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callustrate-blog · 8 years ago

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Fraternity

“Come on Kelly, help me here. I need help. Stop crying.”

Zach’s words were muffled under the dull roar in Kelly’s ears. Not that it mattered anyway; Kelly’s face was already streaming with hot tears. They fell on the face of Hooks, who was barely recognisable as the friend Kelly knew him as. They were both young boys at thirteen; Hooks was pretty in a way that would have become handsome in later years, but Zach had seen to it that those years would never come.

Kelly shook the thought out of his mind. He’s not dead. Stop thinking he’s dead, Zach said so. But it would have been hard to convince anyone that Hooks was still alive. Blood pooled on the floor around his head and over Zach’s rings. His face had been brutalised; Kelly tried to find an ounce of the good looks he’d seen Hooks use on girls at school but found only bruises, the crater in the side of Hooks’ cheek like a pothole in the road. And the red, covering anything. Staining his clothes, staining Zach’s hands, staining the bottoms of Kelly’s new Nike shoes.

“Kelly!” The tone of his brothers voice cut through the rush of noise in his ears, and he looked up to see his brother. The Stetse family had always been short and fat. Kelly’s mother had called her sons ‘stocky’ though Kelly didn’t know what the word meant. Zach had taken the big from his mum and the tall from his dad, and an ugly, crooked face of his own making. Kelly always thought he’d looked like a dog, though never to his face. Now it was obvious; Zach was frothing at the corners of his mouth and his eyes popped with open red streaks. Kelly only saw an animal ducking down, picking up his friend.

Kelly nodded before Zach snarled at him again. Raised to his full height, Kelly had to put his head back to look Zach in the eyes. He cradled Hooks, narrow shoulders held in thick, calloused hands. Zach looked back at him, green eyes on green eyes, and for the first time Kelly saw something like fear flash alongside Zach’s anger. He’s scared of what he’s done, and Kelly knew instantly that this was far more dangerous than all of his brother’s madness. Zach spoke, voice hard and commanding like a gunshot. Or a punch.

“Keep your mouth shut, Kelly, you’ll wake the neighbours. We need to get this wog out of the doorway.”

The way Zach spat out the ugly name he’d given his friend threw the younger Stetse back. Kelly nodded absently, and followed after Zach like a zombie. The word had sent him reeling with a reminder of the entire confrontation. He’d been walking with Hooks back home; Kelly lived alone with Zach after he became the younger Stetse’s legal guardian. A squat council estate building, white stucco and old floral furniture that his mum had liked and they’d never thought to get rid of. Kelly only brought his friends home when Zach was at his meetings – off sat down talking with a man called Greenwood about whatever it was Greenwood talked about. ‘The affairs of Manchester’.

But the affairs of Manchester had come to a close early tonight, and with an end that left Zach sour and angry. He was smoking in the doorway, which was the first sign Kelly should have taken to send Hooks home early. But he’d ignored it, not knowing why, bringing his friend through the gate towards the front door. Towards his brother. Kelly remembered Zach’s first words clearly.

“No friends tonight, Kelly. Send your paki mate home.” Zach had spat, wadding on the cobbles at Hooks feet. Kelly had said nothing, only watched his friend’s hands ball into his fists, his teeth grind. Hooks had a way of going purple when he was angry and Kelly watched wordless as the flush bloomed up his neck. The second mistake was letting Zach see it as well. His brother had pushed himself off the doorway, stepping down onto the porch step, his entire body blocking the light from the house.

“Something to say, cunt? Haven’t you got somewhere to be? Best get home, mum’s cooking curry tonight.”

Hooks refused to make eye contact with Zach. He stared at the ground, and once he felt he’d made enough of a stand, he’d turned to leave. Zach and Kelly had both watched him like crows watching worms. Every step, every movement of his head was kept a note of; what could be taken as retaliation? What would justify a beating? Would he get out of the gate before Zach changed his mind?

As Hooks fumbled with the iron latch of the gate with cold hands, he hissed out a word – crank – and Zach had charged, thick fingers gripping the top of Hooks’ head like a dodgeball and pummelling him into the cobbles. Kelly had screamed and yelled, crying until the blood spilt onto the soles of his shoes.

