Well, next chapter up for tommorow, after having hammered a nail into my hand after every day where I didn't write, I've managed with to write the next chapter with one and a half hand.
EDIT:
Yay! It's here at last!
Chapter 1
“That’s all?”
“Yes. That’s…” Martin’s raspy voice halted for a minute, “That’s all”
It all started as a couple of papers and signs spread out over the city, Henric got that idea. He survived the effect due to being a social misfit, he spent most of his time playing computer, and thus first noticed something was wrong 5 hours after The Effect stroke (what they named the killer trance), when he was on way down to the grocery to buy milk. Perhaps the innumerable dead bodies and bloodsoaked streets gave him a clue, or perhaps it was the smashed windows and brains/intestines/something strewn across the sidewalk? He couldn’t quite remember.
He remembered running down the street yelling for survivors and carefully analysing the surroundings…Or perhaps he ran around panicking while screaming like a little girl flailing his arms around? Did really matter? What mattered was that he (through a series of events he couldn’t quite remember), had figured out that The Effect didn’t activate by merely hearing someone. So as long as both parts didn’t have visual contact, they could speak together.
Henric silently chuckled, even in the blackest deepest pit of hell, someone always had to laugh, someone had to see the joke in things, someone…
No, no, it wasn’t right, he had lost everyone, everything, all his dreams and work was but drops in the rain, to fall and splat, noone ever giving them a second thought, no significance or recognition or rewards or promotions or feeling or meaning or happiness or children or family or friends or love or compassion or enlightenment or contact or sex or awards or speeches or passion or walks or movies or games or books or songs or music or laughter or point in it all or WHERE IS THE JOKE IN THAT HAHAHA VERY FUNNY ISN’T IT?
No,
Don’t break down now, you have the others now, remember?
You’re not alone anymore.
Henric focused again, focused on the voices of the other people in the room, Martin had just finished his story. The others were discussing it right now, trying to cheer him up (As much as a group of people who’d recently murdered their loved ones could cheer someone up).
Henric was an architect, so he was used to planning and constructing. He choose an old catholic cathedral as the location for his project, He cleared the middle floor of benches, and used the confessionals to build a small structure in the middle. The result was a 10-way confessional, where 10 people could sit in each their little room, and talk to the others while having zero visibility of them. Afterwards he spread out the papers in the dead of night, each one, containing information on where, and when, to meet. He set one up in every different district of the town, at places were they were easy to see. Each paper had a different time, so that no one would end up running into each other in the church.
He then waited.
And waited.
For the first week, no one came. Henric was beginning to panic, had no one noticed the papers? Was he the only one left?
The second week, no one came, He had almost completely lost hope now, was he the only one left? Was everyone dead? NO! He couldn’t be the only one, there had to be someone else! There just…had to.
The third week in silence, now he spent most of his time weeping profoundly while sitting in his confessional.
One last time he called out
His voice at the breaking point,
And someone spoke back
The voice of a young girl named Clara.
And they talked.
As the weeks passed, more voices joined them in their requiem of society.
Martin was new, and as a new member, he had to talk.
Talk about the first hours.
Everyone had their own story to tell.
Clara, an uptown girl whom had been the last woman standing between her and her 3 room-mates, according to her she was lucky enough to be wearing a fruit-knife when The Effect struck.
Ernest, an elderly man, and while his voice had been hard to hear through profuse crying, and a heavy accent, it was apparent that he’d been with his wife for 50 years when it happened. He said that the fact that he had nothing to bury was the worst thing.
Ian, some uptown fuck, he strictly denied any attempt from the others to make him tell his story. Instead preferring to make sarcastic comments when the others spoke, calling himself “The Sole Voice of Logic and Reason”. Henric hated Ian, he sometimes fantasised about sneaking into Ian’s confessional with a meat cleaver and let The Effect do the rest. He was sure the others wouldn’t complain, they hated him as well, they just never said anything about it.
There was also Martin, whose story the group just heard.
And finally; a young couple, Annabelle and Steven, who were just about to tell their story.
“I’ll do it” Steven said stuttering, and after a few seconds repeated himself, this time more determined, “I’ll do it!”
