literature

they'll come for me 2

Deviation Actions

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Literature Text

The City. Humming, buzzing, like a kid on Ritalin. Cars and traffic jams. Consumers and shoplifters. Everybody buying, eating, taking, needing. Road-raged and screaming. The tickety-tack tickety-tack of heels on the sidewalk. sunlight sliced into a thousand pieces through the grid of buildings. Downtown. Uptown. Crosstown. Bass-bu-bu-bu from a hatchback in one ear and Mozart from a giftshop in the other. Schizoid psychopolis. The whole place is one massive, self-enabling, crazy monster.

And Chloe is poised on its brink.

Right now it is that time between dusk and twilight when there's a stillness reminiscent of the massive of the moments before a storm hits. The air is a breath held in the lungs of the city. Office workers, those daytime troops of administration and bureaucracy have evacuated their posts and the clubs and pubs are awaiting their transformation into the winers and diners of parallel industries. Their primping and preprandials are underway In the meantime, the city's only habitues are those who have almost become a part of the street furniture - communities of homeless people, Gothic-Punk teenagers languishing against wrought-iron fences owning or being owned by the City, it's hard to surmise which, and chefs smoking silently in back alleys behind giant skips their eyes deadened to the exterior world.

Chloe crouches against the molded stonework of an architectural masterpiece that looms over the corner of 5th Avenue and Dime Street in the city's Central Business District. She is pale and slight and wearing dark nondescript clothes. From her position against the wall it's hard to tell if she's in a skirt or baggy pants but one black leather engineer boot is showing. Her hair is as black as that boot, long, straight and hanging loosely over her shoulder down to her waist. her eyes seem black, too, but this could be a trick of the light. At this deceptive hour the whole world is monochrome.

A group of five Goths walk past her, laughing at an in-joke, talking in code about a band they're all emulating. The post-modernistic quasi-self-referentiality is almost humbling in its mix of irony, deprecation and naivety. Chloe watches them like a hawk, picks one out - the runt of the pack - and starts to rise, but as she does she shakes her head as if to clear it of such thoughts and holds her position. The kids turn the corner, unaware of the potential terror that watched them, and silence descends once again.

Chloe appears to be utterly unaware that she isn't the only one watching. A figure blending with the shadows of the library across the road from her has eyes and ears of its own, although its interests lie more with Chloe than a band of street-rats.

Chloe stands, and the shadows answers the inconsequential question that she's wearing baggy pants, not a skirt. She removes her belt and it is revealed to be a small grappling hook connected to a rope that looks far too fine to be of any use, but nonetheless after glancing up and down the street, still not noticing the shadow, she throws the hook up, up, up with incredible precision and it latches onto a stone outcropping on the roof. Chloe scales the 12-storey building like a spider climbing its web.

As she reaches the top she reattaches the hook and line as a belt and with one last glance downwards, makes her way over the roof's peak.

The shadow detaches itself from the library wall and gazes after her thoughtfully. He has been watching her for months now and is amazed at how quickly she has acquired skills on her own that it has taken others years to be taught by skilled masters. There are some things, however, that can only learned from being part of a community - a sense of identity, a moral compass, social resilience. He has been sensing these things lacking in Chloe, making her confidence waiver. Too much self-doubt could cause all manner of nasty accidents - it could be the difference between catching hold of a rooftop and plummeting to a sudden and sticky end. It's time to introduce himself, he thinks.
Chapter one of part two or possibly part one of chapter two. I've been told that understanding "quasi-self-referentiality" and "preprandials" is expecting too much of my target audience, but I don't buy it. I have a fairly good idea what direction it's heading in and I'm enjoying this one immensely so you may be favoured with more before too long. hope you enjoy it.
© 2012 - 2024 geotigger
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azazelchained's avatar
this is really cool. As for the vocabulary we are living in a post literate world as long as you can google you can know.