Manuscripts Burn


MANUSCRIPTS BURN

"Manuscripts don't burn"
- Mikhail Bulgakov

Hi, I'm horror and science fiction author Steve Kozeniewski (pronounced: "causin' ooze key.") Welcome to my blog! You can also find me on Facebook, Twitter, Goodreads, and Amazon. You can e-mail me here, join my mailing list here, or request an e-autograph here. Free on this site you can listen to me recite one of my own short works, "The Thing Under the Bed."

Thursday, March 12, 2009

Eternity Burning: Chapter 18, Part 1

John Rahowa walked the streets of Philadelphia, proudly wearing the blue jacket which was a trademark of the Fellowship of Labor, Business, and Merchantry. It had been over twenty years since the deaths of Adrian Cain and Victory Halov. After the two great leaders had been killed, the Fellowship had collapsed. The truth about the October Massacre had been made known. The general population had turned on the organization, helping to pull it apart.

Rahowa knew that Cain had been right. Even now, as most people metaphorically spat at Cain and the Fellowship, a certain, small, wise group had begun to rebuild what Cain had lost. Rahowa and his followers had constructed (in secret, naturally) a New Fellowship, based on Cainism and using the traditions of the original Fellowship.

The New Fellowship was small, because the generation which had been born after Cain's death had been brought up to believe the Fellowship was real. Only a small, radical few in Philadelphia like Rahowa new better.

Rahowa believed sincerely that elsewhere around the world small secret, "pocket" Fellowships had also formed. But it was only in Philadelphia, the home of Cainism, that the Fellows had numbers enough to go public.

(In reality the Philadelphia New Fellowship was little better than a street gang with blue jackets as their colors and preaching Cain's old lessons of eliminating homelessness by eliminating the homeless. There was no charisma, no knowledge, no nothing. They were just thugs directing their negative energies towards the homeless.)

Yes, the New Fellowship was glorious indeed. Soon they would have control of Philadelphia, as their predecessors had. Soon statues of Adrian Cain would be erected in Washington D.C. Soon workers around the world would...

"Hey you!"

Rahowa turned. A couple of men were sitting around a fire in an alley. One of them had apparently noticed Rahowa as he walked by the alley’s mouth. They all stood up as they saw Rahowa’s jacket.

Then it dawned on him. They were bums, and a whole bunch of them. Rahowa suddenly wished he hadn’t been so bold as to wear the blue jacket in public without bringing any other New Fellows with him. He was vulnerable when he was alone, and people nowadays instinctually hated that jacket.

Deciding that caution was the better part of bravery, and self-preservation was the better part of caution, and cowardice was the better part of self-preservation, Rahowa ran like hell. He heard yells behind him.

“Get him!”

Rahowa ducked into a doorway as he rounded a corner. He made it just in time, too. The bums came right on his coattails. Luckily, they passed by his hiding place without noticing him. It was then that he truly realized the paradigm of Philadelphia had shifted. The homeless were a stronger force than the Fellowship. Now Fellows were being attacked by bums, when it should have been the other way around. He shook his head, then took of his jacket. He continued on to New Fellowship headquarters, taking all precautions to hide his identity.

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