More writing brainrot time, been thinking about how the "heros" of this story are more or less a group of morally gray communists using cheap tricks and guerrilla warfare to take down the government.
And yeah, on the one hand, the government has been corrupted by a curse, so they're technically doing the right thing, but on the other hand they were gonna do it anyway
More stuff from Fiction Writing class! It is kinda spooky.
------
You're out of breath. Your legs ache, you've been running for longer than you're used to- but you can't stop. If you stop, your life is over. You'll miss your flight, and then you'll be who knows how late to the board meeting, and then you'll be fired and then you'll default on your mortgage. Everything is riding on you making it to the terminal on time. You were lucky, finding a flight on their website that left at the right time. Took some poking around in their directories. There's no other option than to get on this plane, so you grit your teeth and ignore the stabbing pain that's building in your chest.
Oh, thank god. There it is- terminal C5, just like it's printed on your ticket. Nobody's there to take your ticket, everyone must have boarded already, oh god- but no, you look out the window and you see it's still there, attached to the jetway. You've still got time.
You don't have time to ask someone where the ticketmaster is, or address the general emptiness of the terminal at all- they're all on the plane, of course. Where else would they be? You pull open the doors, airport security be damned, and sprint down the jetway down to the plane. Still, nobody there to take your ticket- but it doesn't matter, you'll deal with the fallout from this after you're in London and you've sealed the deal on the Branderson account. The plane door is open, you barge in, and-
The door automatically shuts behind you. You catch your breath, succumbing to a coughing fit as all that running catches up with you. You were this close to being locked out and stuck in JFK for the next few hours- not to mention being forced to pay last-minute ticket prices. You breathe a painful sigh of relief in the dark.
The dark? Wait. Why are the lights out? You find- it's got to be a lightswitch, probably- maybe not, in fact you probably shouldn't be pressing strange switches on an airplane- but you're lucky, it is a lightswitch, and the lights turn on, revealing the cabin and its passengers.
You freeze. There are no passengers. No human passengers. Row after row of faceless mannequins greet your eyes. Shaking. Vibrating and flailing, strapped into their seats, some of them free from their restraints and having seizures on the floor. One of them is strapped to a rolling cart, which wheels up and down the aisle on a track. Some are dressed in stewardess uniforms, the others naked and dingy.
You reflexively stagger, fall over, legs giving out from exhaustion and shock. You stare, sputtering out sounds of panic as you survey the scene. The whirring noises the jittering dummies make drown out your thoughts, and you sit in horrified disbelief for a minute before you hear a noise.
The plane taking off. The plane full of flailing crash-test dummies instead of people, is lifting from the runway. You scream, you run to the other end of the plane, stumbling over an artificial breakdancer or two, looking for anyone in the back to explain what's going on. You find no one- no one in the back, but there must be...! The pilot! There has to be a pilot! You sprint down the aisle again, nearly tripping over the same mannequin, and pound on the pilot's door, begging for help...!
* * *
You're a beleaguered aircraft engineer, tasked with creating the latest and greatest jumbo jet. And you have created the greatest jumbo jet, you're sure of it, but noooooo, the safety regulations say you need six months minimum of live-fire testing! Well, fine. Fine! That's what you said. If you were going to have to test the best jetliner in the world, you were going to design the best TEST in the world! Completely realistic simulation! Run it like a regular flight, inside the airport system, real pilot, real passengers!
Damn those safety regulations, saying you can't have real passengers on a test flight. You had to get creative. Had to simulate the unpredictable motion and cabin weight shifting of a real load of passengers, somehow... you were stumped, until your mechanic stepbrother happened upon the low-budget solution of strapping lawnmower motors to the skeletons of spare crash-test dummies.
* * *
You're a lazy web developer, writing code for JFK Airport's ticketing system. You forget to set the flag in the listings, because you're tired and want to go home early. The flag was supposed to keep users from buying tickets for unlisted test flights, but... eh. Game of Thrones is on tonight. They'll catch it in the final review, probably.
* * *
You're a happy pilot, assigned to an uneventful test flight. No crew, no passengers to reassure, no rigmarole. Just you, your noise-cancelling headphones, a locked terrorist-proof door, and eight hours of blissful silence as you fly across the Atlantic.
