Writer's Fallout Shelter

I didn't see that there was much work posted on here, and hate to mess with the whole flow of the forum. Am looking for reviews on the beginnings of a collaboration of short stories, I know this post is boring, lol, but I promise not to dissapoint where it counts. I have no clue how to put the litle ID thingy on here to link it or whatever it does to make it come up on here, so I am going to refer back to the trusty cut an paste. There are two intro's I am going to post below, so don't be shy. Thank you so much for letting me waste your time :P


This is the beginning to the first story in the collection.

I want to write again. I want to not belong to myself for just those few moments. When does it stop, where does the inspiration go. Perhaps to a new love, a new passion, some renewed interest, or simply pass into memory, gradually. Twelve Steps. Absorbed into whatever mystic misunderstood sense lay above the worlds of irrational thought. It was in December, the bitter ruse of mother earth, gai. Winter swallows everything, but everything’s not dead. There is ever present that valiant struggle, evolution, adaptation. The genius dies, and there will be no one to mourn him. This is my story.
There is no one here. I have my world, one might say blissfully alone. Cigarette smoke hangs loosely of the top shelf of my desk, sensual and bittersweet. I went out today, outside. It was brilliant. The overpass at night, Man made goliath climbing, omniscient and marvelous out of the shadows and squall, cast by the undertow and rejection of social evolution. There is something not cold, but warm, about these streets. Deliciously afraid, I am silent when I go. Always alone. There is no need for false gestures; no motives. Climb out of the cesspool of sameness. I want to fit in. Every person under here is mismatched. Unfortunate by their own design. Belonging only to whatever demons lay under the decay. In the end they will all be the same, banded together, and feeding off of each other. This is the comfort of the inner city ecosystem, you never die alone. There is no you to die.
I have suddenly remembered where I am. The ash from a cigarette lay long and withered in the ashtray, it looks clean, untouched and silent. Calm. I break it, clinging to that last draw. There is nothing, the cool stale taste of wood. I have haphazardly organized my work station. It’s too small. The various compartments of the roll top desk are undone with papers long faded and refused. Coffee, there must be two or three cups. Always cold, whatever closest will do. There is a plain wooden chair where I sit most days. Maladjusted with pillows I have placed to help with my back. I have developed a stoop, a deformation. Adapted to a life time hunched around the barely discernable scribbles I have expelled. Crouched down to the lines cut on the top of the toilet seat, almost invisible to the naked eye. But not to mine. They stand clear in every flick, every flicker of shine off of every grain of desperately needed inspiration, a hint of feeling. Even now, I look at the hard rock sitting on a CD case, Puccini, ID in my pocket. Still waiting. I want to beat it, defy it. Only I know it’s there to run to when I end the farce. Reality looms, and nothing but that sweet chemical drip can make you forget. Before you face up, there must be nothing to face up to. Cocaine makes this all make sense. And then as if I had never been aware, I fall back into the abyss.



