Fragments

As the title suggests, nay, makes obvious to a blind man on a galloping horse, this page contains stuff that isn't finished. You'll note that that's 'isn't finished full stop' rather than 'isn't finished yet', as the stuff here might never get finished, or it might. I don't know. After all, as Hume tells us, we've no way of knowing what will happen in the future as there is no garentee that the future will resemble the past.

This is something I've been working on, on and off, for a few years now. The main characters are a girl, named Holly Marie Jensen, who has lived her life in fear of Them and Socrates Jones - a cog in the machinery of the oppressive government. Other than that, I won't say much. I don't know how long this story will be when its finished, or how long it will take me, or even where I'm going with it, but I'm going to be posting it here anyway.

Click. Twenty tiny artificial suns flickered into blazing light all at once. Jensen's eyes snapped shut, she wasn't used to this. This light. She abhorred it. She shrank back into her corner, not that there was much further she could go, we was wedged between the two walls, unable to turn or move.

  In the doorway stood the man, clad in a suit. A blue suit. He was one of Them. Jensen shrunk back further still, as if that were a possibility. Her frail, fragile frame quivered with fear. The man strode into the middle of the room, glowering at her, his face a mask of indifference.

There was quite clearly no escape for her. Jensen had been found. Found by one of Them. And when you're found by one of Them, there is quite clearly no escape. "Jensen, Holly Marie?" the man barked. A statement or a question? It hardly mattered. Jensen wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of hearing her voice. She simply sat there, hugging her knees to her chest, hiding her face, smeared with running make up, behind her long, dark, matted hair. The man strode over to her. "You have been found guilty of Acts of Difference and Defiance. These will not go unpunished. You will come with me to the Illegal Practitioners Processing Centre, where sentencing and punishment will be carried out." He almost broke his stone-faced, emotionless mode with a sadistic grin as he added "There is no escaping sentence, madam. Resistance is useless." He adjusted his black glasses, Jensen didn't move a muscle. "Stand up." Still, she refused to move. Her mother had always told her "When They come for you, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing." Well, she had always told her that up until They had come for her when Jensen was six years old, after that she never spoke again. "Stand up. Immediately." There was no shouting. No yelling. Not even the slightest change in the tone of his voice. Of course there wasn't, he was one of Them. They never raised their voices. That would be too human. Far too human. "Stand up." He hauled Jensed to her feet, a handfull of her jet black hair in his clenched fist.

Socrates grinned as the woman screaming in anguish. It was a rare treat, for someone in his line of work, to get to see a really first rate torture like this one. The men were real professionals, you could tell.

The prisoner was, Socrates has heard, guilty of 'Crimes Against All Humanity'. He scoffed inside, repeating the phrase 'Crimes Against All Humanity' in his head, concluding that - by the letter of the law; just about everyone on the whole damn planet was guilty of 'Crimes Against All Humanity' - and that anyone with even a shred of morallity would agree that the Agency for the Correction of the Morally and Socially Devient, better known the the general public as 'Them', were the ones who were truly guilty of 'Crimes Against All Humanity'.

The thought brought a slight twinge of remorse to Socrates's heart - he had that shred of morallity, but years of practice had taught him how to hide it to an expert degree.

It was probably just as well, he reflected, since knowing how to hide it was just about the only thing seperating himself from the howling mess of a woman writhing in agony as electric pulses shot through her genitals on the far side of the bullet-proof pelxiglass screen.

Turning away from the first-class torture, Socrates made his way towards the exit of the Freedomville Facillity for the Diagnosis and Correction of the Devient, better known as 'There' to the residents of the city Socrates's own 'Deviant' grandmother had told him had been called 'Paris', in a time she often talked about, the time 'Before the War'.

Socrates reflected on the 'deviant' ramblings he'd heard from his grandmother about the multitude of things which supposedly happened 'before the war'. He didn't know what, if anythiing, the word 'war' meant, or how such a small word could cause the changes it apparently had acording to his grandmother. She often spoke of different languages, besides American, and of places with names like 'France' and 'Germany', it couldn't be true, could it?

