Preface
During my senior year of high school, I wrote four short stories as part of an American Literature class. Recently, I showed my works to @HeyitsNano, and he was adamant that I post them somewhere, particularly this one. In spite of Nano's insistence, I didn't really have any interest in doing that. But, as tends to happen, the writing itch came back around, and I decided I wanted to resume an ambitious project I had started a few months ago and not worked on since. So, because I think it will somehow keep me on task or something, and because Nano threatened to do it in my name if I didn't, I'm posting this here.
A few things to note about this story beforehand: it's written in my best effort at a Modernist style, drawing a fair bit of inspiration and influence from The Great Gatsby - which I'd been studying at the same time. No doubt the people on this forum will notice settings within it, from Discord to Minecraft roleplay, but you'll also notice I am not explicit about those settings. That's because it was written for people other than just niche gaming communities that I happen to be part of. Still, it probably makes a bit more sense to you than the average Joe. You'll also probably notice an odd vocabulary being used within the story - those are swear words. I decided to try that out so that I could make use of a lot of casual profanity without making it actually profane. Each made-up word actually has a meaning, but I don't intend to tell you what. You can either figure it out or make it up. And of course, if you couldn't have guessed by the preface alone, it's going to be kinda long.
Lastly, here's a playlist of music that is very strongly tied to this story for me, if you'd like to listen while you read, or whatever. https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPWuuSDLIOt0SpWs0zw0mBfpOxP3vCg1z
With no further ado, I give you...
Paris
The light shone blindingly in his eyes, making it a difficult feat to open them wide enough to discern details of the world around him. He stood in an airport terminal, this much he knew for certain. A wide, tall-roofed walkway opening out behind him that travelled throughout the terminals and shops of the airport. Where he stood, in a terminal waiting area, there were rows of blue cloth seats running perpendicular to the wall which he faced, though they were mostly empty. There were few people here besides him, it appeared. He stared at a wall composed of floor-to-ceiling windows, windows which stretched on seemingly indefinitely in either direction left or right, save for the break of a terminal ramp just a short bit to the left up ahead. He was alone, and he carried no bags. He had nothing of note on his person, and when he thought superficially about it, he briefly longed for the small personal possessions he may have left behind. A deep sense of loss struck him in that moment, that he was leaving behind things of great value to him. It subsided, however, as quickly as it had arisen, as his mind moved to why he was here. He was running. Not running from something, for he had nothing from which to truly flee, but running toward something. What he ran after was the almost intangible dream of rebellious adventure, of living life while one is young. He knew that he wouldn’t be alone, and his heart fluttered. Over the intercom system, an announcement came in a tinny, almost indiscernible voice. He couldn’t make out most of the words, but understood that it directed him to board his flight to Paris.
The room was an inky dark shade, each significant detail of its contents being washed away into a sea of dark blues and blacks. There existed only two light sources, the faint ambient glow of relatively distant street and porch lights filtering through closed blinds, and the illumination emanating from both the lit keyboard and dimmed screen of a silver laptop. To his left and right, minute details were visible in the peripheral light from his screen; pillows and the edge of a bed on one side, a nightstand, hosting a lamp in the shape of the Eiffel Tower, a partially drained bottle of Alpine water, a small tube of lip balm, and a closed glasses case. His face, of course, was the most illuminated of all features within the room, but he could not see it. His attention was consumed by what was on the very screen that illuminated his features. The time, which read off in the bottom right corner when prompted by a mouse cursor upon the bottom of the screen, was 2:37 AM. The night was still young, and he was far from ready to close down his portal into the worlds at his fingertips. This scene was one which repeated nearly every single night, extending back at least three or four months into the foggy past. He often engaged in vastly different worlds through his screen, but each of them possessed very striking similarities. To articulate said similarities in a concise manner, the worlds with which he engaged all reached swiftly through his chest and plucked at the strings upon his heart, strumming a familiar tune of longing, but never having; of nostalgia, yet not nostalgia for something which ever had been, but for something which had been imagined.
