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Post apocalyptic. Takes place after nearly 90% of the population has been wiped out. |
| This is a very rough version of the novel I'm writing. |
| TWO I walk down the last stretch of block before I reach my school, the air crisp, the sky blanketed by a steely grey. According to my Geography teacher, we live in a place that used to be what he calls the ‘province of Manitoba, Canada’. Of course, provinces have long since been abandoned - consumed by The Forest - and we’ve all been forced to cram ourselves into Settlements. He says it used to be a wintery province, with snow falling up to six months a year in certain areas. Well, after They started making their first appearances, weird things happened to the weather. More clouds. Less sun. Less snow. More rain. Weird rain. The grass dying, turning an ugly, putrid, brown. Apparently it’s been happening everywhere- everywhere where They have come through. The whole world is caught under this dark blanket of mysterious fog. I’m jarred from my thoughts by the sound of voices. Many voices, laughing, talking, seemingly being as loud as they possibly can. I close my eyes and sigh, preparing myself for another wonderful day in another wonderful school, readying myself to walk through the hordes of kids hanging around outside with my head up and my eyes forward. No hunching. No looking down at my feet. No hood pulled up over my eyes. Yes, I would like very much to not be noticed and hiding under a sweater would help with that, but for as long as I’ve been enduring the hell that is school, I have forced myself to walk with confidence. Crouching away feels like defeat. Like I’ve given in. And if there is one thing I know about myself is that I am too stubborn for that, no matter how much trouble it brings me. I round the bend with a tight feeling in my stomach and-there it is, in all its faded brown glory; Rockford High School, home of the Morons. Kids are everywhere, lounging on the wide stone steps, horsing around on the dead grass, blocking the double doors. The noise of high schoolers assaults my ears- girls shrieking about who knows what, the deep crackling of pubescent boys cracking crude jokes. But of course, no matter how loud everyone is, no matter how distracted making dirty comments and swearing over who knows what, they manage to notice me. Voices stutter, trail off as I walk through the thicket, as eyes meet mine. I seem to have that power. Leaving a trail of silence in my wake no matter where I am or who is around me. Eventually I make it to the doors and the two burly guys standing in front of it jerk away from me. Their faces are curdled into withering glares but they -like everyone else- can never keep eye contact with me longer than a few seconds. And I test it every time. Each furious gaze I encounter, I glare right back, holding the stare until they inevitably look away, their eyes darting to the ground. |
| A soft beep chimes and I look down at my watch. 8:30. It’s blinking at me with that obnoxiously chipper tone. Time for school! Aren’t you excited? Ready to start another fun-filled day? Think of all those friends of yours just dying to see you - oh wait. My bad. You don’t have any friends. I glare at it like it really is a conscious being and turn back to the fence. I know it’s strange wanting to be out there, wanting to escape to someplace everyone else wants to escape from. But really, this city wasn’t meant for me. I don’t think I belong here any more than I belong out there. I glance at my watch and find a flashing 8:31. I should probably go so that I’m not late for school (there’s nothing more mortifying than walking into a classroom full of people sitting at their desks) and so that those Watchtower guys don’t notice me (even though I come here-unnoticed- every morning and I’m pretty sure they’re sleeping on the job). With a sigh I turn my back on everything I long for and head through the field towards the beginning of another bleak day. I don’t bother lying to myself that today’s going to be better than the last because it’s not. If there’s one thing that I’ve gathered from living here it’s that nothing ever changes. Today will be the exact same as yesterday and tomorrow will be the exact same as today. The mockery, the isolation, the shunning, the gossip - it’s all going to be the exact same as every other day and I’m going to have to hold my head up and deal with it like I have always done. Deal with the fact that I really don’t belong. I’m just different. And I don’t mean different like; oh she’s so quirky, she’s just different from all the other girls. Nobody wants to be different like me. I’m the wrong kind of different. The kind people are afraid of. I’m not just another 18 year old girl in grade 12 - heck I’m not even just another member of society. This whole city knows what I am and they hate me for it. I’m a Mutant. |
| Forests are forbidden. Travel is forbidden. Basements are forbidden. Orange eyes are bad news. It's all bad news, really. All of it. Nothing that happens is good news. Nothing is normal. You can pretend, but you still know. You can pretend that you’re used to it. That you aren’t afraid, but you are afraid. And you’ll never be used to it. You’ll never really be fully accepting of the rules. You might say you are. Here’s the truth; you aren’t But what else is there besides the rules? What else will keep you safe? So you follow them. Because they are the only things keeping your life from being more miserable than it already is. You don’t leave. You pretend you don’t notice the enormous electric walls that cage you inside your tiny little city. The walls that are so big you can see them no matter where you are. You stay as far away from them as you can. You pretend not to notice what’s outside them. You avoid the demolition streets, holding your breath at the clouds of dust that billow up as they pull down all those houses with basements. You ignore the places that are blocked off. You don’t read the WARNING: EXTREME DANGER, DO NOT APPROACH signs They don't have to worry. You'd never approach. If- by chance- you happen to see someone with orange eyes, you call the police. You turn the other way. You spit on them, if you think you're brave enough. Unless you're me. If you're me, you get as close to the walls as you can, staring out at the abnormally giant trees with your noticeably orange eyes, wondering; How on earth were you born into a hellish place like this. ONE I know I’m breaking the rules. Do I care? Not really. There’s a rule for everything, so many rules it’s hard to keep track of all of them. My uncle has told me stories of how things used to be when he was my age. It sounds so…free. Imagine. No walls. Big houses. Big yards. Room to breathe. Imagine going out at night and staying up late with friends. Imagine cars. Honest to goodness cars. Imagine everyone driving in their own vehicle wherever they wanted whenever they wanted. It sounds so… Impossible. Unthinkable. Yes I have the world’s largest imagination, but even I can hardly fathom a life like that. Because while back in the day, people could just go wherever they wanted, here I am drawn to only one of the many places I am not allowed to go. I’m at the wall. Or at least as close to it as I can possibly get. My fingers clutch the black bars of the towering iron gates. My knuckles are white as I peer in between the metal and catch a glimpse of the Wall a few meters away, of the world beyond. Several yards to my right the Watchtower guards the fence. Not like there’s really any point. No one comes over here anyway. In the eyes of the dismal city population, there’s no point. You walk through the stretch of desolate field, shadowed by the looming steel gates, towards the one thing serving as a constant reminder of everything wrong in the world. And who wants a reminder? To my left there’s the Tree Farm. Fenced in, heavily guarded, accompanied by that long, dreary, washed out Research Lab. And of course, no one - aside from the handful of Researchers - is allowed to go there either. I return my gaze through the bars. The Wall is opaque, but you can just see the tips of the trees poke above it, their leaves rising up and down with each passing breeze. My uncle tells me that he used to live in a sprawling house surrounded by forest. He says it was called the ‘country’. It sounds truly impossible, but he swears it’s true. A forest. Not a Forest Farm, not The Forest, the one outside The Wall, a real, natural forest. I’ve seen trees, don’t get me wrong. But a few scraggly trees is not the same thing and it will never be the same thing. |
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