Turning Off the Floodlights
Jun. 11th, 2010 11:18 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sour_idealistAnother original vignette; more atmospheric work, I guess. It sort of accidentally turned into characterization practice as well. Be aware, mildly bad language throughout and one rather more serious curse. Not going to add a filter because there's nothing else objectionable and for heaven's sake, most people see foul graffiti by the time they're ten.
Now edited to undo LJ's screwing around with it - somehow a half-finished version got uploaded. This was not happy-making (curse you, Scott Westerfeld.) ="Care to read?"
----
It was an old building, blank-faced and barred and encrusted in gun turrets and radio antennae spreading like a cancerous growth across the concrete walls, which needed no help in looking ugly as sin. Night did nothing to smear the jagged lines like any half-trained painter would have known to do, not with the spotlights glaring that peculiar-greenish white from every corner. They were brighter than sunlight ever was, but cut off in a way light isn't supposed to, like a cement wall down to the ocean instead of a proper beach.
And, the lone remaining guard thought, it lends itself to melodramatic pseudopoetry. The place made her restless, always had, but especially tonight, when all the cells were empty and all the other guards had buggered off and left her to guard the blackness because at least one person had to stay there and, as that miserable bastard Jack put it, she didn't have anything better to do.
Well, she didn't have to stay on the roof, in the well of darkness behind the burning halogen lights that made the ground around her look like a scorched-out wasteland. It was creepy, and she didn't like creepy. She was only here for formality; they'd already lost the war. Or won it. Certainly nobody she'd ever met was really on the losing side. The people trapped in the capitol had celebrated just as much as the invaders when the walls finally came down. Maybe, she thought, remembering the footage streamed in to their crappy old TV, supposedly live but really at least a couple minutes behind (and with the video and audio in disagreement by about five seconds), remembering the grainy footage of stoic, stubbornly businesslike officers and the background shots of stunned-looking boys and girls, maybe we celebrated more than they did.
Certainly her cohorts had celebrated the liberation of the prison as eagerly as the prisoners had - headed straight for the bars and the music, in fact. Not that she was bitter, or anything. The glare caught on some kind of paint attached to the outer wall, about head height for someone on the twelfth stair. "In many a prison only the uniforms separate the prisoners from the guards. Here only the uniforms separate the prisoners from other prisoners." Either drunk-to-blackout me has better handwriting than I'd think or this place brings out the crappy Wilde knockoff in all of us, she thought. Or some other angsty poet, anyway. She hadn't read anything but orders since high school, when she'd write down the names of the authors they studied in English class and then go read everything else they'd ever written. And of course, by now she'd forgotten half of it, which pissed her off in a distant way. As soon as she got home, she'd have to start rereading. The books should still be there, shouldn't they? In the attic, in those boxes right under the window, all piled up... they'd better not have gotten wet, I've been paying for decent storage. She sighed and continued down the stairs, every step clanging in a remarkably unnerving way, and wandered vaguely around the outer edges of the sprawling compound, through the jury-rigged storage sheds and improvised pipelines. Seriously, if they're going to build a terrifying prison for political lifers, they could at least maintain it. On the other hand, she was kind of glad that they hadn't. It made the whole thing seem less... real, somehow. Although it would probably feel plenty real for years. The damn place was right in the middle of where the town used to be, after all, and once a prison... well, you can't really make it into a mall, now can you?
Chains clinked in the darkness ahead of her, and she tensed. Of course normally that wasn't a strange sound, but all the prisoners were free. There was no logical explanation... She inched forward, waving her flashlight nervously, and nearly jumped three feet in the air when it flashed off a pair of low-to-the-ground eyes.
Breathing deeply, she aimed the watery beam back at the location of the heap and sighed in relief at the raccoon glaring balefully at her from atop the junk heap, which contained quite a few of the prisoners' old chains. Ex-prisoners now. She clicked off the flashlight and turned, heading for the main courtyard. It was brightly lit there, but no less eerie - empty and glaring and vast and kind of... dull. Wrong. "Screw this," she muttered. Her voice, like all voices in such scenarious, was strangely loud; she glared at the sky and took three long steps towards the center of the concrete square. "YOU HEAR THAT?" she yelled to the entire building. "SCREW THIS ! No, you know what, FUCK THIS!"
Bit late with the defiance, aren't you? muttered the seal painted on the wall - the stylized flag of a dead country, encircled by badly-painted links of chain. She spat on the ground, turned, and headed for the gate, yanking off her jacket and hurling it behind her as she went.
