The Man Who Goes Boom, Chapter One

What would you say if I told you that this world, our world was created by a man? Not a god, just a man who in his own world had a grand imagination. That with the ability of spells and all round awesome wizardry wizard-ness. Our world and everything in and around it from the bacteria that lives in us to the gravity that keeps up grounded, to the suns heat and light radiating and giving life. To our own thoughts and ideas, those thoughts and ideas that allow us to create homes and paint and cook and play the instruments that we made. Everything you know and those things you think of all came from a cauldron (of sorts) in a small stone house in a forest in a world far different from ours. A world where science and magic worked together and war pointless in all account, for there was never any need for such thing, all was equal. Everything we know and dream created by a man. A man whom has many names and faces, for we are not the only world (and everything around it) that he has created. Worlds that have evolved faster and stronger than us where technology is king, where towers of glass and metal reach the tip of the heavens, machines and humans working and living as one. There are worlds where wild things kill and feed of each other, no intelligence just instinct. Planets full of thick foliage hiding titans and shadows of the most unthinkable horrors.

Then we have worlds in which magic and science adolescent in age but growing none the less, and it is on one of these worlds where our journey currently stands. A tale which had started endless millenniums ago and one which I know only the middle, for time as of late has been untruthful to all.
The middle I know so the middle I’ll start. A young man named Jake from our own world, earth, that of number 27.

It was a morning unlike any other for Jake, as he was woken up by a roar of anger and the eyes of red that burned his forehead creating a sharp pain. He rubbed said forehead wiping the perspiration away, amazed just how much fear had consumed him in a short amount of time. It wasn’t until his breathing had once more relaxed that he realised something strange was a foot. The room he was in had four walls, a door and a window. There was a bed side table with a bedside lamp on top. There where drawers full of cloths, Jake being a single man in his late twenties meant that the floor also held host to most of his clothes, clean or dirty they were all there. And in the corner was a television, that wasn’t really a television anymore. Jake rubbed his eyes in a final attempt to get the sleep out before looking at what was his television, for it was now nothing but a hollow plastic case. The innards and screen where gone from sight completely. He found himself turn to his digital clock beside him and found no glowing numbers, no all he found was yet another hollow case, innards and screen gone. Without realising he found that he had lept out of bed and was already halfway into a pair of jeans. A pair from the floor and most likely hadn’t been washed for some time. He gave out a confused cry as words suddenly seemed too hard to comprehend in his half-awake state. He rushed though the small one bedroomed flat, his naked feet slapping the laminated flooring as he ran from room to room. And all was the same. Clocks, televisions where hollow. His telephone was lighter than it had ever been and reminded him of those brightly coloured toy phones with a smiley face painted on it. Well no smiley face for Jake now, some weird shit was happening he thought, and thought nothing else.
Some weird shit is happening right now!
In the kitchen his oven had no fan, his microwave had no digits or innereds and that too was light, just the case. The fridge had no humming sound and when opened the food and milk was off. Then he noticed so was the light, door was open but no light glowed to reveal the delicious contents of this once cold heaven of foods.
No light? He thought and looked to the celling, no bulb hung from a wire and no wire ran down from the white celling. Just a hole from which the wire feed through.
Something really weird is going on!
He ran to his room his feet still patting and slapping on the floor and grabbed the first t shirt he saw (this too was from the floor, but unlike the jeans it smelt fresh) He pulled on some socks and put on his shoes running down the stairs to his front door he ran out onto the street. The idea was to ask his landlord, a man who ran a shop underneath said flat and politely but loudly ask just what the hell is going on. That was the plan. Instead as he opened the door he found himself staring at the cars parked out front and along the narrow street. Every car had no bonnet this allowed him to see that each car was short an engine and battery and all the other fiddly bits that make a car a car. The street lights had no bulbs and the telephone poles had no wires running from them.
Now I know that things seem weird, but this is where it became even more so. As Jake walked into the middle of the road looking down this long narrow street he saw no person walking round. No one had come out with a confused and angry expression like he had. There was no sound, nothing.
He turned to the shop and saw that it was shut. The sky was light so he knew it wasn’t too early. With the shutters down he couldn’t see inside but if he could have what he would have seen was a shop that had not been in use for years.
It was at this point he could think of doing one thing
“He-y” he cried out as loud as he could, he didn’t wait for a response he simply shouted it again and again and a fourth time for good measure, then he waited and there was no reply, not a whisper or a curtain shifting allowing eyes to fall upon this mad man in the middle of the street. There was nothing and no one.
“What the fuck now?” he said once more wiping perspiration from his brow.
Not far from Jake there was a dog following a scent. And at the other end of the city was a giant beast with blood red eyes, each tooth from its snarling mouth was the size of a fist and a hell of a lot sharper. This beast was tracking the same scent as the dog. The scent was that of magic, and it was coming from Jake.

