This short one shot…thing was written for use in some typography pieces in a College Art Project based on the theme of a No Man's Land separating Newcastle City from the rest of the world. With supplies, electricity power and all roads and routes in and out of the city cut off, and ten-thousand of the cities two-hundred and ninety-thousand populace are trapped within an abandoned city, struggling to survive. I'm hoping to develop the idea into a full story. For now, however, a one shot.
Title obtained from a quote by Richard Mahin which is mentioned at the end of this story.
Stone Island.
By Scarab Dynasty.
"There are no people in this city" – CLAMP, Chobits.
If you pictured the situation in your mind, you could almost imagine what No Man's Land would look like from the outside. The blown out bridges and occasional spiral of fire left far too much to the imagination, though, for you to know exactly how things were. The details are, in fact, far more intricate. Want to see?
Thought so.
There used to be a Bus Rank here. Emphasis on the "used to be". There was a lot of stuff that is no longer here. There are no people standing around the tourist information signs, tapping their pens against the desks and looking bored. On the Last Day, these desks were surrounded by a crowd of people, dozens jostling for a place in a nonexistent line and a place on a nonexistent train. The metro stations lasted only half an hour, before the chaos and riots forced on-duty security officers to shut them off. A lot of people got stuck underground, that day. They are not there now, though. The corridors and metro tunnels and railway lines have been all but empty for quite a long time. There are no trains. There are no buses.
There is no attendant, standing watch outside the lost luggage area, waiting to be asked whether a purse or wallet or bag with certain characteristics has turned up there in the last hour. There will be nothing there to claim as your own. Places as obvious as this were emptied out months ago.
There is no flashing light at the pelican crossing. No cars to look out for that might run you down. On the other side of the road there are shops and streets but there is no shop assistant dressing a headless mannequin in a broken display window. There is no glass in the window. No clothes, no display boards, no coat hangers or security tags. The street outside is littered with rubbish. There are no customers here, browsing clothes three sizes too small for them or three sizes too big (making the larger people feel envious. But envy has no place anymore in this city… This isn't as good a thing as it may sound). There are no buskers with open music cases and out of tune instruments, plying for trade in the streets. No violinists. No one-man band.
There was someone here, a while ago. Several people, in fact. They weren't customers, though, and had no intention of paying for non-existent wares. They were searching around inside the stores, stepping in through the broken windows. Somebody cut themselves on a shard of glass, leaving a strain of reddish brown.
Go further. There is another building. Old this whole city is a patchwork, of sorts. There are old style buildings, eighteenth century structures standing alongside concrete blocks from the sixties. Old cobbled streets coupled with steel warehouses. But here, the whole street is old and gothic. One large building still has a sign outside of the door, saying "Literature and Philosophical Society". Inside of the library there are no more old marble statues still in one piece and no polish on the wooden staircases. Through the door, though, the books are still there. There is someone here, too. Somebody watching the books. There are no burned papers or hardbacks in here. Those that have already been burned have been thrown away. The rest of the books are there to stay.
So there are books here. And nobody is reading them. But they were. The tables are covered in papers. Somebody was here. Somebody was planning. There are now no students researching old topics or businessman waiting for their meetings. There are no librarians to check books in and out. But there was, once. There may be again.
Not anytime soon, though.
There is a bright blue sprawl of graffiti covering a wall outside of the library. A large one, more than a metre tall and wide. The symbol resembles a quarter circle, hollow in the centre. It is not the only symbol, and this is not the only scrawl of fresh graffiti in the city, but it's the only scrawl on this particular wall, at the moment. There are no other marks on the wall at all, besides the occasional name –old and scratched out, rather than painted. It's been a long while sine any graffiti artists used this wall as a canvas. Funny, that, since there would be no laws to stop them now. There is no one here now, but there has been. The scraping of blood is proof of life. The graffiti is proof of ownership. (Or as close to it as you can get, around these places. No one really owns anything anymore). What the in-tact books are proof of is anyone's guess. Knowledge, perhaps? Awareness? Cogito, ergo sum?
Most artists had the sense to get out while they still had the chance, just like everyone else had.
Not all of them, though.
We're done here. Lets go somewhere else.
t he college, which is situated about half a mile away from the train station with no trains and no passengers, is not completely abandoned. Like in the middle of the town, there are signs that people have been there, and are there still. There are no branches on the stumps of trees that decorate the outside of the building. No leaves or buds growing, even though it's already early spring. The branches have all been ripped down before the buds had a chance to grow. Someone needed the wood. This is proof enough that not everywhere has been abandoned. Not everything has been allowed to be forgotten. You can't see the students. They're not playing music in the corridors or sifting through different brands of paper in the storage cupboards, but they are here. Somewhere. Probably down in the basement with the (not working) kilns and the (not working) metal workshops.
Anyway, there are no pictures, paintings or sculptures on display in the large, broken glass windows on the outside of the building. There is no longer a sign above the (not-working) automatic doors to tell you the name of the building. But at least, inside of it, there are people who remember.
We'll leave those people alone, for now.
Meanwhile, we'll walk a clear straight path from the college down to the river and a large, domed-roofed building, littered with holes. It's not clear how these holes got there, but it doesn't really matter. The building much be huge inside, but interesting enough, not many of the outside windows have been broken. One can only speculate at what is going on inside.
If you don't mind, I'd really rather not find out myself. Come on. Lets keep going.
We walk down banks and steps and slanting roads, past more trees and rubbish bins. There is no one to empty the rubbish, and nobody who actually wants to use the rubbish bins, anyway. There are still some buds and branches on these trees, but not as many as there should be. Somebody is already ripping them up, to use for firewood. I wonder who lives in this place… I haven't seen a graffiti sprawl for a while, have you? The river hasn't changed, much. Still dull and grey and lapping at the concrete banks. I always thought that probably have. Lets not get too close to the edge.
Look. You can see the bridges really well from down here. See that? They used dynamite to rip holes through the supports so nobody could cross them. There are no cars or busses crossing the bridges. No people who can jump far enough to cross the gaps between one side and the other. You can't get into the city now.
Better keep it a secret… how we got in, I mean. Okay?
Ah.
There is a brand new scrawl of graffiti. There, you see? Under the bridge. A dull orange blur, in the shape of a planet. One large ring around a solid orange circle.
I have no idea how the heck someone managed to get it out there, in the middle of the bridge support. There are no boats cruising up and down this river. No HMS Gettysburg. No Tuxedo Princess. No small dinghy's and not so small lifeboats. There is… no one and nothing, down here by the river. Just more empty walks. More broken glass.
The sky has changed colour. It was lilac blue a few minutes ago – sky still stained with chemicals, even though the factories haven't ran for a long time. I think it's going to rain soon.
We'd better get out of the open.
…I did tell you that you can't go back, didn't I?
Fin?
"The magus dee dreams of a stone island in force, dying in poverty, drunk on angel speech which, paradoxically, they have not actually heard. The scales of music tripping up to evade him in perpetual deferral, to create, open outwards the place of definition."
– Richard Mahin
Reviews are appreciated.