Writing Contest Entry: Lovely View (READ DESC.)

Instructions

*STORY IN DESCRIPTION* Hey there! Hya here with my entry! This is actually part of a longer story I'm working on... hope you enjoy it! ~ It was a bleak but hot day, as all were, when Allie looked out that window. It was not a humid, natural heat, but a sickening dry heat, stinging with the carbony smell of exhaust and manure, becoming all the more prevalent and nauseating in the °105 Fahrenheit temperature. The temp never dropped below °80, anyway, since the Climate Collapse (or Climate Rebirth, as the Joy and Happiness party called it) of 683 P.E. (Post Elon). Regardless of any party’s preferences towards language, that was the day when it started for Allie. It was no more than her 8th night at the Rejuvenation Facility, a residential home designed to assist and eventually let free the disturbed, destructive, and disgusting of the nation. She never quite got why she had to be sent there, seeing that all she did was briefly go off her medication simply to cut expenses. She had lost her job recently, and seeing that they were the most expensive thing in all her receipts, it seemed only logical to cut them. She doubled her daily shocks, of course, simply to keep her obsessive tendencies at bay. By Lord Elon’s cologne, she even notified the Council of Common Bliss. But back to the point. At around dusk every day, just to relieve her unsteady mind, after going off all her treatment as one did in an R.F., she would gaze out the window of her quarters (which were thankfully air-conditioned). It wasn’t much to look at, though, as all the terrain was shrouded constantly in dirt-brown smog. Until that fateful day. As all patients did, she had one Free Day a week, an unscheduled time when one could re-educate his or herself outside of the mandatory classes. She typically spent hers reading in her quarters, though not the most legal literature. A friend from before she arrived, Honey, stockpiled banned books in her apartment and occasionally gifted them to Allie. She didn’t quite know how she got them, but thought Honey said something about a friend who had a sibling who had a spouse who had a cousin who volunteered at the archives. Regardless, it was always great when she did, as the only legal books were all generic romances, adventure stories steeped in blood and entrails, and the occasional bedtime story for children. And, during this Free Day, she sat in her windowsill reading a banned story by some fellow named William Twistspeare or something. It was a perfectly tranquil, quiet moment until she read one unfortunate little line, “To thine own self be true…”. Allie leaned back. Such a word, “true” was unheard of. She remembered looking it up in a dictionary at Honey’s place before she left. “In accordance with fact or reality…”, She mumbled to herself, trying to possibly capture such a concept. Such ideas, “facts” and “reality” had died when the Common Digital Net came about. She lay the book in her lap, staring out the window. It was one of the rare days when the smog thinned, and she could see much more of the surrounding terrain than normal. She thought more of that odd, odd, word, thumbing nervously at the tattoo on her wrist, one black bar on dark skin the color of hazelnuts or bitter honey (both foods she had heard about in Honey’s library). It marked her as a prollyx, one of the lowest and poorest members of society. Most simply wore his or her class markers on his or her garments, but all the patients at R.F.s received an additional tattoo. It was when she looked up from that lone, life-defining little black bar that she saw the most peculiar sight, made clear by the sudden dissipation of smog in the air. Looking out, she saw the most peculiar little brownish-black cavity in the earth. It had to be less than a quarter mile away, she noticed, it suddenly hitting her just how widespread and chokingly thick the smog was. Regardless, her focus was that sinkhole-seeming blotch there. Looking closer, she noticed something that made her blood run colder than a Synthetic Travel Center: A sea of objects with the exact shape and color of bodies. A sickening rainbow of flesh buried in the earth. She gasped, of course, the sight choking off every bit of breath in her body. The most powerful shiver she had ever experienced shook right down her spine. What in Elon’s name is that? “No.” She muttered. “No no no no no no no…” (Rest of my entry is in the notes & credits.)