The Suburb-Zone

This is the beginning of a story I haven't finished. Title (and everything), is strictly 'working'.

Everything is as it should be. That’s what Mom likes to say when she’s upset. She wipes her brow with an oven mitt and stuffs her face with the leftovers from breakfast. Picks at the tape on the phone and twists it into a perfect genome.

She’s not a domestic woman. It’s true, her cakes and protein-waffles are more than adequate. Sometimes we even catch her practicing when we get home early from one of the drills. She’ll be swirling around the kitchen, grasping in all directions for forgotten boxes of flavor flakes, juggling the butter and the eggs and the flakes in a cloud, throwing them like paint at the unsmiling cooker.  When we swing open the door she reaches for the phone, her animation straining through the receiver like canola oil.

It’s just me and Mom and my little brother Charlie. It’s been that way for as long as we’ve been hauled up here. ‘The Suburb-Zone’, it’s called. Someone must have gotten a real kick out of that. There’s a ‘Metro-Zone’ too, and even an ‘Agri-Zone’. It’s like that everywhere.

I know what you’re probably thinking. ‘Oh great, another zombie apocalypse, another great plague dystopian gooey smooch-fest’. If I were you, I’d hold on tight to that idea for at least another minute. I envy you. I do. I envy everyone who doesn’t know and can imagine a despair of tangible, commercial origin. Sometimes I sit up late and skim through those scenarios, altering mine so I can drink in the asphalt air and taste the significance of our era. But as soon as the quarter hour hits, the brigade of steel-plated buses steams and settles into its choreography outside the window, and I remember that civilization is as alive and well as ever. So yeah, hold on to that post-apocalyptic bullshit.

Sometimes I wonder if the sameness is in my mind, and not a fact of living when we do. What if it’s a vision I’m having, like one of those waking dreams they hawk at any of the corner shops in Metro-Zone? You shoot a little thumbtack into a neck vain, and suddenly you’re in a tundra or in orbit over one of Jupiter’s moons. Each trip is a singular experience, but bottled, exacting, we know, not some subjective freak out like the Mescaline leaves I’ve read about. We know cause we’ve split the doses.

All these ‘Memo-Shots’ cost the same, and they’re not labeled. They’re all pinned up on this shiny perforated rail, in order of the color of their wrappings, from light to dark. Each gives off a distinctive aura. One of the green ones was of sea glass, I remember, and somehow entangling. A deep bluish one was oppressive and endless, constricting and limitless all at once. The one that caught my eye was the red one. It pulsed and glittered, and something in it wailed of a mutated cottage with warped halls and a striking clock. Just looking in its direction began to tear me out of myself, prying me out of bones and stretching me onto the shoddy ceiling, so I began to watch myself in the shop, as this ‘uninvited other’. The red fear.  There must be something to the packaging, but whatever it is, it’s beyond me.

Each Memo-Shot lasts for its own duration. Time flails about in zero gravity when you’re ‘Memo-rized’, so you can lose track of things pretty quickly. One time I lived for three months in a place called ‘Africa’. It was hot and dusty and there were lots of strange creatures. I woke up one morning and it was chilly and the buses were gliding in like specters, and Charlie was propped up and watching me, a sneaky smile climbing the corners of his lips. It wouldn’t be that big of a surprise if I woke up one morning and Mom and Charlie turned out to be the unfamiliar creatures.

            A gong ripples decibels outwards, invading my ear canal. I groan and turn over on the mattress. It’s just a recording - where would you buy an actual gong, anyway? It’s not the kind of instrument you learn to play. The gong vibrates again, increasing in discomfort. This is Mom’s doing.

            ‘Get-up, get-up’, the reverberations coo, and I smell her perfume, and her pancakes. She’s not upset; she’s firm and soothing. She’d never program in her less flattering emotions.

            As the discomfort crescendos into literal pain, I yank the sheets off and slide onto the floor. I fold my feet onto the pressure sensors, which radiate mild warmth. The gonging subsides. I glance over at Charlie, who’s writhing like a crumpled insect. Always the one to test his pain threshold. ‘Dreams are worth their weight in waking headaches,’ someone once said. I’d inscribe that onto his Journey Plaque. A cruel thought. 

