The year is 2099; I was born 30 years ago in a tiny seaside house by the shores of Monterey, California. This life of mine, it has been crazy… I saw the world go from a peaceful place to a hellish nightmare in the span of 15 years. It all started some time before I was born, I guess. The Fat Cats decided we needed nuclear energy n’ all. Said it was clean, y’know? Man, they had so many power plants around the country that when the earthquakes started comin’, they didn’t even know what th’hell hittem.
The first one hit Chile in like, I d’know, summer of 2084? It was huge, man. Those big nuclear reactors started meltin’ down and explodin’ all over the damn place. But, I mean, we’re humans, we’re smart, we're gonna get through it. That’s what everyone said when it happened. But BAM! It happened again some days later near Los Angeles, man.
That’s when all the Fat Cats decided to shut off the plants. But by then everyone was sittin’ without electricity and the whole West Coast of the Americas was pollutin’ the rest of the world with nasty radioactive gunk. People started gettin’ sick and all. Losin’ skin and stuff. Animals started dyin’ off and the ones that lived got all funky and big and scary, man. It only got worse and worse until all the people left alive were put into camps and slaved in bunkers until the damn problem got too bad to run away from. I was young then, but I knew it wouldn’t get better.
It didn’t take long for them Fat Cats to throw my family into the “safety” camps. They were just workin’ us to the bone in coal mines there. Them camps are essentially an excuse to enslave the poor. I noticed this pretty quick, man. They don't even give money to the people who work; I started stealin’ food to keep my Mom and Pop healthy. But by then everyone had lesions anyways, there was no savin’ em. It wasn’t long before I got caught.
Y’know they sentence you to death just for stealin’ food that y’need to eat? This world is sick in too many ways. Even worse, they sentence you to a slow and painful death. You get sent into heavily radioactive zones where you just work your ass off until y’drop or get eaten up. Nothin’ fun about that.
Day 1
Bones of dead fish crunched under my feet as I walked on the shores of the once beautiful Zone 24, which used to be known as the Salton Sea. Guess some years ago, the place was a wonderful resort for those who loved the sea but lived too far inland to go to the coast. I guess the environment of the lake had changed for the worst. Actually no, not the worst. There was this one story I heard about a spider that was literally five feet wide and could shoot some nasty webs. Yah...I’ve seen some crazy shit slavin’ around the country. So a dried up sea ain't nothin’, anyways.
Pollution and too much radioactive gunk have taken massive tolls on the shores of the lake and bred a disturbing number of mutated birds! Considering the nasty environment of the orange waters that the lake consists of, you’d be real safe to assume that these gulls are damn resilient. With that assumption you would be correct, there's birds who do not stop growing. These things are crazy man! Instead of reaching a normal size, the birds just keep gettin’ bigger from eatin’ the dead fish on the sand. From what I heard, there was one bird, seemingly alone and everything, unable to make babies at all. But that was some time ago.
Now there are a ton of big birds, man. Birds that are able to overpower and swallow, one by one, the many crews sent to clean up the orange water of the lake. Which is why it is very fortunate for me that I have not seen but one since I arrived. Even more fortunately, the one I saw happened to be rottin’ on the sand. It probably ate up one too many of the nasty fluorescent fish floating in the water, like sponges absorbent exclusively of chemicals. All the crews had the gruelling job of shoveling fish mush off the sand. I’m just a convicted felon in a hazmat suit walking on a bunch of dead, oversized goldfish. On a side note - have you ever seen a green goldfish? Because I sure as hell have.
You may be asking yourself right about now why the felons were doing the job and not others. To put it simply, the job took its toll; radiation is some bad shit! Those scum. The smell of the lake was awful. Someone outside of a hazmat suit would almost definitely puke themselves dead! At least I think they could. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so, either.
“Agh. This place smells worse than the last place we had to clean up," Prisoner 1 said as he dropped a shovel load of fish into a large, clear bin.
I responded, “You mean that place with the octopuses that had like 16 tentacles and were eatin’ children?”
“Yeah man...and they were hiding in damp trees and stuff. These chemicals is bad man. I’m tellin’ ya.”
With that last note, a chill went down my spine at the thought of glowing octopuses eatin’ kiddies and little old ladies alive. I threw another pile of dead fish in the bin; it had a rusty fish hook jutting out of his face.
