Excerpt From My Project
Whistles blow for the tenth hour and the white flag waves in the north. Huddling together, shoulders hunched as cold air nips their necks, the commuters begin to shuffle forward and enter the damp warmth of stale air. A thousand breaths clinging to them while they gripped the skirt of another man’s coat. Bodies compressed between anonymous bodies with sullen, lined faces and an absence of any persona.
Such was the norm.
Weary-minded, weak limbed, eyes drawn to the seduction of a barely visible window to a bleak and dry view, or to the sultry nature of blindness with the side-cocked head listening to the rattle and bang underfoot - resonating so strongly it was somehow overhead.
No one spoke or cried or moaned, neither did they sigh with relief when they left and entered their station and by a positive coincidence that showed no elation from their tediously driven minds and upon unrecallable faces, they left their station…to continue the most vapid tasks of the common life they knew.
The stench of sweat and decaying minds - of a rat dead beneath a man’s feet - never met their sense, but died before they took their breaths. Without a thought…without any ability to consider the rotting of their senses.
They were packed together in such confines. Bowed heads with a fear-drawn black hood they appeared as a brotherhood - closely bonded as if their coats were knitted as one, but each individual was as separately their own, yet their mannerisms were not dissimilar.
Travelling on set tracks, they swayed like a wavering flame - a monotonous dance in perfect rhythm, but without direction. They followed instinctual orders above all else, clinging onto the existence of each other - to feel that the myth of life could have been true - but only if nothing else was attainable to quench a long unsatisfied thirst for helpless support. And all the while men coughed and sneezed to the squeaking of the carriage and the faint gunshots from the mighty chorus of track and train.
The next station was called and thirty or so men threw themselves out into the frost - dry on their tongues, wind biting into the gel of their eyes before the silver bullets moved past them with a hiss…and the door behind them had shut.
There was a faint glimmer of hope…for their coats to catch or for the doors slamming shut before their faces - anything just to escape having to face the dreaded destination.
They would have to exit their carriages and depart from the pack at some station - all did lead to the same place, to the same end or beginning all dependent on their faith. But faith in itself was lost. What remained was a sack of false and unconvincing tales forming a now inconceivable structure and ideal unbefitting for the dullness of their lives - the unrecorded, despised lives left only to themselves like a taboo to any commoner.
Of being clustered, herded off in sums into stations and darting out to where it will lead. Exalting lives, exterminating breaths until someone collapsed - legs giving way at the top of station stairs. And there they descended alone and forever remained nameless.
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Now be ruthless to me. I need constructive criticism. ;)