As the blinding fluorescent light danced around, playing tricks on his eyes and turning nearly every sight within view into amorphous lens flares, he walked painstakingly slow steps, as if bound to a massive boulder by an elastic cable, through an airport entirely unfamiliar to him. He had no inkling regarding whither he marched toward, and yet onward he continued to place one foot before the other. He found himself standing on the street outside of the airport, centered in the large bay which played host to an unending stream of busses, taxis, and nondescript cars. He watched, and breathed in the savory aroma of gas exhaust that encompassed him. Were he in a more alert and conscious state, the scent may have sparked trains of thought as to the power and ingenuity of the human race; but he was not, and so it didn’t. His heart jumped, and felt for a time as if it were one inside another, not incomparable to fingers brushed gently across a ribcage flank, yet contained wholly behind his chest. His journey, that grand expedition that he had embarked upon, harkened him unto images of adventures long past. He felt as if he would embark upon tumultuous seas, pitching and turning in an effort to swallow up and consume the lone traveller; as if he would press on through an unending barren waste against burning sun and dry winds saturated with grains of sand which stung the skin like broken glass; as if he would blaze a trail through dense foliage and underbrush in some humid, muddy place which may hold behind any corner some predator of immense proportions; or as if he would cross some ancient rope bridge, suspended hundreds or thousands of feet above a nearly bottomless gorge, encased by sheer rock faces and whipping, whistling gales, as found above certain altitudes. His journey, though only now embarked upon, neared its completion; he neared his lost treasure which he sought to the ends of the earth. This description is a lengthy paraphrase well beyond that which passed his mind, yet is necessary to create the kind of imagery and sentiment which was held by this quest he had embarked upon. His Shangri La, his Atlantis, his El Dorado, now lies so close and within his grasp, it became so real and tangible.
From the shadows emerged a blade, twelve inches long, tapered to a sinister point at the end and curved along its length at a steady angle, appearing as a whole akin to a crescent moon. Swiftly and silently, it was pressed by the razor-sharp edge against the neck of his victim. He whispered, through the dark steel plate mask upon his face, into to the ear of the burly man whose life he held by a thread,
“Don’t fingting move or I’ll spill your spirit-dynshed guts across the pavement. If you try to yell or pull any kind of shralt, I’ll make sure you die choking on your own blood.” His words had their desired effect, and his victim made nothing more than a quiet whimper of acknowledgement. With a harsh, vice-like grip which dug the digits of his free hand into the muscles across his victim’s shoulder, he crudely pushed the man along faster than his own feet might move, and guided him towards a nearby tunnel entrance. Moving swiftly through the near pitch darkness of the city’s sewer tunnels, he and his hostage melted away into the omnipresent shadows. Emerging again into the bleak starlight within another city district, he moved quickly into a narrow alleyway nearby, and disappeared into the back door of a basement. There, within his safehouse, a bleak and damp room comprised of four stone-brick walls, a solid and rough-hewn floor, a single chair which was adorned with chain shackles for wrists and ankles, and a table nearby on which sat an array of menacing instruments. Here, with his hostage securely restrained, he was joined in the dark room by his similarly masked partner. They exchanged a brief, frosty interaction as to the ease with which their target had been obtained, and she departed the room, leaving him to his business. In under thirty minutes, the burly man had told them all they needed in order to reach their prime target. As a direct consequence of the expiration of the hostage’s usefulness, the burly man was drugged with sedatives and amnesiacs, and taken to be dumped in a nearby square under the shroud of witching-hour darkness. Returning to his safe house, he moved now up through the basement and into an upper floor room which held a map table. He met with his partner there, and having since shed their insidious masks, shared a brief passionate greeting.
“The Duke is a difficult man to get to,” he said.
“I’ve never seen him without at least one guard,” his partner replied, “I take it you learned something useful?”
“Sure did. He’s going to be meeting with Latimer in the noble lounges of the Golden Willow tomorrow during a training session of his Ivory Company.”
“Shralt, the Lord Commander? He’s not bringing guards?”
“Unlikely. This is a private meeting, or so I’m told.”
“Then we could easily take both of them. The dynsh Lord Commander and Duke Keen!”
“It’ll be incredibly helpful for our purposes. The Duke is a significant target, and we will be very well awarded both from our client as well as in removing a large obstacle to our plans, but the Lord Commander is a very significant figure. It is likely that the Violet Guard would attempt to mobilize a force to recover him, but the effectiveness of such an action would be subpar at best without the leadership of the Lord Commander. Either way, they’d never find us, and if they did, they’d never catch us.”