I’ll save y’all the boring details, but it wasn’t real fun. The real fun stuff began an hour or so after we got to the lake. That man who complained about the smell earlier, Prisoner 1, got swept up into the air at random by one of em’ gulls. It was the first live one I had seen in person, and man were they ugly. This damn thing had an extra eye growin’ on its neck. Suddenly man, there were tons of em’. Just swoopin’ down and pickin’ off my crew one by one. Eatin’ em’ whole while midair and screechin’ some sound you’d hear in the pits of hell.
Before I knew it, I was the last one on the ground. Aside from what looked like Prisoner 3’s disconnected legs that fell from the sky. I ran, man, I ran. Bolted for the workers’ bunker I was supposed to sleep in for the night. It was a tiny concrete manhole with a ladder goin’ down. I got to the manhole, lifted it up, climbed down, and left the hole uncovered. Those damn birds were too big to even make it down anyways. The only damn thing I could do was bunk down and hope the Fat Cats had a change of heart and would save me. I was terrified and sickly by then, but I knew that wouldn’t happen.
Day 4
So that’s how I got down here. Damn birds! I been explainin’ this whole damn thing to you and you probably thought it was some fairy tale. Hah! No one's even listenin' right now, man. Those scum Fat Cats sittin' up in their comfy beds as I die in a foxhole. They gotta hear the kinda shit they’re puttin’ innocent men through. I slam my fist angrily on the edge of the solitary metal bunk in the concrete walled room. One of my damn nails fall off when it hits. Equal amounts of blood’n pain surge through my hand.
I’m speakin’ with a tone of assertment, ya get me? These Fat Cats gotta understand I went down brave n’shit. And you know what? I’m real damn brave sittin’ down in this concrete cell awaitin’ my death in the overwhelmin’ stench of my own filth. Man, my hazmat suit turned from a butt ugly yellow to a palette of browns and reds real quick - still butt ugly. I’m lookin’ like one of my dead cons out there on the sand, all rottin’ in the sun and radiation, man. That is if the gulls ain’t gottem. At least I’m gonna die where they can’t get me.
There was this one time, man...when I was little. I was sittin’ on a tree branch beside the ocean just wonderin’ what the dark waters held as the sun shined off em’. I did that a lot. Now all I’d see from that tree branch is a sea of red and brown like that of the rottin’ corpses within every goddamn’ zone in the world.
I tear off the torn upper half of my suit, and along with it, some of my skin. By now I’m shiverin’, my mind all oozed and not knowin’ why the hell my nails are all red. My whole damn vision is red. Swirlin’, swayin’ waves of red portrayin’ the image of someone who isn’t actually there. A man in a custom fit suit with a bright red tie. Red eyes. Red skin. Staring down on me like the face of death, counting his money as he watches me die. There ain’t nothin’ human about these men. You men. You’re all damn evil with your ignorance of us, of me. I was only supposed to be here a day, you scummy bastards.
You rich shits are gonna just use me up and spit me out, leavin’ me and everyone else to die like some kind of slaves? I can’t even take a swing at ya... You’re as untouchable as money can buy ya and I’m nothing but a pawn, a disposable piece used for your greater cause! Your greater cause that’s just money and greed and the fuel in your gas tanks, cars that run on roads paved by the death that you have caused.
Faced with a swarm of damn seagulls the size of trucks and I still abhor you the most! You are the monsters of this world, and they are your underlings! I’m yellin’ at the man in the red suit sittin’ against the red wall of this red bunker, the spit exitin’ my lips as I shout, resonatin’ with the same scarlet but appearin’ darker. Like that of damn blood. Consumed with rage, I start swingin’ at the man staring at me. My fists, smackin’ against his skull, are met solely with the crushin’ pain of impact upon metal. He’s remainin’ unmoved. My nails are peelin’ off like they were never even on in the first place, the skin above them now gone, revealin’ my bloody bones.
The only damn thing that Fat Cat does to show he’s livin’ is laughter. He starts laughin’ right in my face, the shrill laugh followed by a sentencin’: “You will be dead and forgotten before you know it.” His laugh piercin’ my ears like a warnin’ siren you would hear durin’ the meltdowns; I grip my ears violently and tug at them. Coverin’ my hands in the same blood red that prevailed through the overall tone of scarlet earlier. I dig into my ears with nailless fingers, the pain shootin’ from the tips of my fingers into my skull. The noise stops.
