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This is a continuation of the hook already posted. (This is a work in progress) |
The silence kept me up last night, and now it won't stop raining. You'd think the world would've changed after last week. But it hasn't. Not yet. For the time being it's just my personal world being shaken to the ground, Just my safe havens going up in smoke. Her screams echoing in the coils of my brain. If they came for me now I'd probably let them take me. I have nothing left to fight for, no more reasons to live and all the reasons to die. I keep running her death through my mind. If I had just reacted quicker, If it hadn't been a wednesday. If I hadn't cried out. There were too many variables and so many times to strike. The reasons have dwindled to one. It's all my fault. I let my emotions get the better of me. But this is where I hit my dilemma, my paradox. If I hadn't of been so in love, hadn't let my fear of losing her sting my eyes, I could of saved her. But what would make me save her then? Either scenario leaves me standing on this hilltop, all alone and completely empty. “Arthur!” My name peals off around the hills in a lilting irish accent. “Arthur! Where are you?” My self absorption lessons to gauge if this person is even looking for me, and if she is worth leaving my inner sanctum; Where I can almost hear her laugh, see her smile, before the memory of Wednesday sears through my cortex. I start categorising those who would know my name, and devise a surprisingly short list. There are only the dead and one other who wishes me dead. Caution is well advised. Another scream echoes around the hills, and it takes me a moment to realise it actually happened. I hear a deep chuckling, and time slowed down. This is not a random animal attack brought on by carelessness, but a deliberate act of malice as one sapient being harasses another. If she is looking for me, then she put herself in danger because of me. A little respect for a fellow consciousness should be shown. Although, it could be an elaborate trap. Have someone call my supposedly secret name in an area they suspect I've wandered, then play off my compassion as she screams. And to really add the carrot to the snare, they'll have found someone who has already emotionally scarred me, and allow him to terrorize the “victim”. It would help if he had something signature, so I could recognise him easily... like a chuckle. I reach my decision within five second of the scream. If I were in a better frame of mind I would've found something odd about recognising a chuckle over the rain. And while I may have been cautious of a trap, I had not forseen that they had already known where I was. I certainly hadn't seen the blackjack coming. Ideas are crucial for revolutions, as they provide a different perspective than the widely consumed norm. Ideas shape the world around them, and inspire action from those who would not normally act. Ideas permeate the physical and metaphysical universe. Selfish ideas like gravity allow the universe to function and life to form, and arises when emotionally unstable particles feel lonely, and craves other particles attention so much it starts to physically pull them closer to itself. Life is a revolution. The idea that more than just the elementary forces of physics can have an effect on the universe. That the endless decay of matter can be fought. That the arrow of time can be stopped. Ideas are much like energy, in the fact that they had to come from somewhere. So please welcome into the story the presence of God, who had the good humour to present himself as a humble idea. For those reading who thoroughly enjoy arguing the existence of an all powerful being, please consider the idea of an all powerful character, who watches the lengths of time, and laughs. In the beginning the lord of creation was bubbling with ideas on how to get this party started. After contemplating a universe made entirely of triangles, the Fount of Heavenly Wisdom decided to make a fully formed universe, up to and including life (because you really can't leave that to free lancing chemicals), and leave subtle hints of a cataclysmic explosion. As God of Time and Space, he had already been to countless weekend retreats formed by his new world, and had decided on a six day plan to create everything, seven if you included the public holiday. The official version is reportedly in the "Bible" but due to personal deity choice creation times vary. I'm not really sure what happened. One moment I was sneaking up on the chuckler and a dark skinned girl, confident in my stealth; and then I wake up here. It is obvious that the girl and the chuckler are not working together (or this plot is more convoluted than I could hope for), but it is uncertain whether this was a deliberate sting operation designed to capture me (meaning the government ordered the attack that wednesday), or I got mistaken in a police arrest of a rapist. The fact that this is a prison cell and an armed, uniformed guard leads me to believe that an accomplice of the chuckler captured me and is holding me captive. The black girl is also a mystery, as the current