Exo-Slayer
Moderator
I have never posted in this forum but I enjoy writing. Written a few books but I have been too afraid to send them anywhere. Thought I would start doing some short fiction and post it here and become more active in the forum.
This is a bit of post apocalyptic fiction. It's pretty dark and depressing but how can the end of the world not be? I have got a few other short things written but need to edit them a bit. Any critique or suggestion would be appreciated.
“This is the way the world ends. It started with a bang, and ends with a whimper.” I speak to my invisible congregation for I am alone, alone as one could imagine. Another strained breathe and the story continues, aloud or only in my head it matters not.
The city had survived but it was no longer recognizable. The streets were covered in ash as the eternally dark sky dropped it like dark snow. The trees that lined the street and the shutters along with the paneling on the buildings were gone, anything that could burn. This was the day that I realized the world had moved on, that the world had come to its end.
The temperature had plummeted and the people were bound in many layers. No one had matching clothing for those who cared of fashion were all long dead. The pilgrims fleeing the city looked like a quilt of many colors sewn of small patches of mismatched cloth. They fled from the horror of the city to the burning countryside and the roving bands of harriers. The huddled mass grouped together for protection pushing shopping carts full of useless mementos.
I saw a woman cross the street, she had once been overweight but now she was anemic and her overlarge skin hung off her body in sallow patches. A quick and fearful gait was what made me take notice as she scanned the streets suspiciously. There was reason to be suspicious someone was following her, only a dozen paces behind.
He was a scoundrel, a vagabond and he followed her with envious eyes. Like everyone he was emaciated, when had this wretched creature last found food, and what terrible thing had he forced himself to eat. Nearly all the food of the city, perhaps of the world had been devoured or destroyed in the initial devastation. The vagabond was wrapped in a sweater gray with ash, the hood tied close to his face.
The smell of the city that day has never faded from my memory as much I wish it would. The smell was of death and blood so thick you could taste it like sucking on batteries. The death was mixed with smoke and ash and of flesh roasting upon a spit. The cows had all been slaughtered and the dogs, probably even the rats, so what was this tempting aroma?
During this chase I could hear a vehicle in the distance and then gunfire and cheering. In the street still remained many cars, accumulating inches of cinders, but they had all been siphoned and would remain forever like ashen gargoyles protecting their empty castles.
The woman taking notice of the gunfire quickened her pace and pulled the package close to her bosom. She stepped over a corpse without taking a second glance. By then murder was rampant and the death cults had already started to form. Few bothered to bury the dead they remain in the street nothing but a nuisance to avoid like a pothole or a beggar.
The woman clutched under her arm a small nylon bag the vague outline of tin cans visible to her pursuer. This no doubt was the reason for her worry and her quick pace. The street was dangerous enough walking alone but carrying something as precious as food was downright suicide. In the ash covered street deep footprints were left as she quickened to a run and then climbed the wide concrete stairway to her first floor apartment. The sanctuary was a large steel door with bars covering windows the glass long ago shattered. A single key was tied on a long string around her neck she fumbled for the lock as the feral man rushed toward her. Suddenly her hold on the bag was ripped away and he was sprinting down the street. Falling to her knees a piercing wail choked from her throat, it was a cry of defeat, a cry of death.
The scoundrel was free, he crossed a street and looked back and knew he just had to get off the road. From an alcove a large outstretched arm knocked him to the ground. This man had been watching, he had been waiting, and this man was our hero. The bundle had tumbled to the ground and the hero picked it up and started back toward the woman walking with a calm confidence.
The hero was an Adonis he was muscular and had a face that men would follow. This hero could bring order to the chaos, a man who could rebuild the world with his own hands. The rebuilding would start with the return of a small bundle of food to a distraught woman. She looked at him with disbelief still kneeling on the stoop of her apartment the ash covering her body.
The Adonis stepped out into the street and turned in time to make a stupid face before he was under a school bus. The men inside cheered and fired out randomly from the shattered windows and then continued on. The nylon bag rolled to the side of the street and the scoundrel once again grabbed it, tipped his hood toward the woman still crying on her stoop and was gone.
The hero was dead and the scoundrel lived on. So it goes.
Perhaps if that hero had lived the world could have survived. Perhaps if there were more like him, had they found each other and banded together. Instead I lived, and stole from others, and did much worse in time. I took something from the world, something that could not be made right again.
Now I think I am the last and when I am gone so blinks out this short and miserable existence that was life. You may ask do I regret how I survived, what I made myself do for self preservation. I hate myself for what I did, but I love myself to much to have done it any different.
