This story is going to be based off of my own explorations in this very real setting. The whole concept of it is about a man who is in a rather low spot in his life, and he enters an abandoned apartment complex. Inside this complex he encounters a violent gang, and he must find a way out of the complex before they find and kill him.
A beautiful sunset streaks red and gold across the sky as heavy twilight permeates the air. The clearing of grass just north of a rough gravelly parking lot collectively sighs as the wind bends their light green strands. A cloud parts from its union with the sun, and bright, harsh red light washes over everything. An automobile rolls through the lot, grumbling at the chill breeze that frolics its way through the lot of red brick buildings. The energy of the pumping machinery inside the car seems to distract the calm and quiet atmosphere of the coming night. The car rolls to a stop and the driver inside switches the ignition off, relenting control of the dusk to nature.
The man inside the car rolls the windows down, and perks his ears up to experience all the sights and sounds of the night. After the sun goes down and the stars come out, the crickets slowly begin to weave their sound into the melting pot of night noises. A long, low whistle pierces the air and cracks nature’s pot of sound, signaling the arrival of the night’s first train. Soon, a cacophony of engines that dwarfed those of the car fills the pot and breaks it, destroying the sacred silence that harbors itself in the remote areas of the world. Wanting to breathe the night air and be closer to the train, the man opens his car door and enters the night.
The wind picks up and playfully tussles with the man’s shoulder-length black hair and beats against his young stubbly cheeks. He sees an old whitewashed garage that straddles the two worlds of grass and gravel, and he walks over to it to explore. If there was any one thing that the man enjoyed doing, it was exploring old buildings and structures and seeing what secrets he could find inside them. Peeking inside the window of the garage, which appeared as though it would only hold one car, he saw that the entire floor of the place was covered with slabs of broken wood.
He dared not to get too close to the grass for fear of what his father had told him. ‘Snakes, little garden snakes, are always waiting for ya in tall grass. You’d best stay away if you ever feel the need to go jumping around in grass that’s up to your neck.’ The black-haired man was always one to eschew fairy tales and superstition before real danger, so he heeded his father’s words and stalked away to find another interesting site.
While he was walking along the row of mostly empty storefronts that hugged the top of the parking lot, he noticed a large metal fence cutting off a gap between buildings. Upon closer inspection, he realized that part of this big gate was made to swing open, and, better yet, was unlocked. The gate released a horrid rusty screeching noise as he shoved it open, but nobody was around to hear it. Walking inside the gap, he quickly noticed that he was not the only person to find this little treasure. Graffiti covered the two walls of the neighboring buildings, and the path between them (about big enough for a car to drive through) was cracked open in many places by weeds. Even the calming sounds of the night could not be heard once the fence gate was closed. There was a palpable feeling of quiet in the alley, and the black-haired man quite enjoyed the total silence.
He then decided on impulse to climb a ladder propped up against a building to see if he could reach the roof. Although the ladder was made of metal and was frighteningly wobbly, he kept on climbing for twenty or thirty feet. In his childhood, he used to climb up on top of trees and roofs all the time, and he was quite an expert at it. He did not, however, anticipate what would come next. The brick that the top right hand side of the ladder was resting on suddenly cracked, and the already wobbly ladder slowly began to slide to the right.
So that's that. I've been pretty busy with school starting up again, so this post will just be the unedited beginning of the story. I'd like you all to comment and say what you think of the concept itself, so that I can decide if I would want this to turn into my NaNoWriMo story or not. Alright, I promise that I'll write about something serious next time. Until then...
I like it, Tony. Like I said before, your first paragraph was a little too heavy on description for my taste.
ReplyDeleteBut the rest of it was just the right amount. It's a good beginning. I'm curious to find out if you ever finished this...