Callous, a novel in parts.
Note - This is just something I have been working at for my own enjoyment. I will make it a goal to contribute to it weekly. If I ever finish it I’ll work the various chapters into an actual book. I won’t spend much time editing or rewriting them as yet as I want to keep momentum going. The goal of this project for me personally is to learn how to write a compelling narrative and tell various truths in the process. It should also help me refine my writing.
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Corpulent, the only word to describe him. Corpulent. The fat pathetic creature barely fit on the ancient mattress. The torn curtains shedding faint orange light on the dingy little room. A groan, a moan of pain. Memories. He knew he should have ordered in again, but just once he had felt it important to get out the shitty little cube he called a home. He walked the neon streets, flashing lights all around. Weird to see such color and vibrancy when he knew the main street was surrounded by miles upon miles of slums, and beyond that a wasteland as far as he knew. He couldn't enter almost anywhere, they asked him for a vaccine pass, they asked him to show his QR code, he didn't have a fucking clue what these things were most of his life, and even when he did, he had no way of getting them. He had been alone for years, and was so detached from the system now that he was almost invisible. This suited him. Thinking on his parents; painful memories threatened to come to him amidst his reverie so he shifted his thoughts back to more recent events.
“Hey, FAT BOI, WHAT YOU GOT FOR ME HUH?”
He pretended not to hear.
“FAT BOI, FATASS, HEY, WHITE BOY, I'm TALKING TO YOU”
He turned around, and politely and meekly suggested he didn't have much. “You white boys always got something, and besides YOU OWE US”. The four thugs had pounced on him so suddenly he simply couldn't react, not that he would have done much if he'd had warning, he was white, he had no right to speak up, as detached as he was he knew that much. He took it, they punched him, kicked him, stomped on him, took the meagre 20 Squirgcoins he had (about 10 years earlier all cash had been removed, the lowest unvaccinated classes had basically invented their own currency apart using cryptocurrencies, though they changed names weekly as each was banned).
He lay on the bed, ribs cracked, arm possibly fractured, face bloody and bruised, teeth knocked out. He had tried to go to the hospital, though he should have known better, he sat in the waiting room for hours, watching as various people entered and were dealt with before him, he couldn't fathom why. It gradually dawned on him that the only people stuck in the waiting room (slowly becoming a twisted sort of purgatory) with him were white too. That fit with all the entertainment he'd consumed in his life; surely white people deserved to be placed last, but part of him began to feel angry. A rage he couldn't quite understand, so he pushed that down deeper than he could see, and left the hospital.
He spent the days afterward healing, but in the following weeks something changed, he began to despise the ones that damaged him so, despised the system that allowed them to get away with it, and most of all he despised himself for simply taking it. He took a good long look in the mirror: The chiseled features were visible even under all that fat, in any other era he would be considered an attractive man, but his self-loathing had buried any possibility of him being able to see himself properly. He stared into his own eyes, indulging in a rare moment free of doubt or dread, he wondered.
“What am I?”
All he knew for sure was he was disgusted with himself and avoided the mirror as much as possible. He determined that he must do something. Anything.
Weeks of preparation. Weeks spent preparing for one moment. Starving himself. Research. Risking it all by looking online at various forbidden websites and channels. Revenge changed his very soul.
He set it up beautifully. He fashioned himself a knife, as knives of all kinds were forbidden to ''Nazis' as they called them, and got hold of a ridiculously oversized coat in which he could hide it. He waited on the corner. He walked the streets. He simply couldn't find the man. He thought he'd found him 3 or 4 times as Africans (or now simply called The People) all looked the same to him. After days of this he gave up, and was walking dejectedly home, then he saw him, again with his three cronies, shaking up a rotund middle-aged lady, who was doing everything in her power to demonstrate just how racially aware and just she was by giving them everything she had. The man was like a caricature of gang-bangers you have seen throughout the nineties, broken teeth replaced with all sorts of metal, fake hair attached to his skull via metal ringlets, chains galore. Our wannabe vigilante ran straight up to him, and ran the knife, about the length of a cereal box, straight into his chest. Then he ran. He ran for all he had. The woman screamed, the gangbanger’s buddies yelled.
He ran. The fear. The terror. Nothing had ever gripped him so. He ran, and ran, and ran. Despite the fear, he felt exhilarated, ALIVE. Eventually he somehow lost them in the dust and mess of the slums, and found his way back home.
2 -
KNOCK, KNOCK, KNOCK, BANG!
The door was kicked in, two Hispanic justice officers marched in, a butch looking woman holding herself as if she was a musclebound man, and a reedy looking subservient man.
“Jonathan Fredrich Callus?” she said with a haughty sort of disdain.
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I will continue beginning at chapter 2 next week.