“Kelly. Kelly!” Zach’s words brought him forward as fast as they’d sent him back. He was still crying, and Zach had noticed. Behind the bulk of his brother, he saw Hooks propped like a drunk against their garden fence. He watched him for a moment before a flash of pain shot through his cheek, leaving a bright red aftershock behind. Zach had hit him. He stared into the eyes of his brother, and saw tears running down those craggy cheeks, filling the crack in his nose. His brother was crying too.

“Kelly, what am I going to do? I don’t want to go in again, Kelly, I don’t want to leave you behind. I don’t want to go in again.” Zach’s lower lip trembled, his eyes glassy and red hot with tears and blood. Kelly couldn’t tear his eyes away. He had to take control, or his brother would do something drastic. Do something to land him in a cell, and that’d be it then wouldn’t it? Kelly would be put away in a home somewhere and he’d never see Zach again. He stared as his brother unwound. He took a breath, and made a decision.

“Zach, listen. You have to listen, alright? Listen to me. What would Dad say, if he saw us like this?” Kelly’s voice was quiet, but it cut through his brother’s sobbing like a knife. They stood in silence as Hooks bled out into the cold evening air. The question hung in the air between them until Zach took it, made the answer into words and action. Kelly repeated it after him, went inside, and called the hospital.

“Real men don’t cry.”

#writing #crime #ashes of a broken childhood

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callustrate-blog · 8 years ago

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CALYPSO

Never let it be said that computer geeks are an unperceptive people. Spending hours upon hours a day looking out for changes on a screen will do that to a person. We were hikikomori - modern day hermits and recluses. That identity, with its small, tedious boxes that we locked ourselves in for months, inspired us to take entertainment from any small bit of change, and a respect for those who could find those bits and tear them wide open. And in my circle at least, it was worth being a little aware of what was happening in front of you. The people of my little digital community varied on a spectrum between friendly loner and delinquent psychopath. And whilst the threat of danger was purely something directed at our beloved possessions (usually, at least), those plastic collections of fans and boards and batteries were often all we had, so we kept watch over them like primitive mother-beasts over our children.

What I’m saying is, is that we should have seen it coming.

We called our circle Tortuga. This was because our administrator Lyle had a fascination over pirates, and none of us could really argue that we were the reputable sort. The image of us cruising along the lightning strings of that great Web in the form of junk ships and galleons was also one that grew on us, and by the first time CALYPSO introduced herself we all had a fairly large nautical era, so we recognised the name instantly.

CALYPSO didn’t introduce herself personally. In fact, she never did. Instead, CALYPSO was the name of an invisible author of a gradually growing number of text files that appeared in a USB dead drop owned by Paul, another one of our own. The drop consisted of a 1TB flashdrive cemented deep into a wall of a factory located in an out of the way industrial cul-de-sac called Danmouth Grove. The metal interface jutted out of a concrete wall, fastened in place by a Frankenstein stitching into the structure of the building itself. Paul called the drop Treasure Island, and it was his one way peephole into the outside world. Through a regular trip every two weeks, Paul could download any number of files that people had left on the drive.

This wireless, off the grid access to files was a valuable asset to Paul and all of Tortuga. As a group of casual crackers, it would have been a risk to pass our tools to each other through our online client. Like thieves exchanging picklocks and crowbars outside of a police station, we could very well have taunted them into arresting us and the white hat inquisition would have piled on no quicker. As such, Treasure Island was well guarded against outside threats; Paul’s father worked high up in the building, and Paul paid the security there weekly to keep an eye on the little jut of metal. As an added precaution after a close call with one of our little, lurking sociopaths armed with a blowtorch, Paul had fitted a hidden camera to the wall of the opposing building. There, in shades of grey and black and white, Paul could watch his beloved Treasure Island all day and be there immediately in case of a more determined intruder.

CALYPSO, of course, was one of these intruders, though never did Paul see her coming. Our little city being coastal, we were prone to thick sea frets that lay their cloying fingers all the way down into the metropolitan centre. She arrived on one of those nights. Paul’s camera lens had fogged his view into absolute obscurity, and the whole thing sent him into a panic for the next few hours. When he checked Treasure Island the next morning, everything he had expected to be there had disappeared, wiped clean and replaced with a single file labelled ��calypso.txt’, with three crisp lines:

‘odysseus lived on ogyia for seven years before i let go

this time i fancy more for longer

you have one week to say goodbye’

The word of our mystery villain spread across Tortuga in minutes. At first, it was all endlessly amusing. It became a joke for a time to whip Paul into a flurry of rage whenever CALYPSO was mentioned. He had never been a particularly sporting loser – always the type to need several clones of his controllers in case of damage. But this slight, along with the ridiculously confident and physical threat, had him riled beyond anything we had ever seen before. He would rant and rage for hours, winding himself into a tremendous frenzy that filled our screens and overwhelmed any attempt at changing the subject for the rest of the day. Almost a week later the joke still hadn’t lost it’s lustre, and Paul seemed to wait on edge all times of the day for the topic to come up again so he could try out some new, hilarious argument or justification for his ‘loss’ that he had clawed out of that dark pit of low self esteem.

