Erosion

A little thought emerged a while back, it expanded into this as you will read.

In this lonely plateau, with steep walls down to nowhere, at the bottom, it gets cut off by the heavy fog; no one knows how deep this place is. But the villagers on top of this plateau don’t really care as they survive and thrive in their small village. Populated with fifty people, one of them is considered retarded among his peers.

            “So…” I whispered, “How did he became retarded?”

            “Jean… I told you this MANY times…” Kim whispered back. “But if I must say it again, when he was a child, a mere five year old I believe, with a family. But the family is very quiet, very isolated, one day they finally came out into the light, and went to the edge to look around. He wailed to get off his mother’s arm, which the mother let him down, and he wandered to one of the window. When he peered through the window, he noticed his family in the reflection, and saw the ground beneath them cracked, they all sink down, he turned around and ran to the missing ground, his sister hanging on for dear life. He grabbed her by the arms and tried desperately to pull her up while screaming for help. Help arrived but they said that the parents are gone.”

            “Later, his sister became quiet and suicidal, and then she just disappeared. The mayor asked the boy when he became 12, he didn’t say anything, not one word. He got pushed away from his own house, other family moved to there. From that point on, he wandered the edge of the plateau, hoping that his family will climb up the edge to hug him.”

            “Some say, however, that he tries to push people off the edge when they wander too close. No one really knows him now, but why do you want to know about him anyway?”

            “Because, he seems innocent.” I said, staring at him through the window.

            “Innocent? Please! When people try to talk to him, they just get a growl from him, he got violence once, one of the little boys were picking on him last year, calling him a lonely freak. That boy got out of control and grabbed the little boy and dangled him over the edge, he just kept growling at the poor dangling boy. When the mayor saw them, He yelled at the boy to let the dangling boy go. He did nothing but threw the boy back on the ground. The boy then cried and went to his mother. The little boys just left with fear inside them. The mayor slapped the boy for punishment, but rumors say he’ll drop anyone over the edge if they get on his nerves!” Kim growled.

            “Does he have a name?”

            “Mort I believe, it was George before, but he growls at anyone who called him George.”

            “But the little boy kind of deserve to be dangled like that, I would probably do the same thing if someone was picking on me.”

            “Yeah… Oh yeah, I got to go, I got homework and my parents will freak if I don’t get home and start on it.”

            “Ok, see you around.” I smiled, once Kim left, I went out the back door and sneaked toward Mort.

            He was staring down to the fog when I got to him. I walked toward the fog casually, greeted with a growl, I ignored it.

            “So… what do you think of this nice night? It’s raining, lightning, there’s no moon.” I smiled.

            He just growled at me.

            “I’ll take it as you agree with me. I like weathers like this, it’s a shame we can’t have it very often.”

            “Agreed.” He growled.

            I said nothing, but sat down and dangled my legs over the edge, which made Mort growled, so I leaned back so I won’t be able to fall off, which calmed him a bit. The rain stopped, and the moon shined through the clouds. The way the moon drifted across the sky, chasing to the clouds to try and hide behind it, made me very sleepy…

 

            A glare woke me up; I groaned and sat up, realizing I fell asleep last night. I looked around and see Mort sitting on the edge, dangling his legs over the edge, kept staring down at the fog. I crawled closer to the edge and did the same as Mort.

            I started to stare in the fog, after a while of thinking about ditching school, a flash in the fog distracted me. Thinking it’s just my eyes playing trick on me, I kept staring, and it flashed again.

            “You see? That’s a sign of life down there, I tried to get people to look, I made that kid looked, he was picking on me saying that there is no life out in the fogs and I need to stop staring, I grabbed him by his collar and dangled him over the edge so he can get a better look, needlessly to say that he panicked and didn’t even looked. The mayor found out on what I was trying to do and slapped me, telling me that there is no life and if I tried to spread the story again, I will be pushed off the edge, like they did to my family.”

            “I thought the ground they were on broke off and they fell to their death?”

            “That’s a lie they were feeding you, the mayor spread the story and everyone believed it. The truth is, the mayor drugged my parents and pushed them off the edge. They pushed my sister off but she was smart and grabbed on the roots from the holy tree, she started to climb up and another pedestrian helped me pull her up.”

            “Well… I’ll try my best to get everyone to believe me.”

            “Don’t bother, my parents tried that and got themselves killed, you’ll wound up dead if you try.”

            “You sure?”

            “Yes…” He growled.

            “Well, if you want to see life down there, why can’t you just climb down?”