The long yellow rubber chain, leading to an overbearing overhead light, has been all but destroyed by something or someone; I am too tired to wonder. Always so tired. All these older places have overhead lighting. Gaudy overbearing lights, bulbous against maladjusted ceilings. The light bulbs have all but one, been broken to provide jagged makeshift pipes. Disposable blackened shard, one more danger amongst the bitter ruins. Junkies hate light anyways. The inevitable silence that falls between the binge, and lay exhausted, temporarily abided by the nights forgotten sins. There are bigger concerns than poor lighting.
Crystal has taken her son somewhere. Probably drop him off outside of emergency and cut her losses. She goes by Roxie down at Atmosphere massage parlor, how cliché. Real classy broad. Slings an assortment of shit on the side; Dope, Ice, Coke, Crank, Ecstasy, Ativan, Ketamine, Euthanasia (for all the ones looking for something more), Ether and Methadone for all the undercover junkies who can’t get their fill at the clinic. She does free kink shows and f***s for some MD and his buddies, and they hook her up. She had a son with some asshole, who commits suicide. Left her with a kid and no money.
She keeps Ryan in his room most of the time. The doorknob fastened with rubber to the top of the stairs. He never cries. He is seven. Sedated by whatever mommy slipped into his individual microwavable Kraft dinner. Another week gone, lost somewhere. Residual pangs of yesterday’s drug, arriving in a starchy burst to the brain. Maybe she killed him. Euthanasia, no, it's harder to come by, she would have used ether. Easy enough. Maybe his little heart couldn’t take it anymore. Mercifully deceased, and unsung. No one seems to even notice, only that crystal is gone. That ready available source disappeared. The reality moves in, everything suddenly comes alive. What to do, wait? Go forth and seek alternate feeds? It’s quiet again. How long have I been lost on this thought? If only the hidden inside the mind, could somehow translate themselves in some semblance of order, and become material.
Robin, the resident meth junkie is in the kitchen on the phone. Searching, letting it ring over and over again. A dancer who got into a bad crash, lost half an arm and got himself hooked on morphine. Now he gives blowjobs behind the Joy Ho kitchen and shoots meth on the community couch with all the rest of them. It’s sad; there is no greater word, no emotional display of intelligence, only the simple sound of sad. You can tell he was once alive, once young. Not this shell snorting crumbs and ash off the end of a key, perhaps belonging to whatever life was there, the last reminder of cruel chance. We can’t all be lucky. You are all statistics. Robin is sweet, young. Through drug use and amphetamine crazed obsession, he has maintained that silent dignity that male dancers posses. He is tall and flows limber through a room taking nothing with him, awkwardly dignified. He looks frantic; Crystal was already gone when he arrived. No one knows why she has gone, I do, and I have been trusted by default with this secret, because I have been here all along. Since I am the only one who knows, I savour this misplaced secret. No one knows when she will be back either.
If she is going to work, they know it will be approximately nine hours minus the time since departure. If she is going to Joy Ho for red bull and rolling tobacco they know she will be about fifteen minutes. They know how long it takes her to f***, sleep, take a goddamned shower. Now they are left in the dark. Hide the stash.

I love classical music and cocaine. The perfect drug for the sophisticate class. Aristocratic black and white, cocaine dreams of dignity. I pretend I am one of them, I am. In this world, I am the upper class. The least depraved and disheveled a glimmer of something almost new among the lost and unanswered souls below. Under the rest of the sleeping world.
It is about four am. Crystal is back. Without Ryan. She looks tired. She wouldn’t be back without him. Wouldn’t they keep her at the hospital, or call the police. There has to be something. Surely she hasn’t told them to come see her here. Ha. I laugh out loud unwittingly. No one even looks. They are all looking at her. Waiting for the o.k., that signal lift of the head. She sits down with a cigarette, asks for alight, the room itself sighs relief.
We are all too oblivious to have taken in Ryan’s existence; I don’t think that anyone even notices that he is gone. I would like to play Sherlock. I don’t know where to start, so I give up. There was never a beginning to find. It has only been two days since he left the house. His torment was lost to the deaf ears of six famished souls in an unlit room. None of who suffers greatly. A eulogy of muted thoughts and the hollow reprieve of curiosity. How will anyone ever know he was here, barely living, but still alive. I know, and she knows. Someone else as well must, or maybe not.
Individuals are the minutest pieces to a global ecosystem. The majorities have never counted, and never will, they simply cannot. Only the great people will leave themselves behind, emblazoned upon the minds of generations to come. Ryan isn’t one of us; he wasn’t great, or even extraordinary in any way. Just misfortunate, living in limbo as perhaps the smallest piece. He wasn’t dying of aids in Africa. Not a victim of genocide in the east. In their misery, these people are mourned, and in all their squalor count to the world. Weighed in worth by their own suffering. Pestilence takes its fifteen minutes of fame. Slowly, savoring each drop, over at once, having given birth to the next miserable pandemic. Red and Raw, bleeding into the souls of men.
I should go, I know I should. But my eyes are fixed on that door. Scuffed and dirty, it seems to sound out to me, something dangerous, something delicious. I am frightened by it all. This sudden rush, adrenaline. More lines. I cut them hard and fast, choppy and unforgiving to chapped skin and raw flesh. Is he in there? I want to look, so bad to look. I know it. She’s left him to die here. At home with the people who loved him. The perfect place. She knows no one will go in that room. At least she’s bought herself a little time. But what comes after that. Maybe he is fine. I don’t know. It’s painful and panicked trying to recall anything at all. So I wait, I wait for it to come, in words. More lines.
I should run away from whatever truth I believe I possess. I will, go home. I have a home. One of the few lucky enough to maintain a certain distinction within addiction. A genius trapped in a morally corrupt era. No profound truths to discover, nothing left by brilliant fore fathers, to claim as further insight and hope to the masses of our generation. An intellect left to rot in the expanding chaos that is our pathetic universe. Expansion is not evolution. We, as humans, have failed the game. You fail to evolve, you fail to survive. Our extinction by the divine hand of Man. I cannot leave; I must prove what I already know from some demented hiccup in reality. When it falls quiet I will look. Outside, the skeletal frame of a degenerate fire escape twists arthritically up through the sulfur yellow of street light. So much beauty.


