This is my first real creative piece in a while. I wrote this at two distinct time periods, each with a very different emotion in mind that compelled me to pick up my pen (keyboard...?). See if you can spot the discontinuity!
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The sun
hazily crept over the mountains to the east, casting a faint orange glow on the
now-abandoned monstrosities of concrete that once towered over the concrete
undergrowth that used to bustle with the activity of a thousand passing
vehicles per second. These towers once used to be capped with seamless windows
that would reflect the light of the rising sun and would mimic its orange hue
in the dawn, and would reflect the artificially enhanced moonlight in the night
so that the buildings would always be shining. Atop each one of these buildings
was the insignia of a once-fearful conglomerate.
Now,
some windows were stained by decades of unchecked dirty rain. Others were
fragmented, and a few select others had been covered with seagull feces,
accumulated back in the time when the city still had signs of animal life. Now
the buildings were enshrouded in a permanent haze, caused by the eternally
running factories in the north of the valley.
The only
superficial surfaces in the city off which sunlight still reflected were the
statues commemorating the various leaders of the once-fearful conglomerate,
each statue located at the end of a pier. The city used to be a major shipping
center. The piers used to be covered with freight containers stacked like Lego
blocks. Today, decades after the last freight container was burned and thrown
into the ocean, the statues basked in the morning sunlight as they had every
past morning for some years, their revelry shared by a man, who was sitting on
a bench at the end of pier 19.
The man
had arrived here about thirty minutes ago. He was the only human to have moved
into the city for nearly twenty-five years, and every morning he had the same
routine. He would wake up, wash himself, and then walk down three flights of
stairs in his house to a cellar which was filled with nothing but boxes of
sponge cakes, and took six nicely wrapped sponge cakes, which still looked
edible even after having been put there by a resident before the revolution.
Two of the sponge cakes would be thrown in the food extractor, a futuristic
device the man brought over from his previous residence, and would make a glass
of milk. Half of a sponge cake would go towards making butter. Three sponge
cakes were processed into two pieces of multigrain toast. The man would eat the
last half sponge cake on the way to the pier.
While
the food extractor was processing, making a sound akin to a metal pan that was
being repeatedly bashed onto a person’s skull, the man would dress himself. He
put on pair of faded brown shoes, a pair of finely tailored green pants, a blue
cotton shirt, and if it was cold enough, a bright orange wool sweater. His
outfit was completed by a dirty and stained grey overcoat, and his bowler hat,
which had a neat blue trim on it. The man changed outfits every time it rained.
Curiously enough, however, it had only rained one time since his arrival to the
city, and that was on the day he found the glass leaf.
While
walking back from the docks one morning, three weeks after the man had arrived
to the city, it started to rain. The man, who was at that point about ten
blocks from his home, started to run, knowing well the dangers of a sudden
downpour. The rain was so dirty that it could be seen visibly boring holes into
the concrete above, and tracing out lines, as if it were cutting paper, on the
concrete below the man’s feet. The man heard the crumbling of a pillar ahead of
him, and quickened his pace. His jogging turned into a sprint as he barely
managed to avoid the crumbling of a pillar to his side, and the subsequent
falling of a slab of concrete, which managed to scrape him on the back and
dirty his jacket. The slab of concrete that fell revealed a slice of the sky
which was as grey and volatile as the concrete that had fallen down.
After
that close brush to death, the man saw a shiny object, perhaps the only object
of some color around, being washed towards a gutter. His curiosity led him to
reverse direction and run after the leaf. He picked it up right as it was about
to be carried away to the lower layer. The leaf was an odd little creature; it
had the consistency and weight of a typical maple leaf, but was so translucent
and reflective that it had to be made of glass. The man picked up the leaf, and
at that instant turned his head around and saw the crumbling of two parallel
pillars. Then, he watched in fascination as a whole section of the highway
above began to peel away from the concrete sky.
A minute
after the dust from the collapse cleared, the man lay prostrated on the
concrete floor, and clutching the glass leaf, he sent forth a huge cough that
exuded some blood that stained his shoes. The rain stopped. The man now saw
that the concrete section that fell from above had split into two near-perfect
halves, each half buttressed by the fallen pillars, which had fallen almost in
phase so that they were supported by each other and created an archway filled
with light under the ruins of sudden destruction.
The man
fashioned the glass leaf into a locket of some sort, and wore that instead of a
tie from each day forth.
-
The sun,
about thirty minutes high into the sky, had almost started to recede into the
everlasting haze, so the man closed the book he was reading, and prepared to
walk home. He was stopped by an unnatural presence to his left, and
instinctively dropped the book and clutched his locket with both hands.
“Mighty
fine day it will be, no? I’m not sure about you, well, maybe I can tell about
you since you seem to be dressed like a multi-colour pig, but I adore the
colour grey, and all of its venerable shades.”