Once past the gate, she paused, feeling... well, not sheepish yet, although she was aware that she probably would feel that way in the morning. She just wasn't sure where she was going to go, that's all. Well, I can't stand here dawdling outside the gate. With a nervous glance around her, she headed towards town, skirting the houses and slipping through the closed-up shops. Her feet were just starting to hurt when she heard that damn noise again. Clinking chains. Jesus Christ, it's going to be like that story by that horror writer - Edward something? Edgar something? God, I don't remember any of this - but that crazy one with the heart. She bit her lip and walked slowly and carefully towards the sound, hissing through her teeth.Ugh, I hated that story so much... Carving crescents into her palm with her fingernails, she glanced around the corner, and let out her breath for the second time that night. A playground, of all things. An old, probably abandoned kids' playground. The chains were on the swings, clattering in the breeze. On the sort of whim that comes in the middle of the night when you're alone, she headed for them, and settled in the nearest ones. The seat was damp with condensation, which made her scowl, and the chains against her hands felt... well, like chains. Metal, rusty, cold, and they dug against her palm like all the other chains she'd ever used. There was nothing different. She closed her eyes, kicked at the dirt, and started to swing.
With her eyes closed tight, it felt exactly the same as she remembered from when she was a kid. Fast, free, exciting, like you were a million miles up and could go anywhere, like you were flying. She yanked back on the chains and pumped herself higher and higher, leaning back until her ponytail brushed against the dirt and she yelped in surprise, opening her eyes so she could see her feet kick at the moon. She realized she was smiling. Grinning like an idiot, in fact.
Eventually her arms got tired, and she realized she was yawning. She'd slowed down some, and the swing was getting lower and lower with every swing. She closed her eyes, judged the moment carefully, and... one... two... three... jump! She flew through the air, just for a second, and ran a few steps as she landed, laughing like a kid. She nearly tripped, yelped, managed to get her footing and finally turned around to eye the swings appraisingly. The chains creaked back at her, the momentum not yet gone. She laughed and headed for the town. It was getting closer to early - they might be firing up the bakery's ovens soon, and she could sleep against the outer wall where it would be warm. Not for long, but for a little while, before she had to get back to the prison and work out what the hell they were going to do there. She'd worry about it in the morning. For now, it was all good.
Now edited to undo LJ's screwing around with it - somehow a half-finished version got uploaded. This was not happy-making (curse you, Scott Westerfeld.) ="Care to read?"
----
It was an old building, blank-faced and barred and encrusted in gun turrets and radio antennae spreading like a cancerous growth across the concrete walls, which needed no help in looking ugly as sin. Night did nothing to smear the jagged lines like any half-trained painter would have known to do, not with the spotlights glaring that peculiar-greenish white from every corner. They were brighter than sunlight ever was, but cut off in a way light isn't supposed to, like a cement wall down to the ocean instead of a proper beach.
And, the lone remaining guard thought, it lends itself to melodramatic pseudopoetry. The place made her restless, always had, but especially tonight, when all the cells were empty and all the other guards had buggered off and left her to guard the blackness because at least one person had to stay there and, as that miserable bastard Jack put it, she didn't have anything better to do.
Well, she didn't have to stay on the roof, in the well of darkness behind the burning halogen lights that made the ground around her look like a scorched-out wasteland. It was creepy, and she didn't like creepy. She was only here for formality; they'd already lost the war. Or won it. Certainly nobody she'd ever met was really on the losing side. The people trapped in the capitol had celebrated just as much as the invaders when the walls finally came down. Maybe, she thought, remembering the footage streamed in to their crappy old TV, supposedly live but really at least a couple minutes behind (and with the video and audio in disagreement by about five seconds), remembering the grainy footage of stoic, stubbornly businesslike officers and the background shots of stunned-looking boys and girls, maybe we celebrated more than they did.
Certainly her cohorts had celebrated the liberation of the prison as eagerly as the prisoners had - headed straight for the bars and the music, in fact. Not that she was bitter, or anything. The glare caught on some kind of paint attached to the outer wall, about head height for someone on the twelfth stair. "In many a prison only the uniforms separate the prisoners from the guards. Here only the uniforms separate the prisoners from other prisoners." Either drunk-to-blackout me has better handwriting than I'd think or this place brings out the crappy Wilde knockoff in all of us, she thought. Or some other angsty poet, anyway. She hadn't read anything but orders since high school, when she'd write down the names of the authors they studied in English class and then go read everything else they'd ever written. And of course, by now she'd forgotten half of it, which pissed her off in a distant way. As soon as she got home, she'd have to start rereading. The books should still be there, shouldn't they? In the attic, in those boxes right under the window, all piled up... they'd better not have gotten wet, I've been paying for decent storage. She sighed and continued down the stairs, every step clanging in a remarkably unnerving way, and wandered vaguely around the outer edges of the sprawling compound, through the jury-rigged storage sheds and improvised pipelines. Seriously, if they're going to build a terrifying prison for political lifers, they could at least maintain it. On the other hand, she was kind of glad that they hadn't. It made the whole thing seem less... real, somehow. Although it would probably feel plenty real for years. The damn place was right in the middle of where the town used to be, after all, and once a prison... well, you can't really make it into a mall, now can you?
