Have you ever been through an image of you're being in an apocalyptic travel with some zombies and this kinda think of and did you have an imagination or a dream that you're fighting your way through to find a cure out of it and make your own story...
Our house is grey. The ground is hard grey pavement with tiny grey pebbles strewn about. Even the sky itself is grey. I never question this. All I know is grey and it doesn't bother me. The people I know have sagging grey skin and attire themselves in worn out grey clothing. I did learn my colors in kindergarten, but because my world is so void of any other color, there are times when I find myself forgetting what red looks like and if blue truly is even existent. I don't like grey but I don't hate it either. It is my life and I know I should be happy being gifted with such a thing as that; grey as it is or not.
Life. That is something I contemplate often. I have been told, and learned from observance, that I am not expected to live much longer than thirty. That is the typical life span of humans in Haim. That's the country I live in. It was called America several decades ago, even a century maybe; I'm not sure. They never talked about it in school, even before it was shut down. Valentin Haim is the name of our dictator who controls every aspect of our lives. Sometimes I even forget he exists; his presence in our society so seldom mentioned. Then I get sick and remember he still rules us with an iron fist; an unrelenting fist that squeezes us until we shrivel away into dust.
That's the story the old gypsy woman tells on the corner of the factory square. She says the ash from the factory is really the remains of workers whom Haim has worked so hard that they wither away and float out on the wind, ash forevermore. When I was younger I believed it with my entire being. I still believe it now, too, but in a more figurative sense rather than the literal.
It is this factory, our region's sole productive work, which gives our city its name: Ash. I do not know what is made in the factory. In fact, no one knows except the workers themselves, and even they never speak a word. I witnessed one incident where several men harassed a young boy, maybe 18, trying to get him to say what was done in the factory. Not even when they ripped the clothes from his body and beat him until his face was a mix of red and blue did he say a word. When I saw this, I didn't understand why he remained silent. Now I do.
It was because the torture of knowing what would happen if he told was worse than taking the pain of remaining silent.
I now think that is a good motto for life, in many ways.
I have avoided that factory ever since. I remain as far away from it as possible, as if not seeing it will help me to forget that it exists. If it weren't for the ash that drifts in on the ever constant stream of wind, I might actually be able to do so.
The ash is not only a reminder of the hard labor we experience in the factory, it is also a reminder of our short lives. It is this strange ash, always in the air, that gets into our lungs and into our systems. I am sick at least once a month for three or four days. I cannot breathe, it hurts beyond words. It hurts to eat, to walk, to sleep, to talk. I lie in bed, grey sheets around me, grey sky above me, and wonder if my life will be shorter than I was told. For it is happening all the time now. Those who expected to live longer are dying younger and younger every day. I am already 17 and I have had friends – those eighteen, twenty, twenty five – die in their sleep, die from the sickness, and die from unknown causes. Some will be found dead and no one knows why.
If we all die young, you ask, are there any adults? Yes, there are some, though they are few. Those eighteen and older work in the factory. The oldest in our town is Ofelia yet she does not tell s the number of her years. It's been rumored that she's around 48. I am not sure if I believe it. She seems rather ageless, making it hard to tell. She is my Leesham; what we call adopted parents. My real parents died a few years ago, my father from work in the factory and my mother from the sickness. I loved them, though I knew them so little. I was six when they died. I remember being sad, though not confused. I knew why they had died and, in my mother's case, expected it. I had expected it every day since I was old enough to know about the sickness. Every day after I have expected my sickness followed by death, too. My mother died when she was forty. That was rather long, even back then when the death age was averaging fifty.
As for my father, he was thirty-nine when his death came in the factory. When he didn't come home on time, I ran all the way to factory square and pounded on the giant metal doors of the entrance. They were opened and a few men came out, but father was not among them. It wasn't until a man in a suit came and took my hand and led me away that I understood my father wasn't coming out. I was never told what had happened. I still don't know.
Mother cried. She cried for days and wouldn't eat or drink or barely sleep. I took care of myself, eating the cold things I could find in the fridge. After a week she got the sickness. A day later she died.
I cried. I cried for days and wouldn't eat or drink; the one thing I did do was sleep. When I awoke, Ofelia was bustling around giving my liquid concoctions and patting my hand. I moved in with her and have been ever since. I have come to love Ofelia, but never as much as my father and mother.
There was one thing my father told me when I was younger that I will never forget, though I forgot many other things he had said to me. It was one small sentence he gave, after I had asked, shyly, only once, if he would tell me what was done in the factory:
"Somewhere there's a cure, Adler, and they don't want us to know about it."
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Well guys, that's it for the first chapter and I hope you've just liked it already and if you did, don't forget to hit that Vote Button at the top right corner... leave some comments down below and let me see of what you think about the story!!! But without further a do, thank you all guys for reading and as always what I said, oh bye there...
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