Like I said, we were a perceptive bunch. It was part of our job, our lives, our being to be apt observers. It was a requirement for our safety to have foresight. So when Paul didn’t log in, we should have noticed. Someone should have spotted that bit, torn it open, and ripped out the answers to that questionable change. But no-one saw. No-one said a word. No-one saw when more of us disappeared either. By the fourth day of the new week, Paul’s disappearance had been joined by five others, and we had done nothing except wonder dream-like what our friends were doing with their time that kept them away from their computers.

On the fifth day, Lyle disappeared. A man who had spent more time on Tortuga than he had under his parent’s roof, whose name was so prominent in the chatroom that he might as well have been the logo. A shining beacon of persistent, unique charisma that we had harboured at for years that day winked out, and suddenly we were aware how many more of us had gone dark.

We talked for a while about what to do. We hated the idea that we had let so much happen without notice, and it drove us to act unlike we ever had before. Every possible point of contact the lost seven had lit up like flares for hours, trying every avenue we could think of to find our friends – or so we wished to believe, anyway. But as we came back to Tortuga with our hands empty, the plan that became clearer was one that none of us liked to think about.

Seven days after Paul’s disappearance, we drew lots. We let Neil - Lyle’s boyfriend, who by far was the most driven of us all - place some of our names into a random number generator. The few of us who were too frightened or lived too far away were given the mercy of abstaining from the draw, but they assured us that whilst we went on our mission, they would do everything they could to make contact with those who’d gone missing. Still, I felt a pang of envy for the ones that the group had considered too weak to go. When my name was drawn from that list, my heart felt like it had sank a thousand leagues down. I swallowed my fear, and packed a bag with things I thought I might need to survive an outing into the wider world. Three hours later, at 8PM, the four of us who were chosen left our homes and ventured to Paul’s house.

Our meeting was surreal. I had met none of my cohorts before; I knew one of them only as ‘Fizz’, and the others I had never even seen a picture of. They all looked as I might have expected, however; Fizz was a short, gangly man with frizzy ginger hair and freckled hidden by a dust mask and a grey hoodie. The other two, Gary and Randall, were two hulking figures in the dark. Gary was almost grey faced with the exhaustion of his travel, the sweat of his brow hidden under a black trilby hat. Randall was clearly fitter, long scraggly hair, tight, hole-ridden clothes and creeping beard barely sodden. Looking on this now, I feel like I might have had a view of them that was a little too judgemental – I’m sure, looking back at me, that any one of them might have thought me the essence of what we were. Avoiding the grim reality of our appearances, we turned to the locked door of Paul’s apartment.

The common lock was something that fortunately came under the array of skills we had that were applicable to the outside world. Randall leant down, and after a few moments of clicking metal and whispered swears, the door popped open. Randall beamed, and in return we offered him a small, congratulatory smile. None of us knew how to talk to one another; as we walked in single formation into the narrow, dingy corridors of Paul’s private lair, we didn’t say a word, wishing silently to be in front of the comfort of our glowing screens again.

The search for Paul was short – his apartment was only small, and between the four of us the bedroom, bathroom and kitchen/dining room were quickly confirmed to be empty. It seemed then that the conclusion we had expected and feared was the right one – Paul really had been taken by CALYPSO. As we all convened back into the main hallway, we loitered awkwardly, the guilty shadow of the seven lost members of Tortuga making it only harder to speak.

Finally, Fizz broke the quiet open. His voice was quiet and high pitched. He stumbled over his words in a way that made us all wince with sympathy.

“Di- uh. Did any of you f-find his. The camera feed?”

Fizz’s question wasn’t answered with words, but again with more silence. As we looked between each other, it became clear that none of us had seen the infamous set up that Paul used solely for his surveillance. The search began again, and with the four of us looking, the room we had all missed was found in moments. Beside the fridge in the kitchen was a small, square doorway – a crawlspace, through which a greyish glow emitted when the door was pried away.

