*QUICK NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR *Hello everypony! If you've managed to somehow stumble upon this story, then please take a moment to read this message. My name is SemperFiBamaDash, and this is going to be my first attempt at a fanfic. So far, this is the first chapter, and it will mostlikely be redone soon. The titl is also definitely going to be changed, so if this story interests you, feel free to follow it! I haven't had the time to work on it lately, but if you want to leave some constructive criticism or suggestions, feel free! Just remember that I am most likely going to completely redo this first chapter, and more content will be on the way shortly!
Thank you,
SemperFiBamaDash
I tossed and turned in my bed, trying desperately to fall asleep. My forehead became drenched in sweat, partly because of the high temperatures from the nearby steel factories, but mainly because of my ever-increasing level of anxiety because of tomorrow.
Tomorrow was Layoff Day, the annual day where my boss draws a bunch of random names of the lower end workers from a box, and if your name gets drawn, you’re fired. These cuts were mainly for economical purposes, but it has caught on over the years, and is seen as some sort of sick, twisted holiday for the higher ups in the company that have a sense of security in their jobs. They usually bet on who will be fired, and who won’t.
I wipe the sweat off of my forehead. I’m not going to be able to fall asleep. Not tonight. Every year I get more and more frightened that my name might be drawn from that horrific box that determines my fate.
My job at the steel factory is only barely enough to scrape through in life. The minimum wage set by the government is usually nullified by bribes from the factory owners, and jobs are scarce. If I was to be fired tomorrow, I might not be able to find another job...
I shake my head. It had risen up to an abnormally high temperature, and I could feel myself getting redder by the moment. I stand up and put my shoes on.
I stepped outside into the damp, rotten alleyways that housed the front doors of a number of homes in the poor section of town. My nose cringes at the ever so familiar smell of decaying waste and the rotten corpses of the rats that couldn't even withstand the hazardous living conditions of the slums. The rats that had adapted to the living conditions carried debilitating diseases that could take a man down in five minutes flat.
I trudged through the many layers of grunge in the streets, trying to avoid the rats that hissed at me from the cracks under the feeble foundations of the ancient tenements. I made my way down to my usual walking spot, past the factories, in front of a book store with two gigantic glass panes in the front. I stared in through the panes and saw all kinds of books everywhere. Classics, fiction, cookbooks, everything was there.
I was always interested in books, ever since I was a young child. The old man that raised me for as long as I could remember used to read to me often, and eventually taught me to read. After he died in an automobile accident, I had to get a job at a steel factory and live in a tenement next to an alcoholic that supposedly strangled his wife. Every night, I can hear him throwing empty liquor bottles at the floor, cursing at his small television set, and beating against the wall.
He was a burly man, one that could easily throw you across a room if you rubbed him the wrong way. I had never spoken to him out of fear that he might take anything that I said as an insult, but we had occasionally exchanged looks whenever I saw him on my walks, or my trips to the factory every day.
Over the years, I had been saving up the little cash that I had to spare. With the little money that I managed to scrape together, I bought a book, a classic from a time period known as the Olden Age, a time in which North America was unified into many different countries, and the countries actually allied with each other instead of relentlessly bombing them. The entire continent had eventually split up, however, and major cities formed into their own countries, and were constantly involved in wars with each other. Some of these countries were lucky, and managed to get their hands on a nuclear bomb, which could permanently take a rival down for good. Hundreds of years ago, our country was hit by a nuclear bomb, but the few citizens that managed to survive in their shelters had eventually reproduced and repopulated the country.
Our country was a decent sized one, part of an ancient North American city that was known as Chicago. Years of radiation poisoning from unsafe water and poor living conditions, paired with the corrupt government, has led to form a dystopia that constantly grew weaker each day, and we were only a bomb away from being eradicated for good.
Our country is led by a small group of the wealthiest people in the area, and they have little sympathy for the working class that makes up almost ninety-five percent of the population. There was a high level of social stratification that existed, and it is growing each day. The rich factory owners and political leaders are getting richer, and the workers are getting progressively poorer.
The sound of thunder, roaring over the sounds of manufacturing, interrupted me as I was staring at the books. I jumped back a little bit, staring up into the sky, expecting the arrival of the acidic rain that had taken its toll on the buildings over the years, and the buildings were threatening to collapse. I was heading back to my home for some shelter when I ran into a homeless man that I had known for years.
The man was tall and slender, he towered over everybody that he talked to, but looked as harmless as a rabbit. He had suffered years of misfortune, but his experiences had left him with a smile on his face that never seemed to deteriorate. He was slightly insane, and he constantly rambled on about how he had some form of connection with a “mysterious land” that was filled with mystical creatures and plants. I try to act like I believe him, but I can’t help but snicker at his ridiculous notions of this mysterious land.
I walked up to the man, and his face was etched with surprise.
“Well hello there!” The man said with a sense of excitement in his voice. “Why are you out this late at night, especially when there is a storm approaching?”
His words, although understood clearly, took a while to be processed by my brain. My head was filled with worries of losing my job, and my face must have reflected my inner struggles, because the man looked at me with a quizzical expression on his face.
“What’s the matter? Are you sick? Worried? Depressed?”
Once again, the words refused to settle in. My head was spinning, my mind was scattered out so bad that I could barely even make sense of the stimuli around me... The sound of thunder in the distance, the sight of the old man staring at me, the raw stench of the sewage in the streets...
I ran. I don’t understand why, but I did. I took off as fast as I could, the old man screaming, trying to chase me and calm me down. It was no use. I was too fast. Adrenaline pumped through my body as the doors of the tenements turned into a blur that raced by me, getting faster and faster. I ran up to my doorstep, opened the door, and ran inside. Right as I was about to close it, I looked outside, only to see my neighbor, drunken as usual, staring at me, partially out of confusion, partially out of curiosity.
Without thinking, or hesitation, I slammed the door shut.