The clash of steel-on-steel echoed throughout the valley as the battle raged all around. Erasmus, griping the hilt of his enchanted blade with both hands, charged towards the nearest hobgoblin – just as the foul-smelling creature hacked into the arm of his comrade, Huntley, he believed, though he could not be sure as the beaver of the man’s helm obscured his face.

            The fiery sword cut deep into the flesh of the goblinoid, dropping it to the ground as its own black blood gurgled in its throat. If it was not killed outright, Erasmus was safe in the knowledge that it was not long for the world, and soon its twisted soul would face the eternal torments of the Abyss.

            Standing as he did over the fallen hobgoblin, Erasmus looked out across the valley. As far as he could tell, he stood alone amidst the baying mob of evil humanoids. It seemed that he was about to make the kind of valiant last stand that was expected from a Knight-Lieutenant of the Flaming Sword.

            His comrades, the other knights of his company lat strewn across the dusty ground of the battlefield – each one dead or dying, all soaked in blood, both their own and that of their goblinoid foes.

            It had been a slaughter. An absolute slaughter. The hobgoblin warband had surprised them, outflanked them and outmanoeuvred them – and then they had ambushed them. A slaughter.

            An arrow whistled through the air and embedded itself in Erasmus’s shoulder as his magical broadsword sliced cleanly through the neck of his newest attacker, a smaller runt of a hobgoblin with a serious of hideous, disfiguring scars scattered about its contorted facial features.

            Even with the increasing number of hobgoblin which had died upon his sword, or at the hands of his courageous companions ere they themselves had been hacked down, Erasmus was completely and hopelessly outnumbered. An ordinary man, any ordinary man, would have thrown down his sword and fled. An ordinary man would not have continued this hopeless fight in the face of such impossible, insurmountable odds.

            Erasmus Headsman was no ordinary man. Erasmus Headsman was a Knight-Lieutenant of the Most Noble and Sacred Order of the Flaming Sword. The most courageous, most skilled and most powerful order of Paladins in all of the Haupan Empire.

            Calling out in prayer to Strom, the Mighty God of War and the Champion of all the Deities, Erasmus thrust the enchanted steel of his broadsword through the throat of the nearest of his foes, only to find himself struck across the back with the bastard sword in the hands of yet another of the filthy creatures.

            Wincing from the shock of the blow, though the blade had failed to penetrate his field plate, Headsman swung around, his enchanted weapon glowing with magical flames as cut deeply into the warty flesh of the larger goblinoid, it’s black blood gushing forth and splattering the knight.

There was no time for Erasmus to focus on this, there was hardly enough time for the fact that the blood of the slain beast stained his scarlet tunic and splattered his clean-shaven countenance before the hail of arrows was upon him, nor was there time for him to count the arrows ripping through the air towards him, before two or three had struck him. The metal of his field plate stopped two of them – but the third struck a chink and bit into his flesh.

Recalling the countless hours he had drilled and practice, the young knight gripped the hilt of the weapon from which his order drew its name and charged towards the hobgoblin archers, loosing the rounded shield from his back and using it to deflect as many of the oncoming arrows as was possible as he once more called upon All-Mighty Strom to grant him honourable death or heroic victory.

Despite his best efforts, Headsman still found himself struck by several of the barbed projectiles. Calling out once more to his Lord, this time pleading with the Champion of the Gods to grant him courage, he continued his charge – bounding over the bloodied corpses of his fallen comrades and the reeking carcasses of the slain goblinoids alike.

            The heaven’s roared with thunder as sheet like rain began to pour, obscuring Erasmus’s vision and slowing his movements. This was no natural storm, he knew that. This was just another form of attack. Through the howls of the foot-soldiers as he fought through them, and the din of the torrent, he could hear the guttural chanting of the shaman.

Squinting through the downpour, the young knight located his quarries. Standing atop a boulder in the midst of the battle they stood, the hobgoblin leader – a colossal brute with a mighty two-handed sword in hand, and cowering behind him the shaman who had called forth the magical rain.

Even now, the runt was beginning the chant which would call forth another magical effect. Erasmus leapt into the air, his magical blade cleaving through the shoulder of one of the goblinoids who stood between him and his goal.

Suddenly, the arrow pierced his throat – and everything went black. His sword clattered to the ground, its magical flames fizzling out as he lost his grip on the hilt.