The Other World

 I scurry as fast as I can. I cannot, under any circumstances, let them catch me— the "them" being the police guards who keep "order" in the City Down Below. I feel beads of sweat drip down my neck in a rhythm. I am holding a bag full of sandwiches that was meant to be for a group of cemetery workers, however, I do not think that is a top priority anymore. The smell of decay throws me off guard as I continue to sprint, knowing I am closing in on said cemetery, a burning in my esophagus from the concrete air sifting. I weave through graves and tombstones trying my best not to disrespect the dead.

Beginning to feel fatigued, I try to think of the reason I am sprinting in the first place— actually, I do not remember this time. I could have swiped something or solely just glowered at the guards, who knows? I take a turn and encounter a dead end. I am fucked. My mouth feels like sandpaper and my throat like insulation. The wall looms over me menacingly and jeers my existence, there is nowhere else to go and the guards have caught up to me.

I am apprehensive about what is to come after finally being seized. Look up, there appears to be an alien ship above me, something I would draw as a child. A phantasmagoric antic, the saucer emitting a luminosity surrounding me. The guards aghast, dared not to interfere with whatever was occurring. I feel my feet begin to lift off the ground; feeling like air and my mind fuzzy. Everything around me turns white.

In the City Down Below we live a harrowing and rigorous life. Most of us wake up around 7 a.m. to attend work which includes farming, burying dead bodies, burning dead bodies, mining, and other mindless jobs. I got lucky delivering sandwiches for a deli. The city is meant for a "lower class" society, the scum of the world.

The Upper Ring serves The World Beyond, usually cooking food, playing music, painting, and other tasks that could be of use or entertainment for The World Beyond (or so I'm told).

The World Beyond, however, is a whole other ball game. Everyone up there is beyond intelligent and physically exceptional to all of us beneath. I wish it could change someday, however, I am aware of how implausible that is. It is so barbarous to put some humans on a pedestal above others just because they are deemed as "worthy." I've never seen the World Beyond, but I know those entitled bastards do not understand how lavish their lives are.

Connecting them all is the labyrinth. Two ways in the labyrinth connect the cities: one is a transit unit connecting the Upper Ring to the World Beyond, most of it runs outside so we can see it from down below, and the other is a physical labyrinth with tunnels throughout, almost impossible to get through. Some people from the City Down Below can enter but those are the sanitation workers and they are only allowed to stay in a certain area. Even if they wander off they would get lost.

Down here, the only thing I have going for me is my collective of colleagues. We all live in an abandoned warehouse, with cots lining the floor, a single cooler in the center of the room with bottles of water filling the brim all being used over and over again refilled with rainwater. We have a space on the roof that accommodates all the canned goods we can find. We care for each other and make sure we have a chance to survive. None of us have a family to turn to, thus we found a family with each other. The older kids take care of the younger, and some of us find jobs to aid in providing. It truly has been hard for all of us but regardless we have prevailed.

When I was younger I watched a group of elitists from the World Beyond capture and kill them right in our home. They took my younger brother with them as well, leaving me by my lonesome. The image of the corpses of my parents lay etched in my brain forever and the face of my younger sibling blurred in every memory.

**************

I open my eyes. Where.. am I? I sit up from the frigid table I was lying on. Turning my head, I see an accumulation of people engaging in physical activities; a woman jogging on a conveyor belt, and a man lifting a metal bar with weights on it. I am in my own separate room but it is detached from the rest of the area by a glass wall. The rest of the walls are painted a clean, white color, reminding me of the concatenation from before.