Peace (the first part of a horror-y short story - roughly 700 words here)

Started by KyriakosCH, Sat 21/03/2020 08:03:32

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KyriakosCH

Writing this in english - usually I translate stuff I wrote in greek, cause when I write in english from the start the result is crap :) Feedback is welcome. I may try to write more in english, for various reasons.



Peace


by Kyriakos Chalkopoulos




“[...]ubi solitudinem faciunt pacem appellant”

(where they make a desert, they call it peace)

Tacitus





To some there is only one valid term for the place we are in â€" they call it a prison. Their view, quite paradoxically, failed to stir much rebellious sentiment due to being almost unanimously accepted. So ubiquitous a conclusion loses virtually any potential to lead to action, much like no one would feel angered at gravity because it makes you fall. And while we aren’t being kept here due to something quite as neutral as a force of nature, one can’t help but feel that our captor or captors might as well be faceless or mechanical, with the most popular joke among us alluding to how good those hypothetical machines seem to be at preparing meals fit for humans.

Those meals, after all, appear at regular intervals at the very edge of an opening in one of the high walls â€" so that they are visible from the large hall, given someone is always starving and looking carefully for the emergence of those dishes filled with delight, ready to shout to others to get on the movable scaffolding. The anxious observer of the wall isn’t always the same person, though some common trait can doubtlessly be observed in all in that position; it’s not just hunger, for we all are, to degrees, hungry, so arguably the crucial ingredient there is a type of apathy towards all other activities to be had in the singular hall we pass our lives in.

As indeed with all other activities, this too has been focused upon by some of us, for a good portion of the entire population is into examining anything they feel able enough to grasp, and often their desire to speak of any theories they have on their subject of interest is all too difficult to quench, for seldom are they satiable while simply sharing their insights with fellow enthusiasts. Our overall population being very small â€" not even a hundred people â€" makes things worse, but time finds a way to enlist agents of determent for anything, so by now even a single voice raised in anger â€" as long as it originates from a person very capable of acting upon the uttered threat â€" suffices so as to make those clumsy zealots retreat back to the safety of their group.

Nominally there are five populous and distinct groups among us, though in reality it’s true that every person here is their own subgroup. The complete lack of females has created even more tension, yet either by luck or design we saw the last of that particularly dangerous for our small community sub-type of person who’d openly try to force himself on others. And in many ways his exit has been the most decisive event in our colony.


Confinement is always a harbinger of great change to people, yet there are those who seem entirely unable to accept it. And when there’s no obvious way out, they may export their inner-tention onto their fellow man, regardless of being aware that he is an inmate too and as much a victim of powers outside his control as themselves. Perhaps being more introverted helps soothe the sense of being held against your will, yet no one chose to be by disposition more suited to this place and therefore it’d make no sense for him to be punished for it. It was months ago when it happened that we witnessed the first act of brutality between the inmates, and it deserves at least as much as anything else to be in the history of the colony I keep on these paper towels, using the food’s sauces which quickly dry and keep the words readable for anyone interested. Perhaps this too is a lucky accident, for I have no reason to assume our captor or captors, whatever they might be, meant for the only imports to our colony to be used in such a manner.

(to be continued)



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