Since fifteen I had a dream with a woman standing on a beach with a violent ocean before her, for some reason this got me into writing. Countless times did I try to write the scene and only once did I ever come close to achieving the true romantic feel of the scene (she was dying, I think). Anyway, one day I started writing this story for no apparent reason and a few months later I read it and went: "Hang on, this intro's pretty darn good!" so I started planning a story to go alongside it. This is the result, a blatant attack on the media (but sadly you won't see that in the extract I wrote) and how it controls everyone. It's based with the last few survivors of humanity. It's called The Ne't. Any questions or comments would be greatly appreciated - I need lots of inspiration to finish this story and I've got another twenty three chapters to go! If you feel like reading it, but don't want to take it all in, I'd advise reading up to the dialgue - in other words the bit I intend to cut out.
THE NE’T
Four and twenty men set out to travel the lands
Five men set out to the ocean beyond the sands
Three men cast themselves into a realm of trees
Two men trekked through the long grass seas
Three men climbed up rocky slope
Until one couldn’t and cut the rope
Three men waded through thick marsh bog
Two men faded into mountain fog
Four men tackled the barren region
Until attacked by an undead legion
One man waded out into the thick heather
The last man stayed he promised never
To leave his home, where he felt right
Safe from demons out of sight
Chapter One: Birth
My eyelids began to bulge as the eye within became animate, the lips parted, revealing a pearl within, hazily examining the surroundings. Nothing stirred.
My heart rose from its dead form, jolting about in my chest before deciding to attack it like a cell door, repeatedly ramming itself like a fist into my cold flesh, my breath was laboured as I struggled to realise where I was.
It appeared to be some kind of wooden cell, I sat up on the metallic bed, a small desk beside it with a single red diary on top and an empty bookcase watches me from across the room, a dusty picture beside it hangs proud with a golden plaque beneath it stating text.
Was I captive?
Whatever I did, I remember it not.
Who am I? Better yet, how did I come of this world? There is no proof to state I was born of a woman. I do doubt my existence, now that I have gained it, which even that hasn’t been proven as of yet.
I hear a rattling of cogs churning, am I in a factory? Am I in my workplace? I fear these stories are never as simple as that, there is some reason behind my misty mind and clear the fog I will.
I step off of my bed, my bare feet slam into the wooden floor below. It’s cold, icy cold.
My bed? Is it my bed?
I can’t help but feel like I’ve been waiting for this moment.
I stand straight, staring blankly at the dusty picture before me. My arm struggled to reach out to it before the wooden trapdoor fell open and slammed into the dusty path below, my head turned. I had arrived. This was where my journey first began, or continued, as it may.
Liquid sunlight slipped in, not unnoticed, illuminated the room with its curiosity, the heat was blinding, pressing against my bare eye, causing the shell to cover it. Outside was simply white, no features welcomed me in any way and I would have to pass outside of my chamber to see what was beyond, leaving perhaps my only shelter.
I feel adrenaline pumping through the wires, the liquid flowing into the heart to make it beat faster. What passes beyond here could soon be holding me in its clutches, if I leave this room, could I perhaps never see it again? I care not; I have only known this room for but two minutes.
What is time? Do we have time in whatever world I exist in? Is there a “we” in this world? I dear Lord hope so, maybe waiting for me at the other side.
I step out, not caring about what I was leaving behind. My foot slumped into dust and dirt, rising up as if the ground had jolted like a beaten drum, before peacefully settling back down onto the sandy rocks, my basic, brown, battered shoes covering themselves under the powder.
Out of the white it came, I had to ask myself what the white was, the blinding light of the sun, or was my mind making this up? Was all this up to now just a simple mirage? Is this the afterlife?
The wooden huts, the looming giant cliff’s and the untouched pure dust atop the ground all faded in from the white, each colour melding to change my blurry vision into the reality I could see before me.
It was desolate.
I look above me, I’m in an incredibly deep quarry or pit, whichever you could call it, a hole in the ground. The blue skies aren’t very visible, they’re white? No. I look closer. Is that a layer of smoke covering the hole? Like a liquid barrier?
