literature

Does Anybody Know? - 2

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As she led me down the stairwell, a column of concrete down the middle of the tower, Sib tried to get me to talk. She asked about my childhood, my family, the nekra – and I replied every time with a shrug and a grunt. By the time we reached the fortieth floor, she'd run out of questions. By thirty-fifth, she'd started talking about other things – Outreach, this Gallagher woman, how she got out of the drugs. While I didn't care for any of it, I no longer needed to talk back. That was an improvement.
At twenty-fifth, she left the stairwell. It was a retail level – but because this tower was officially 'dead', every shop was boarded up. Holes in the boards showed where the unofficial residents had broken through for a bit of privacy.
We crossed to the next tower centre-side, and across that one. The shops here might have been in business still, but you couldn't tell. It would be a brave shopkeeper who stayed open past dark. We passed maybe one or two people walking the other way, all looking furtive with their collars pulled high.
From there, we went to a third tower centre-side, and out of that one to the next counter-clockwise, and into that tower's stairwell. It was just as dull as the last, but I could hear sounds of life from floors below.
Feet starting to ache, I interrupted Sib's monologue.
"Hey, how far is this place?"
"Not far now. It's just down on the twentieth."
"Right."
Two more flights of the dull, grey stairs. I remembered the time I'd gone a few rings centre-side, how the stairwells there had been well-lit and decorated, painted with colourful murals. They said that, in the very middle of the city, there were proper masterpieces, and fancy lights, and even music.
There was definitely conversation below. Not loads, but more than you'd normally get in a tower. And when we reached twentieth, I found out why.
The door out of the stairwell was propped open, and the little landing between stair sections was occupied by a handful of people hunched against the wall. One of them nodded to us; Sib smiled back, and I eyed him warily.
Stepping out of the door brought us onto the landing that ringed the stairwell. It was crammed with people, every inch of floor taken up in some way. There were people curled under thin blankets, and a long, thin queue curling out of sight around the corner. I stood in the doorway, staring.
"Come on," Sib said, at my shoulder.
I jumped.
"If we go the other way round, we can get through easier."
She started off around the landing, stepping carefully through the narrow gaps between those on the floor. I looked from side to side as I followed. There were people of all shapes and sizes there: scar-faced men with broken noses; thin-faced women with rats'-tailed hair; even children, curled in tiny spaces. Those who were awake stared at me as I stepped past. In one or two faces I saw the glaze of nekra. Lucky bastards. My muscles were beginning to ache, already, and as I stepped over a sleeping child's legs, another cold flash ran down my body.
"Reagan?"
I looked up. Sib was standing by a door, which would usually lead into one of at least ten apartments. The smell of something hot and fatty curled through onto the landing. My mouth watered slightly – it had been a long time since I last ate. I followed her through the door.
Inside, was the largest space I had ever seen in a tower. All the rooms on this side had been knocked through to form one long one. At the far end, I could see the queue from the landing; at a foldable desk, two chubby women in aprons were doling out bowls of something steamy and sloppy. Between here and there, long tables with benches were crammed with those who had been through the queue, gobbling up their soup.
My stomach grumbled.
"Wait here," Sib said, and she threaded her way along an aisle between benches. She came up behind the servers, and picked up a couple of bowls.
"Hi Sib."
"Hey, how's it going?"
"Same as, same as. Hey, you know Janine's coming by after her speech, yeah?"
"Oh, cool. I'll stick around then…"
I drifted out of their conversation, turned around to take in the rest of the room. The space at this end was occupied by a number of shelves, some of which still had stacks of thin, brown blankets on. They weren't particularly special – I had a stash of pretty similar scraps in a corner of my tower.
"Reagan?"
I turned back again, and Sib pushed one of the bowls into my hands. It was hot, warmed my hands, so ignoring the spoon she offered, I raised it to my lips. In a few gulps, it was gone. My stomach seemed shocked at the idea of food, but glad to be at least partly filled. With another cold shiver, though, and an increasingly severe ache in my muscles, I couldn't say I was feeling good.
"Well?" Sib was watching me for some kind of reaction.
"Well, it's better than starving." She scowled at my misinterpretation, knew I'd done it on purpose.
"The Centre, what do you think?"
"Mm, it's all very nice, but it's not going to change anything."
"Oh really?"
"You can't just hand out food forever."
"Come this way." She opened a door next to the one we'd come through, into a second large room. There were fewer people here – just one or two staff workers (they were the better-dressed ones), and a handful of visitors, hunched over the row of desks down the middle. At the far end, an open wardrobe showed a rack of dull suits; along the other walls, bookshelves, posters and leaflets competed for space. I eyed the bright posters uncertainly. When you run with a street gang for the first half of your life, there isn't much in the way of reading to be done.
"There's stuff here for teaching people to read and write," Sib was saying. "And there are suits for people to go to job interviews in. And showers. It's about giving people a chance to break past the prejudice, and start again."
"But why bother? What's the point?" She was gushing all this stuff with such a weird look on her face; I felt the need to combat the idealism she was waving at me. I was sweating, too, now – but still shivering.
She turned to face me, a hint of disappointment in her face. "It's better than chasing the next hit, right?"
