Dragon Rising Excerpt 10 - 11

Asher's Journal:


Excerpt 10:



July 4, 2033

Days without food – 6 (I’m getting to be a pro at this)
Days without sleep – 3 (see aforementioned new skillz)

In honor of this fantastic holiday, I’ve spent the last hour wondering what independence really means. It’s been 6 (66 ha, ha) weeks in HELL now. I keep thinking that staying here was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. But what was I supposed to do? I couldn’t just WALK to Chicago. Could I?

Could I?

This is the delightful refrain of my dreams, punctuated by a gasping, sweaty arousal, if I’m lucky enough not to be ambushed. It’s becoming pretty clear now that surviving outside these disgusting, vicious… …Shit, I’m tired of trying to describe them. They’re gangs. Gangs are gangs. Before, during, and after. But in the “after” surviving without them seems nearly impossible. There are always the Lifer fights, but those guys are all gang guys, lets face it. The shit I’ve seen these past few weeks????? My highly expensive vocabulary fails me.

Now, trapped in this concrete DMZ, it seems to me that I spent too much time studying everything else and too little studying the gangs of New York. Or at least the gangs of Harlem and the Bronx. That would have been waaaaaaay more useful.



Excerpt 11:

July 4, 2033...

By the way, generally speaking, if you see gang tags run like hell. (In case anyone finds this journal on my body consider this advice my gift to you. Unless you killed me, in which case, screw you, mother******.)

If you have the balls and stupidity to climb to the top of one of the towers in this twisted geodesic landscape, you see the same sunset over the Park - only now there are hundreds of tendrils of smoke dotting the horizon like streamers.

We’re all just a mice in a maze. Tasty morsels