A rising fall 2nd editio.., p.1
A Rising Fall (2nd Edition), page 1
A RISING FALL
Written by:
C. Sean McGee
A Rising Fall
“love as one; live as you love”
CSM Publishing
The Free Art Collection
Santo André, São Paulo, Brasil
COPYRIGHT © 2013 Cian Sean McGee
Second Edition
All rights reserved. This FREE ART ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, the reader is not charged to access it and the downloader or sharer does not attempt to assume any part of the work as their own. Free art, just a writer’s voice and your conscious ear.
Cover Design: C. Sean McGee
Author Photo: Carla Raiter
This novel was written under the influence of:
Grace for Drowning by Steven Wilson
A Rising Fall: b00k 001 in the dystopian trilogy CITY: a literary concerto
for keli, nenagh & tomás
00110000
He was sure his arm was broken. The pain from the blow coursed from his elbow through to his fingertips. His legs too were beginning to give way now. They ached courageously and they were so heavy. Each step made a mile of its own and the inevitability of collapse was beckoning. Still he threw off any and all ideas of stopping.
On he rushed through the mangled weave of broken cement, ripping skin on plates of loose gravel and broken glass.
On he rushed, never wincing for a second, swallowing; in every shallow breath, the agonizing defeat echoing through every fibre of his body.
On he rushed, unsure of whom or what it was that hounded his piles of footsteps.
On he rushed, certain of his uncertainty but unwilling to challenge his paranoia.
On he rushed and he never lost pace.
He moved through the maze of concrete structures with a comfortable ease and an unsettled feeling of familiarity. He knew every brick that lay strewn in his path and given time, on any other day; without the shadow of death creeping upon his own, he could tell you exactly how and why it was that each brick came into being and its being where it was; its purpose before the blackout and its purpose now.
None of this now though, for now was pressing.
The fractured cement beneath his feet governed his stride and his knowledge of every fissure meant that the probability of coming unstuck and losing his rhythm was far less than whatever was on his trail, sweeping him from his feet and devouring him under this choking black sky.
On he rushed through the narrow street, his feet heavy, his mind light. The endless night; beleaguering his sight and his mind; was of no assurance to him at all, for on his scent was neither man nor beast. He was running from darkness itself.
The streets narrowed further now so his hands; outstretched, could run against the walls of the structures that stood unconvincingly to his left and to his right, on the path set before him and of those out of sight. His fingers and his toes urged him in a way that his eyes and ears could not.
His left arm swung in a lifeless fashion, catching on exposed nails that lined the walls of these archaic structures. He could pull this limb to his body with his right arm but it would be frivolous and counterproductive. Until this rush subsided, his right arm was his navigator and his left merely a counterweight. The searing pain of tearing skin and broken bones paled in comparison to the suffocating fear that galvanized his perpetual stride.
His fingertips manoeuvred laboriously across the crumbling brick work feeling for a shape he could recognise. The pounding of footsteps in his wake reverberated not in his ears, but in his consciousness. The air was completely still; a heavy blanket of nothingness. As has always been, an asphyxiating toxic black cloud flowered from the heavens down to his feet. No light or sound could penetrate yet on he rushed.
And his pace quickened; a familiar shape. Now count steps he thought. “Sixteen, left, seventeen, right; left foot will slip towards a crevice. Hold firm in the crevice, spring to the right, twenty eight degrees inclination.”
His foot slipped just as he predicted sliding into a crevice but just as he moved to deflect into the opening to his right, something small and agile latched itself to his left calf. He entered the small opening yanking hard on a rusted chain as he dashed through. Behind him the opening vanished, as did the beast that was attached to his leg. He lay silent and discreet, foetal in the centre of the room.
Now that he was still, he could feel the pain from his left arm pulsating throughout his every being.
‘Safe’, he thought, as long as he remained still, and so he held onto his suffering. A marching procession moved pass the blocked entrance, their thunderously stampeding footsteps came loud, and then fell silent. Neither man nor beast had lost his scent. Not one, not the other, but an execrable amalgamation of the two.
His breath though hollow at first began to take shape, and with it, not a sensation of calm but one of calming washed over him like a stream of cold ale on a drunkard’s beard. It impregnated his blood and spawned at his fingertips, his digits twitching rapidly, surpassed only by the incapacitation of his heaving lower limbs.
“Dese legs o mine” he thought, “Dey take anchor witout order. Dey listen not ta command but instead determine dis immediate state o misdirection. Damn dese insubordinate limbs. If I could do witout em, I’d be witout hunger, if just for one more day.”
He thought of this rebellion, and he obeyed. Still and stupid, he sat in absolute silence.
“Girl” he said, wavering his head and right arm towards a crevice in the darkest black of the room.
“We have to move” he followed, choking on his own breath, the silence begotten only by the screeching of two pieces of rusted metal turning on one other as the hinges of a nearby cupboard hath said upon the world, “A secret in thine womb seeks absence of thee.”
