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Alright!

Here we have my second short story/prose (I don't really know the difference, lol. I think it's a prose, actually...) to be posted on gaia. I just finished writing this one, but I've been playing with the idea for quite some time now. So, without further ado, I give you "Slaughter."
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I live in what most people call The Great Tiered City. There are five levels in which the height grows progressively taller and the dingy walls progressively whiter and untainted. At the very top are the council members, the Gods that look down upon us from their thrones, those who manage our city and keep it free from outside corruption. Which is all well and good, unless the only corruption your city suffer comes from within the walls themselves. For how can man mend his own flaws?

Then comes the fourth and third and second levels. All are insignificant. The two things that make a city what it is are the highest inhabitants, the gods, and the lowest inhabitants, the sewer rats. The highest because of how much they build up, the lowest for how much they tear down. Or at least, that's what their books say, on the off chance you can find one and someone down here with enough education to read them. But I believe that the rich, with their high and mighty perceptions of themselves, are at fault, for they are the ones who turn a blind eye while we rot away in the sewers of their pristine city. As long as our carcasses are hidden, no one cares but us. We are unwanted, and they make no effort to hide it.

So I don't consider this repulsive place a city or a home, or any other place fit for human to inhabit. It is my own personal hell hole, an ordeal that only I seem to find this tortuous. How someone can be surrounded by such filth, such lies, and yet still maintain the facade that their life isn't too much to possibly bear. I would think there was something wrong with me if not for the fact that I know its all the fault of this damn city. I know that I must look at my reflection and not the image of this city, but it's so difficult when you can't distinguish one from the other.

Yes, I now that somewhere out there, someone is worse off than I am. I've been told plenty of times. My family is starving in a broken down shack with as many holes penetrating the walls as grains of dust coating the floor. We have only been torn apart by this ordeal, discord ripping through us as though we can be moved to hatred as easily as ripples spread across a pond. I know it isn't so much that I should complain. We're a wreck, but I know there is someone out there suffering more than I am. I know already. Stop telling me.

It makes me frustrated when people tell me things that I already know, when they repeat it over and over and over as though they have nothing to better to do with their time. Like they think that a simple statement is beyond my limited comprehension. Please. I'm more intelligent than everyone else in this hell because I'm the only one to recognize it for what it truly is.

But still, words can make you do stupid things. Rash things. Things like declaring that you've had enough of everyone saying that you should be thankful for what you have when in reality, you have nothing. Things like claiming that you'll prove that you can take more than what you're already going though, not that it isn't already bad enough. Things like saying you'll work at the Slaughterhouse just to provide your family with the packaged meat rations that everyone in the city eats, no matter their rank.

The Slaughterhouse. In the upper levels, it is barely mentioned; a side note in a history book that no one takes notice of. Here, though, just the name is enough to inspire fear and send shivers of dread down the spine. It isn't an unspoken terror or the stuff of nightmares. No, it's much worse than all of that. You can't convince yourself to reason away the fear brought about by the Slaughterhouse with the fact that it's no more than a fantasy used to frighten misbehaving children. The Slaughterhouse is very, very real.

Located beneath this city of deluded fools going about their daily business as though the static state of their life is satisfactory is another of hell's many dungeons, a circle of flames that singes the skin just a little more than the previous one. Every now and then you hear about so-and-so's child, brother, sister reluctantly stepping down into that darkness, never to be heard from again. Even here in the lower reaches of misery where that shadow that is the Slaughterhouse lies within arm's reach, no one truly knows what goes on there. We know only the basics. Men and women, young and old, travel there either to support their families or themselves. They slaughter and prepare whatever livestock is being raised just outside of this accursed city. Workers,or the forsaken, as we call them, slave away until the day of their deaths. Whether this takes months or years is unknown. All we know is that someone has yet to claw their way out of those shadowy deaths.

As I descended into the darkness, no fond farewell or even someone to note that my short existence on the surface had ended, I realized that I wasn't nearly as frightened as I had thought I might be. Like I mentioned before, it's just one step deeper into the fiery pits of hell. My life wasn't over. Everything would carry on more or less like it had before. I didn't care either way. I would live, and surely I could find some reason to celebrate the fact that I had another second of whatever you called this thing that I was living. Life. That's what you call it. I would live, and that was all I could ask.