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New York, there was an old black man tired and sick lying in his box in an ally away from the tourists and businessmen that walked the streets, heels clicking and boots stomping and trainers shuffling, this was the Percussion. Drinking their coffee and talking into their phones, nudging each other away cursing and shouting for a cab and sirens wailing in the distance these things are the vocals. The exhaust of cars that drove past both with speed and that of a snail, people rushing but not really getting anywhere as every other person was trying to rush to the same place as well. So the cars soon slow down to a crawl, exhaust pipes coughing out the sounds of revs deep and soft, this would be the bass which all songs need. The city playing its song, a song the black man has heard for far to many years (so he believes) far too long. So the song that played in his young adult life the song that was as cold and as dead as the memories he has now played the same song for his death. He coughed and shivered pulling a worn damp blanket over his three layers of clothes that he wore.
“Fuck it” he said coughing once more “I hate this fucking city and this city hates an old nigga like me”
And with that he closed his eyes, but it was hours before he fell asleep and not long after that with the street song playing softly in the distance his mind wandered to those memories of his. Those memories that he hated so.
A kid he lived in the old nigga country of Alabama where his father worked him half to death on a farm that couldn’t raise no good crops. After working his father’s farm he found himself at the end of his father’s fists no reason other than the fact that his father needed something to relieve the stress. And hell who better than the son that killed his momma on the way out. The only woman who Copelands father loved. Well when he was thirteen or so he ran away from those fists and kept on running working for food he always seemed to find the right places. Stayed with a family in Mississippi for a year or two, but soon left after he was caught fooling around with one of the girls.
Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and finally Missouri where in 1965 a nigga was no long a nigga but a brotha, and a brotha could make money from white gold. This is where old Copeland found himself mixed up with a group in New York.
He woke up as the wind picked up, sending a chill down the already existing shiver. He tightened the cover and pulled the plastic cover over him again, pushing one corner under his right butt cheek.

He fell asleep again not long after that he dreamt a recently reoccurring dream where he follows a creature that’s both small and fast through a door that leads to a room full of doors. Each one black and cold to the touch, the sort of cold that burns. In the dream he has always gone to a door with the number twenty seven etched into the wood but has never been able to open the door no matter how hard he tries. And he never understands why he wants to open it; he just knows he has too.

He wakes up again, but to something he hasn’t heard in over forty two years since he arrived in New York back in 1970. It was everywhere around him and it was the sound of silence.
For a second he thought he had died and to be honest was pissed about it, cus he still felt the pain in his chest and back and arms (but not his legs, oh hell no not these legs). Then the smell of sewage and filth hit him back to reality, no he’s still alive. But is anyone else? he thought shuffling, coughing that taste of blood out of his mouth, making his way to the street and road away from his cardboard home and what little belongings he had, which was nothing but a shopping cart half full of tins, some of those full, some empty. He saw cars, but no bodies driving, no engines running and no people looking at him; looking at them, for there was no one to look at. The street was empty. The song of the city, that same song that he heard for forty two years ended. And he, an old dying man of 62 smiled and embraced the silence.