Solace

"The only thing we have to fear is...fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror..."*

To the residents of a decaying city district in a future far too near, this is just what the peacekeepers - aristocrats tasked with keeping them submissive - take pleasure in disseminating: dubbed 'the red terrors', a gaseous hallucinogen that causes people to perceive others as the monstrosities of nightmares. Unable to bear laying eyes upon each other, the common people live alone in fear.

Solus, endued with angelic apparitions instead of the horrors that plague everyone else, is a maverick among the passive populace. He must take solace in his own solitude as he navigates this divided world - a dystopia for some, a utopia for the upper class, who dwell in majestic skyscrapers above the smog that ensnares the lower class, breathing instead a gaseous euphoria...

This is the first draft of a two-part story.
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* - Franklin D. Roosevelt