My thoughts changed abruptly as I pushed open the ominous steel doors and stepped into a whole new hell.

I imagine that everyone has the same reaction with they forever bid the sun farewell and enter that chamber gleaming so coldly, with it's polished machinery and those razor-sharp knives. I imagine everyone cries that they want to turn back when they realize that place they've left behind isn't hell, simply purgatory, and they only thought it was hell because they hadn't experienced it before. I imagine that everyone's eyes widen, just like mine did, when they realize that there are no humans working in this place, no sign of the thousands that have disappeared down here before you, no livestock waiting to be slaughtered. But the knives are dripping vermilion all the same.

The pangs of hunger that they had grown used to didn't haunt her family that night.

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Well, there you have it! As always, any constructive criticism and/or comments are greatly appreciated (and very much wanted, I might add). I particularly want to know if the ending is understandable without me having to type out word for word what I want the reader to understand.

Don't worry, for those of you that do, the next story I have planned isn't dark or anyting. Really, I swear!

What makes something real? Must it have substance to surpass a flight of fancy and be classified as part of reality? Must it have flesh and bone and blood to be brought forth from the realms of obscurity? If so, then perhaps I have no chance to become anything more than a dream, a whisper of what might but never will be.

For if I have blood, it is not but ink, my bones no more than pulp and paper. My flesh is a story that was once, perhaps, good, but the pages were turned so often it became dull and went from one of a kind to one in a few, to one in hundreds, and so on. So eventually there were millions alike, and my story ceased to stand out, not because it shone any less brightly, but because its lone brilliancy was swamped by a sea of mediocrity. The light drowned, and my story was forgotten. I was forgotten.

On and on the pages that had once been my haven were transformed into my prison. The words that had once set me free were now bars. When I first realized that was when I began to doubt whether or not I was a part of reality.

I realized that my existence, if you can even call it that, is a dreamless one, one that holds no surprises. My actions and words play over like a broken record, forgotten. Or perhaps forsaken by everyone else, so that only I am left to endlessly endure. Sometimes I'm so frustrated I get the urge to yell and yell till I'm hoarse and can't yell any more. But even when I want to, I don't want to. Not only are my actions scripted, but my thoughts as well.

There's a sunflower that grows outside my bedroom window every week, at the same time, on the same day, without fail. Every time I see it, at the same time, on the same day, I think, "What a pretty flower." But it isn't. If I could, I would loathe that flower with every last bit of me, every singly bit. I would stomp on it until the stalk was crushed and unable to stand erect ever again, and then I would burn it. I would set it alight and grin into the crackling flames, rejoicing in my victory. I love it and hate it, but I can't hate it, so who's to say I do? Neither part of me knows.

For there are two parts of me, you see. There's the me that isn't me- the one who's been written and never feels doubt or boredom in her life, unless it has been written that she does. She is the one based solely on the words, the one who cannot make them up on her own unless it is written that she can. Unless it is written that she is, she is not.

I am the me that thinks these things, here and now. I'm the one that sees through the feelings that she so blindly follows. What she believes to be her house, her school, her reflection, I know to be nothing more than a few words, a cheap facade immortalized just because some idiot found a pen and paper and the will to write them down.

Are a few words really all it takes to create an existence? Am I able to think, right now, because of me? Or because someone, somewhere, is pushing a pen along a piece of paper, giving me another story to live over and over and over again? Only this time,will I be the one that does what is written while another part of me tries to defy every word, every letter?

Perhaps literature really did bring me into existence only to make me ride a merry-go-round of repetitious thoughts and empty hopes. If that's the case, then maybe it's better that I remain what I truly am- words. Nothing more than words.

Hey guys!

My name is Jessie, for those of you who don't know, and I'm fourteen years old. I absolutely love writing, but none of my friends ever offer me any advice. They simply say, "Yeah, it's good."

So I figured I would put my stories somewhere that people can read and comment on them, a place where most people aren't afraid to be mean. What better place for that than the internet? With that, my journal has been transformed into a place where I can post anything I write. Except the poetry that is required for English. Trust me, nobody wants to read that.

Well, without further ado- let the writing/reading/criticizing begin!