The Horror, The Horror

The Horror! The Horror!

Marlow stood by the milky window on the second story of the huge skyscraper that towered over the street below. His gloomy eyes starred out onto the bleak wasteland they called ‘Central Park’. His face was marked with this mornings attempt to shave whilst running around his apartment trying to get dressed; a feat he had never managed successfully. Despite the fact that it was only mid-day Marlow had five o’clock shadow.
Marlow had been working at the multinational for the past five years and yet ha had received no recognition for the sixty hour weeks he put in, so four months ago he stopped doing them and cut back to the minimum of thirty-nine. His eyes flicked around the busy streets where the rush hour seemed to last all day, just fluctuating between disgraceful and abysmal. He sighed leaving a patch of condensation on the glass in front of him.
In his right hand Marlow held a paper-cup. He lifted it to his mouth and slugged down a mouthful of what could best be called coffee, but more commonly putrid coffee and walked around to the front of his desk. Marlow sat down and dropped the cup into the basket to his left.
Marlow leant forwards over his desk and leafed through the inch thick wad of paper fortifying the corner of his desk in the ‘in tray’ and then examined the empty ‘out tray’. He mumbled to himself so low and muffled that he couldn’t understand what he said and tapped a long black ballpoint pen on the lined pad below him. Reversing his position Marlow leant back in his chair and once again found himself starring out of the greasy window.
The sky was (as in usual) a uniform grey, with a string of white hedges hovering over the centre of the city. The colour reminded Marlow of his time spent travelling the world, yet a complete contrast to the exquisite colours of the Belgian Congo. Butting onto Marlow’s view of the sky were the polyethylene pre-fabricated ceiling blocks, which Marlow mused, were uncommonly similar to the texture of the sky.
Disgusted, Marlow got up and went to the kitchenette and poured himself another coffee. He raised it to his lips, but remembering the sharpness of the previous cup he placed it back on the artificial surface; and then walked out of the office.
Outside Marlow’s door sat at her desk was his secretary Jane. The mechanical typewriter in front of her was working hard to keep up with the tempo Jane’s scrawny fingers played on the keys. The emotion on her face altered with every word and her body swayed in harmony as though she was playing the ‘Moonlight’ sonata by Beethoven.
Marlow stood for a moment watching. Jane’s method of typing though wasn’t unusual, it was a technique developed by the business world to make secretaries care more about their work, so they made them type to a silent tune. Jane was though the approved model of woman. The skin on her hand seemed shrink-wrapped to her bones, this was probably the case all over her body. Her cheeks were withdrawn and eyes sunken so far that the phrase ‘eyes in the back of your head’ took on a new meaning.
Jane looked as though she was someone who had tired of using talk to make herself look pale and instead had opted for face paints. She looked gaunt, this was a side effect of the anorexia she suffered from. According to a report published in Kurtz, ten per cent of women over the age of fourteen didn’t suffer an eating disorder and concluded that this was too high. She was one of the millions of women affected by the marketing moguls.
Nevertheless she carried on typing the report on how much of a potato was lost in the peeling process (commissioned by the Managing Director).
Marlow walked out of the inner office and onto the street, having to first push his way past scores of secretaries all ploughing into their work with and in some cases more enthusiasm than Jane. The pavement was speckled with the chewing gum the teenagers spat out of their mouths on their way into the shopping precinct and from the air no doubt resembled, Marlow ruminated, the legs of a garden spider. This would be the case more so when the added colour (the only colour that wasn’t used to describe the colour of a cloud) of the cigarette butts was taken into consideration. Despite these two facts and what the media often portrayed litter, there were no large slabs of paper on the pavement or road to be seen. This Marlow presumed, was due to the fact that he government didn’t want too much flair in the city, that would be too extravagant. What was lost in paper, was gained in the amount of grit an dust that swirled in eddies which formed every few feet or so – the buildings were almost certainly designed to funnel the wind down the streets, to pick up this grime and from the park. The park… A place which many referred to as the heart of the city. Why anyone would refer to such a diseased, corrupted, dark, wasteland as being a heart was beyond Marlow.
Marlow had to get out; get away. Leave mankind and its supposed ‘civilisation’; the smells the sight the sound, he could feel himself drowning in the sceptic tank they called humanity. He would die getting out of this godforsaken city if that’s what was needed. Anything would be better than how he felt at the moment. Best would be solitude; being alone, away from what was basically wrong with mankind - man.
The traffic was nose to tail on the road in front of Marlow, all of them moving along slower than walking pace, tracing the outline of the web, that eventually took them to the nest of the city. All of the drivers having their own pathetic reasons why they needed to get there. ‘I need to enter the numbers otherwise the business will collapse’; ‘I have to set an example to others,’: ‘This package of envelopes needs delivering’.
Nothing to anyone. Unimportant to what people really needed. Does it really matter how much people want to pay for dried orange powder. Do you really need to send that letter to Uncle Fred who has never written back and is a compulsive drinker anyway?
Stepping forwards Marlow walked between two cars; and in the process his legs smashed through three of the whirlwinds that created the pavements own climate. In each was caught every sort of dust, soil and grit imaginable and even though Marlow moved on, the back of his trousers was whipped by the muck. Marlow was not aware of the brown mark this left on his pale brown trousers and carried on walking across the four lanes of traffic onto the park.
It was the middle of autumn and had any of the trees survived the slash and burn policy the local government had run when there was a massive shortage of toothpicks, there would have been a deep layer of amber leaves weaving a rug on the ground. As it was there was merely a layer of ash covering the ground as far as the eye could see (which was not very far when you took into consideration all of the smog that had polluted the city for the past fifteen years).
In the middle distance Marlow could see a the river he was aiming for, weaving a precarious line between the rocks and scarred land. He couldn’t remember it’s name, as it was one of eight rivers that fed the city, sending nourishment in the form of barges and freighters up three of the main rivers; the others were mostly shallow and left alone by the shipping companies. This one, Marlow hoped was the smallest and would have none of the traffic that it’s siblings suffered from.

