The first draft for this that only got to be half a page long was very much a failure of the 'show-don't-tell' storytelling rule, but there is a bit of world-building context I want to establish so I've tried to implant it into familiar bits of speech between characters and in the general view of a people that don't really think about that stuff all that much anymore. It's modern, but lacking a lot of innovations due to the history that this world has, which I'll try to explore to some fruitful end.
Anyways, here's the story, it is going to go in some crazy weird directions eventually but I've gotta really get at that character motivation, make you honestly believe that, yes, this character is trapped on a roof and very pissed off about it.
Hope you enjoy, see you when there's more, and have a lovely day.
Clarise's End-Times Restart I by Mac Clevinger, October 16, 2017.
Clarise sits in her cubicle, phone held loosely in her hand as she stares blankly at the top page of a stack of sheets she had been handed that morning. Row-upon-row of names and phone numbers vie for her attention and fail as they are absorbed into the ennui of her gaze, hers one of several silent cubicles amongst the hundreds sharing the twenty-seventh floor.
She relaxes the muscles in her hand, letting the phone slip from her grasp and hit the floor with a dulled concussion as the carpet catches it. Against the assault of innumerable people to contact about changing their landline provider, her eyes shut and she mouths the slow counting to ten. Then to twenty. To fifty. To one hundred.
A finger taps her on the shoulder when she hits seven-hundred-and-sixty-three, shaking her out of a better place and reminding her of where she really is. Her head jerks around, worried that a manager had noticed her lack of attention again, but lets out a relieved sigh at the sight of a kindly colleague handing her the dropped phone.
“I don’t think Paul would take kindly to seeing you disrespecting the honorable work we do, Clarise.”
She takes the phone from his hand, putting it back on the table with its dial tone quietly buzzing in the background as she sags forward and digs her face into her hands, mumbling through her palms.
“Stephen, I am this close to losing it today, and I just got here. I… I feel like someone pushed my face right into the Peace fence and just…”
Clarise puts a fist against the side of her head and makes an exploding gesture with her fingers, rocking her head back and letting her eyes roll as far back as she could manage with her mouth softly agape. Relaxing her features, she sighs and lets out a little laugh.
“I can’t… god, I can’t keep doing this to myself. How are you still here? It’s only been months and I…”
Stephen looks at the floor for a moment, letting out a quiet chuckle as he rubs the back of his head nervously. Stephen wasn’t old quite yet, but his youth had long passed by and Clarise could see him starting to become that down-to-earth happy uncle that would delight anyone in the family.
“Well, Clarise… It’s been hard, at times. What’s kept me going has been two things: my insidious plot to purloin this fiendish corporation’s finances through a diabolical scheme that has tricked everyone here into believing myself to be a portly man well into his years instead of the vicious criminal I really am…”
Stephen had hunched his shoulders and put his hands up in mock-claws, making a wide-eyed and sneering face that Clarise couldn’t take seriously for a second and began laughing at nearly uncontrollably. Through the laughter, Clarise eked out an amused voice.
“And what’s the other thing?”
He settles back, face growing more serious than moments before, the same anxiety as when he’d first shown up appearing again. Stephen shakes his head.
“Getting out of here every once in a while and treating yourself right – Clarise, this job can take its toll, we both know it’s worse for our health than going on a day trip outside the city, and you’ve got to have something outside of here to go back to. I’m older than you, Clarise – I know it’s hard to hear – I found my reasons years ago and go back to them every night, and I did not find them in this damn office.
“You’re young. I know Potrero has changed since I was a lad, but out there is love, life, and excitement, which are all a hell of a lot better than anything in here. As your friend, and as someone that knows a thing or two about life and regrets, please Clarise: get out of here. Go out and have the best day, alright?”
Clarise blinks, shocked by the sudden shift in tone from Stephen. There was almost a desperation in his eyes when he said this, a plea that she recognized but couldn’t understand.
“I… Stephen, I can’t just leave. This… They would fire me, and… I need… You can’t be… serious?”
“Clarise, I meant every word.”
“Even the part about being a criminal?”
Stephen cocks his head to one side, mulling over what she’d said.
“Well, maybe not a vicious criminal, but definitely pretty dastardly. Look, backup plan: if you won’t just walk out, then… the sun’s still on the rise, I bet you it looks beautiful from the roof. Maybe that’ll give you the kick you need to make it another day? Maybe the view of Potrero: The City of Ascension from the roof of – “
Stephen raises his voice, a cruel, mocking note in his voice that Clarise didn’t recognize.
“ – the second tallest building therein –
“ – could be your reason to get through the day. Or at least today. But please, Clarise, do something? For me?”
