Red Stitch

See my own artwork here.

For fun, I thought I'd post a slice of a different short I've been tinkering with. It's nothing serious, but it's fun.

"It was cold in that place, and he felt terribly alone, but he couldn’t stop. If he stopped he might remember that he was tired, that they were all gone, that the beast stalked the night, and that he was afraid to die. But most of all he was afraid of the dreams because in dreams things were good and sweet and whole again, and he knew that they didn’t matter anymore.

Red dust and gritty clouds slithered through the sky. They hovered like grimy specters in the twilight, and as Threads scrambled over the rubble, he did all he could to avoid them. He was a wiry, thin young man who frequently tripped but seldom fell, and he kept throwing looks over his shoulder. He was ragged and disorderly, with heavy patches in his clothes and an angry cut in his left cheek. Poles and lines of yarn and wire and hooks poked from his pack, which lay like a run-over turtle shell on his back. It gave him the dreary look of a lost explorer.

Eyeing the mass of red fog, he pressed a rag to his mouth before clambering over an obliterated wall. Specks of gravel lay quiet in the ground, and some crushed to sand beneath his sneakers. He continued through a forest of twisted metal rods and discarded tires, stopping and starting, with his heart beating like a leaky engine. Somewhere out in the city prowled the beast with slobbering teeth and shining claws.

Walking gave him only the comfort of movement, that he was doing something. He wasn’t actually getting anywhere. Tick was the navigator; Tick could lead them to safe places because he always knew how things fit together. But Tick was dead and Threads was alive, and Threads had no sense of direction. Someone’s mother might say he’d get lost in his own closet, and if he had a closet perhaps he would, but it was more likely that he’d hide in it and never come out again. Regardless, he wouldn’t find anything good while going like this unless he fell over it. He had to get higher, to see what was around, and go from there. Ridges of trash and debris, old cars and decayed machines towered all around him. They blocked him, kept him hidden, but they also obstructed him. At the thought of standing in the open, naked for all the empty world, his spine went numb. If he fell, no one would catch him, and if the beast came, no one would warn him.
But darkness crept in from behind the clouds, and he knew he had to go, so Threads climbed.

Bits of wood crumbled away from his palms; rusty helmets clanked when he used them for foot holds. Ash and dust tumbled into his face until he felt half blind and hacked into his jacket. He could see the sky while meandering, and he found it orange and heavy. Threads did not often look at the sky anymore, but sometimes he caught himself searching the plumes of smog for something. He could hardly remember what.
A metal finger, perhaps once a television antenna, snagged a loose line from his pack. Threads felt a tug and wrenched away in panic, feeling hot breath on his neck and claws at his throat. He wheeled around, arms thrashing, and nearly dropped to the ground, but at the last moment he pressed himself against the wall. All around him, things fell and crashed, but he had his eyes shut tight and bit into his arm to keep from screaming.
It went quiet, after a while.
He moved to test his luck and felt the tug once more. Behind him, he saw one of his pack wires coiled around the antenna. Red faced, he worked quickly to set it free, and though his hands trembled and the knot pulled tight, he released it and set upward once more. Tick once said that Threads had a surgeon’s hands, and Threads, who always found compliments rather awkward, never thought much about it. But in truth, he was always good at unraveling things. And fixing them, if possible.
He came up over the ledge and crawled atop a slab of cement. It was luke warm and splotched with grey sludge. At first, he did not look around, not because he was ignoring his surroundings but because he took to drawing little things in the dust. He spelled his name and wondered how long it’d stay. Satisfied, even prepared, Threads looked out into the wastes.

The horizon bled into the backdrop of a grey sky pregnant with ash. Sick yellow lights flickered beyond the clouds, like fire, or the pale glow of a bar. Some people said that the sun was exploding, back when it started, but Threads didn’t think so.

The streets were murdered by some tremendous force. Black slabs were flung on top each other, forming mutated shapes and inbred facial expressions that grinned and snarled. Buildings loomed over the sidewalks—shops with heavy metal doors and apartment complexes with rotten boards crisscrossing in the windows. They were old, tired buildings, rising up in a cemetery of machinery, brick, metal and stone. Tanks and missiles and useless guns clotted the city and spread out bullets like candy. Dirty clothes and paper fluttered like mock birds through the air. They spun and twirled and danced and no one except for Threads watched. Newspapers were everywhere, soggy with oil, the ink on the pages running together into grotesque shapes. He saw a noose in one; the beast in another.
Nothing else moved.
Threads sighed. Specifically, his eyes sought well founded buildings that were least likely to fall on top of him while he slept. He lived inside rotten houses before, and it wasn’t only the danger of a cave-in that unnerved him. There was something twisted about a wounded house, like they took the damage personally, like they were going crazy with all the ghosts hiding in the attic. They were predators, and he was always afraid they wouldn’t let him leave. The door would slam shut and no matter what he tried he’d never get it open because the house wanted to gobble him up.

Few of the buildings looked sturdy, but the most wholesome stood to the north. Threads estimated five miles or so of hiking over crap piles and about an hour of light to help him. He thought maybe he could get there without trouble if he hurried."

This post's featured artwork, seen below, is by Avid. It's also how I feel right now. Click the image for a bigger view.