I'm a Junior in High School and I've been trying to write my own novel since I was in 8th grade. I figured this website would help me with my progress... However, can submitting my work to the internet keep me from publishing my work?
This is just what I have written so far (so I'm planning on answering certain questions later on, such as my protagonists name...)
So, without further ado..
THE ACHERON CHRONICLES
By Joe McCreavy
“The mind is its own place and in itself can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven,”
-John Milton, Paradise Lost
Chapter One:
REBIRTH
(December 2nd, 2084)
The cold tile floor was hardly a substitute for the warm bed the young man preferred. As he lay there in the remains of the abandoned chapel, the morning sunlight pierced through the shattered stain glass windows and blazed down upon him. Irritated by the glow, he turned over onto his side, realized the sun wasn’t going to let him be, and then slowly began to sit up.
Scratching his head in a daze, he gathered his thoughts and remembered where he was. His eyes slowly adjusting to the brightness, he glanced around what had once been a beautiful catholic church. He was sitting up at the front of the shrine, where the priest would have spoken to the Sunday morning audience and performed communion. The building was gargantuan and several hundred people could have attended mass there every week.
But that would have been a long time ago. Decades. No one had been here in ages. Dust and cobwebs seemed to occupy every square inch of the church. Now, this supposed ‘House of God’ only served as a shelter for spiders and vermin, as well as a refuge for the young teen who had stumbled inside during the storm that evening. Drowsy as he was, the boy noticed that a small puddle had formed nearby from the rain leaking in through the crevasses in the ceiling. He leaned towards it and began to lightly splash his face.
Staring back at him through the rippling pool of water was a 16 year old boy. He donned a head of messy, unkempt and uncut brown hair and a pair of icy blue eyes. Both of his ears were pierced and it was evident that a razor hadn’t touched his face within the last few days. A silver locket dangled from his neck, the chain rusted and corroded. His expression in the puddle was blank and apathetic.
He cleaned off his damp hands on his greasy white T-shirt, then turned around and grabbed his worn-out, raggedy backpack that he had tossed aside upon entering the church. After unzipping it, he pulled out his black leather jacket and quickly slid it on. Reaching further into his pack, he retrieved a second item; A sleek, silver pistol. He examined it, turning it over in his hands. The revolver could hold up to twelve rounds. Within this gun, eleven shots remained. One had been fired already.
He tucked the pistol into the back of his pants and concealed it with the end of his jacket. Peering into his bag again, he observed several other personal possessions of his: A Swiss-Army knife and dropped it into his pants pocket… Looking into the bag again, another object caught his eye. Giving a heavy sign, he slowly reached in and pulled it out, holding it level with his face.
It was a child’s toy; A stuffed elephant. It was a purplish-pink color, faded with age. It had been torn and sewn together many times, patched stitched all of its petit body. The boy stared at it for a long time.
Shaking back into reality, he placed the elephant back into his bag. The boy got to his feet and slung his backpack over his shoulders. As he did, he could feel something rolling around in his coat pocket. He reached in and pulled it out.
It was a fortune cookie, somewhat squished with bits and pieces of it chipping off. Curious, he began to break it apart. A tiny slip of paper slid out into his hand and he unfolded it. Printed on it in bold black letters was:
“IF YOU’RE GOING THROUGH HELL, KEEP ON GOING!”
He closed his hand around the fortune tightly before placing it inside his empty locket and shutting it inside. Then, after taking a long, deep breath, he made his way towards the end of the church, pushed the large wooden doors apart and stepped outside into the ruins of New York City.
The boy shielded his eyes from the sudden burst of daylight. Squinting, he noticed a nearby sign, half embedded in the dirt, indicating that this was Staten Island. Or at least what was left of it. Stepping down from the stones steps outside the church, dust kicked up as his muddy hi-tops planted themselves into the soil. He could only speculate what this place could have been like before the war. Old timers usually whispered something about this city being known as ‘The Big Apple’. All it seemed to be now was a discarded, rotten core, withering away more and more as the days went on. However, if the rumors were true, then he was close to the place he was seeking…
Ahead of him was a debris ridden street. A flock of crows took off flapping in all directions at his sudden appearance. Aside from them, he was all alone in this dead, ghost town. It had been like this since before he was born and it would remain forgotten forever. The nukes made sure of that.
The metropolis known as New York City had been swallowed by the atomic fires of the Third World War. Buildings had been knocked down in the midst of the explosive shockwaves, toppling over any neighboring structures like oversized, concrete dominos. Loads of destroyed cars and other vehicles lay abandoned by their drivers in the streets. The boy could picture the stampede of panicking citizens running in the opposite direction of the blast, feebly attempting to escape the inferno.
As the boy stood outside the decimated church, he noticed a cemetery had been built nearby. A sea of tombstones, which had been reduced to mere piles of rubble, seemed to stretch on as far as the eye could see No one had come to visit them in years. No one had come to leave flowers or mourn their loved ones. Corpses of family members lay forgotten within the earth as did the town they once inhabited.
In the middle of the graveyard, something caught the young man’s attention. Towering over the rubble and debris was a statue. Although it had taken damage from the catastrophe that had befallen the city, it had somehow managed to stay in a good enough shape to appear mesmerizing before him. The statue was of a tall man, dressed in robes, holding up a long sword triumphantly. His long, curly hair flowed frozen in stone. His face, chipped and cracked, had still retained a look of bravery and courage even as it had begun to wither away.
A pair of long, feathery wings stretched out tremendously over the statue, as if they were ready to wave down and take off into the sky. He could only wonder what had kept them from crumble into pieces over the last few years. Inscribed on a plaque beneath the statue was: THE ARCHANGEL – SAINT MICHAEL
The statue looked as if it had been placed there to watch over those who had passed away, as a shepherd watches over and protects his flock, guiding them towards a higher plain of existence; The Afterlife.
The boy sneered at it. It was another desperate attempt of mankind to implore some kind of reason and hope into this twisted world. People wanted to have faith in something. They wanted to believe that there was more to the world then the chaos and bloodlust that took place everyday all across the glove. And so people invented God.
But the teen did not believe in God. He believed, plain and simple, that some people are able to endure the trials of life and manage to stay alive, while others, no matter how futilely they struggle or squirm against their fate, do not. Survival of the fittest. That was all.
Wasting no more time, the boy turned and headed down the road that awaited him. This place reeked of death and decay, as did the destroyed New Jersey he had ventured through only days earlier. The boy kept moving towards the north. His destination was even closer now; he could sense it. It was as if some kind of invisible force drew him into that direction like a magnet. Something deep inside him, though he knew not what it was, urged him onward…
***
Anyway, that's it for now. Please tell me what you think. And just to clarify in case anyone missed this, as a lot of people who I've let read this seemed to miss, is that World War III took place 16 years before this current story... If you think I didn't clarify that enough, let me know
lol
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