Kindle Edition
Amazon
Category:
Horror
Publisher: Kindle Direct Publishing
Type: Fiction
Pages: 31
Copyright: 2 May, 2014
Price: $1.25 (eBook)
In a dystopian Russia, Mizraph lives in the massive prison-concentration camp used to contain he and his people as well as those who hae committed the msot heinous crimes imaginable. After a harrowing failed jailbreak, he is bestowed the responsibility of his brother who was taken from him at birth, and soon decides that he has to escape, not for himself, but for his brother as he goes on a journey that will test his morality and faith in what he believes.
"Midway upon the journey of our life, I found myself within a forest dark, for the straightforward path had been lost." Dante Alighieri, The Inferno
Mizraph looks through the diamonds of a chain-link fence out to a world that doesn't know he exists. He looks out to a world of darkness, where he knows war and death lies. Of course, these things also reside within the walls of the massive prison he and his brethren call Mazland. In a dystopian Russia, war cries out though the world, the skies are always gray, and death is a constant companion to those who reside in the massive prison-concentration camp where Mizraph lives. Mizraph has gone every day of his life beyond his twelfth birthday believing that there is nothing waiting for him in the world, and he has gone every day knowing that his life was insignificant, but when he is bestowed his six year old brother, he suddenly realizes that he has a greater destiny, one that involves escaping the darkness: escaping hell.
In the first episode of this haunting retelling of Dante's Inferno, we are introduced to compelling characters, a dark setting where the wind's song is a constant tune the prisoners tap to, and any man can die, we learn that violence can often be the only answer to peace.
Excerpt
My world is small. Its dimensions, at it’s minimum, are 600 or so feet under the earth, where the coal mines burn; its walls are nearly rectangular. The furthest end is octangular and rests at the top of a steep hill into a great chasm where a river of darkness flows day and night (it is said that if you listen close enough over the wind, you can hear the screams of men's souls who had fallen into the chasm; or rather, those men who had been condemned to the bottom of Hell). Its front walls are square, and the cement floor are made up of diamond tiles, cracked and stripped entirely in some places; there are tall, narrow pyramid watchtowers jutting out of the black forest around the prison, some thirty or forty feet high with sharp, white lights that shine in every direction at night. I commute by foot every day, working from six in the morning to twelve for a single break to six at night. Its maximum edge lies at the rusty, chainlink fence, topped with electric barbed wire--and beyond that, a brick wall some two hundred feet high. There is no chance of climbing, and even if one did manage, he would be shot down by one hundred soldiers who lurk the wall like shadows come to life, along side them their silent companions, massive black dogs the size of bears. The soldiers carry heavy Hecklers, MP38s, and G3A3s in their metal gloved hands; on their backs, great swords that look like spikes jutting out of their shoulders, and their uniforms seem to increase their height by ten feet, their black jackets like the wings of a raven, and when unfurled, their winged death sweeps upon your heart with it’s sharp talons.
Now, I stand at the chainlink fence. My lips are pressed against the frosty metal, the rust creating imprints in the skin around my mouth. My fingers are looped through the diamonds, numb from holding this position for so long, and finally, my eyes are sore from staring at the reaching, grabbing hands of the sea of dead trees, reaching up at the hungry sky and crying out. They ache as they stand still in the cold that burrows beneath their bark and tears them asunder from the inside. There is also the massive, iron tinted mountain range that merges into the sky which wears the same pallor.
Beyond these mountains, I knew not what truly lied, of course the weekly report told of small villages that were raided by smugglers and crime lords searching for Bits and dictators who controlled massive slave trades in the factories that sprinkled the tundra. This is the homeland, this is my home, the land of eternal winter, where the skies remain a constant hue of gray, where the sound of the winter sings the song of sorrow.
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