Short Narrative

Now as I emerge from the underground, the city opens up around me. Pulls me in. I am surrounded by people. So many people they could crush me. A mass of people head across the street, to the safety of another sidewalk. Why are there so many? How can they all breathe the same air? I can’t understand how in a place with so little trees there can be enough oxygen for us all to breathe. Nature has been obliterated, and replaced by man-made contraptions. Workers rush in and out of enlarged ant hills, built straight up to the sky. It has a nature of its own. People scurry around, nothing on their minds except the task at hand. The sorrow I feel for these people, not being able to experience life, they’re so caught up in themselves. Like a spider web, this city is catching them all. Drawing them near like a moth to a light, then ensnaring them, bundling them up to be used as it will. These people serve the city. And as the night draws near, artificial lights illuminate the skies in place of the moon. Why do they do this? Why block out the beauty above with this gaudy light? This is what keeps them safe. As long as there is light, they are safe. A fear of darkness, a fear of something they can’t see, something they don’t know. As long as they keep building higher, brightening their lights there is nothing they can fear. I cannot understand what it is to live in their city of eternal light.