A bridge to Treasure Island.

It became immediately clear what had to be done. Gary and Randall were too large to fit into the hole at all, and Fizz looked at me desperately, silently pleading for me to go in myself. What had been wrong with Fizz that night was beyond me. Whether he was claustrophobic as well as agoraphobic, or just scared of what he might see inside, I never found out. I crawled smoothly into that space head first, straightened up into a dark room illuminated only by the still live feed. I never thought to wonder who had kept the screens running until later, but by then the obvious answer was too late.

What I saw on that feed, among the mist and the crumbling static, was too much for me to bear. I left Tortuga forever the very next day, and broke an eight month spell of hermitry to visit Paul’s parents. I stood on the steps of a house in a nice neighbourhood for half an hour, knocking and then pounding for a response. I saw the shifting of curtains and whispers beyond the door, but no-one ever came. No-one ever talked to me about this again.

Sometimes, I remember CALYPSO’s threat. I remember that she had said she wanted more, and for longer. On sleepless nights I wonder whether the prison she has Paul locked in is so different from mine – forced into a primal isolation beyond even our wildest dreams. An idyllic place of peace, and quiet, and a lack of socialisation. Above all, I wonder whether Tortuga still exists without it’s beacons of communication; or, in the absence of us trapped by her presence, they drift like solitary ships in the black of the Ionian Sea.

#writing #scifi #horror #misc settings

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callustrate-blog · 8 years ago

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The Tower

I’ve never felt so in place. Everyone here is dressed in an expression of their own independence. On the edges of my vision there’s an army of mini skirts, tracksuits and tight leather trousers. My dad’s bobble hat I fitted so tightly onto my head when I left for the concert has blown off somewhere or been stolen. It doesn't matter. I lost track of where I was a long time ago. Everything I am is directed at Danmouth’s Tower.

He’s only been around for four weeks, but no-one believes it. He’s not four weeks old; he’s immortal. There’s nothing young in his face or his body. Up on the makeshift stage, he looks like he could be in his mid twenties. The leather screams youth like a greasy, roaring engine that throttles your grandmother’s heart. But there’s an amusement in his eyes that demands you find the lie. And the voice, oh god the voice, raising now to a climax-

“Oh- oh my g-uuh!” A man quivers out a sentence that sounds like a prayer. I try to find his face, but his body collapses before I see it, knees forgetting to hold him up.

No-one knows what he’s saying, only that it means revelation. He’s been singing for the six minutes, but it feels like an eternity. The Tower’s eyes glide across the audience, and the light bounces off them like a lightning bolt. Somewhere in the front row, a woman sees something in that twinkle. She strikes out with a closed fist to her left, breaking the nose of the man next to her, three times her size. He doesn’t notice, eyes locked to the god on stage; he’s crying, tears mixing with the blood on his face.

His whole body turns to face the part of the mass that I’ve become a part of. I feel like the part of the sea that was blessed to carry Jesus underfoot. The rain outside thunders just a little louder as he inhales. His voice soars, rising like a magician's wand swaying to form some great disaster. A bolt of lightning strikes the side of the warehouse, and everything is white. I see the ocean of people around me crumble like old foundations, and I wonder for a second if the earth has reached up to swallow us out of jealousy.

When the light fades, I’m the only one standing for fifteen paces, and he’s looking at me. Oh god, he’s looking at me-

He points, at me-

And I feel so blessed, I’m so blessed, nothing has ever mattered more than this. His eyes are pitch black eclipses of some awful sun. They flash with the light of the stage, and each time I glimpse catastrophe. Upheaval. In an eternal blink of an eye I see the fall of everything I’ve ever known at the touch of his fingers. I’ve never wanted anything more.

His smile widens, crinkling the corners of his eyes, and he laughs. It’s the most joyous thing I’ve ever heard, and it rings in my ears as I fall. My view goes black. I’m gone before it ends.

---

The next thing I see is my own reflection mirrored in a side walk puddle. Rain water has seeped into the threads of my denim, and I reek of sweat. Cars drive past, speeding with the busy pace of late night workers desperate to get home. A sudden gust of cold wind scrapes down my back and I shiver, curling up a little.

The trill of laughter cuts through the sound of traffic – his trill of laughter I realise – and I crane my head to find him.