“The Lord Commander will be ours, Pariah.”
“He will. And with him, we take one step closer to our long-term plans.”
“Down with the Empire!” she cheered.
“Down with the Empire,” he responded, then saying, “((alright I think that’s enough for one night. I don’t think I can keep my eyes open much longer.))”
“((ugh ikr I can barely think straight, I’m gonna go to sleep))”
“((same, night))”
“((night))” she said, and dematerialized from the world. He promptly did the same, watching as the Victorian cityscape through the windows of his map room vanished at the press of a button, and he was returned to a menu screen. He shut his laptop screen, leaned it against his nightstand on the floor, and rolled over to attempt sleep. But no sleep came for some time, his mind consumed by the thoughts of the world he had just exited. He continued to go over scenarios of how the following day would play out, considering contingencies, backup plans, and how to phrase his actions effectively. He spent a great deal of time and effort on this online role-playing game, and she made it difficult to ever want to leave. When they spoke of their real lives, hers was marked by struggle with an intolerable stepfather and a clueless mother. She wanted to get away, and he couldn’t help but entertain the idea. Nonetheless, such talk was as tangible as what they would do if they were millionaires.
The lights of the city glared and streamed by as he watched through the taxi window. Speeding along, though his eyes absently gazed at the flashing lights and blurred figures they passed, his thoughts were on nothing but his destination. He was bathed in persistent feelings of not only immense anxiety, but powerful and frightening excitement. He found his breaths to come in unsteady, shaky gasps. His heart rested firmly in the bottom of his throat. A twisting, churning feeling in the base of his abdomen made him nauseous. His body shook as if struggling to overcome the freezing cold, and yet he sweated at the same time. After everything, the moment was coming where the vast tracts of time he had waited would be vindicated, the life he led would be so immensely changed, and his impossible dreams which enveloped him so powerfully would become realized. Around the next corner, they would meet.
The dark grey wall, which held a continuous string of messages in a white font centerfold, a list of online users on the right panel, and a list of various different communities of various different forms, as well as the multiple different channels of different topics and the several voice call rooms on the left panel. This was a domain in which he was entrusted stewardship. He was one of the handful of individuals which ran this online politics chat room, each of them falling under the typically distant owner. Under their watch were several hundred individual users who had joined this chat room. It is worth noting that only a fraction of that number regularly, if ever, interacted. Nonetheless, it was active, and lively. Heated arguments over archaic or fringe political ideals were commonly had. Philosophy, when discussed, was painstakingly pseudo-intellectual. Perhaps the server owner and founder would have known better than to have dozens of immature teenagers devoid of life experience discussing complex matters, were he not one of them. And so a very unique kind of group came to form, and an especially volatile one. He was responsible for policing the members and handling their occasionally deplorable conduct. The rules were generally common sense, though often loosely enforced; one of special note was a rule against members being backseat drivers with regards to actions taken by server staff. Essentially, it was the wild west.
Firmly and swiftly, he responded to each infraction. Immediately, he was met by harsh condemnation of the members, especially those who were the target of his discipline. He had no patience for his critics. His absolute adherence to the rule against questioning the server administration commonly earned him the moniker of ‘tyrant,’ among other expletives.
“Fingt you you tyrant-arb nykle. Suck dynsh and eat shralt. You’re such a beyp, you can’t handle criticism, you fingting falbog,” they might say to him, to which he would reply,
“Fingt off, shralt-head,” before they were purged. It was fitting that he should re-title himself to Tyranny, embracing his infamy wholeheartedly. His draconian enforcement was nearly unanimously disapproved of, and a policy that was patently his. The other administrators on level with him often criticized or outright reversed his actions, much to his ire, and the owner of the community seemed almost entirely withdrawn in his policy; a sort of ‘boys will be boys’ approach. There was really only one person who saw eye to eye with him. She was a rank beneath him in the staff. He spent a considerable portion of time in voice call rooms venting his grievances to her, and likewise lending an ear to her lamentations. She was just as unpopular as him, her methods largely the same, though she was far less thick-skinned, and had not come to embrace the hatred the community felt for her in the same way that he had. It was not uncommon for members of the community to single her out as a sort of mob; she was an unpopular authority figure, though one with relatively little power, and it was easy to get under her skin. These instances often made him livid, as was readily observable in the special harshness with which he dealt with the offenders. Though he denied any such accusation, he felt protective of her. It was them against the world. He knew very little of her outside this community, but that didn’t stop him painting an idea of her in his head.