I am playing around with introducing light fantasy into the collaboration, so here is the start of what would be the second story in the book.


There isn’t much in here. The windows are open to the light. Soft sun spills over the sill, exposing puffs of undulating dust in the air. Its quiet, the scuffed wooden floor gives off a yellow hue in the calm of the day. I am standing here watching the shadows grow, as dusk settles heavily into the room. There is never any food in the refrigerator, just the squeaky smell of plastic. Lukewarm air and a week old bottle of whole milk. Half empty box of cheerios sits in the cupboard, stale from being left open in the haste of an idea. Half empty, half full. It’s all the same, still only half of what was there. I grab a cup for coffee. The sparse mismatched furniture is shabby chic. Everything coming together into somewhat of a bohemian vertigo. No air conditioner. I feel safe in the heat. In the sweaty cold nights awake with nothing, simply your own wet body and itching mind, you discover the soul. I am sane here, in the unrealistic haven from all the reality I seek. There is a feeling of calm dreary memories and new comforts, alone again, at last.
I hear music, soft and mellow rubbing through from the next apartment. A reminder of life on the other side of the wall. So curious are the lives of men. I often stop, and ponder the mere thought of insignificance. There are so many entities existing at once, it’s impossible for every one of them to count. So who makes the cut? I prefer inconsequential myself. There is much freedom cloaked in unimportance. The bathroom is small but has a separate bath and shower. One of those junky antique clawed tubs, along the white enamel, rust drops frozen mid drip form under a ridiculously rounded tap. The music has stopped; the only sounds now are my creaking footsteps and the white noise of rushing water. I am undressed, sitting, waiting, dreaming. Steam rises heavy and wet, pushing itself against me, leaving clammy hot skin. How long has it been? The water is scalding. Slowly, deep breaths, the water embraces me, slowly. An ankle, a calf, a thigh, torrid water rips at my skin, at my delicate sex. I have become unborn, clean, purged of sin and the stench of pity, death and despair. It cools the water and leaves me stripped red lying against the frigid surface of the floor. Exhausted I dream.
Something happened here, alone on the floor in the dark. My eyes have opened but I am not awake. The air is dry, and dark. I struggle to pull myself from the floor, my thighs and face branded cherry by intolerant tile. Inhale. I am lissome, stealing through the slivers of moon, naked and glorious under the cover of dark. Invincible. There is whisper of a sound, the smallest sigh of a thought, as though the world itself were breathing in this moment. The lights come on, and I am disappointed to find myself alone still. My breath is slowed. And I know exactly what to do.
A dirtied moon hangs dull and diminished as I make my way through the street. I know every corner as it is in light, my feet maneuvering a muted figure, through the eerie pools of light cast by seemingly overgrown lights. There is a sticky heat that hangs between the narrow walls of the lane, sour and stinging. Echo’s of haste provide a cadence for an eager mind. Stop. A black iron door, heavy and bent; but fitting all the same opens unassumingly as if anticipating the arrival. Inside the stone basement there is subtle chill, pleasantly arousing the sweet pearls of sweat across the nape of my neck. I cannot help but smile, there a magic about this place, an impossible improbability I already know to be truth.