* * *
It's been eight hours. Eight. Hours. You feel like you're going insane, in here, in this place, this purgatory of faceless friends. You spent the first hour banging on the cockpit door, screaming at the pilot. Eventually you concluded that the pilot must be a dummy, too. Everything here is a dummy. Maybe you're a dummy. ...You're definitely some kind of dummy for thinking that thought just now.
You spent the next hour trying to find an emergency button. You found several, and pressed them, and they didn't do anything that you could tell. You cried, a little. You gave up on making it to the meeting, and started hoping you would make it out alive. You had to go to the bathroom, and you screamed when you opened the door and found a dummy on the toilet, with its pants around its ankles. The other dummies didn't have pants. Someone gave that one pants. Why?!?
You started talking to the dummies. They were in the same boat as you, you figured. Trapped in the sky forever, unable to move or escape. In a moment of deranged compassion, you began undoing their seatbelts. They flopped onto the floor and started wiggling on top of each other. A surreal, pantomime orgy. You considered joining it, briefly, resigning yourself to life among your new inhuman family, but your shame, thus far, has held you back.
Out the window, you suddenly see lights. Lights on the ground, rather than dark clouds over dark waves. You stare at the glowing web for a while, wishing you could go down there, among those lights- and then you do.
It's slow, at first, but the plane lowers, lowers, lowers. You and the plane head towards the lights, eventually touching down on a wide and empty road. A runway. Hope races through you along with the impact of the landing, and you watch the plane taxi, over to...
It's Heathrow Airport. You check your watch, and you're right on time. Exactly as the ticket said you would be.
You disembark. Nobody says anything as you exit the terminal. You're not sure you want anyone to say anything. You arrive at the meeting on time. You seal the deal on the Branderson account. You try very hard to forget.
Yulio sighed. “Yes, I’m just so very naked right now. The only obstacle preventing you from just opening the door and coming in is my bare naked flesh. What a shame. Why don’t you come back later when I feel like putting some clothes on.”
There was a moment of silence where Yulio thought that Barnsley had left but he opened the door. Yulio pretended not to notice him hovering there in the doorway as he scrolled through a webpage full of fashionable robes and tunics.
“Yulio, I just wanted to apologise for… What’s that?”
Yulio didn’t have to see where Barnsley was looking to know what he was referring to. He pulled at the waist of his dressing gown, closing it over his chest and tying a firm knot in the belt so it wouldn’t slip again, and his finger returned to the mouse wheel. His heart started to pound.
“Yulio? Is that… Are you soul-binding?”
“No, I’m binding my boobs because I want to be a boy.”
Barnsley continued to stand there, silent and staring, until he caught Iris by the hand as she was passing through and pulled her into the room. “What? What what? What’s happening?” She looked at Yulio then back at Barnsley, confused and worried by their brooding silence. “Is… something wrong?”
“Yulio’s binding,” Barnsley blurted before Yulio could get a word in. Not that he was going to, though; the rush was completely unnecessary, and a little hurtful.
Iris stared at Barnsley, wondering if the word “binding”, with all of its vague interpretations, was supposed to mean something to her. “I don’t…” She shook her head, smiling haplessly. “Binding what?”
“Uh, his soul.”
“What!” Her eyes widened with cautious surprise. “Well, uh, that’s… No, Barns, I’m still not following – is this a common practice?”
“It used to be,” he said gloomily, watching Yulio as he clicked through the latest fashion catalogues and vehemently pretended that they were elsewhere, talking about something else. “It’s an ancient one. It was one of the first remedies that surfaced in response to the spread of demons. Well… the idea was to bind the body to keep the soul inside it. It was only until after three or four years of widespread binding that healers realised that, not only was it completely ineffective, it was starting to distort the figure. People who had only used the binding as a precaution were fine; they recovered. But the demons who were the most desperate – well… some said that, finally, their form matched their nature.”
Iris reeled from the story, biting at her fingernails and looking uncomfortable. “Well, that sounds… horrible. You know, it reminds me of an old cure they used to have for autism many years ago, back when they used to believe that emotionally impaired children just needed more of their mother’s love. Clinicians would tell these mothers to hug their children, as tight as they could, even as they thrashed and screamed and cried. Many kids died… strangled, by their own mothers, trying to help him. It’s just terrible – people are willing to try anything if they think it will work.”
Barnsley nodded. “I think that those angels would’ve ended up dead as well, if they could die from strangulation. People supposedly thought that the soul resides in the heart; many chests were bound so tight that the ribcage collapsed in on itself. Some bounded heads entirely. I heard that some had even tried to bind their entire body.”
