Extract from my novel, obviously work in progress…

I awoke to a turbulent wind that shrouded my entire body. My clothing flapped and after a few sleepy blinks, I realized I was falling. Fast. Sounds replayed in my mind; screams, or was it metal tearing? It quickly ceased to matter, like the memories of a dream upon waking. I couldn’t see any further than my dangling feet, as the sky was smothered in a sandstorm. My heart fluttered as I swept around like a lost leaf. It moved past my feet and further away into the sky as golden brown clouds. Only then did I think to turn and see just what I was about to strike.
          A flurry of red dirt grazed across me and I rolled away about 7 metres from my point of impact. It didn’t hurt much, but if I wasn’t awake before that I definitely was then. I spluttered and wiped the red dust out of my face. I was covered in the stuff. I stood up with a wobble and surveyed the landscape.
          It was like I had landed on Mars… Only if Mars were populated by intelligent beings that dwelled in big, ominous black towers with large stretches between them. I had to stare at the tower closest to me. Pointed into the sky at the height of the Empire Estate Building, but looked as though it had been built in the Victorian Era… Out of metal. Except, the metal was naturally black. Every few stories the tower was surrounded by a ring of frightening spikes. I should have been scared.
          I heard some more crashes and noticed others dropping down out of the sand clouds in the sky. I jumped as a body sprayed a wave of dirt at me, rolling up right next to me on the floor. He lay there unconscious for a few seconds and I stared at him with careless curiosity.
          “Are you… Alrighty?” I asked. I nudged him with my foot, and he leapt awake like a frog that had been playing dead. He crawled back onto his back and stared at me wide-eyed. He looked from side to side faster than a sparrow, then crawled up to me.
          “W-we’re in Hell… Aren’t we?” He asked. I took a moment to survey the landscape again. The sky was filled with bodies, just falling like raindrops into the wastelands.
          “That would make sense, actually.” I responded, “Yes.”
          “OH GOOD LORD!” He wailed, and clenched his hands onto my jeans. He started crying, “I’M ONLY TWENTY-SEVEN! I HAD SO MUCH LIFE LEFT TO LIVE! I’LL NEVER WIN ALICE’S HEART NOW… OH GOD!”
          “Please, get off.” I said, gently kneeing his face. He coiled up into a ball and ran his fingers through his mousey greyish-brown hair.
          “I didn’t see you on the train. Well, it was a big train I suppose. Busy too. Oh my god, so many of us died. I almost feel like I’m dreaming…”
          “I don’t remember a train.”
          “Well you must’ve been on the train. It was a train crash. That’s why we’re here.”
          “…Oh.” And that was when the train crash idea began to enter my mind. A train crash. It makes sense. Being a young british individual I probably relied on the public transport extensively and met an unfortunate fate. I should have known the rail system would bring forth my death. “That also makes sense.”
          “THOSE BLOODY TRAINS!” He pounded the ground with his fists and clenched his teeth. I had to laugh.
          “Yeah. Trains are shit.” I grabbed his collar and pulled him to his feet, “Your name?”
          “Edward, mate. You?”
          “I’m…” The reflexive response to answering the common question left a vacancy in my brain. My mouth opened but no words emerged, like I had forgotten my lines, “…well…”
          “That short for William?”
          “No! I’m thinking. It’s, um…”

