Hint of The Continent

This is a long post so bear with me.

This excerpt is from the first short story of eleven short stories, a collection called The Continent that is preamble to a novel, Elsewhere. Here's the project description I sent in with my admissions materials to Lesley University (hoping to go next year).

The Continent will be a collection of eleven short stories, each following an individual in one of ten cities of the fictional landmass, Continent. The story of the eleventh individual will follow him through what he has participated in, seen, or heard of in regards to the events of the previous ten. He is the subject the following novel, Elsewhere, in which he returns fifteen years later to Continent to face his own, and many other, demons.

These short stories are an exploration of individual experiences within a degraded society. Each character faces some facet of the totalitarian-like, corporate driven syndicate, Sage, as it conducts its operations with little regard to human cost, societal values, or any brand of justice. Sage’s nihilistic bent is either shared or shunned by the characters.

Most, if not all, of the characters are haunted by a lack of intercourse (both sexual and conversational). This leads to acts of depravity, of escapism, of sado-masochism, and creates an overwhelming sense of alienation and loneliness; all the while natural forces surround, at times intrude or even bombard their already tumultuous lives.

In some characters, this leads to sociopathic behavior that is neither condemning, punishable, or off-setting. At least it isn’t to many of the Continent’s denizens. Violent crime is routine, and only punishable if it happens to work against Sage. The syndicate’s pseudo-judicial system holds military-like tribunals to punish and execute the worst offenders, all behind closed doors.

As for the cities themselves, they are an eclectic collection of dystopian dynamism. These include the urban monstrosity (Urbanopolis); a desert shanty-city with over a dozen palace-like prisons (Baron); a derelict, ramshackle town that has been without rain for over a year (Fringe); and even a city surrounded by agro-chemical processing plants that have poisoned much of the Continent’s drinking water and shorelines (Nautis). Characters and cities alike will exhibit a wide range of personalities and conditions creating a sense of incredible instability and lack of hope. It is not to say that the stories have no positivity, or that rays of hope do not shine through, but The Continent is a dreary lead-up to the final character’s fate and subsequent adventure in Elsewhere. It is in that story he matures and gains a sense of right and wrong, compassion, and justice, whereas in The Continent he is completely devoid of such sensibility.


Digs
Location: Fringe

Digs knew something was off when a new patron whined, “Salt!” quietly and harshly through his teeth. He wasn’t exactly a patron—never ordered anything from the bar. He was just in a dire, inexplicable need of a single item.

“Don’t have any salt at the moment, umm…” Digs replied, rotating his mythically large hand about the air.

It took a moment for the man to get it. “Oh, uh, Prad, Prad,” he answered jerkily.

“Well, Prad, like I said, I’m fresh out.” A lie. But this fellow had a subtle aura of distrust and failure glowing about him, and a faint hum that was a song of some past thing. Digs wasn’t about to satisfy him just yet. Normally, for any drifter, for any woebegone soul—even a desperate criminal—he’d readily give the giant shirt off his back as a blanket, serve up a heaping plate of food, drop off drinks until they were passed out. It was no matter—but this Prad. “What do you need salt for, anyways?” Digs said calmly after a good long moment of watching the sort not stumble about, but list fluidly from side to side as if blown by intersecting winds, and dig his sliding feet into the floor as if to sand the rough-shod smooth.

News of no salt hit Prad hard.

“Questions?” Prad seethed, a heated, unstable look in his eyes. “I thought there were no why questions from the bastard bartender of Fringe.” He sat down on one of the stools, violently, and dug his elbows into the dark wood of the counter, his long shag of grimy brown hair falling over his gray eyes. Which was fine, Digs thought, because his drooping lids suddenly flapped open like pull-down shades—blinkless, and so he ended up looking a wide-eyed fanatical ass. “No questions. None.” Prad impressed his stomach into the edge of the counter and shuddered as if his bones would explode out like a fragment bomb. “Just give me the salt, already.”

“Well…” the bastard bartender did not appreciate this dire rub, or the treatment of his bar. If the first sight of this Prad hadn’t already got under Digs’s skin, this freakish verve was more than enough to give him pause. Such behavior was not unexpected from these wayfarers, but this Prad had gone from a swaying tree in heavy winds to the spastic gusts themselves. “You’re thinking of years ago, my friend. And I told you already, good sir,” he continued in his calm etiquette, “I’ve none left.”

“No salt! Damnit.” He didn’t catch on to the near sarcastic courtesy, his worn mind too fixed and shallow, nor did he ever raise his voice above a solid, biting whisper. “I’ll look like such an ass, do you know that.”

“Is it pressing?”

“Don’t you hear my voice? Don’t I sound like I’m pressing you?” He did, and Digs was already wearing thin. Not to the point where he’d give in and give this flop the salt just to get him out of there.

“Such an ass,” Prad repeated.

No, he was more getting closer to flicking him off the stool with that arm-strength middle finger he had there. It was in his voice. A back-throat anamoly, a slight hard crackle, like water pulling back from the shore. Digs had been the bastard bartender of Fringe, and even though Prad had said it, it was obvious he failed to remember just who Digs was, or what had transpired four years ago. But just as Digs saw some sorry sinister gleam in his eyes, Prad glimpsed the distinct flicker of rage in Digs’, like fire licking out of the gaps of a giant steel furnace.