The room is silent, my senses dulled by the throbbin’ pain throughout my whole body. My tormentor slowly transforms into a bloodied man in a topless hazmat suit and suddenly I’m lookin’ through his eyes. The red is gone. The only remnant of the shitstorm I went through is the body of my slave self, layin’ in a pool of crimson blood on the concrete floor of the bunker; my hands bound by a long red tie.
The first one hit Chile in like, I d’know, summer of 2084? It was huge, man. Those big nuclear reactors started meltin’ down and explodin’ all over the damn place. But, I mean, we’re humans, we’re smart, we're gonna get through it. That’s what everyone said when it happened. But BAM! It happened again some days later near Los Angeles, man.
That’s when all the Fat Cats decided to shut off the plants. But by then everyone was sittin’ without electricity and the whole West Coast of the Americas was pollutin’ the rest of the world with nasty radioactive gunk. People started gettin’ sick and all. Losin’ skin and stuff. Animals started dyin’ off and the ones that lived got all funky and big and scary, man. It only got worse and worse until all the people left alive were put into camps and slaved in bunkers until the damn problem got too bad to run away from. I was young then, but I knew it wouldn’t get better.
It didn’t take long for them Fat Cats to throw my family into the “safety” camps. They were just workin’ us to the bone in coal mines there. Them camps are essentially an excuse to enslave the poor. I noticed this pretty quick, man. They don't even give money to the people who work; I started stealin’ food to keep my Mom and Pop healthy. But by then everyone had lesions anyways, there was no savin’ em. It wasn’t long before I got caught.
Y’know they sentence you to death just for stealin’ food that y’need to eat? This world is sick in too many ways. Even worse, they sentence you to a slow and painful death. You get sent into heavily radioactive zones where you just work your ass off until y’drop or get eaten up. Nothin’ fun about that.
Day 1
Bones of dead fish crunched under my feet as I walked on the shores of the once beautiful Zone 24, which used to be known as the Salton Sea. Guess some years ago, the place was a wonderful resort for those who loved the sea but lived too far inland to go to the coast. I guess the environment of the lake had changed for the worst. Actually no, not the worst. There was this one story I heard about a spider that was literally five feet wide and could shoot some nasty webs. Yah...I’ve seen some crazy shit slavin’ around the country. So a dried up sea ain't nothin’, anyways.
Pollution and too much radioactive gunk have taken massive tolls on the shores of the lake and bred a disturbing number of mutated birds! Considering the nasty environment of the orange waters that the lake consists of, you’d be real safe to assume that these gulls are damn resilient. With that assumption you would be correct, there's birds who do not stop growing. These things are crazy man! Instead of reaching a normal size, the birds just keep gettin’ bigger from eatin’ the dead fish on the sand. From what I heard, there was one bird, seemingly alone and everything, unable to make babies at all. But that was some time ago.
Now there are a ton of big birds, man. Birds that are able to overpower and swallow, one by one, the many crews sent to clean up the orange water of the lake. Which is why it is very fortunate for me that I have not seen but one since I arrived. Even more fortunately, the one I saw happened to be rottin’ on the sand. It probably ate up one too many of the nasty fluorescent fish floating in the water, like sponges absorbent exclusively of chemicals. All the crews had the gruelling job of shoveling fish mush off the sand. I’m just a convicted felon in a hazmat suit walking on a bunch of dead, oversized goldfish. On a side note - have you ever seen a green goldfish? Because I sure as hell have.
You may be asking yourself right about now why the felons were doing the job and not others. To put it simply, the job took its toll; radiation is some bad shit! Those scum. The smell of the lake was awful. Someone outside of a hazmat suit would almost definitely puke themselves dead! At least I think they could. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought so, either.
“Agh. This place smells worse than the last place we had to clean up," Prisoner 1 said as he dropped a shovel load of fish into a large, clear bin.
I responded, “You mean that place with the octopuses that had like 16 tentacles and were eatin’ children?”
“Yeah man...and they were hiding in damp trees and stuff. These chemicals is bad man. I’m tellin’ ya.”
With that last note, a chill went down my spine at the thought of glowing octopuses eatin’ kiddies and little old ladies alive. I threw another pile of dead fish in the bin; it had a rusty fish hook jutting out of his face.
I’ll save y’all the boring details, but it wasn’t real fun. The real fun stuff began an hour or so after we got to the lake. That man who complained about the smell earlier, Prisoner 1, got swept up into the air at random by one of em’ gulls. It was the first live one I had seen in person, and man were they ugly. This damn thing had an extra eye growin’ on its neck. Suddenly man, there were tons of em’. Just swoopin’ down and pickin’ off my crew one by one. Eatin’ em’ whole while midair and screechin’ some sound you’d hear in the pits of hell.