          Eventually, I remembered being called ‘Ade’. Edward notified me that Ade is usually short for Adrian, so we worked out from that, that my name is Adrian. I then told him to describe my appearance. “Good lookin’ fella I suppose. You know, from a masculine perspective. Quite dark skin for a white guy. Black hair. Piercin’ blue eyes. Dress sense… Pretty casual, but pretty cool too.” I was wearing jeans, a black belt, a leather jacket and a tight fitting red shirt. He failed to mention my earring, too.
          “Thanks for that.”
          “No problem… Oh god, where do we go?”
          We noticed a crowd of people being gathered into a group. Bat-like shadows were flapping around and scaring people, but they seemed harmless to me. A woman with long red hair was standing on a podium outside the closest tower holding a megaphone,
          “GATHER HERE, PLEASE. GATHER HERE!
          “I think we need to gather over there, Ed.”
          “Yeah… Can I follow you? I’m… I’m fucking terrified.”
          “If you want.”
          I probably should have thought more before I answered that, but I wasn’t thinking too heavily back then. My mind was clear and I was enjoying that lucidity very much.
          We approached the crowd. It was very noisy and unhappy. In fact I got some very awkward bitch-stares from people who were perplexed at my calm slightly happy demeanour.
          “ALL OF US SINNERS, WE ALL HAVE SINNED! WE GONNA BE PUNISHED. PRAY, PRAY ALL OF YOU FOR REPE-
          The annoying individual was cut short by a swift smack to the head. A burly fellow wearing the same uniform as the woman with red hair stood behind the man and crossed his arms with a grim stare.
          “Behave.” He said. I laughed.
          “We don’t tolerate preachers so best you shut up about it.” Spoke the red-head into the microphone. “Now I suspect you’re all confused, scared, mourning, etcetera… But I’ve got a busy day ahead so please just try and act as orderly and calm as possible and follow those of us wearing a red coat. Try to keep questions to yourselves as we’ll be here all bloody day otherwise. You’ll each be assigned an imp shortly, who’ll be happy to explain everything in meticulous detail. Okay? Okay.”
          And that was that. She walked inside the tower, and the others in red uniforms rounded us up like sheep. Inevitably, people screamed out questions,
          “Are we going to be punished?”
          “What did I do wrong?”
          “I’m a good person!”
          “Where am I?!”
          “This doesn’t make sense!”
          “Please, I want to go home!”
          “I can’t remember anything, how did I die?”
          After a while, I drowned the voices out. I also drowned out Edward’s voice, who was babbling incessantly by my side. After a few minutes we entered the tower. Inside, it was much larger looking.
          “Ade? I don’t mean to take the piss but, are we in a train station?”
          I had to laugh at that, too… Because it did seem that way. The main interior was covered in rails, as where the walls surrounding the tower and the various constructs above me into the high, high ceiling. Carriages hung from the walls vertically, ready to ship groups of people to their destinations. One such carriage emerged from beneath the earth and docked before us. The carriage appeared to be made out of stone.
          “Those of you who died in the tragic train accident, I apologize but special treatment can’t be taken. This is the only mode of transport for you. Besides don’t complain, I was eaten by a shark.”
          The burly fellow rolled his eyes, “Can I go a shift without her bringing that up?”
          A few carriages came and went before me and Ed was permitted to be seated. The interior was bizarrely un-train-like, more closely resembling a church. The rows of seats were lined in red fabric, and the windows looked very much like stained glass. In fact you could barely see out of them at all and the train was filled with odd multi-coloured lights. We walked down the red carpet aisle and seated ourselves in a two-seater row near the back.
          “How are you staying so calm about this, Ade?”
          “I have absolutely no idea.”

        Unfinished early draft for an experimental short story I started at Uni, but abandoned in favour of something else.      

  The day was as peaceful as any other in the Calm Era. The centuries old architecture stood still shining in it’s grandeur beneath the un-spoilt morning sun. Elmira was carrying a basket of time-tellers in one and a purse of profits in the other. This was the first time in years she hadn’t been thinking about the future or the past.

                The air distorted and collapsed in on itself before bursting him out at the centre, flopping to the ground uncomfortably. His coat steamed profusely. She dropped her basket and ran to the unconscious man. It had been so long now she had almost left any hope that he would return. She turned him round to see his face and it was him; Rufasa Wrodete. The moment she saw him, a bolt of emotion made her sigh in relief. She smiled uncontrollably as he came to.

                He looked about ten years older than when she saw him last. Deep lines and stress scars marked his face. He stared at her with glazed eyes.
                “Are you okay?” She asked, repeatedly.
                “I’ll…Never get used, to that.” He chuckled, then coughed. Specks of blood decorated his lips and nostrils.
                “What happened? Where have you been? What happened to you? Are you okay?”

                Every time he turned to leave his cell a loud and muffled message told him to request appropriate leave. An hour after requesting, a form was faxed through the wall monitor pushing out dust and ancient smoker’s ash from the previous ‘tenant’. He had to complete the form and send it back. If lucky, he was permitted entry to the courtyard area; a beautiful layout of concrete, gravel and potted succulents. He could converse with other criminals lost in time. The elderly and insane man who would ramble about his unmapped childhood, one that even I knew didn’t really exist. He would exchange a few pointless sentences with deranged individuals as him before feeling the tiresome cry for food in his belly and returning to his cell.

                She asked questions over and over, in disbelief that the man she was leaning over was actually Rufasa and not another dream. He delivered a broken monologue, “They found me. Took me back. They put me under house arrest, living directly opposite Micros Estate. For seven years they had me, watching my childhood from my window and not being able to do a thing about it. The bombings occurred and I survived them somehow, again. Luckily in all the chaos, I was able to find one.” He pulled a hissing Chronovice from his coat. The screen was cracked and melted and the frame had warped. It leaked an odd liquid as he tossed it to the pavement. “I didn’t forget about you.” He coughed again.
                She blurted, “Me neither! It’s been so hard. It’s only been three years since you left, but I tried my hardest to forget about you. I mean, I had to for my health. You were always at the back of my mind I just… Got used to it. I hated that I couldn’t change a thing. Even if I got one I wouldn’t know where to go.” Rufasa groaned in pain, “Did you get my letters? I left them all in that place where we said I would, if we got separated.”
                He smiled at her, “I found some, yeah. It was hard. That’s how I deduced when to return to, roughly.” He stood up slowly.