            “Sister did, never come back; I’m worried if I’m the same…”

            “Well it must be better over there if your sister didn’t come back.”

            “I know, but I want to help this community, but…” He trailed off.

            “OH I just remembered something! Mayor’s leaving his office to give a speech to school today, want to sneak in and see if he’s hiding anything?”

            “No thanks, I want to watch the flash.”

            “Ok, I’ll see you tonight,”

“Wait… How old are you?” He asked.

“14, you?”

“Just turned 16 yesterday.”

“Happy belated birthday then.” I smiled, and ran toward the town hall. No security or anyone there, Mayor’s very trusting and knew us all well so he doesn’t need security. I walked up the stairs and went into his office.

I scrambled around in the pile of papers, checking the drawers of files, until I found one letter that read.

 

Dear George,

 

This probably won’t get to you, but it’s worth a try, they’re telling lies about us, I’ve been watching the fog, and I’ve notice flashes everywhere, I know the Mayor’s telling bullshit about how we are the only survivor. If you do manage to get this letter, climb down the steep walls, and look for the flashes.

 

-         Your parents

 

I grabbed the letter, and walked out of the door, but slammed into some heavy wall instead. “Well… well… well… what do we have here?” A voice I recognized as the mayor asked.

“Just doing research.”

“The teacher didn’t ask anything about research when I came over there.” He smiled evilly. “I would let you go, if only you return the favor.” He then start petting my hair slowly, as if I’m a cat. He started to stroke down to my shoulders, I instantly knew what he wants.

“Hell no!” I squirmed out of his stroking arm, which then pinned me to the file cabinet.

“Hell yes, you will like it, you can trust me on that.” He started to close the door and undo his tie, shirt, until his chest is bare. All I can do, being weak and all, is watch him, as he start to undo my shirt’s buttons, I heard a loud bang outside the door. “The hell?” Mayor turned around, another loud bang and the window of the door shattered nothing on the other side. Mayor walked closer, and grunted as he collapsed backward with a brick in his face.

An arm reached through the hole and opened the door, revealing Mort. “I had a feeling…” He shifted uncomfortably.

“Thanks, lets get out of here before he wakes up.”

“Yeah.” He led me out. We walked toward the edge, I handed him the letter. After he finished reading, a tear threatens to crawl down his cheek. “Shall we do what the letter says?”

Before I could answer, the ground rumbles, we turned around, saw the mayor losing balance and crashed into the rumbling ground. The rumbling is so loud that we can’t hear his clearly fierce screaming. The ground started to tilt enough that we started to slide to the edge, we grabbed on to the bushes, the ground crashed hard enough to make the houses fall off the ground.

 

Pain engulfed me as I woke up, fazed visions greeted me. You can’t see the sky no more. Voices chattered up the eerie silence. None of the voices I recognized. “NO! Don’t shoot the boy you idiot! He’s my brother!” One of the voices growled.

“He is wearing the enemy’s clothing; he clearly belonged with them, not us.

“I don’t care! Maybe he didn’t see the flashes? Just rescue him!”

Mort’s voice groans send chills down my back, those groans are clearly painful, just as mine.

“He’s awake! My brother’s awake!”

In my blurry vision, I see a figure walking over me, my finger evilly twitched itself.

“Hey this one’s alive!” The figure yelled back to Mort’s sister. The figure aimed his gun at me.

“NO!” Mort screams over his pain. The figure looked back to Mort, “She’s like me, she understand the village’s evil way, don’t kill her.”

“You converted her?” The figure asked. The figure puts his gun away and picked me up easily. “Very well, I’ll take this one back to base.”

“What happened?” I asked, pain clearly showing in my voice.

“Lets just say Mother Nature hates the village that it eroded the pillars beneath the village to the point where it’s thin as a tooth pick, and one of us ‘accidentally’ knock on it and it snapped.” He put an empathized on accidentally. “But worry not, you and Mort is safe now that they’re gone.”

“Why are we not safe with them?”

“They are a group of terrorist, once they found out that one of us knows that there’s life down here, they slapped the aware ones, and if they tried to convert the others, they drug them and put an explosion on them before pushing them over the edge to bomb us. Now that the converted one has survived, it’s almost as if Mother Nature is with us today.”

“Can I see the eroded part?” I asked, visions are starting to get clear.

“The hospital is right besides it.”

I saw the eroded part, thinner than a tooth pick, freshly broken. Shock started to kick in as I was put on a hospital bed.

Author's Note

Thanks to the 50,000 Words Novel assignments for English class, I'm now not used to writing in shorter stories, so hope you don't mind the "long" story. What do you think?