Reviews

[KAin]

I enjoy the faded colours of this piece - there's a Nietzschean lack of faith in humanity in the undercurrents of this work... I certainly enjoyed it, as well as the annoyed voice of the narrator, determined to see things "half-empty", as it were. I've been trying to do what you've done in this piece, which is the matter of addressing the reader directly, which i see K.N. Lorenzen mentioned - there are very few authors who get it right - and i think it lends itself better to a post-modern style. An author who i think was very successful with it was Gene Wolfe, in his "Book of the New Sun". (what made it interesting was that it was a fantasy setting, but i digress.) Obviously setting and voice have something to do with it, and i think you've managed to do this quite effectively this time around, though in what I've seen they usually sound a little heavy-handed and tend to take a lot on faith on the part of the reader. Again, i think you've managed to avoid these pitfalls, through the simple strength of your prose.

I must also compliment you on the depth of the character you created - it's clear that we will require several chapters to understand him and his story, but you've created a powerful framework for the reader to understand and to identify, to agree and disagree with his views - it's a rare thing to accomplish in so short a span. Well written, Thaddius. Keep writing.

[Thaddius]

Thanks, I read this awhile ago while at work, and I'm grateful for your in depth and intelligent feedback. I've been working on consequent chapters. This is an experiment in long-form process more than anything else. I'm eager to see how many ends I can tie, how well I can carry off the whispers of resolution my subconscious tantalizes me with, and what the end result of my poetic prose may be. Will it be readable? Read on. Haha. But seriously, thanks for the character depth remark. Mean a lot. Not least because this guy isn't exactly me

[Ashley Beeson]

I LOVE the idea behind this story! One thing is that it gets a bit confusing when you start talking about the market place and stuff like that and those bottles. I would considering slowing down that part and lengthen it so that you can include all of those amazing details but still have the reader fully understand what you are talking about! But in all: LOVE LOVE LOVE!!

[Thaddius]

brilliant advice. I totally loaded too much into that scene. I should drop a line about it, and then come back to it later. I was making it up on the spot, so I wanted to establish the mythology for myself. But it ended up too 'front-loaded'. Glad you enjoyed it!

[Dhaye]

Hmmnn..nice prologue to a short novel. This is interesting since you have only revealed a very small detail in the life on the edge the city (specifically about a family).
It motivates the readers to wait for the next chapters.
You have started it well. Keep writing. =)

[Thaddius]

Thanks - yeah, creating mysteries and alluding to monumental truths without outright telling them was my goal. I wanted to whet the reader's palate, to make this addictive. I could iron so much stuff out though

[Einstein Noodle]

nice ... with a wake up like that what will their day be like? .. as I was reading I was wondering where is the focus ?? .. then the last three paragraphs brought it all to a point for me ... I enjoyed reading ...
E.

[Thaddius]

yea, the focus is a good point. an above review describes it as 'meandering', which I'm glad for. I am figuring out how to balance inner monologue and the thought process of the protag with action. His memories serve as a good intro to the world, a clean way to sneak exposition. I may have loaded too much of this upfront. If so, its literally because I was inventing the world as I started telling the story. So I agree with all you say - I did tie things up, but it could be much, much cleaner, now that I know where I need to go. Not too clean, though.

[Caradoc]

Interesting and well written. I have spotted no mistakes in SPAG and it has an even, steady pace to it. I will say that it feels incredibly unfinished. In fact, I would peg this is a prologue to a much longer tale, perhaps at the beginning of a novella. There's definitely more to this one than you show us in these few paragraphs.

Run with this and see where it takes you.

-Caradoc

[Thaddius]

Haha it is 'incredibly unfinished'. It was almost a bad move to put something so rough and incomplete up here to receive the full review treatment. I really just wanted to feel out if people liked the story and the prose. It may just become a novella. Thanks for the feedback

[Caradoc]

You're welcome.

[Tina Louise UK]

An interesting start, really enjoyed hun...look forward to more :) x

[Thaddius]

thanks - I look forward to continuing this