Dungeon Town

The midmorning sun filters through damp leaves and rotting branches, casting a harsh mockery across Johan’s face. It was supposed to rain again today, and so of course the sun is up to its usual mischief, filling Johan’s squinting eyes with beams of disobedient light between every treetop, like the pinions of some great bird drifting lazily across the sky. He sighs. If it were any cloudier, he could have argued with himself to stay home, but the sky is mercilessly clear today. No excuses. He hears it in his father’s voice.

“Alright, Dad.” He says to himself as he trudges onward.

Johan’s parents settled in this town some ten years ago. Back then, it was just a quarry, a school, and a general store. Now, it is even less. Johan has spent his life in this place, and tomorrow, he will finally leave for a technical college upstate. A fresh start where he can make new friends and pretend that this sad little chapter of his life never happened. Still, there is something that brought him out here today, to parade in dreary silence around the monuments of his childhood as if to arm himself with the memories. After all, Johan is leaving this place forever. Reminiscing is what he’s supposed to do right? He glances back. Murky footfalls trace his path through damp gravel to the wet, crumbling road and the street that looks like a demilitarized zone; his home for as long as he can remember. What is there in this moribund town to reminisce? He supposes that even if there is nothing, he may as well try out of respect for his father, who tried so hard to give him fond memories. Johan takes one last look across his town, picking out his house amidst cracked rooftops before crossing the tree line. On the other side, flattened ground stretches for hundreds of metres. Dirt roads divvy up the land, and concrete and rebar pillars stick out of the Earth at right angles; each one a headstone for a building that was never finished. Looming ahead are three skeletal towers. Apartment buildings, close to completion. They are sad, sleeping giants, the unfortunate refuse of a poor investment. Like sentinels of this land, they keep solemn watch over the torrid marshland and the graveyard of their fellow high-rises. Johan takes a step forward into this sacred place and sinks to his ankles in mud. The bare earth radiates a pleasant petrichor, and he finds himself breathing deep through his nose. He has always been more at home with the uninhabited, there is something about the half-eaten buildings that reminds him of himself. He takes another step, then another, the mud sucking greedily at his boots as he tugs them free. Usually, he’ll find little weeds sprouting around the concrete, like someone has left flowers for the buried giants. Johan dares not take from the headstones, instead trudging across the field until he is in the deep canyon between the three towers. They loom above him, scrutinizing his every move. Here there are all sorts of plants, quaint flowers that he recognises from his yard and wilder grasses he only finds out here. He settles for home, picking a handful of the little blue ones and continuing onward. Beyond the worked ground Johan reaches the lip of a shallow valley. A wide stream rushes through here, and as Johan clambers down he nearly falls in, wetting the tips of his boots. He would play here as a child, wielding fallen branches and jumping across the water with his friends. The other kids are gone now, scattered by love or fortune. Johan is the last to leave this town. The water is wider than he remembers. Perhaps it was dammed for the quarry back then. Johan bends down and tentatively tests the water with one hand. It is fast, faster than it looks, and cold. No excuses. With a sudden motion, he splashes into the river, flapping his arms wildly as he almost loses his balance. It rushes cruelly past him, reaching up to his waist and clawing at his back, pushing the air out of his lungs as he resists the flow. He takes one step, then another. One of his boots becomes dislodged, and with the sudden weightlessness of his foot he loses balance, falling forward into the stream. Panicking, he begins to paddle, kicking his legs desperately behind him. His hand touches silt and he heaves himself, wet and panting, onto the opposite bank. He takes a moment to collect himself before looking down. His right foot is bare, and as he reaches down to pick himself up, he realises the flowers in his hand are probably ruined. Sighing, Johan pushes himself to his feet, wincing slightly as the coarse sand digs into his bare foot.

“No turning back now, eh?” He says dryly as he clambers up the other side of the riverbank.

The sun warms Johan slightly as he emerges from the valley, but it is the reason he is here in the first place, and Johan refuses to acknowledge it. Otherwise, the wind cuts through his dripping clothes like a knife. Shivering, he begins walking briskly onward. Ahead is another clearing amidst trees, albeit far larger. As Johan approaches, the quarry yawns out underneath him. The immensity of this place is always dizzying, and he keeps careful distance at first so as not to fall in. It is a great gash that tears the forest asunder, and Johan’s little town feels so small in comparison. He takes tentative steps towards the edge until he can look down and see it all. Here, the great machines would pick at the open earth like vultures at a corpse. He remembers his father taking him here when he was young, marvelling at the size of the drills and trucks and cranes his father operated that mirrored his toys in gargantuan scale. Whatever prize they sought beneath the earth they seem to have found, as these titans of industry lie dormant and rusting, frozen in their final machinations, but not, it would seem, to the ravages of time. Keep away from the edge, son. They are his father’s words again, echoing up from his memory. Johan looks stupidly at the wilted flowers he clutches in a shivering hand, and back at the edge. He remembers suddenly, his father’s apprehension towards weeds. He can almost hear him now, going on about them taking over his garden. As far as Johan could tell, the flowers looked just as nice.

“I... I know it’s a weed, but I thought they looked alright.” Johan says to the air as he awkwardly opens his hand over the quarry, letting them drop below. “And I’m sorry they’re wet. There was nothing I could do.” There is a slab etched with his father’s name back home, but Johan feels closer to him out here. A moment passes. Johan looks down at himself. What is he doing? He falls to his knees, slumping his shoulders as he begins to feel the emotions he was starting to escape. There are memories here, buried behind layers of indifference within his mind. He wells up with tears as he looks out. The unnatural shadows of skeletal machinery mingle through his blurry vision into seeping ink across the sheer rock faces ahead. The last time Johan saw the quarry like this, he bottled up everything he felt. Now, as if some long-burning furnace inside his heart has opened, it all comes rushing out. Something builds up in his chest, and before he knows it, he is shouting, roaring a guttural nothing into the quarry below. His despair echoes back to him, and he lashes out again, louder. He is raw and angry. Angry at his father for leaving him alone in this world, angry at his town for daring to wither away, and angry at himself for this sick charade to please a dead man. Johan’s shouts melt into desperate cries, then into heaving sobs as his body racks with the weight of reminiscing.

“I’m sorry. I can’t stand to be here anymore.” He groans into the chasm. “I don’t want to leave you behind, but I have to.” He doubles over, sobbing and growing quieter. “I’m sorry.” Johan lies on the ground for a time, half expecting his father to pat him on the back, to help him up and wipe his tears away and say it was all a bad dream, but he feels only the sunlight tickling his neck.

And suddenly, that is ok. Johan realises with a start that he has broken through. He sniffs and opens his eyes, watching tears and dripping water mingle in the dirt between his hands. For the first time in a long time, he feels free. Free of the chains that shackled him to this town, and free of the burden inside.

“I’ll take you with me.” He says, arming himself with the memory.

It is time for Johan to leave. He wipes the wetness from his face and turns around to begin his journey back. He crosses the river for the last time and pays his final respects to the three kings. The sun shines inexorably upon his face, and he is smiling. Johan is glad it did not rain today.