“Darling, No please, I-I can’t take it, not again. I don’t want to go through it again!” Annabelles said.
“We have too! I’m sorry bu-“ his voice broke, after a few minutes where the only sound was Annabelle’s uncontrolled sobbing.
“We had a baby girl” total silence rang throughout the church room after these words. Steven’s voice was forced and hollow.
“She was only 4 weeks old. Christ! She wasn’t even baptised! It…
It was supposed to be here.
I was in the kitchen when it happened, Annabelle was alone with her, inside the living room. She…She…I heard a scream, my little baby girl’s scream, she sounded so terrified. And then…
Silence.
I hurried in there.
Just as I entered the room I heard the bathroom door shut and lock.
Blood
Blood everywhere.
And a small, so small, lumb of meat.
Just meat.
That’s what she had been reduced to,
Meat.
I kept hitting the bathroom door, but…she wouldn’t open up, I kept screaming, kept asking “Why?! Why did you do it?” But all I got for an answer was sobbing, oh Ann, if only I had known!”
“It’s okay Steven. You couldn’t possibly have known” Annabelle said.
“I ran outside looking for help. It was just chaos out there, everyone killing one another. There was this one little man standing on the top of a car, he wore in fine clothes and everything. His guts hanging out of a gaping wound in his stomach, he kept kicking this other guy in the head, even though his face was just a mess of blood and flesh, the guy kept trying to crawl up on the car! People jumped out 4th floor windows just to get down there faster, they just started pushing themselves forward when their legs broke! It was… it was…
Hell.
I fought too, luckily I’m pretty strong and…well, they were mostly dead already.
It took, a couple of hour perhaps? I don’t know, it was a cloudy day, and I kinda lost track of the time during all the…well…
I ran back up afterwards, I opened the door to the apartment slightly, yelled at Ann to stay inside the bathroom, I wasn’t hurt very much, only a few bruises…”
“What, you came out to find a street filled with people in psychotic rage, and you wasn’t even hurt?!” The signature cynical voice of Ian said, Henric silently reminded himself to bring a meat cleaver next time.
“No, wait, you’re right, I gotten torn up pretty badly out there. I was in shock…I…I just didn’t register it, I- sat down at the bathroom door and wept, bruises and wounds everywhere! I…I…”
“It’s okay Steven, it’s okay”, Henric said. His voice was tired and worn, the story only reinforced his depression. His confessional felt claustrophobic, he wanted to burst out of it, to hug Clara and confess his love for her, for the effect to be destroyed by the power of love, for them to cry of happiness as they kissed passionately, for the others to clap and cheer, for all the pain to go away.
Either that or rape her.
He wasn’t sure which it was, he had trouble distinguishing his emotions from each other these days.
The short daydream cheered him up a bit.
“Henric, there was something I wondered about…” Clara’s frail voice said.
“Yes?” He answered, feeling a glimmer of hope.
“The Effect only reacts on sight, right?” She said.
“I think so, yes.” Henric smiled, he was pretty sure he knew what she was about to say.
“Then maybe if Steven and Annabelle something to cover their eyes they could…well, meet.” She said with a slight chuckle.
“That might be true, I don’t think it reacts on touch.” Henric said enthusiastically.
“So they could meet and, you know, repopulate the world…” Martin whistled.
“Oh! Great, we can repopulate the world with blind people!” Ian bemoaned, Henric twitched, and considered bringing the meat hammer as well next time.
“Shut up Ian!” The others said in chorus, Henric smiled, happy that the finally had gotten enough of Ian’s chronic assholism.
“I’m not sure, it’s a bit of a risk, what if they tore off the eye cover by accident?” Ernest said.
“It’s a risk but…” Steven said, “But we have to take it. Ann, are…Are you… are you with us?”
After a short silence, a determined Annabelle answered. “Yes, I’m prepared”
They spent the next few hours planning the meeting. Martin (who lived near Annabelle and Steven), was to sit in the room next door, and he was going to report back in case the experiment…failed.
For the first time in a long while, Henric felt hope.
Edited by SquigPie, 27 December 2010 - 23:51.
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