government is opposed to anyone without a national heritage, or anyone who even tans half-well. This current government was made from the remnants of the British National Party (after it collapsed) and a whole lot of suave. The speeches at the electoral campaign were repeatedly likened to Hitlers', and Sarah Richardson was also repeatedly likened to Hitler, though not so much after she was elected. "Arthur?" I Jump. The same Irish tint. I look to the mostly concrete wall to my right and see a dark face peering through the five inches of iron bars near the ceiling. "Hi" My voice is deep and croaky, I haven't used it in weeks. Social preconceptions start nudging each other in my brain, and I grudgingly acknowledge them. "What's your name?" "Sofia" "You already know mine..." I hadn't meant to sound resentful, but a lot had happened recently and I haven’t yet caught up. There was a time when I could use words. I'd even go so far to say I had charm. Seeing as my word count is still in single digits this week, there may be hope. "That's great Arthur, but may I suggest holding what’s dear to you and cowering in that corner? I'm going to make something explode, and I don't want to clean up your mess." This is not what I expected from a girl I first met being attacked on the moor. For the sake of compliance I sit in the gestured corner. I hear a clatter as something lands in the cell across the corridor from Sofias’. There's a faint whistling and then a sharp crack. I feel disappointed. Compared to some of the explosions I've seen (and I was in one of the world trade towers as they were collapsing), I'd give it a two out of ten. Just better than a vinegar volcano. Then I look around at all the explosive material that just happens to not be littering the floor of my cell, and upgrade it to an eight for impressiveness. There’s a louder whistling, followed by a very deep thump, which causes bits of the roof and floor to fall away. I catch a piece of falling rubble and admire how something seemingly unimpressive caused such results, and how Sofia managed to build something like that in a prison cell. The bars to my cell fall forward with a crash, and I notice how localised this freedom is. Only four or five cells were opened, and only mine and Sofias' was occupied. There’s a soot stain near a sizable hole in the hole opposite Sofias’ cell, and the maker of the bomb is lying on the floor of her cell, coughing and rubbing her eyes. She seems like she is recovering so I peer outside of the hole. I see three bodies partially buried by the rubble, drawn by a single brick falling from the wall. Anticipating a hand to start enlarging the hole, they were not prepared for the collapse of a building. I hear running footsteps, and see that Sofia has just picked herself off the ground. I reckon that she would have enough time to leap out the gap before the guard came, but she would need me down there to catch her. So I jump. It's ten metres to the ground with a groggy head, and a landing that makes my shins wake up. I jumped out of the trade tower and landed on another building to survive, breaking all the bones in my legs and most of the bones in my body. I glance up to Sofia and try to make her jump, but she bites her lip and shakes her head and wanders back inside. What do I do now? My rescuer has wandered back inside. There must be a reason she was looking for me, and a reason why she was willing to risk her life to physically remove me from the prison. Now she's going to get arrested again, and held in a far more secure facility if they figure out the bomb was her. I'm no good to her here. Time to really escape. I'm at the top of the fence and contemplating the reels of barbed wire, when I hear my name again. Leaving the prison was Sofia, accompanied by the guard. The main gates were slowly opening, and sofia was gesturing me to come over. Feeling foolish, I exit with Sofia and guard friend, centre stage. Ideas have the talent of evolution, changing noble revolutions into bloody wars. One such noble idea was shared by a few lowly angels, undertakers for the celestial realm, so to speak. These spiritual beings longed to worship God, to stand in his temple and constantly praise him. They wished to serve God more usefully than the menial jobs they'd been doing for most of eternity. In its purest form, the idea of things being in a place they were not created to be belonged to those few. These eternal beings do the same job over and over, so there aren't many opportunities for socializing. The idea is fundamental to the structure of current humanity, and ideas with such a future have a power of their own, and as such this idea was heard by Lucifer. Lucifer was already the most powerful thing in creation (as only being the right hand angel to an all powerful deity can be), but it wasn't enough. Slowly he recruited or coerced once sacred beings to his cause, while he watched Yahweh waltz around the garden with something created in both the physical and spiritual domain. Imagine the loathing that builds up, watching perfection for thousands of years and knowing you can't have it. It's from this contorted soul the enemy of life emerged. |