One more breathe I pull in and whisper out in a death-rattle. “This is the way the world ends. It started with a bang, and it shall end with a whimper.”
This is a bit of post apocalyptic fiction. It's pretty dark and depressing but how can the end of the world not be? I have got a few other short things written but need to edit them a bit. Any critique or suggestion would be appreciated.
“This is the way the world ends. It started with a bang, and ends with a whimper.” I speak to my invisible congregation for I am alone, alone as one could imagine. Another strained breathe and the story continues, aloud or only in my head it matters not.
The city had survived but it was no longer recognizable. The streets were covered in ash as the eternally dark sky dropped it like dark snow. The trees that lined the street and the shutters along with the paneling on the buildings were gone, anything that could burn. This was the day that I realized the world had moved on, that the world had come to its end.
The temperature had plummeted and the people were bound in many layers. No one had matching clothing for those who cared of fashion were all long dead. The pilgrims fleeing the city looked like a quilt of many colors sewn of small patches of mismatched cloth. They fled from the horror of the city to the burning countryside and the roving bands of harriers. The huddled mass grouped together for protection pushing shopping carts full of useless mementos.
I saw a woman cross the street, she had once been overweight but now she was anemic and her overlarge skin hung off her body in sallow patches. A quick and fearful gait was what made me take notice as she scanned the streets suspiciously. There was reason to be suspicious someone was following her, only a dozen paces behind.
He was a scoundrel, a vagabond and he followed her with envious eyes. Like everyone he was emaciated, when had this wretched creature last found food, and what terrible thing had he forced himself to eat. Nearly all the food of the city, perhaps of the world had been devoured or destroyed in the initial devastation. The vagabond was wrapped in a sweater gray with ash, the hood tied close to his face.
The smell of the city that day has never faded from my memory as much I wish it would. The smell was of death and blood so thick you could taste it like sucking on batteries. The death was mixed with smoke and ash and of flesh roasting upon a spit. The cows had all been slaughtered and the dogs, probably even the rats, so what was this tempting aroma?
During this chase I could hear a vehicle in the distance and then gunfire and cheering. In the street still remained many cars, accumulating inches of cinders, but they had all been siphoned and would remain forever like ashen gargoyles protecting their empty castles.
The woman taking notice of the gunfire quickened her pace and pulled the package close to her bosom. She stepped over a corpse without taking a second glance. By then murder was rampant and the death cults had already started to form. Few bothered to bury the dead they remain in the street nothing but a nuisance to avoid like a pothole or a beggar.
The woman clutched under her arm a small nylon bag the vague outline of tin cans visible to her pursuer. This no doubt was the reason for her worry and her quick pace. The street was dangerous enough walking alone but carrying something as precious as food was downright suicide. In the ash covered street deep footprints were left as she quickened to a run and then climbed the wide concrete stairway to her first floor apartment. The sanctuary was a large steel door with bars covering windows the glass long ago shattered. A single key was tied on a long string around her neck she fumbled for the lock as the feral man rushed toward her. Suddenly her hold on the bag was ripped away and he was sprinting down the street. Falling to her knees a piercing wail choked from her throat, it was a cry of defeat, a cry of death.
The scoundrel was free, he crossed a street and looked back and knew he just had to get off the road. From an alcove a large outstretched arm knocked him to the ground. This man had been watching, he had been waiting, and this man was our hero. The bundle had tumbled to the ground and the hero picked it up and started back toward the woman walking with a calm confidence.
The hero was an Adonis he was muscular and had a face that men would follow. This hero could bring order to the chaos, a man who could rebuild the world with his own hands. The rebuilding would start with the return of a small bundle of food to a distraught woman. She looked at him with disbelief still kneeling on the stoop of her apartment the ash covering her body.
The Adonis stepped out into the street and turned in time to make a stupid face before he was under a school bus. The men inside cheered and fired out randomly from the shattered windows and then continued on. The nylon bag rolled to the side of the street and the scoundrel once again grabbed it, tipped his hood toward the woman still crying on her stoop and was gone.
The hero was dead and the scoundrel lived on. So it goes.
Perhaps if that hero had lived the world could have survived. Perhaps if there were more like him, had they found each other and banded together. Instead I lived, and stole from others, and did much worse in time. I took something from the world, something that could not be made right again.
Now I think I am the last and when I am gone so blinks out this short and miserable existence that was life. You may ask do I regret how I survived, what I made myself do for self preservation. I hate myself for what I did, but I love myself to much to have done it any different.
One more breathe I pull in and whisper out in a death-rattle. “This is the way the world ends. It started with a bang, and it shall end with a whimper.”