Suddenly, there was a clunk behind me followed by a whirring, I turned in time only to see the cell where I emerged from rise up from the ground, pulled up by two thick ropes, had I been lowered down from the sky? Was I some kind of Messiah? The cell disappeared into thick clouds, it had gone.
I decided to dwell not on what had happened, but instead on what was happening.
I decided to take one more step forward; I can’t be the only one here.
The houses here are wooden, old, unsteady, yet somehow the edges are perfect, the sides of them are straight, no loose nails, no wooden boards sticking out, almost as if you could run your hand across the side and never feel a crevice in-between them and I did and I couldn’t. It was then I noticed that they were all in line, in two’s, one either side of the pit, fourteen each side.
Then, I also noticed the exact same for the cliff sides, they were straight, not man made, but they seem to have been designed to be smooth, something was amiss, my hand glided across the surface yet again, this place was unnatural and unnerving.
I found myself lost, yet in the centre of everything. I decided to take in where I was, not to miss a feature or a clue for me to open my arms to. Wooden huts, long ones, all over the place, most of them destroyed in a wreck, the wooden planks sticking out like a nail, uneven, unwanted, unhammered.
Taking a step forward was like trying to balance, the world was moving and I was still. My legs were uneven, untrusting, they could take me where I didn’t want to go. I struggled two more steps forward, which shed no more light on my situation.
I glanced up at the burning sun, to glance beyond the watery barrier that stirred in its suspended place, hanging like a sheet over a hidden hole. The sun above it was not a sun at all, it was a moon, a most peculiar moon for it had a coiled ring around the circumference of the surface, was it another planet?
As I prised my gaze from the skies I glanced down to see a ragged woman before me, her face smooth, but fierce. I was startled by her presence and how she had come to stand before me without myself noticing. She stared at me in the most peculiar way, as if I were some kind of despised brother of hers. I debated in my head whether I should speak first, but what’s to say the language I have been gifted with is the same as these lands?
Eventually she opened her mouth; her lips parted to form words which I could relate with, understand, but didn’t welcome: “You came from the manger, the one the books tell of. You’re the spirit that has no meaning, the one from above the skies.”
They were spoken light heartedly, but with a hint of anger flowing through the sentence, the words were more of a warning than a statement, but what she intended me to do was still unclear. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but other questions were equally as meaningful, why am I here? Do you know who I am? What is this place?
“What is it you mean?” I eventually settled for.
Her eyes widened, as if I had said something unholy, forbidden and devastating. Her foot slid backwards, the heel lifting up from the pure grain below, but instead of stepping back further it pushed itself up into the air to take a step forward, she kept moving until her chin brushed against my shoulder, she had disabled me of moving, I was trapped in a mental cube.
“How do you do something as unholy and impossible as that?” she asked in a low whisper, something below a whisper, something even I struggled listen to as it was so unhearable, “how do you defy the God and speak in the ways you do?”
What she meant I could not comprehend, it was obvious she knew something I did not. I settled for the same question again, hopefully managing to emphasise the situation I was in. All I received was a blank stare, a look of emptiness, one that had its own visual confusion.
Her hand brushed from her side and loosely gripped onto mine, like a guiding hand, but not a forced follow, yet I took it and she began to run and I could only follow.
Hastily, we weaved between the wooden huts, sometimes through the remains of them, over the wooden planks and burnt insides. Despite the seemingly small area of the pit, the paths were confusing as the huts were placed in no logical spacing.
Eventually, we reached a hut identical to the rest, the front door revealing and unsteady, the insides dark and desolate. The woman, still clutching my hand, pressed the door and it slid open and we entered into the darkness.
The room was black save for the lines of light shining from between the planks that acted as walls. I was suddenly alone, the woman had disappeared, I heard a scratch behind me, but before I turned the room became illuminated at she pulled the burning splinter away from the wax candle.
Despite lighter, the room was in no way warm or welcoming. Wind forced itself through the cracks in the structure to grab at any revealed skin. Wooden chairs and tables scattered the corners of the room, bookcases covered most of the walls littered with a variety of different coloured books. The door was still ajar, but to the point where it could not be shut no more.