I shrugged. "What are we living for?" I repeated, holding her gaze with a solid stare.
"For…" She still didn't have an answer, I could see. She wanted to have one, but she didn't.
"Does anybody know?"
The stare was making her uncomfortable. She looked away.
"Sib, you ok over there?" a deep voice called. Sib looked over to the speaker – a burly guy with a broken nose, in trousers and shirt with that mended look. Staff, then. He was holding the end of a long cardboard box, the other end of which rested on a shelf in the wardrobe.
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Can you spare a moment?" He nodded to the box.
"Sure. Hey, Reagan, I'll just be a moment." She crossed the room to help. A particularly violent shiver ran down my body, and my stomach twisted with nausea.
This Outreach thing was boring me – the food had been good, something I might come back for, but this suit thing? And I could sleep under a thin blanket in my own tower, without having to fight for floor space. And, what really decided it: I needed to score. The nausea and the shivers were warning signs, and if I didn't get something soon, it was going to get a whole lot worse. I'd been through that enough times to want to avoid it.
Seizing my chance while Sib was occupied being helpful, I ducked back through the door, and out of the big room onto the landing. I picked my way back through the sleeping bodies, and at the stairwell, I headed down – fifteenth was the closest road level, and I could try my luck in the parking lots. It wouldn't matter if I found a dealer, if I didn't have anything to pay him.
By the time I was two floors down from the Centre, the stairwell was pretty much deserted again. I passed two people heading up to the handouts, and the occasional huddle of blanket was someone with more want for personal space than those upstairs. That was it.
On fifteenth, I came out of the stairwell into the parking lot – where the apartments and shops took up space on other levels, on this one there was just flat concrete, marked out with chipped and faded white lines. In some towers, there'd be dozens of cars lined up there; in ones like this, barely anyone could afford a pedal-bike, let alone a car. There might be up to five in a parking lot like this, and chances were they'd have been stripped down already. But I was out of other options – and I could keep an eye out on my way back to my place.
I loped along the road, to the next tower clockwise. Again, the bays were empty, and the flickering strip lights didn't show up anything other than stones and broken concrete on the floor. I headed out edge-side, crossed over to the next. Here my luck might be in – there were a couple of dark shapes in the corner of this lot.
The first car was a beat-up thing, about ten years old from the reg. plate, and showing it. I peered through the windows anyway, but my luck was out – even the seats had been ripped out. Suppressing a sigh, I moved around to the other side… and stopped.
In the next bay, a sleek, silver beauty sat neatly in the space. It looked like a cat, curled up and waiting to leap. I gaped. I'd never seen anything so expensive-looking. I couldn't even begin to think how much it would be worth.
Glancing around me, though the place was still deserted, I crept over to its side. Something like this would surely be alarmed, and yet… I couldn't resist having a look. After all, there was no-one here. And I could run fast.
The back-seat windows were tinted glass, so all I could see was my own face looking back at me. I frowned. I could break in on the off-chance that they'd left something, but…
Before I made any move, I edged up to the front windows. Peering in, I could see smooth, leather seats, all in black. The dashboard was covered in little buttons and dead lights, like some magic thing. But there was nothing loose, nothing in the doors or on the seats, unless – was that a watch?
A watch, not gold, not anything really flash, but a watch that was working – I could see the second hand ticking around. That could be worth enough, to the right person. And it was just sitting there.
I looked around again – still no-one. Over on the edge of the parking lot, I noticed a pile of rubble, where one of the walls had crumbled. I darted over, started sifting through the heap. There – that would do. A lump of concrete, just the size of my palm. I hefted it, felt its weight, and went back to the window.
A loud clang echoed through the building. I jumped a foot in the air, almost dropped the concrete. Carried by its weight, my hand swung down and smashed into the side of the car.
An ear-splitting wail started up, and all the car's lights started flashing. Heart racing, I dropped my weapon and jumped out from behind the car, made a run for the edge-side bridge out of the tower. I could run fast, pretty fast; with any luck –
One | Two | Three | Four

These are not chapters - I've only split this up because scrolling down a text wall is one of my personal dA peeves. So, read them all in one go. Go on, read the next one before you look at this Comment box. Shoo. ;P



So, I finally got around to this prompt from #ScreamPrompts. Yeah, three of four months late, I know, but at the moment I'm feeling positive, so I'll stick to that sense of achievement for actually doing it at all. 5000 words takes a whole lot of effort.

That said, please feel free to go wild with the critique. Have I painted this world vividly enough? Are the characters believable, do they react in an understandable way? Thanks in advance for any and all comments.

The song I chose for this was Queen's The Show Must Go On; the question I took from the lyrics (becuase there's a few in there) was "Does anybody know what we are living for?" (Full lyrics here.) Perhaps it was the tone of the song, or something, but this ended up rather, uh, dark. I went with it, on the basis of 'at least i'm writing something' ;P



Oh, and, a tip if you don't spend much time in lit: pressing that lil thing at the top between the "T" and the square will indent the paragraphs, which makes it much easier to read ;P
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