“Wow,” Yulio barked, turning to them with a face full of faux effervescence. “As much as I just love to hear about children being crushed to death, and mummified angels and whatnot, I’m gonna have to ask that you move it to another room. Literally any other room, besides this one.”
Barnsley looked blankly at Yulio for a moment then turned back to Iris as if he’d just remembered something of interest. “Did I tell you that Yulio is a kind of autistic? Well, I’m not quite sure it’s very comparable to human autism – he can’t see auras the way other angels can.”
Yulio liked to think that he was beyond caring whether or not people knew about his social disadvantage, but having Barnsley casually throw that bit of irrelevant information out there, right in front of him, to someone that could barely understand it themselves, seemed like it was worth a reaction. He stood up and leaned in to Barnsley threateningly. He hardly knew what to say to that; no one had infuriated him this much in a while, and he couldn’t even tell if Barnsley was doing it intentionally. “No, you’re absolutely fucking right, Barns. I can’t see your soul, which, I’m sure, is all pretty and healthy and happy and stuffed full of self-righteousness. But that won’t stop me from eating it.”
Yulio saw a twinge of anger in him. He’d touched a nerve, somewhere. “There’s no need to be so defensive, Yulio. I wasn’t trying to ridicule you, I just thought that Iris would’ve liked to know-“
“She doesn’t need to fucking know!” He heard her catch her breath and it made him sit back down and try to calm himself down before he offended her or said the wrong thing. It was Barnsley he hated now, not her. He said in a softer voice, “can you please leave? I’m tired.”
“But you’re…” Iris lifted her hands and gestured the enormity of the issue that she felt. “You’re soul-binding!”
“This again?” He sighed and hunched over the computer, switching from page to page, not really appreciating the designs as well as he did earlier. “Can’t we just forget about it?”
“Yulio, don’t you understand what this means?” Barnsley asked.
“No, I don’t, because I’m an austictic.”
“Just autistic, dear,” Iris murmured.
Barnsley smiled a little. “It means that… you care.”
“Do I?”
“Well, enough to resort to some really old techniques.”
“Yeah, well, I’m working my way backwards. Nothing else worked and I don’t expect this to either, so why don’t you just go away.”
Barnsley turned to speak to Iris but then he switched to whispering in her ear with a hand covering his mouth. Yulio rolled his eyes as he watched it happen from the corner of his eye. He knew what Barnsley was whispering oh-so-secretly to her: that he was very upset and needed a bit of reassurance, or something along those lines. And, sure enough, when Barnsley finished up, Iris cleared her throat and began to slowly kneel in front of him, and Barnsley backed up against the far wall to fade into the background and left Iris to work her own forms of magic on him.
He said before she could even say his name sweetly, “I’m sorry, Iris, but you know I’m not a huge fan of this ‘talking’ method.”
“I know, Yulio. But I can guarantee you that something good will come out of it. Talking is rarely a waste of anything.”
He scoffed. “No, it’s just a waste of everything. I’m sure it’s very different for humans, Iris, but it just doesn’t work like that for us; sitting here talking about my problems isn’t going to make my soul full again… Then again, neither is anything else, so I might as well have a nice chat with you while Barns watches me like a hawk and loads up his crossbow. So. What did you have for lunch today?”
“Yulio…” She looked like she was really trying and he wished that she wouldn’t. “About the binding, did you do it for yourself? Or did you do it for… some other reason.”
“Some other…” He looked at her, frowning confusion. “Rea-son?”
She smiled nervously, like she thought she was walking on eggshells. “Well, perhaps… you only did it to… please Guidance.”
He paused. He liked to do that sometimes and just watch the sudden euphoria of understanding fall on their faces, like his silence was a strong confirmation for whatever they thought was already true, and they would move on with that confirmation in mind, rather than just leave the unanswered question hanging there. It didn’t even matter what he would say afterward because his pause had already ‘given everything away’. “I’m still doing it, aren’t I? Even as I’m away from Guidance?”
She had already moved on. Then again, Barnsley could read him like a children’s book of colours, so there was no point in pretending that their assumption hadn’t been right.
“You don’t care if you don’t recover?”
“Why should I care when it’s not going to happen?”
Iris started to look distressed. “No, Yulio, don’t say that! There’s still a chance!”
