What If

What if everything wasn't always as it seems? If there was no good or bad, no judgement on what is light and what is dark? If the things during the day were as dangerous as those that lurk in the night? What if there were no laws, none of the moral and ethical bindings that make up society? A world where only the toughest survive.
Welcome to a place where worst fears become reality. Welcome to the world of the Anari...

          "You grow up fearing your own shadow. In a world where nothing is as it seems, you grow strong to survive. There is no one to help you, to hold you up if you fall down. It's you against the world. No one wants you, or cares. Its just you, yourself and no one."
                                       *****
          Jamie slammed her hand against the keyboard in utter frustration, forcing the others in the library to look at her with disapproving glances. God, why did everything have to be so hard? Why wasn't Dan here, Meg, someone? She paused, tryign to collect herself, but to no avail. You want to know why there was no one real to help? They were all in her head. In the real world, she had no one. Why were they all looking at her? All the stupid college kids with their stupid exams and the business people in their three-piece suits. She wanted to scream at them, to tell them... 'Dont look at me. I've gone through more in a single day then you have in your entire lives, you pompous stuck-up rich bastard. You, with your business suit, in here to check your email on lunch break. I know your kind, people that dont give a thought to the little people down below. Its because of you that the Anari world exists. Go back to your plush corner office on the 10th floor, your cubicle with a view. And you, blond girl, going to college on Daddy's bankroll. Probably never had to work a day in your life. Dont look at me.'
          Jamie closed her eyes and counted backwards from ten. Good, that always helped. She had to keep herself in check. If she didn't they'd put her back on the meds, and she couldn't write if she was. She needed to hear Dan and Meg and Monroe. Because without them, without the voices, she couldn't find out what was happening in Anari, and she couldn't write the story that would show them all.

*****
          "Monroe walked outside. He figured things were safe for now, unless Marilyn decided to attack him. But she wouldn't do that. Would she? Nah.
          The sky was clear again, a bluish-red that hinted at purple if you looked at it closely enough. The sun shown vaguely through, but that was the best you could ever expect. Some days the sky got black, and then you had to be really careful. To find a shelter in your area when the sky was black was imperative. He had met Marilyn in a shelter.
          People sometimes spoke of the old legends, before the supposed bombing of the world. When, thousands of years before, the sky had really been blue, and you could drink the rain without the filtration taps. When there was no real need for a shelter. But that was just a myth. Why was he thinking about this anyway? He needed to find Marilyn. She make him stop thinking about myths and skies.

          Marilyn rose and stretched, stepping away from the little shade the crater provided. People said that the craters were the most dangerous places left on Anari, places where the most mutations came from. But hell, who wasn't a mutant? Even Monroe, the thinker, agreed with her on this one. There had been no one you could really call normal for at least 15 generations, especially with the new inter-mutant relationships. Besides, who cared if you had three arms or four arms or none? As long as you could still survive, you were fine. At least, that was her philosophy. Philosophy. Monroe would love that word. It was big and had an origin in a practically million years dead language. Didn't it? Oh who knew? She had to find him though. He'd probably be mad at her for walking off like that. And he liked to roam. If she didn't stay around and remind him she existed, he might wander off and never come back. Or maybe if he didn't stay around she'd wander off. Who knew?
         "Monroe. Monroe. Shugar, where are you?" Marilyn talked with a slow drawl. In another world, another time, it could maybe be thought of as the Deep South, but generations of mutations and inter-breeding made it virtually another way of speech entirely. She did look a little like the mythical Marilyn of old, with bleach blond hair and high cheekbones. She was bred that way. Her momma had wanted a pretty baby. But she didn't care what Momma wanted. It was everyone for themselves, and she wouldn't even remember 'Momma' as more than a general stepping stone in her life if not for the fact that she had taught her to survive.
          A flash frame of Jen, standing in the black day, put a sudden damper on Marilyn's so far clear day, and she pushed it aside to search for Monroe.
         "Shug, I want you. Where are you?"

*****
Jamie stopped her pounding of the keyboard. She had to get those stories written up for the press in the morning, she couldn't be late. Suppressing the voices in her head that threatened to engulf her with their clamor, she logged off of her personal account and onto her business one. "Welcome, Jamie." The voice emanated from the screen, and she started. What did she have left for tomorrows deadline? Just the McNeary story, and that was A-13 stuff. Back-page news that nobody read anyway. It was all good. And her real story was coming along just fine. She wondered why she had flipped out like that? She hadn't done that in months, not since she had gotten rid of Matt and all that baggage. She shouldn't let herself get involved with her story like that. It was dangerous. The consequences of letting her other personalities take over, of letting the voices in her head run the show, were dire. If it happened again, she'd have to go back on the meds and stop the story. Jamie allowed herself a secret smile as she rolled up her sleeves to get to work on McNeary's latest screw-up. It was a good story so far wasn't it?
          She logged off the computer. Yeah, for a start, it was definitely good.