Clarise drums her fingers against the table in her cubicle, eyes falling upon the list of names and numbers and immediately glossing over before she could get through the first. She hated her job, but she loved money. Or needed money, and had some kind of Stockholm Syndrome thing going on with it.
“It’s a clear day. Maybe you could see Kara Matriette in her penthouse?”
Clarise groaned, wincing as her hands balled into fists.
“Why did I ever tell you… Fine. Fine, Stephen, I’ll… go try and enjoy life for thirty seconds and then just magically be able to call people about something neither of us care about and get shouted at for the next seven hours without dying of boredom. Are you happy?”
Stephen was euphoric, but hid it as he mulled over her question.
“Overall in life, or just in this moment?”
With an exasperated sigh, Clarise rises from her seat and, eyes scouting for the presence of anyone that might prefer she didn’t stop ‘working’, strides towards the stairwell that would take her along the short walk which separated the twenty-seventh floor of the building from the roof. Stephen sighed, too, as she walked away, relieved that she had gone.
Catching the eye of a young man that had ducked his head into the alley between lines of cubicles to look his way after Clarise passed, Stephen nodded at him before sitting at the recently vacated cubicle and taking ahold of Clarise’s phone. As he dialed the first of several numbers he needed to get through quickly, the young man ducked into the stairwell behind Clarise, nerves dancing along his face.
He reminds himself that he isn’t using her. He’s keeping her out of the way.
Clarise emerges onto the rooftop, letting the heavy door slam behind her as the wind catches it. She emerges from a squat brick that sits in the corner of the roof, stepping across the massive expanse of pebbled gravel that surrounds a few picnic tables and a gazebo, struck both by how pleasant the garden at the top of the world looks and how utterly ignored by its owners it must be.
Approaching the edge, Clarise warily approaches the waist-high barrier that surrounds the roof. She wasn’t scared of heights, exactly, but the idea of a sudden gust of wind pushing her to her doom makes her careful as she looks over the edge towards the North of the building.
Clarise gasps at the view, struck by how much of it there is. She knew there were mountains to the north, that the plains on the other side of the Peace fence gave way to forests, but seeing it all at once with her own eyes affects her in a way she wasn’t expecting. No one had probably been out there in generations; trees that must have been massive were like blades of grass to her.
Closer to her, she could see Potrero, the buildings growing progressively shorter as they approached the Peace fence. Billboards and gleaming signs were common sights dotting the rooftops towards the North, advertising restaurants, hotels, museums, music halls, and all other fine things that were for people not living as tight with money as Clarise had to. She loved to walk around there, though, among the pushing throngs that swarmed the streets at night and that’s when she had seen…
It was easy to spot the Matriette Hotel; it was the only building taller than the one Clarise was on. Beautifully designed and ostentatious as all hell, it draws Clarise’s attention as she can’t get the image of Kara out of her head. It ached in her chest, but she knew it was just a crush. The heiress to that kind of money? She knew where she stood with them, and it was far, far away.
Shaking the thought out of her head, Clarise walks along the perimeter of the roof, gazing over the center press of buildings at the lake that stretches into the horizon to the West of herself. There’s a strange kind of respite around the docks, where shipyards and warehouses lay low to the ground and let her see the sky unblocked along its streets, seeing into the immense and unknowable void of the night.
To the south the Peace fence stretched for miles beyond the city limits, giving ground to massive stretches of farmland that Clarise found to be the closest thing she could imagine to walking outside of the Peace fence, if you ignored all the horrific beasts that would also be there and trying to eat you. There was a unique culture around the farms, one that unsettled Clarise as she tried, for a day, to maneuver herself around a system of favors and power that left her dumbfounded.
She knew what lay to the West like the back of her hand: it was where people lived, where work was done, where you found the restaurants that served the locals and didn’t gouge the lucky few that could afford the protection to travel from a distant city to Potrero. The building she worked in was a part of this sector, her apartment picked out from the dull, nearly identical buildings in a matter of seconds.
It was easy for newcomers to discount this place and its people as dull, but she would argue vehemently against that. Where was the shame in doing the work that needed to be done so Potrero could operate? These weren’t tiny or unimportant lives, nor could they be known from the brief glance which was all they ever got from non-residents, or the inspectors sent from the city center to update the Mayor’s office on the city’s progress. They were… special, and overlooked far too often.
Clarise raps her knuckles on the edge of the roof, mind whirring along a familiar argument. She sighs, and takes a step towards the unsightly brick of concrete that would let her back into the building and get to the work she had just described as being so vital to Potrero. Maybe she was the exception, she was the one that didn’t matter and didn’t –
The door was locked.