“No, there isn’t,” Barnsley spoke up, only to have Iris turn around and chastise him. Yulio almost laughed.
“Look, Iris, it’s sweet that you want me to live. But Barnsley must’ve explained the situation by now. Only the people drowning in money get to be in on this program, which, unfortunately, lowers the success rates a lot. Because of people like me. See, let’s just pretend for a minute here that I actually have a strong desire to put off the inevitable, and I come to Guidance, in secret, and offer him a million dollars to put me in the program until I’m all good and well again. He looks right at me. He can see that I have about as much of a chance recovering as… I don’t know, something that’s already dead. Still, he takes my money and sends me to a nice host family, who helps me get in touch with my spirit, and we hang out for a month or so before I turn full-demon and my dear old dad gets to shoot me in the back of the head.” He threw a look at Barnsley who was already shaking his head. He looked back at Iris who, quite frankly, looked horrified. “So you see now, how this works?”
“So you bought your way into this program?”
“No! …Guidance did.”
Iris was just appalled now. She flashed a dark look over her shoulder at Barnsley who chose carefully not to react to it. She looked back to Yulio since he seemed to be providing the most answers. “So what about all of the angels who deserve to go on the programme but can’t afford it? What happens then?”
“Um… They don’t go on the programme? Because they can’t afford it? Yeah, we know, Iris – our whole system reeks of injustice and corruption. There’s not much I can do about it.”
She fretted that they had gotten so off-topic and tried to bring them back to that subject Yulio thought he had artfully dodged. “Yulio, have you told Guidance? That you don’t even want to be on this programme?”
He let a pained expression come into his face as he shrugged. “Why would I tell him that? He’d never stop… harassing me about it.”
Iris reached up for his hands and Yulio allowed her to hold them and look deep into his eyes. “I think… it’s something that is definitely worth bringing up the next time you speak with him. Alright? Tell him how you feel.”
“But I don’t know how I feel.”
“I could tell you,” Barnsley offered.
Yulio glared at him. “Hey, Barns. Want to see what I learned today?” Seeing Barnsley smile and nod, it only fired up his hatred of him. He spun around in his chair back to his computer, abandoning Iris’ loving hand-hold, and began to open a new Microsoft word document. He brought up Word Art and found the most vivacious settings available and began to type the words ‘FUCK OFF BARNSLEY’ into the box. “Oh, wait a minute,” he said, clicking the corner of the newly placed text and dragging it out so it took up over half of the screen. He smiled over his shoulder and began to add as many details as he could - emboss, shadow, glow. He even gave the text a nice curve.
“That’s beautiful, Yulio,” Barnsley said, admiring it from the wall. “Perhaps you should print it out and stick it to your door.”
“Well, what a great fucking suggestion if ever you had one!”
Iris made a big show of rolling her eyes and stood up, brushing her knees off. “Okay, I can see neither of you are taking this very seriously, so I’ll just be leaving before Yulio decides to add my name to that text.”
“Don’t worry, Iris. I don’t know how to edit text yet. I’d have to make you a whole new one and I can’t be bothered doing that right now.”
Iris smiled like it was the sweetest thing he’d ever said to her, which it probably was. She kissed him goodnight and said, “We’ll talk more tomorrow, alright? Sleep well, honey.” She went to pull Barnsley along with her but she eventually left without him, leaving Yulio to assume that he wanted to impart a few profound words before going to brush his teeth. He stepped forward and Yulio reluctantly faced him, eyes narrowed.
He spoke in a quiet, sombre voice. “I can see that you’re in no mood to have a rational conversation with me. All I wanted to do was apologise for the way I acted earlier, and now I have to apologise for this, too. But I think you forget that we’re here to help you anyway we can, Yulio. You don’t have to fight us. You don’t have to hide anything from us.”
Yulio laughed, loud and sarcastic. “Oh, no, I could never hide anything from you, Barnsley.”
He feigned confusion. “What do you mean?”
“I think you know what I mean. This entire evening it’s just been you – assuming you know everything about me just because you can look past my shroud and stare at all the colours of my aura and paint a stupid fucking picture out of them. I have that shroud in place for a fucking reason. I wouldn’t care one way or another if people like you – people like Guidance – didn’t always respond to me like you know best, like you know exactly what I need to hear. And then you have the fucking gall to tell me, when I call you out on it, that I just ‘don’t get it’ because I’ve never even seen a fucking aura before in my life.”
