Young Writers Society

I was a worker at the Swan Inn. The building is–was–nothing like what you must be picturing. It is lodged somewhere halfway between the outskirts and the real city, and almost doesn’t belong there. It is a much more elegant and well-built work of architecture than about anything else there, but this gives it the burden if ennobling the city around it rather than making it seem outright misplaced. That’s only fitting, seeing as its guests are almost entirely from other places. Whether this brings them in, or they keep it from degrading, is a matter of whether the chicken or egg came first.

I wouldn’t recommend you ever go yourself, but the city is the kind of place where it’s always midnight. It is as if the smog is a blanket for the specters to sleep under during the day, and you can tell the guests were slowly being smothered when they walk through the door. The musty air and artificial light is better for them then than sunlight and fresh air are usually. I was very appreciated sitting behind my wooden bar even if people’s enthusiasm was stifled even after drinking.

One guest, though, was livelier than I’ve ever seen any guest be. He–he?–threw open the door like a gust of wind rushing through and it slammed shut from recoil just as quickly. He stood, unapologetically, wearing a frilled blood-red suit like something from the 18th century, complete with ruffles on the sleeves and flowing down the front of his shirt like some sort of blood-waterfall. His hair was below his chin and wild as if he were in a storm, yet not unkempt, and a faint red lightningbolt symbol covered the whole left half of his face. Maybe there was a storm, but not overhead.

He swept over to the bar, slammed down his right fist without a sound, and politely demanded alcohol. “One glass of brandy, please! The strongest you have, quickly!”

“That would be 10.50 dollar, please.”

He set down 10.50 dollar faster than I could see, and I set down one glass of brandy.

“So, you say ‘dollar’ here?” he asked.

“I don’t know how to respond to that,” I said.

“Well, then,” and he turned away with his suit’s jacket swishing out behind him like a cape.

He put his left hand on the right shoulder of a man standing there in a worn-out green sweatsuit.

“Are you a prole? Pleb?”

“What? No.”

“Then I’ll assume you’re no man.”

“Who would you be?” the green-suited man responded in monotone.

“I’m called Christian. Tell everyone you can. Most of all, tell your master.”

“Your name is what?”

“Krist-yan. Is what I’m called. Have you told your master?” he looked the green-suited man in the eyes with a laserlike stare. “Good, and goodbye.” He threw him down under his foot and jammed his hand straight through his ribcage. He pulled out a chunk of wires, and electric sparks flew out from the wires, tinted red from Christian’s burning flesh and the translucency of the flesh of most of the patrons in general. The sparks arced out to a few of the other patrons faster than the blink of an eye, and they shorted out and exploded like thunder.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” he cried. The whole building was black and smoldering. “How did anyone think there could be any replacement for the human spirit in any case at all?”

“You idiot! You’re burning us all!” cried out a woman in a long dress colored like the golden ochre of old Italian frescoes.

“You only burn if you want to! Leave this place!”

“That’s nonsense!”

“Nonsense? Look at my hand!” His hand that had burned in the fire minutes ago was unscathed.

She looked down in silence.

“I don’t want to be dust in the wind,” he said quietly, head pointed away towards the ground, “and I can’t think about anything else. I don’t know what it all means, and really I don’t even know what ‘it all’ is. I go to this inn to stay a night, and I can’t even be alone because the walls have electronic eyes! I hope they follow me here. I hope it’s like a huge battle, like in olden days. My drive, they call it, what? Vitality, animal magnetism, Will to Power? I don’t see how drones could kill anything but those who are already dead, since they have no will. Let the living corpses burn! I can only envy what is truly alive, what yearns for death by flames! And hate myself…”

The building was scorched blacker than night, and hotter than Hades. It is better called the Black Swan Inn now. I am broken, and due for repair on [DATE].

• —Unit 208234756, black box recording