A tiny hand slipped from the darkness into the sight of the man who in a moment jumped to his feet, yanking on the frail arm and taking with him, the young girl in his flight. Run, run, run chanted mind to foot.
“Don’t look back” the man urged to the young girl.
The man’s hand clenched unyieldingly around the young girl’s dragging her through a darkly invisible landscape of charred concrete. The beads of sweat that ran from their foreheads to their eyes stung wildly but it didn’t fault their pace or direction.
On they rushed, through the blanket of black sky that abounded them.
On they rushed, vomiting as their breaths gave way to the tremendous waves of bile. Foot after foot, print by print, they weaved and dodged their way down a corridor of decomposing buildings; the man focused on a shadowy image far in the deep-set of his conscience, a destination of sorts.
On they rushed and a horde of footsteps rushed with them until they could rush no more. A great structure, a formidable sight; as high as the out stretch of night, beckoned their freedom and fraught their sight.
Stopped. Breathing heavily. Turned over upon themselves. Gripping their heaving chests. Exhausted. Beaten. Exposed. Frightened. Coughing violently and disgorging the vulgarity of screams that drowned out the silence and calm in everything. They could rush no more.
Fire, then filled the sky.
day001
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On a cold grey August morning under a wisp of clatter, a young man rose from his dirty old mattress and shook off his slumber. Motioning towards an open window, he pulled his arms up over his shaven head, gazing vacantly into the long grey horizon. Behind him a woman stirred, kicking puffs of dust in the air as she contorted her body in her rousing sleep. The squeaking of rusted springs under her shifting weight killed the silence in the young man’s mind.
He moved his attention away from the window where outside, the world sat without colour and without life. As he turned, a single drop of rain fell through his reflection on the pane of glass, seemingly as if his ghostly image had shed a tear.
He stood over the end of the mattress, his arms at his side, simply watching in silent admiration at the woman before him. Her true beauty for a moment defeated her immediate appearance of emaciation.
The young man in that moment saw beyond her fragility and beyond the sores that had ravaged her body. Before him lay a voluptuous woman with pale white skin, warm brown eyes, supple firm breasts, her face; a pillar of affection, proportion and symmetry, her hands; unscarred and gentle with long slender fingers and painted nails, and her hair; elegantly styled, cut to the nape of her neck, midnight black with subtle tints of scarlet and lilac.
As she stretched out the sleep in her soul, pulling her arms together outspread beyond her head and kicking her feet up into the air, the young man sat idle, lost in a chimerical stare, outside of reason. A strange sensation became him; a visceral warmth engorging his mind and his loins, smothering that cold zero:one rationale etched into the core of his consciousness; lust, desire, want.
The woman pulled a blanket over her exposed body, overcome by a sheepish playfulness completely unbeknownst to her. She; feeling her man’s longing stare peel away her thin layers of flesh and magnetize her catatonic inner self, whisked herself up and motioned towards him with the blanket trailing at her feet.
Her man stood there, taken aback. His conscious mind detoxified from its delusionary state leaving him awash with confusion, a grey state so unlike anything he had felt in such a longing of time.
His mind felt like an unfinished painting.
Once again he returned to
The dog marched off triumphantly into the smoky distance, his tail wagging haplessly, grinning with his jaws clenching his trophy; a tiny slither of meat. His fur was charcoaled and matted and his body wore the effects of many a close encounter with man and beast. His big blue eyes scanned left and right as his little paws patted away at the broken cement. Around his neck, a remnant of an obedient past; a red cloth collar still in one piece housing a small silver medallion with the word ‘Ruff’ engraved upon it. The dog; Ruff, ventured onwards, his senses heightened, his pace quickening, his journey well underway.
The Woman; dressed against the skin of her lover, rested her chin on his muscular shoulder and her breasts against his naked back, staring with him out of the window. It was another bleak cold grey August morning, the spitting rain making the air dense, chilled and unwelcome, just enough rain to blotch up your windows, but not enough to wash away the filth caught in the frame.
Weather like this was no reason to wake at all. She belonged under the covers; cosy, being wrapped up in the arms of her lover, his warm breath running down the nape of her neck, his right hand gently caressing her long slender thigh as he whispers the words ‘I love you’, and a shiver creeps the length of her spine. They should stay there, under the covers, until the sun reaped enough courage to step out from underneath its own depression.
“Not now” said Marcos, negating her sensual address.
“Oh wonderful, thanks, way to make me feel wanted, you prick” she said, tearing her hands from his body in protestant disappointment and exiting for the bathroom.
She slammed the door shut and sat at the edge of the bath tub with her hands over her face. Her heart started to race and her breath became heavy and it carried with it, her evening supper.