Danmouth’s Tower looms over me like his namesake, stood crooked in a doorway. Next to him is a rusty sign. ‘No Smoke Breaks; in big block letters, letters that I recognise. We’re outside the warehouse where the Tower has just performed.

“I understand the World offers free healthcare to the people who pass out in front of her.” He speaks through a wisp of smoke, tapping the cinders of his fag to the ground. “But I can’t afford to hospitalise all of you. You’ll have to excuse the sleeping arrangements.”

He sounds just like me. He sounds like someone I would have played footy with, or had a drink with now. But it’s spoken from the mouth of the Tower; a member of Danmouth’s Gentry, the Pantheon. One of Merseyside’s 23 gods. And he’s waiting for me to answer.

“Uhm. Mmm.” The sounds spill from my mouth like I just spat at his feet. I try to compensate with a nod, scrambling to sit up. The Tower watches me for a moment, before flicking away his cigarette offering his hand to help me up. I stare at it like the most beautiful man in the world has just pulled out a gun to mug me, and he notices. He rolls his eyes.

“You can take it. Making contact won’t end in tears, I promise.”

I take the hand, and he pulls me up. I stumble, still drunk on his presence, and his other hand claps on my shoulder to keep me still. He smells like smoke and rusty metal. He looks like violence given a name and the body of a skinny twenty-something. Pain, bloodshed, and disastrous upheaval smiles at me. He asks for my name, and I mumble something that sounds like ‘Michael’.

“Michael? That’s Christian right? ‘Who is like God?’” By now, he’s realised that I’ve got no words left for him, so he talks whilst I nod. I have no idea what my name means, but if The Tower says it it’s gospel true.

“You got a place to stay, Michael? Parents know you’re out here?” A nod, then a shake. The Tower tuts, shakes his head, and brushes at the shoulders of my jacket. Like a ray of light shining out of dark clouds, I only just now realise that he is shorter than me by a foot. He raises his eyebrows up at me as I beam like a loon. He takes a moment before he smiles back, asks me another question.

“You want to come over for a drink?”

I start walking before I even say yes, and his laugh rattles in my ears like the best death knell I’ve ever heard.

#writing #romance #fantasy #merseyside 23

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callustrate-blog · 8 years ago

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What the Couriers Saw

The road through the Outreach Territories was long and hard, but no-one complained. My eyes were locked to the path ahead; six horses trailblazing a barely-there set of tracks marking safest passage to Amnisol. Along the edges of my vision huddled my honor guard. Eight men – and women, counting Rattleboot Judy, who’s foot I could see now jigging in the stirrup – armed with big iron boomsticks filled with black lead and gunpowder. None of them looked up from the track, eyes firmly on the necks of their rides. Even the bird perched on the caravan roof made no sound, seeming to have decided on staying there permanently. Not a single one of the Amnisol Courier Troop made any attempt to even glance at the sky. We’d all seen the dogs. We daren’t look up.

Most people see dogs as built just for protecting. My mumma once told me they’re the oldest type of homunculus; fancy word for ‘cue’, the domestic creatures you and I eat and ride and order every day. I suppose that makes sense, considering; we needed guarding before we could explore, colonise and make ourselves comfortable. She’d told me that when I was young, over an old book with frayed edges and half a spine missing. Mumma had told me that it was one of the original alchemist’s almanacs; full of pictures of animals that the shapers could focus on to make their cues. She told me plenty of stories about creatures that no-one ever bothered to make outside of flights of fancy, because they weren’t worth anything, but the one that stuck in my mind the most was the canary. How’d they’d sing and sing in the mines of the world old and gone, and then grow silent when some invisible black death approached from the earth ahead.

The story came back to me on the road that day, and I thought that maybe whoever made the dogs was thinking of the canary whilst they made it. I’d watched them cower away from danger before we’d even seen it. But there was only one thing out here that could have made a dog grovel like that. The Outreach Territories ain’t somewhere where anyone lives. It’s a place where the exiles of Amnisol and Unagrid go, but they don’t stay for long; the pariahs of one place will often go to the other, and when they’re kicked out of both they’d often rather die. Only one thing stays in the Outreach Territories, even with all the doors closed to it. And it’s right above us, where no-one will look.

The angel lurches down like a drunk along an open road, and I see Judy flinch. She ain’t seen it yet, but we all hear it when it moves too fast in one direction. It sounds like wet fingers sliding down glass, and it’s long and constant until it’s hanging maybe fifty feet lower in the air than it was before, and I feel it’s glow on the back of my neck. That’s when the horses stop, out of fear or reverence. and suddenly my head is full of curses and prayers, and my eyes are full of tears.