Light reflected off of every surface within the elegant lobby, from the polished granite floors, to the classical marble pillars, to the shined brass accents, creating a scene not unlike a Van Gogh, wherein specific visual details melted into an array of glaring color and light. There she stood before him, embodying both glowing elegance of her form and heedless crudeness of her stature; both delicate purity and flagrant mischief; both infallible comradery and blazing passion. As time stood still around him, he deliberated as to what greeting they should share in this monumental moment. This greeting, however it may play out, would be remembered eternally. It must be significant, as this moment would never be repeated. It occurred to him that, for all he felt, he had no foundation of a romantic relationship with this person; were he to use the term ‘love’ in this greeting, it would be the first time. Yet, at the same time, he did not know how to justify this greeting as friends in spite of the overwhelming sensation that burned through his chest. Here he was before her, and yet he knew nothing about what he was doing there. If she did not feel the same as him, it would be disastrous to let himself go; if she did, it would be disastrous not to. So they stared at each other, silently, wide smiles upon both faces, for what must have been at least three full, painstaking seconds. Instantaneously, he then disregarded any and all doubt, and ran to her. In the course of this action, time went immediately from nearly frozen in place to flying by, and he could not have judged her response if he tried. He did not have to, as she rushed towards him in the same moment, and leapt straight into his arms.
He watched from the passenger seat as the sun slipped beneath the horizon and the sky began to gradually change color. First from blue to orange, then red, then purple, and into blue. Shortly after the sky had darkened, he arrived at his destination, and disembarked the vehicle. Removing his bulky bag from the trunk, he made his way inside. He felt a brief pang of anxiety, knowing that she would be present tonight. She was rather quiet, though not in the sense of being shy, merely not typically having much to say. At times she was perfectly social, and she certainly did not shrink away from being interacted with, she just didn’t seem largely interested in seeking out many interactions. She was always in the sort of mood where you couldn’t tell if she was gloomy, bored, or just tired. He never saw her demonstrate vested interest in anything, though the miniscule interest she gave to things struck him as adorable. A year before, they had seen each other at least each week as members of the same team, and even casually associated as teammates at various group activities. This year, she had moved to a different team. When he saw her, the one odd time a month, he felt compelled to make it count. He wanted to grow closer to her, but the thought of doing such brought such anxiety that he rarely could come to speak to her now. Instead, he would glance at her from across the room, and maybe give a wave before saying goodbye for the next month. All the while, she lived in his head rent free, and burned a hole in his chest. Before long, he learned she was not allowed to date, and so made a futile appeal to her parents during one of their monthly encounters. As a result, he was rebuffed not only by her parents, but by her as well. He remained optimistic, and planned to hold out. He had not lost hope, but hope was taken from him. His only method of communication with her, the only thing making her more tangible and real than a Hollywood actress, was his ability to contact her through his phone. In an act of his own recklessness, his phone was destroyed, and she was gone. There could be no second attempt.
The sunlight cast out upon the glorious old city, presenting from their suite balcony a view of beautiful classical architecture, foliage, and an iconic spire, stretching out into the horizon. His arm wrapped around her shoulders. They smoked, and they drank, and they ran, and they did all that they desired. They were free, with no chains to restrain them, no rules to abide by. He had all he wanted. He had her.
The ceiling was dark and formless, save for a few thin lines of light that streaked across part of it, and yet it was what held his stare. He lay on his back in bed, surrounded by silence. He had long since returned his laptop to the side of his bed and submerged himself in solid twilight. His heart ached and yearned, the crushing weight of isolation weighing down on him as if he lay at the bottom of the ocean. He wanted nothing more than the idea of her which existed in his head to be real; to run and leave the dark, inky twilight behind and run into the light, and to her arms. But she was intangible. She was reachable only in his dreams, where he might be free, and the blinding light might wash away the harsh details and shadows of what was, leaving behind only the ideas and the beauty that could be.