I have always found vampires to be the most erotic creatures. A shameless breed, dark and sensual, delicately deceased in the dim of underground dens, hard limber bodies blush under the candle light. Pornographic heavy metal grinds in rhythm to the swell of the pack and I am hypnotized. The room is seemingly endless, and there are others, smaller and secluded in the back. Private. A few are used for the bar, services kept secret, from all, even the soulless. The others are for rent, most likely by the hour, although not in the way you’d think. They Use them to feed, and f***. They usually buy animals for feeding, but every once in a while there wanders a curious stray, down into the undertow they will fall, drugged with passion and unnatural highs. To be consumed by those who entice. It’s usually a younger woman, not a girl though. They won’t take them before puberty; they need that first flush of life. There is something about the red. Color of blood and birth, Carnal and real, the want for hot life. Like black velvet cats, gentle and mysterious they provoke want.
Making my way across the floor, I can feel the eyes turn unwittingly. They all know who I am, as I do them. But the pulsing scent of a woman, ripe, affects the something greater than mere thought. Pierre has already started on a double neat Black Russian. I wait, observing the crowd tonight. There are more than enough in here, however, the air is a little cooler, and emanates a feeling of alone. The drink is done, and heading through to the back are the sounds of hot leather and stone. An indiscernible murmur almost promises to be only in your mind, broken by muffled guttural cries; from pleasure or from pain, one can never be sure.
I have reached the last cell, key in hand. Simple silver key for a simple wooden door. Protected by appearance of unimportance. The room is round, and roughly the size of a minivan with high ceilings. The walls and floor are rough, nothing but dirt, compacted by a thousand footsteps over a thousand years. Empty, the only contents are a crude cross, on the north wall, and a stool. On the stool is a book, black and gnarled like burnt skin, but smooth to the touch. It’s thick, but sits, almost weightless in my hands. There is no sound inside, but I can feel the conversation in the adjoining rooms. It washes over me, occupying every last inch. There is no where for my soul to go, and so my soul escapes, and the weight of the book bring me to the floor.

It is a strange thought to have killed a man, in those final hours between death and dawn. Counting the hours in packs of cigarettes, in moment of clarity, puffs of smoke. Pure chaos ensues having knowingly taken in lust for the kill, taking in cold blood what was born of warmth. Another man condemned to what is only thought to be true in myth, to relieve his fundamental nature unto something beautiful, dark and insatiable. A vampire is born. Nay, not born, freed from the cold grips of balance. Released by the primal desire to kill, to taste the last few breaths of life, acceptingly sweet on your mouth. These creatures, are born of men.
One will watch that cruel sunrise, neither will see. But there are two there. In that final fall, as day threatens to emerge, there are two beings emerged. One from the vestiges of the cruel night and a life not yet exhausted, and one of new light. We are seraph, living among the pitiless, the wretched, and the seemingly divine. Marked by the unnatural, the embodiment of desire. We have sacrificed for Satan himself, providing the necessary temptation for the reincarnation of evil. And so we are forsaken by our own design. We live as men, muted but not silent. We are not angels, not the protectors of men. Working along side our antithesis, we sustain a balance, the quintessential existence. And in the process are tainted. All people are born with original sin. I am original sin. No longer of Earth, or Fire, or Light, but of the Dark, infinite and glorious.