Barnsley looked offended. “I really think you’re reading too much into this, Yulio. I’m just trying to keep peace with you – I am in no way trying to manipulate you.”
“Yeah, right. Sure. Whatever. Please refer to the sign,” he said and pointed at the Word Art text.
“…Do you feel like I’m taking advantage of you? Because I can see your aura but you can’t see mine?”
“Yeah, just stop looking at it.”
“I can’t do that, Yulio. It’s ingrained in me to see past shrouds – it’s required for my job.”
“Oh, yeah, and don’t even get me started on your despicable, amoral job. You hunt needlessly for a living. You’re nothing but a glorified killer.”
Barnsley was frowning now and it gave Yulio no small amount of pleasure. “That’s one way of putting it. But you know what another way of putting it is? How about someone who will bear the burden of taking lives so that everyone can live guilt-free and safe from leeches like you.”
Yulio was shocked. He pointed at himself, “like me?”
Barnsley rubbed at his eyes and headed towards the door. Yulio suspected he might’ve not been intending to say that. “I’ve had enough of this. I’m going to bed.”
“Yeah, that’s fucking right, Barns!” he shouted so he could be heard from the corridor. He was starting to cry now but he didn’t care; Barnsley had already slammed his bedroom door. “Can’t see me having feelings now, can we, or that would just ruin the illusion that I’m a soulless, godless demon!” He kicked at the door, but it felt like it had done more damage to him than it had a plank of wood.
On the plus side, my new story is a young adult paranormal story about the nephilim and the angelic civil war in Heaven. And I think I'm building up the angels to make some kind of gender identity allegory, though that wasn't the plan at first. There's also a general theme of self-acceptance and embracing what makes you different. And also finding/building a family. So it's basically a coming of age story, which are a dime a dozen. But this one has angels and angels are cool. They have wings and they smite things. And I may have some angel/human romance going on, depending on where I take the characters' relationship, because I have this pretty sacred bond set up between guardian angels and their human charges. I need to get out of this angel phase so I can get back to work on the series I actually plan to get published one day.
The Third King-The main antagonist. Elusively known as the “Third King,” this war criminal heretic promises to bring peace to all of Felore and unite them under a common enemy, himself. From what people know, he is the reincarnation of Dek, the first elf, and leader of the “Cult of Men.” Allegedy he has returned to lead the “Cult of Mages” to the third doctrine, and to finish what he started thousands of years ago. He follows “the Third Doctrine,” a form of magic claimed to be heresy and made illegal throughout Trestan. The 3rd Doctrine follows the Titan principle, whereas the 1st Doctrine follows the Soul Principle, and the 2nd follows the Cosmic Principle.
-The 1st Doctrine AKA the Soul Doctrine- Base magic, magic responsible for all life, it keeps us alive. It is also the source of emotion and intuition. The doctrine is referred is covered by studies in Espos-Krado. The 1st Doctrine is recognized by all people of Felore, referred to as “Psychology, Biology, Anatomy, etc.” in Espos-Krado.
-The 2nd Doctrine AKA the Cosmic Doctrine- Advanced magic, the manipulation of the cosmos to cast incantation and spells. The 2nd Doctrine is referred to more commonly as the Arcane Arts. This was also the cause of the War for the Stars. The idea of manipulating the cosmos only through your physical body seemed dangerous and unnatural and regressive to many, who believed they should come to understand the cosmos and use that understanding to improve what they could build.
-The 3rd Doctrine AKA the Titan Doctrine- Forbidden Magic, tapping into the source of the cosmos to access nigh unlimited power. The Titan theory (which would later develop into the Titan Doctrine) was developed by Dek himself. Upon discovery of Dek’s research the Spire’s Council of Mages, deemed that the information was too dangerous to use and could disrupt the balance of Felore, and prove ill to the Spire’s claim. When Dek refused to stop working on his project, he was taken to the gates of Espos-Krado and handed over as a war criminal.
Dek was injected with a synthetic virus, which deformed his face into a religious like steel mask. The mask would later be used as a symbol in propaganda to strike fear into those opposed “New Felore’s Law.” The Third King wears the mask, as if it is a symbol of office, to 1.) Make himself immediately recognizable as Dek’s heir and 2.) Strike fear into all who oppose him.
FINISHED! What I had hoped would be a 2 page fanfic morphed into 5 pages.....my writings have got to stop doing that, but hey it came out nicely and I am pleased.