It took but a few minutes to reach the river one hundred yards away. Upon arriving, Marlow stopped and starred at the bank on the other side, a chain away from him. This river was approximately the size he was hoping for, being also what looked to be knee deep. Standing there, the sharp edges of his grey pin-stripe jacket began to surf the air currents of the wind, hindered only by Marlow’s body inside. The wind was just beginning to acquire the biting edge it perfected during the eight month winter - which only stopped for a quick respite to let autumn strip the green leaves from the trees. For the first time in a long while, Marlow wished he had something man-made – his jacket, as the wind was sliding through the thin weave of his jacket peeling his skin of the heat it emitted.
Oblivious to these problems were the drab shoes Marlow had procured for himself the week before, huge scars of black ask desecrated their rough finish. Marlow leant down and untied the laces, feeling the pressure around his foot ease. With that he chucked them into the river that flowed onward, leaving his feet only protected by the cloth of his navy blue socks.
Studying the murky water, Marlow jumped.

Back in the kitchenette Marlow had left twenty minutes earlier, the paper cup now held tepid, putrid coffee. A ripple formed across the surface, followed seconds later by another, which partially cancelled the first out. No more were formed and the water was still, waiting for the next one.

Hamnet was driving the lead truck of a convoy of vehicles travelling from East to West Kurtz. He had decided to take a minor road that went over Central Park rather than the motorway, which was always jammed. It was a risk as the roads were of poor quality, but so long as they stayed on the track, Hamnet was fairly confident of delivering his important shipment on time.
Hamnet was young - fifteen - and his boss had told him that this was the most important shipment in the whole of Kurtz. His job was on the line, if his shipment and those following behind him, didn’t get to their destination on time, they were all going to be on the unemployment list within the week.
The lorry transmitted as much of the road surface that was physically possible to the base of Hamnet’s spine. He was already five minutes behind schedule and he was damned if – at the rate things were going – he was going to be nine minutes late.

Marlow landed in water up to his knees and found a steady holding with his shoeless feet. Parts of his jacket were doused in water from the splash he had made jumping in. He stood motionless to get his balance on the uneven surface supporting him. For a few moments Marlow stood in that position, not wanting to move; the security he had gained was precious and his hopes of deserting mankind were as fulfilled as they could be at this stage.
There were no ripples in the water, it appeared to Marlow that in honesty the river was stagnant. Marlow stepped forwards with his left leg, beginning the process to leave the sprawling metropolis that had been named the capital of the country fifteen years earlier. The warm barrier of water he had built around his leg was washed away by the flow of water, and his skin, only protected by a flimsy pair of trousers was no match for the ice-water that surged off the mountain range a few hundred miles on from Kurtz in a torrent. There was a hollow glump as the liquid filled in the space Marlow’s leg left behind.


