Chapter 1 - Jacob

Jacob

The tin can spun out of control bouncing off the pavement before sliding to rest in the gutter. No traffic passed by, the streets were always empty here. Small dust devils lifted dry leaves in their wafting grasp, sending them floating down onto the street to rest in clumps by the side of the road. This part of town was mostly rundown warehouses, disused and abandoned factory complexes. There was no sign of life here. Nothing moved, nothing lived. These places had sat useless ever since the economy crashed a decade ago. No one came here anymore.

Jacob swung his foot and kicked the can again, sending it careening along the gutter, the metallic noise reverberating off the nearby walls giving him a little satisfaction.

He was frustrated. Frustrated and annoyed. As usual nothing was going his way. Again today he went to his local unemployment office looking for work, and again there was nothing “suitable” for him. Hmpf! He thought. How the hell do they know what is suitable? They don’t even care what I want…

Another furious swipe at the can sent it clanging down the street, disturbing a pile of leaves built up in the gutter and sending them flying in a plume of rustling colour. Cripes. I don’t even know what I want, how the hell can they know?

The product of a society deep within an economic depression, Jacob was your typical teenaged dropout. After leaving school a few years ago, he had nothing to do and nowhere to go. And school was a nightmare. He had left before graduation. Hell, he’d run from that place, run as fast as his legs could carry him. It had turned into a bloody tangle of gang warfare, and he wasn’t the gang type. How could he be? Jacob was a loner, his thin frame and quiet demeanour made him an easy target, and his white flesh bore dozens of pale silver scars to show it. No, school was a death-trap for him, an angry gathering of madness and calculated cruelty, that’s why he had to leave.

Now he was 19, and life was not much better. Alone and quiet. But he was safe enough, life had taught him that much. Well, life, and death. In the past 4 years he’d seen violence and death, the decaying stench of week old rotting flesh writhing with maggots and swarming with flies still haunted his nightmares. But neither was he the soft youngster that had ran away from home and school. Harsh lessons in brutality and hunger had hardened him, his toned body rippled beneath his casual exterior, a bundle of steel springs tightly wound that could explode in an instant. Jacob’s reflexes were like lightning, reacting to any situation with uncanny speed and accuracy. All those years playing video games really did count for something. And Jacob was no rocket scientist, not by a long shot, but he was street smart and adaptive and that’s all he needed to stay alive and out of sight.

Nudging the can out of a scattering of debris and leaves, he smashed his boot into it again sending it flying across the street with spinning fury into a wire mesh fence. That was when he saw him, just a glimpse from the corner of his eye, a dark figure standing to one side, deep within an empty factory complex using buildings as cover. The can clattered to a stop on the road drawing his attention for a split second, but when he looked back the figure was gone.

A cold shiver ran up Jacob’s spine, the hairs on his neck stood on end and Jacob felt a certainty that he had seen this person before, dark and mysterious, wide brimmed hat drawn low over his face, flowing dark trench coat pulled tightly around his chest, the loose ends draped and flowed around his booted feet in an unseen breath of air. Jacob couldn’t put his finger on it, his mind felt hazy, like a thick fog had rolled across his memory making things hard to see. One thing he was sure of though, something he couldn’t mistake, the figure was looking at him, watching him, examining him…

With a brisk shake of his head to clear the confusion, Jacob pulled his jacket closer to warm his skin and smooth away the goosebumps, took a final glance through the wire mesh into the empty factory complex where he saw the dark figure, and walked briskly down the street towards his home. His tin football left forgotten and shining on the street, rustling leaves settling around it in the cold silence left in his wake.

Intro

Well for years now I have been toying with ideas for some Fantasy / Supernatural / Sci-Fi based writing but just havent been arsed to actually do it.

This in itself is not such a bad thing, over time I've been archiving ideas and thoughts, you know, those tiny lightglobes you get when your on a bus or or waiting for the water to boil... *ding* There's a cool idea, I'll have to remember that... *ding* Hey wow, that could work!

So all this time that I've been lazy and written nothing I have actually been churning out tons of concepts to work with, then throwing most of them away... Now I have a handful of core ideas that i can combine and shape together into something more solid than just my brainwaves.

This Blog will be my attempt at putting those ideas into some kind of tangible form, combining them into what I hope will be a piece of original writing that I can share with my friends and family, or whoever else my stumble across it.

I'll be posting in parragraph and chapter form as I go, please feel free to leave any feedback you like (dont worry about spelling and grammar, I don't! Thats what spellchecks are for ;) ).

Cheers,

Fire...