A speck meandering through darkness. Focus on it long enough and it becomes indistinguishable from the vacuum in which it sojourns. To notice it would seem like a blunder from an otherwise faultless maker. But It is on this canvas of blackened nullity where hopes and dreams reside. Where love and tribulation live side by side like paramours in the dead of night. Look a little closer and a tale will emerge. These chronicles are familiar to us but exist as abominations in the ceaseless void.
Every story must begin somewhere. And this one begins here.
Light puckers intermittently through the greyish mist and a man is huddled under mounds of filth and turnt up earth. He looks upon the valley beneath him like a god casting a shadow on his accursed domain and like a god he sees its few inhabitants as a foolish catch. “Travelers,” he murmurs to himself.
The other man grips his weapon and rejoices like a salivating leopard. “Day travelers,” he gleams.
The man stands up on his kingdomly mound and shouts to the transgressors below. “Halt!” he ordered. The travelers stop and see the specter of a figure several meters above them. There were four in the caravan and one and one attempted a flee. But the man with the weapon rifles a bullet over his shoulder and the young traveler freezes at the kicked up dirt before him.
The two men traverse down the mound to meet their visitors and both were brandishing weapons. They inform the travelers that they were in violation of the law for this was private land. “We are not from the Agency,” the first traveler informed them.
“I figured “ said the man.
“We are fleeing the latest strikes.”
“Where to?”
The traveler didn’t answer.
The man rummages through their belongings and finds little of interest. Just enough food and clothing sufficient for a journey. Then the man looks under the hood of a shrouded traveler. It was a woman.
“I’m taking her according to the law,” the man declared.
“She’s only 15,” said the other woman.
“I’m taking you too.”
“Please have mercy,” begged the traveler. “We have no weapons. We didn’t know this was private land!”
“I’m only doing what the law allows,” said the man.
“Then the law is dead!”
The two men slew the male travelers and gathered their remains. Then they calmed the women at gunpoint then escorted them out of the valley.
TO BE CONTINUED…
The Internet Ruined Everything 