His foot sought out for a solid surface to place the weight on and found a large rock. Marlow shifted weight from right to left foot; and then found that the rock was covered in a layer of algae, which had no intention of holding Marlow’s weight without a battle. Marlow lost the battle and fell forwards into the water, after being unbalanced and unable to rebalance himself due to the hindrance of the water around his legs.
His hands reacted in time to get out in front of Marlow and stop his face from being submerged in the icy depths (by inches), though they discovered that the river bottom wasn’t as smooth as the rock. Marlow’s warm breach made ripples in the water. Carefully arranging his weight, Marlow stood up, resembling the reverse of how a pregnant woman raises herself from a sofa.
Again Marlow was stood motionless knee deep in water. He glanced down at his hands. They were speckled with holes and from each trickled some blood. There were so many that he looked like he had chicken-pox and had been scratching the spots.
Blood dripped into the water adding more colour and warmth than it deserved. He leant down and scooped up some of the polluted water, to wash the blood off his hands. Studying it he raised it to eye level and discovered that the water was so full of particles that he couldn’t see his fingers through the fistful of liquid. Disgusted he wrinkled his nose and poured it back into the river and found that his hand was cocooned in slime that was almost opaque itself. Marlow felt compelled to wipe his hands on part of his jacket that was not submerged in the river, though even that was now damp after absorbing water from around Marlow. This time he trudged on, sliding his feet along the bottom, hoping this was a safer method.
Ripples began to form in the river, from bank to bank, pushing their way past and though Marlow who instinctively looked up. The clouds were still grey, but did not look as though they were sweating their perspiration. A deep shake in the ground began. Marlow could feel his feet adjusting to get a better grip on the stony surface, as he had no desire to plummet into the depths; especially after examining the water.
Marlow carried on, knowing what was happening to the city behind him. The skyline (currently resembling the superstructure of a battleship) would soon be as flat as the Nevada desert. He resolved not to look back though, for fear of what happened to Abraham’s wife, Sarah.
The rumble of the ground was getting worse and Marlow’s senses were being reduced to the state they were in as a child when he spun round and round in circles. Marlow’s determination prevailed though and he only looked up to make sure he was going in the right direction and not going to career into a bank.
Ahead was a small bridge which Marlow eyed suspiciously. The concrete was barely above head height and it loomed waiting for Marlow to pass under it, swaying in the earthquake. Marlow stopped and glanced at the bank to either side of the bridge and knew that he was going to have to deal with Kurtz again, whichever path he chose. The vibration, noise and realisation of the position Marlow was in became unbearable; Marlow collapsed to his knees and vomited into the water, again adding more colour to it.
Marlow got to his feet and spat out the bile that had taken over his mouth and moved towards the bridge. In his wake was a trail of vomit which had made a vain attempt to hold onto his trousers, but had given up a few meters further on.
Marlow again paused; this time just before he stepped under the bridge. His ears were filled with sound of people shouting and beeping their horns (as though this was going to stop the earthquake). He breathed in deeply, for the first time realised the stink of the river, and then stepped under the bridge.
At that precise moment the sun sprang forth from behind it’s veil of clouds and pointed a solitary few beams towards the bridge. Silhouetted against the water in front of Marlow were two trucks crossing the bridge.
Marlow gasped. He couldn’t believe that a lorry would even contemplate going over a bridge in an earthquake, especially one that was groaning as much as this one. The three other lorries in the convoy had stopped on the before they had got to the bridge.
The bridge groaned loudly again and then crumbled under the strain, the masonry falling onto and around Marlow.
After a few minutes Marlow awoke to the blackness which enveloped him. The coy sun was again hiding behind the clouds, leaving Marlow alone; and as he lay, lumps of grey cement crushing his ribs and robbing him of the air he needed to breath others lumps supporting his broken back and legs, Marlow contemplated how the headlines in the morning would read ‘The Horror, The Horror; Bridge collapses causing delays to toothpick supplies!’