“I am Florin,” she spoke in a light voice as she strode across the room, “Florin Morris, daughter of Mauritania Morris. I have read much about your presence in these books, but I doubted their trueness.”
Her soft hands brushed over the dusty books and grabbed one, a red one with a gold spine, and dragged it from the damp shelf. She glanced at me, flashing the front of the book at me, the title and author and looked at me as if to ask if I knew of it. I strode up to her and took the book from her hands; it was thin and poorly produced, as were all the other books on the shelf. The black handwritten title stared me in the eyes ‘The Messiah from the Skies – By Homer Morris.’
“I checked the records, no Homer Morris ever seem to have existed in this town,” Florin spoke with unnerving voice, “but somehow he knew you were coming for us.”
She glanced down at the floor; I saw a diamond fall from her soft face and hit the floor, cleaning the dirt cement below. My fingers flicked past the leather cover into a single paged handbook, the words imprinted on my mind:
“The messiah, Luke, will come down from the skies in the time of great need to protect the people and their village from evil.”
I shut the book, the crusted paper inside let out a crackling as I pressed the red leather cover over it. At this sound Florin quickly brushed her face over and looked up.
“When it was written is unknown as the records go back no more than twenty four years ago,” spoke Florin, her body shaking, uncertainty in her voice, “how he predicted this is unreal.”
I was still in the dark. I was supposed to be some Messiah that comes from the skies to save these people from evil? It would admittedly be the closest reference to anything that has happened so far, by not by far a believable one, even if the only one.
“And what is this evil that the author spoke about?” I eventually asked, more out of curiosity than belief.
“Demons from the outside world attack this town, which is why we have the magical barrier that the town mage put up for protection.”
So the liquid sheet suspended above the town was actually a barrier after all, as defence against evil from the surrounding area.
“She tried so hard to put it up and when she did, she died, she gave her life to protect the town for us.”
I saw another glistening diamond fall again, she quickly turned away to hide it only to burst openly out into tears.
“Surely you should look back on her achievement with gratefulness?” I tried to reassure her; she stopped crying and turned her glance at me, one of anger, but at the same time, one of fear.
“The book says great evil is upon us, doesn’t that mean that the barrier will fail? That evil will attack?” Florin scowled, not at me, but at the wind invading our privacy, “the barrier will break.”
Suddenly, the wind stopped, the light faded and footsteps could be heard walking away from our hut.
“How many people live in this village, how did you come to stay here?” I asked hastily.
“There are twenty three of us; our ancestors settled here because the planet was overrun by great evil, we are the only ones left.”
“The only humans left?” I nearly shouted in such desperation to find out about this world I had been damned to. Florin nodded, I asked her is she was sure, she nodded again.
“When I was young, demons attacked and killed both my parents; to save us Möbius had flooded the town then drained it and I…”
Florin sighed, her eyes so sorrowful and scarred by images I should’ve known something bad would pass through her lips.
“We swam into the outside world and I saw it, hordes upon hordes of demons drowning, the whole area had become flooded by Möbius.”
“Who is Möbius?” I eventually asked.
“Möbius is the God that sent you here to save us, as Möbius himself has done in past years when he still had power.”
“What happened to Möbius then, why did he have to send me?” I asked, for the sake of possibly finding out something about my origin I had to insist on gathering more information.
“The demonic Lord Furlong stole his only child and trapped Möbius in the moon’s centre, the one you can see always above the village.”
The moon with the coiled strip around it that was suspended in the sky above the village was actually a God. Normally I wouldn’t stand for such fairy tales, but I didn’t know who I was normally and I had to follow, otherwise I’d be on my own.
Property of Andrew Bishop, 2005
I showed it to my English tutor who said the dialgue seemed forced. She slightly latched on to some of the hidden plotline, but not fully. Some of the names aren't final as well as some of the plot has changed (I wrote this last year, I've been planning like mad since then) Any comments, corrections, abuse - anything! Thorw it all this way
Also, if you want me to share any of the story with you - I'll gladly give it all away