I think to pray to The King, but I realise that ain’t worth nothing. They’re his servants after all. We, the immigrants, the outsiders, are the ones who have lost our way. I think on how unfair it is that we’d been judged like that; how are we supposed to follow a path that we don’t know? Why punish us for that? Benji flicks a worried glance at me because I’m sobbing too loud, and I brings my hands up to cover my mouth, but that’s the thing that catches the angel’s attention. With another lurch and a burst of sound that I feel behind my eyes, it’s maybe ten feet above us. I see it’s light on my periphery, and I know it’s hanging right above Rattleboot Judy.

Thinking back on it I now know that the angel was blind; it was acting on sounds, and it’d heard Judy’s stirrup rattling. Some of them are; I ain’t an expert on the subject but I’ve heard experts talk, and they say that they do it to learn lessons. To experience restriction. I never understood how the experts had come to know that the angels could even think at all – we’d never talked to one after all. The closest interaction the Echo City has ever had with an angel is through Great Amir. Great Amir, leader of Unagrid, Angel’s Bane, the only human alive that the angels have followed an order from. But no-one knows how he did it; not even him.

Judy screams in frustration because her footwon’t stop moving, and I’m reminded that you can’t stop an angel. Anything thrown into that brilliant light never comes out. Any wall that’s built to keep them out goes down at their faintest of touches. The angel descends on her and we do nothing; too scared even to scream or cry in panic. Out of my periphery I watch the thick, bullet-headed Mark Derrick wet his pants, but he doesn’t even seem to notice. We’re all waiting, because Rattleboot Judy is sixteen. A sick curiosity brought on by having nothing to do but watch has triggered a question in all of us – is the angel taking her, or killing her?

It hangs over her for a few more moments that feel to me like an eternity, so long that I stop feeling the tears running down my face. Her screams stopped a minute ago, replaced by that same, sickening noise; skin on glass. When the angel lifts away, we see that it has judged Judy too old to take with it. Her body is stiff and clear; every part of her has been warped into frosted glass. Apart from her eyes, I realise. Some part of her brain is still lodged in the sculpture the angel has made her body, and a patch of her face remains. A remnant of her nose spreads upwards to one clear, sky blue eye. I watch it, how it moves around and fills with questions, and realise that what little is left of Judy doesn’t realise what’s happened. But there’s nothing she can do. Her body won’t move to inspect the problem. She has no ears to hear our explanation, and me and the rest of the couriers know from experience that she will not die quickly – the sculpture will keep her alive for years, frozen in time.

“Wes,” Benji is talking to me from somewhere that sounds like miles away, his voice reaching me quiet and hoarse.

“Wes, what do we do?”

Rattleboot Judy’s eye meets mine, and it’s full of panic now as realisation has begun to set in. Her flesh twitches as she tries to cry, but I see now that the angel hasn’t even given her that privilege; the glass has spread to remove the tear duct of the remaining eye. I swallow hard, and then the order to shoot is spilling from me like a torrent. I watch her eye close as the shot shatters her, and I realise I’ve chosen the greater mercy.

Benji fires three times altogether; it's enough to send Judy's horse scattering. The remains of her body shatter under the pressure of the horse's working body, collapse to the ground and lay in shards. I try to reassure myself that whatever was left of Judy is dead now, but I'm reminded that people have been left in worse states by the angels and have remained. But I never went to check. I was too scared, you see – meeting that eye again would have broken me, I think. I couldn't see the last part of Rattleboot Judy's skin on the ground, and I didn't want to. I turned my sight back to Benji, who's hands shook under the iron cylinders of the gun.

"Steady yourself, Benji. Big breaths. We've got a fair way to go and I don't want you falling off your horse." My voice was soft, but it still made him turn to look at me in fury. But he didn't say anything. He knew as well as I do that no words could have comforted him, but we needed to leave. He nodded once, and then again as if in confirmation to himself that he's still alive. As we set off again, I watched the angel spin and float delicately against the grey static of the sky. I remember clearly thinking how easy it would have been to think of it as something good and holy. I think of mumma and her almanac of animals, and I think how similar we are to the snake, sentenced to crawl slowly through the dust.

#writing #horror #fantasy #the echo city

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