As her stomach convulsed she threw herself in the direction of the toilet and as she vomited, waves of heat washed through her mind. She started to sweat and her vision started to blur. As she sat foetal, with her back against the toilet bowl and her head curved into her body, her mind started to drift and she could hear her lover in the other room on his cell phone.
He had barely even gotten out of bed and was already attached to that thing. He can barely string two words together to say how he feels or why he won’t let her touch him, but he has no qualms about negotiating extended terms and aligning expectations and evaluating corporate governance and whatever it is these guys actually talk about at six thirty in the morning while their wives’ outstretched hands fall upon absent approval and transparent stares and vacant self-assured smiles and condescending waving of hands ushering them into another room and worse yet, the lifting of one finger before the mouth and miming disapproval whilst never breaking from the phone. She could have despised him, but she didn’t.
One day was not the sum of a lifetime and she knew his absence had reason but she would never discuss it; and he would never allow it, not with him, and not with herself. She sat on the floor and listened to the sound of his voice as he carried on in his business manner.
Closing her eyes she could picture him exactly; he, standing in front on the balcony, his left hand moving between the crème railing and pointing out into the distance over his beloved city, his eyes; focused and unwavering, opened assiduously and his facial and ear muscles flexed pulling his ears up and back like an eagle’s soaring wings and tensing his defined face every time that he rebutted an argument. And the force in his persuasion, in the intensity of his voice, in the construction of his confidence made her heart beat faster and her lips moisten.
A wave of warmth flooded her veins and deluged her mind, sinking her heavy stomach and numbing her toes. She turned to the bowl and gave in to tremendous waves of convulsions squeezing her stomach under and over itself and casting her out of conscious dream and into a waking reality.
She continued to vomit for many minutes that to her felt like many hours. When finally the tides of unease receded, she collected first her sight, which wavered but then narrowed to focus on the filthy tiles of the dark freezing bathroom and to the silence of her lover, of whom she knew, like every morning, stood in passive conscious engagement with The City he loved, staring out of the tops of buildings, down upon the colonies of people moving below, following the labyrinth of spaces between the buildings where the streets carved a web of accessibility through the grotesquely large structures.
She knew too that he stood with pencil in hand sketching away at a tiny piece of paper folded over many times on itself or failing that, etching away at his mind, romanticising and making permanent the contours and epic dimension of the sprawling city at his foresight. She picked her aching body from the floor and ran a cold tap, cupping her hands and nearing her senses as the cold water trickled through the gaps in her fingers, running down her wrist and to the bend of her arm, finally in drips coming to rest on the floor beside her blistered feet. With every drop she felt her heart beating, in tune, in rhythm, falling away from its source, but in her ears she heard not the sound of water touching tile, but the sound of static droning from an old ham radio.
“It’s not the hour to be here. We will make a false impression if we have to depend on your self-detention any longer” said Marcos through the closed doors, his voice splitting hairs in her broadening sense of solicitude.
She stared into the grimy mirror and vanished into her own reflection. The static grew louder and compounded her conscious listening. It beat on her emotions. It upset her stomach and it settled in her bowels.
As Marcos cleared his throat, obviously to call attention to his own needs, his voice too wore a static dress and every word crippled her sensibilities and made her want to scream maddeningly directly into his face, ‘It wasn’t my fault’.
“My famine bothers me” she said, her voice muffled by the bathroom door. “Marcos, are you hearing me? I’m sick” she continued.
In the other room Marcos continued to stare listlessly out of the living room window at his city and in doing so he felt neither high nor low, neither fine nor foul. He simply rested his sight on the columns of concrete structures that stood defiant yet without meaning.
The bathroom door swung open and then slammed shut. The woman, dressed as one, in pale white, walked to where Marcos stood and rested her drawn face once again against his neck, gazing with him at the cold grey August morning.
“Love as one” she said in absolute monotony.
Marcos’ eyes fell upon the young boy still rolling about in the dirt then looking to a heap of clothes dumped beside him on the floor. From the pile he took a shirt and pants and then quickly dressed himself; he, as zero, in black. Black pants, black combat boots and a black shirt adorned with a white heart.
“Live as you love” he said as they walked out of their room and made their way into the foggy and drizzling, cold grey August morning.
On their way to where it was they were going, they passed through a myriad of obstacles; some bodies lying about lifeless in their path and many a people standing in line, simply waiting; a common sight to be seen in a city with no light, no name, no power and no purpose. People seemed to wander aimless until they encountered a queue of any sort. Reserved and unspoken, they would simply take their place at the rear of the line and like those before them, wait as their anticipation built and their purpose was defined.
Most stood with their hands crossed or by their side, their heads hanged low, lifting only occasionally to acknowledge others passing down the line to enter the queue; nodding acceptingly, offering a quarter smile or simply diving momentarily into their stare, following them with their eyes as the person took the tail of their starving expectation ensuring that in fact they are waiting in the right place.
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