming cut short by a falling rafter.

I fall, defeated, to the scorched earth. I can only rock back and forth, sobbing quietly until my face, my face is wet with tears and mucus.

He wasn’t the only one. He wasn’t the only one that survived the flames. There were others, too. Every single one asked for death, but I could never do it. They all died eventually, though.

I set up camp in the old school-hall, the only place not completely razed. If you look carefully from there, through the haze¾ you can see The Perimeter.

here's a link to where I got the Idea: http://www.sacred-texts.com/chr/tbr/tbr039.htm

I hope ya'll liked it.

Well...

I got a damned Myspace, and its cool.

I guess.

so... Bye.

sorta.

GAHHHHHH!

I'm SORRY!

but not really...

Currently Watching King Kong see related

This one's for you Bobby...

Garrr.... Scaurvy!

and I know scurvy is spelled wrong, but it is for onmonpeadfdhjk effect.

or however you spell that awful word.

toodles.

Currently Gaming XB360 Call of Duty 2 By Activision see related

I GOT A 360!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!