Sunday, January 20, 2008

The Shredders

Beneath everything were the shredders.

And while, stories above them, aristocrats carried handguns and automatic weapons, the shredders carried kitchen knives and cricket bats. They all wore battered moccasins because, when you're invisible, you had damn well better tread lightly.

The cloaks they carried were heavy and uncomfortable, and they wore them on their backs. The lucky ones had the older models, but most of them had pieced together the ones they wore in their basement. It was hardly infrequent for these homemade devices to shudder and die without any warning at all, and, in that case, the unfortunate wearer was not likely to get home before he was seen.

The people had long ago decided that a government that governs least governs best, and so they had done away with the government all together: the police, the firemen, the schools.

The schools, it was said, taught too much science anyway.

The shredders resented the aristocrats, and the aristocrats disdained the shredders. There was an elevator, though, that shredders could take up to the aristocrats. When they arrived, aristocrats would hire them for a day's wages, and then, at the end of the day, all the shredders would take the elevator back down, and they would put their cloaks back on and resume their normal lives, completely invisible.

So, stalking the dark streets in which they dwelled, the shredders passed silently, never hurrying because they never had anywhere to go.

5 comments:

Abby said...

Speaking of distopias...

actually, since there isn't a government, I guess it can't be a distopia (as I learned two weeks ago (: )

That that photo isn't from Saturday, is it?... wait, no, it's a different bowling alley. And you didn't have a camera with you (duh). My b.

Anonymous said...

that was fun =]

Tim said...

Quasi-dystopian writing...

Very interesting.

Anonymous said...

Very Rousseau. Not so much Voltaire, but very Rousseau.

Anonymous said...

Very nice, and interesting. I enjoyed it.