                At around three in the afternoon he would stare out through the blinds and follow with his eyes to the house sat on the other side of the fence. He would watch intently to see himself coming home from school, trying his hardest to remember that exact moment of his life. He never could remember the flats behind the fence, because if he ever did he would have seen his older self staring back. The counter on the wall reminded him of his time left. Only six years and nine months to go until the roughly estimated day of bombings. It was a death sentence really but they feigned ignorance and perpetuated the concept of ‘Time Control’. There was no justice in this era.

                They were sitting behind the trees that lined the path in case anyone came by and saw them. His outfit was completely typical of the War Era, as was the terrible industrial stench. A small patch of ash stained the concrete where he had appeared. “It’s funny thinking that there’s a time untouched by traveller,” He looked at her with a smile, “that in one unmapped era, you had to just make do with the area you lived in and the year you were born in. Isn’t it just typical that I was destined to be with someone from the Calm Era?”
                “They can’t find you again, can they?”
                “I don’t want to make any more promises I can’t keep. I don’t know.”
                She frowned, “So you spent seven years living opposite yourself?”
                He nodded, “All those years I tried to remember each specific moment I witnessed and couldn’t. I kept trying to remember the window in the flat I was kept in, but I never did. I never looked into the windows of the flats near my house.”
                “Fate works in mysterious ways.”
                “Exactly, but it’s what I deserve to finally be here. I’ve worked it out. This is it now. They can’t catch me again.”

                Despite his burns, he stayed and talked to her on the grass behind the tree row for hours and hours. People would walk past on the other side occasionally. She was telling him about her life now, only three years since he was taken away. She lived on her own making a living out of selling things. Her beauty captivated buyers. She made a hobby out of researching time mapping. She tried to research the future, meeting other refugees from the War Era who had come to live here legally. No one had ever heard of Rufasa. She had to give up and move on.
                They began to talk about how great their life will be. Then, they moved on to discuss travelling to unmarked time eras. Perhaps in the distant future after the world destroyed itself, they could find a paradise.
                Laid out on the grass was a Time Map which she studied enthusiastically. New eras had been discovered and notations that she had never seen before. She stared in awe at the vast gap between their native times. “It’s so hard to believe that this field will be the estate you were born on… And the estate you were trapped in, one day.”
                The sun began to set and they grew cold. “Come on, let’s go home.”

                He watched the shell sear through the side of his house and the extent of the damage dawned on him. Screams roared into the air as he observed his neighbours get annihilated. He stared lifelessly as he crawled out of the rubble. He tried to remember the feeling from the first time, but by now it was completely repressed. The wall monitor was bent and warped in the aftermath of the bomb. His hopes of survival were gone. His body was propelled out through the blinds and the glass by the next shell. He came to nine minutes later on the grey stained grass. The fence was torn apart and the current had been completely nullified. The ringing in his ears made everything seem unreal, like a dream. He went to the rubble of his house. The Chronovice he had once struggled so hard to find was right before his eyes.

                That strange hum that never sounds the same came again on the other side of the trees. The shock wave made the leaves drop away as though they’d lost all reason to stay. About six feet appeared beneath the canopy, armoured boots with the logo of the Imett Army attached to their ankles. A great depression threatened to destroy her undeserved happiness and she feared the worst. “Let’s run. Let’s run.” She trembled, grabbing his wrist fiercely and digging her nails. His eyes widened and he groaned in his attempt to stand again. “No!” She yelped and pulled him again. He simply fell down stiff on the grass. “Ru, get up!” She commanded. The guards walked through the trees, laughing at their attempts to flee. The leader crunched through the undergrowth and grabbed Rufasa by the arm. Rufasa stayed down and grabbed the man’s boot with a fierce grip.
                “If you resist, I’ll kill you.” He pulled a gun out and shoved it into Rufasa’s neck.
                “Don’t kill him!” She screamed.
                He told her to run. He told her to trust him and run. She left the unsaid three word phrase in the back of her throat and ran across the fields, watching in absolute terror as the sun plunged into the sea.

                She returned later that night. Her face was stained with three years of pent up sadness. Her brain was still, wearing down from the action. She was almost exhausted from caring. She just wanted to forget, now.
                The small patch of ash was still visible on the path. Her basket of time tellers had been kicked over and many were lost in the grass. She gathered them weakly into the basket, flicking them to lose the dew. She found the map, slightly damp and coiled it into her bag. Beneath the last cluster of time tellers was an emblem of the Imett Army. She held it to the moonlight and saw the number etched in it’s surface. A hesitant smile crept across her face as she read the year.