well this is just a random thing i wrote for school, figured that if i was a member i'd better upload something. let me know if you love it, hate it, or if you have any pointers. :D
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A crack had opened up in the roof, and we wait for it to widen. For the roof to collapse. For the idea of death -that had plagued us for days- to finally be realised. The teenage King, face lit by our one lantern snatched from the bus, stirs from his rubble throne, looks straight at me.
"How long do you reckon it will be?" I ignore him, so does everyone else, and he doesn't ask again. Every eye is on me, but I pretend not to notice. I get up and begin to pace. The section of tunnel that we are confined to, which will soon become our tomb, is thirty steps long, ten wide. In that space there a four strangers, and me. No names have been shared. I am the only common point of reference among us all. In place where money has no value, they still manage to feel that I am the one that they can turn to, the responsible one, the leader. Its funny how people work. They form an idea - like maybe that a person who is good at their job will be good at anything- and then stick to it with extreme confidence. All because they forked over a couple of bucks and got what they wanted in return. Seriously, it can't be that uncommon. People work everyday, they rely on doing their job well in order to survive. Perhaps that's the answer. Faced with an honest to God fight for survival, to them I look like the best method of getting out alive.
"Guys, I'm a fucking tour-guide." Four sets of eyes blink at me, surprised. The Young King of the Hill speaks again, slowly.
"So...What?"
"So stop looking at me like I'm gonna get you out of here!" A girl gets up and walks toward me, one of the twins. She stops about a metre away, one hand behind her back. Her sister Watches possessively from the shadows.
"Couldn't you just give us a guided tour out?" She reveals the hidden treasure, and laughs. The emptiness of the sound distracts me from her bounty for a moment. She leans closer, and whispers, "I saved this for you." In her hand is the microphone I used for the tours. She must have brought it off the bus before it was buried. I swear under my breath. She laughs again. Her sister's eyes shoot between the two of us, and a slab of concrete dislodges itself from the ceiling. The King is crushed, dead. A Silent man, who had been closest to him, has blood and other things splattered across his face and chest. He doesn't move. The Blackbird twin twirls the mic between her fingers, and then begins to mutter into it. Snatches of her monologue float over to me.
"Excuse me ladies and gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We are currently experience some turbulence..." I remove my jacket and go to wipe the grime from Silent's face. It ends up stained lightly red from my efforts, both from energetic rubbing and because I have no water to actually wash his face with. He doesn't care.
"Ground control to Major Tom...." I sit down beside Silent and try to ignore the slowly increasing volume of the mutters. The Watching twin gets up and begins to dance around her sister, slow shuffles steps circling recklessly.
"At least you've stopped looking me for ans-" The Blackbird twin begins to shriek, words abandoned in favour of noise. Her dancer spins out of control, caught by the rhythm. I sit, with Silent, and try to gain some peace from the calm I sense in him.
You see, I don't usually go around making up random names for people based on their actions. In the static darkness of our tunnel, however, names didn't seem useful anymore. As I watched the people around me shape themselves into living, breathing coping mechanisms, my mind refused to consider them as anything but their most obvious manifestations of desperation. When we were first caught, chased by pouring rubble and, finally, confined to our thirty-by-ten mausoleum, they tried to maintain a connection to reality. Hell, I still am. They were smart, acknowledging early that reality was dead, and that soon we would be too.
Silent stirs beside me, stands. Walks to the Dancer Who Once Watched. Pulls a knife from his coat. Plunges it into her gut. Jerks the blade up, breaks her heart. Suddenly, the Blackbird is not consumed by the need for sound. The Blackbird becomes Silent. He Who Was Once Silent becomes Cruelly Competent. I stay, sitting, breathing, wondering. Silent takes her predecessor's spot beside me. Another crack forms in the ceiling.
A bus tour through the mountains. Capacity: twenty-five, twenty bookings made. Twenty-one including me. We drove, stopped at lookouts and interesting places I had seen hundreds of times before. Entered a tunnel, just another in a string of many, and never reached the other side. In the first tremor, eleven died. Four more trying to evade the sliding rubble. This five of us left to wait for the end.
Silent stares at her knees. Cruelly Competent cleans his blade with a rag from his pocket. Calmly. The Dancer slowly drains. The King is unrecognisable. I get up, start to pace again.
"Sit down," Cruelly Competent orders. I ignore him. He stows his rag, carefully. Walks to me. Readies his blade. I keep walking. Silent is broken, and begins to whimper softly. I change my course, walk until I am standing in front of her. Crouch down, place my hands on her shoulders. Murmur words of comfort. Feel the point of Cruelly Competent's blade between my shoulders. "Sit down."
"Why?" The pressure increases, and I spin to face him. A line of red is drawn across my back. The blade recovers, settles itself over my heart. I meet the eyes of Cruelly Competent, Who Once Was Silent, and ask again. "Why?"
The lantern light flickers gently, and goes out.