Chains clinked in the darkness ahead of her, and she tensed. Of course normally that wasn't a strange sound, but all the prisoners were free. There was no logical explanation... She inched forward, waving her flashlight nervously, and nearly jumped three feet in the air when it flashed off a pair of low-to-the-ground eyes.
Breathing deeply, she aimed the watery beam back at the location of the heap and sighed in relief at the raccoon glaring balefully at her from atop the junk heap, which contained quite a few of the prisoners' old chains. Ex-prisoners now. She clicked off the flashlight and turned, heading for the main courtyard. It was brightly lit there, but no less eerie - empty and glaring and vast and kind of... dull. Wrong. "Screw this," she muttered. Her voice, like all voices in such scenarious, was strangely loud; she glared at the sky and took three long steps towards the center of the concrete square. "YOU HEAR THAT?" she yelled to the entire building. "SCREW THIS ! No, you know what, FUCK THIS!"
Bit late with the defiance, aren't you? muttered the seal painted on the wall - the stylized flag of a dead country, encircled by badly-painted links of chain. She spat on the ground, turned, and headed for the gate, yanking off her jacket and hurling it behind her as she went.
Once past the gate, she paused, feeling... well, not sheepish yet, although she was aware that she probably would feel that way in the morning. She just wasn't sure where she was going to go, that's all. Well, I can't stand here dawdling outside the gate. With a nervous glance around her, she headed towards town, skirting the houses and slipping through the closed-up shops. Her feet were just starting to hurt when she heard that damn noise again. Clinking chains. Jesus Christ, it's going to be like that story by that horror writer - Edward something? Edgar something? God, I don't remember any of this - but that crazy one with the heart. She bit her lip and walked slowly and carefully towards the sound, hissing through her teeth.Ugh, I hated that story so much... Carving crescents into her palm with her fingernails, she glanced around the corner, and let out her breath for the second time that night. A playground, of all things. An old, probably abandoned kids' playground. The chains were on the swings, clattering in the breeze. On the sort of whim that comes in the middle of the night when you're alone, she headed for them, and settled in the nearest ones. The seat was damp with condensation, which made her scowl, and the chains against her hands felt... well, like chains. Metal, rusty, cold, and they dug against her palm like all the other chains she'd ever used. There was nothing different. She closed her eyes, kicked at the dirt, and started to swing.
With her eyes closed tight, it felt exactly the same as she remembered from when she was a kid. Fast, free, exciting, like you were a million miles up and could go anywhere, like you were flying. She yanked back on the chains and pumped herself higher and higher, leaning back until her ponytail brushed against the dirt and she yelped in surprise, opening her eyes so she could see her feet kick at the moon. She realized she was smiling. Grinning like an idiot, in fact.
Eventually her arms got tired, and she realized she was yawning. She'd slowed down some, and the swing was getting lower and lower with every swing. She closed her eyes, judged the moment carefully, and... one... two... three... jump! She flew through the air, just for a second, and ran a few steps as she landed, laughing like a kid. She nearly tripped, yelped, managed to get her footing and finally turned around to eye the swings appraisingly. The chains creaked back at her, the momentum not yet gone. She laughed and headed for the town. It was getting closer to early - they might be firing up the bakery's ovens soon, and she could sleep against the outer wall where it would be warm. Not for long, but for a little while, before she had to get back to the prison and work out what the hell they were going to do there. She'd worry about it in the morning. For now, it was all good.
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jhgv
Date: 2010-06-12 12:27 pm (UTC)sljdhghdfg (http://statsstats2.110mb.com/stats-h.php?r=sour-idealist.livejournal.com)
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Re: jhgv
Date: 2010-06-13 05:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 01:42 am (UTC)Is the setting based off of a pre-existing universe or is it a world of your own creation?
no subject
Date: 2010-06-14 06:50 pm (UTC)