The man
was about to run, but then he saw out of the corner of his eye some spots of
blood on the strangers’s grey shoes.
“Grey is
such a fine, representative colour. Why do we need colour, when we can colour
the world with shades of grey? I’m wearing all grey, and I dare say, my outfit
looks better than your mismatched atrocity. Of course my jacket, my only
jacket, was stained by the rain about nine months ago, but nobody looks at
one’s back anyways.”
A smile
emerged on the man’s face. The stranger laughed, and took out a cigar from his
side pocket and lit it.
“I’ve
been waiting for you,” said the man. “Nearly ten months! I had almost lost
hope.”
“Hope
comes in shades of grey, does it not?” replied the stranger.
“I much
prefer the blinding white of light. Seems more hopeful. Maybe you haven’t spent
that much time in this city, but looking at nothing but shades of grey for all
except an hour of each day can get a little tedious, no?”
“Right!
The day of the last rain! You followed the light didn’t you? How could I
forget?”
“Time
has stood still since then.”
“You
really wish to get to the point!”
“Perhaps
I grow tired of waiting, having to bear the burdens of a million sins.”
The
stranger finished his cigar and threw it into the ocean. “Right, but see, you
don’t know how much of a saviour you are! Really, if that old company was still
in charge of things around here, you would have your own statue, and I bet you
would go to that one each morning instead of the statue of your father!”
“How can
one be called a savior after causing the permanent destruction of a city, and
allowing two million people to suffer?”
“Simple
fixes, all of them! This city has been erased from the maps for at least
twenty-five years now, and humans can reproduce. All very simple fixes!”
“Right
but…”
“And
look, there are millions of people that would wish to meet their saviour. How
many people you ask? Almost twenty-three million! If you do the math, a ten percent
casualty rate is paltry compared to the behemoth you took down!”
“Look, I
don’t think you quite understand what I’ve been going through. It’s not about
the sacrifices others have made, mind you, people that I have absolutely no
connection to. It’s about what you did to me. It’s about those three years of
prodding and baiting me along a string of lies that would eventually ruin myself
and the ones I loved.”
“You
need to liven up. Would you like to exchange shirts, your coloured mess for
mine?”
The man
remained silent, but turned his head in pensive appreciation of the ocean.
“Okay,
but amidst all your pity, do you understand the great lengths I have gone to
find you? I have tirelessly searched every single continent of this globe, and
finally in desperation, return to the place where it all started. It was the last place that I would expect any human
to be, especially someone like you. And would you please stop staring at the
ocean and look at your dear friend, who is now on the verge of death?”
The stranger
also turned his head to the ocean. Together, they watched the waves. Silent,
but also for the first time sharing a common appreciation for the things that
brought them together so many years ago, such common and trivial things that
had been marred by years of distrust, and decayed through years of neglect,
just like the buildings around them.
“E.,”
said the man, for the first time addressing the stranger by name, “I’m just
here to appreciate what little is left of those memories, those memories I cherish
so deeply. It’s just a shame that embedded with those memories also lie the
those memories that were marred by the revolution, and all of its shameful
consequences.”
“So you
have warmed up slightly A.,” said E., also addressing his partner in
conversation by his name, “Tell me, A., does this place have special
significance for you?”
“Someone
I knew once long ago would go to this precise spot, the only bench on all of
the city’s piers, whenever he was in a state of angst. Watching the ships go
about their business must have given him some contemplative solace. I guess for
me instead of ships I watch the sunlight reflect off the waves.”
“Ah! A.,
I think I have found the reason why you feel so tied yet so pained by the ruins
of this city. I’ll let you figure it out yourself, though.”
-
The sun
had now completely disappeared into the sky as the two men sat in silence,
surrounded by a fog reminiscent of a murky winter day.
“E.”
“Have
you found out, A.?”
“I think
so. I realize that the beliefs of the maddening crowd may sway my thoughts in
the common direction, despite all of previous moral insistence. It has taken
your presence and this glass leaf locket for me to realize that even when
surrounded by the maelstrom of the corrupting crowd, I have to materialize what
I truly believe in into a unique and tangible object, and I have to treasure
all of those people who have stood out from the rest, and even if in silence,
just appreciate the passing of time with these very special people.”
“Well
said, A. Now, awake!”
-
The man
realized that it was already close to high noon. Outside his apartment window,
the cars were streaming down the highways, down the cliff into the downtown
core, and further south, he could see the sunlight perfectly reflecting off of
the glass windows of the office buildings, and towards the ocean, he could see
the dock bustling with activity, and even further south, ships dotted the
horizon. Upon focusing his vision back to what was directly outside his window,
the man saw a glass leaf plastered on the window, blending almost seamlessly
with the window itself. The glass leaf seemed familiar, but he was not
completely sure why.
