The sky was thick with the stench of death. Dawn broke over the once populated city, marked by a faint glow across the horizon. Pained cries of dying survivors echoed from underneath the rubble, desperate and afraid. The deceased lay where they fell, their faces still contorted with fear and discomfort.
All of them had attempted to escape from the facility, even though they knew it was a fatal mistake. It was easy to spot the tell-tale signs of the escaped prisoners; the vicious wounds etched into tortured flesh. Each citizen who entered the facility was given a GPS chip, contained within a metal tag. If the GPS detected the citizen was outside of the facility’s boundaries (which in itself was a feat), the tag would release ‘compound 101’ (a corrosive acid that would leave the prisoner unable to walk.)
The facility is an area rumoured to distinguish citizens by their wealth. A portion of the remaining citizens came to the facility each week, under the order of the government. Higher class citizens were given permission to pass The Wall, an hundred-feet-high, concrete barrier separating the Dystopian city from a Utopian paradise. Poorer citizens, such as the lifeless bodies underneath the rubble, were obliged to spend the rest of their days in the facility. There, prisoners would be watched via CCTV by the totalitarian government, only mere meters away from the prison. Looking for what, you may ask? Signs of happiness. A single smile, a handshake, a wave – all gestures with serious consequences.
Prisoners would be organised into dormitories, small groups forbidden to interact with one another. They were kept in groups for fun. It was entertaining for the government to see them fight the urge to communicate. Most of the 'hostages' were driven to insanity; trembling, hollow shells of their former selves. Few prisoners seemed unaffected by the regime. But inside, they all felt the same loneliness - the same longing for freedom. Each hostage (as the government called them), was also forbidden to write or draw. According to them, it poisoned the mind with an escape from reality. Not that anybody knew what that was.
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The Facility
Fantasy''All of them had attempted to escape from the facility, even though they knew it was a fatal mistake.'' Alex Mooney, a poverty stricken teenage orphan, lives in a post-apocalyptic city demolished by the totalitarian government that was once the lif...