Before I knew it, I was the last one on the ground. Aside from what looked like Prisoner 3’s disconnected legs that fell from the sky. I ran, man, I ran. Bolted for the workers’ bunker I was supposed to sleep in for the night. It was a tiny concrete manhole with a ladder goin’ down. I got to the manhole, lifted it up, climbed down, and left the hole uncovered. Those damn birds were too big to even make it down anyways. The only damn thing I could do was bunk down and hope the Fat Cats had a change of heart and would save me. I was terrified and sickly by then, but I knew that wouldn’t happen.
Day 4
So that’s how I got down here. Damn birds! I been explainin’ this whole damn thing to you and you probably thought it was some fairy tale. Hah! No one's even listenin' right now, man. Those scum Fat Cats sittin' up in their comfy beds as I die in a foxhole. They gotta hear the kinda shit they’re puttin’ innocent men through. I slam my fist angrily on the edge of the solitary metal bunk in the concrete walled room. One of my damn nails fall off when it hits. Equal amounts of blood’n pain surge through my hand.
I’m speakin’ with a tone of assertment, ya get me? These Fat Cats gotta understand I went down brave n’shit. And you know what? I’m real damn brave sittin’ down in this concrete cell awaitin’ my death in the overwhelmin’ stench of my own filth. Man, my hazmat suit turned from a butt ugly yellow to a palette of browns and reds real quick - still butt ugly. I’m lookin’ like one of my dead cons out there on the sand, all rottin’ in the sun and radiation, man. That is if the gulls ain’t gottem. At least I’m gonna die where they can’t get me.
There was this one time, man...when I was little. I was sittin’ on a tree branch beside the ocean just wonderin’ what the dark waters held as the sun shined off em’. I did that a lot. Now all I’d see from that tree branch is a sea of red and brown like that of the rottin’ corpses within every goddamn’ zone in the world.
I tear off the torn upper half of my suit, and along with it, some of my skin. By now I’m shiverin’, my mind all oozed and not knowin’ why the hell my nails are all red. My whole damn vision is red. Swirlin’, swayin’ waves of red portrayin’ the image of someone who isn’t actually there. A man in a custom fit suit with a bright red tie. Red eyes. Red skin. Staring down on me like the face of death, counting his money as he watches me die. There ain’t nothin’ human about these men. You men. You’re all damn evil with your ignorance of us, of me. I was only supposed to be here a day, you scummy bastards.
You rich shits are gonna just use me up and spit me out, leavin’ me and everyone else to die like some kind of slaves? I can’t even take a swing at ya... You’re as untouchable as money can buy ya and I’m nothing but a pawn, a disposable piece used for your greater cause! Your greater cause that’s just money and greed and the fuel in your gas tanks, cars that run on roads paved by the death that you have caused.
Faced with a swarm of damn seagulls the size of trucks and I still abhor you the most! You are the monsters of this world, and they are your underlings! I’m yellin’ at the man in the red suit sittin’ against the red wall of this red bunker, the spit exitin’ my lips as I shout, resonatin’ with the same scarlet but appearin’ darker. Like that of damn blood. Consumed with rage, I start swingin’ at the man staring at me. My fists, smackin’ against his skull, are met solely with the crushin’ pain of impact upon metal. He’s remainin’ unmoved. My nails are peelin’ off like they were never even on in the first place, the skin above them now gone, revealin’ my bloody bones.
The only damn thing that Fat Cat does to show he’s livin’ is laughter. He starts laughin’ right in my face, the shrill laugh followed by a sentencin’: “You will be dead and forgotten before you know it.” His laugh piercin’ my ears like a warnin’ siren you would hear durin’ the meltdowns; I grip my ears violently and tug at them. Coverin’ my hands in the same blood red that prevailed through the overall tone of scarlet earlier. I dig into my ears with nailless fingers, the pain shootin’ from the tips of my fingers into my skull. The noise stops.
The room is silent, my senses dulled by the throbbin’ pain throughout my whole body. My tormentor slowly transforms into a bloodied man in a topless hazmat suit and suddenly I’m lookin’ through his eyes. The red is gone. The only remnant of the shitstorm I went through is the body of my slave self, layin’ in a pool of crimson blood on the concrete floor of the bunker; my hands bound by a long red tie.