Read My Crap - Anti-Water
Read My Crap - Anti-Water
I was a worker at a dam, a giant dam in a huge canyon filled with dark black rock. The dam itself was made of a grey cement and probably more than a mile high, absolutely huge, the kind of big that just gives you that awestruck feeling, like seeing the New York City skyline in person for the first time. I was on my way in to do my shift, I had a white jumpsuit on and an orange Hard Hat, I was joined by many others all going to the same place, some had red hard hats, others had orange like mine. The colors designated which side of the dam you worked on, the orange generator station on the left side of the dam or the red generator station on the right side. I was obviously part of the orange crew. The people I was with were all blank, there were no emotions in any of them, if you talked, they would talk back but it was always one word answers, short, and very abrupt. It was an eerie feeling, more because I felt the same way, I could feel the real me inside but it was being blocked like light through an opaque window, some gets through but you can't make anything out on the other side.
I reached a long hallway that split into three corridors, one left, one right, and one down the middle that lead to an elevator, apparently I was the only one allowed in this part of the dam, as everyone else was directed either left or right. I walked to the elevator and used a card key in my pocket to enter, it was all rusty and damp inside, the light on the ceiling was on, but the case around it was yellowed by some kind of mineral build up making it dim and flickery inside. It felt ominous, like an elevator leading to horrible monsters. But like I said, those feelings were extremely dull and I mostly felt nothing at all. So I got in and up it went.
The elevator came to a stop and the rusty door slid open, that sound of scraping rusty metal on metal giving me the chills as this new landscape fills my vision. I'm now on top of one of the towers that stand at each side of the the dam, I'm standing at some kind of master control board. I can see over the top of the dam out to a vast black ocean, the water as black as oil, leading out as far as the eye could see. The sky was dark, but light enough to see what was out there. This dam was holding back all of this black water and it seemed almost comical to me. "It's only a matter of a time", I muttered to myself as I watched the black waves crashing into the back of the dam. The water was nearly at the top and you could feel the immense pressure being put on the dam by this huge black ocean.
The black water was like anti-water, not life giving, but life sucking, not refreshing, but dehydrating, the opposite of everything water should be. You had to be careful here, getting this water on your skin could take years off your life and was fatal if ingested. The protective white coveralls were there to deflect the effects of this anti-water. There were two main side effects of being around this substance, anger and confusion, yet it would mask off almost all other emotions. It was filled with that dark energy and that's exactly what we were generating at these stations. The orange station generated confusion and the red generated anger, which were being fed into giant pipelines. These were physical manifestations of these emotions, flowing like water through massive pipe lines to the refineries below where they would be concentrated and perfected before being deployed onto the world. This was necessary, if not done, the black anti-water would eventually grow so large it would take over the entire face of the planet. So we all had to take our share of the burden. It was packaged and put into everything, food, water, entertainment, society, religion, absolutely everything had to have a share of it.
At least my job was easy, I would use my cool glowing control panel to direct the flow of anti-water into each station, being careful to maintain a balance. As I fed the anti-water to the generating stations, I would feel at ease and actually happy about it as I would watch the level of the great sea behind it drop down to a safer level. I knew the dam was old and a safe level had to be maintained at all times, or the worst could happen, a full collapse sending the sea down the canyon and wiping out a massive amount of cities, towns, and lives. There were cracks in the face of the dam, but none of them seemed deep enough to be concerned about.
At the end of my shift, I would return to the town right below the dam. It was a very strange and lifeless place, yet there were colors everywhere, lots of really fancy bright neon signs adorned everything, even coffee shops, grocery stores, and churches. Just imagine if everything in your town had giant Las Vegas like casino signs. I would stop by my favorite local bar after my shift, it was called "Lewks", it was the usual small town bar atmosphere. Beer signs, pool tables, etc. There was usually a small amount of run down looking people at the bar and it was same here as it was everywhere in town. The people would talk to you, but it was always short, emotionless, and usually one or two words. It wasn't unfriendly, it was just the way it was. No one seemed particularly happy about being here or what they had to do, but it is what it is, why fight it? Just do it.
The town closed down at 8PM sharp, there was a strict curfew that had to be followed. At 7PM, alarms would sound and everyone had to be home and inside by 8PM, because at 9PM something really weird would happen. Big iron gates on the mountain side would open and armies of black skeletons would march from below. These skeletons would go to the refineries and remove the waste products left over from the anti-water. It did not affect them, as they were made from the same substance, so they would take our piles and piles of waste products back down to their underground society under the great black sea. It was a mutually beneficial situation, but they hated humans with a passion and would kill you on sight if you were outside when they came. Hence the curfews, and if you were killed by one of these skeletons, you became one and were forced to join the ranks of the living dead under the mountains. It was known that these were the remains of those who were killed in the great floods when the dark waters came, millions upon millions were lost and now exist as black living creatures of bone and mineral. A frightening and undesirable fate for any human.
I think we all understood that eventually the dam would collapse and we'd all go down to join the skeletal ranks, that was another part of the strange blank attitudes everyone seemed to have here.
Can we stop the inevitable flood of darkness? Or will we all become black skeletons working under an ocean of hate?
The dream left me with an eerie feeling and heartburn. What created the black water in the first place? Probably us.
