This was a short story for my creative writing class in Fall 2019.
The city was thousands of years old. Its stone walls were worn from countless acidic rains and bleached by the sun. The thick Venusian jungle stopped a hundred feet from the city’s edges. Within the city, nothing grew. Its winding alleyways were silent.
Owen parked his sleek metal truck by a small gatehouse beside the outer walls. The afternoon reflected off the bone-white walls and into his dark goggles. He hopped out and walked around to the back of the truck, where he retrieved a large briefcase. He shut the trunk with a slam that echoed off of the imposing wall.
It was a humid day, and time was suspended in the thick air, as if in a dream. Yellow sulfur clouds hung above the horizon. The perfect day for a picnic, for a break from civilization. The hustle and bustle of life at Venus’ capital city wore on a person over time. The same repetitive life, day after day, unrewarding work and scant money. It disconnected one from life, and life became a series of daily challenges down to the smallest thing. Owen had to force himself to even get out of bed now.
Owen walked through the gates and into the silent city. His shoes clicked on the stone street. The city watched him from dark empty windows and shadowed alleys. He came to the center, and stood under a tall, ashen tower which stretched high into the sky, above the rest of the buildings. He entered the tower and began to climb. The golden sun shone through evenly-spaced openings along the stairs. He made it to the summit, and emerged to a flat area bordered by a polished marble railing overlooking the city. Owen set his briefcase down on the railing and undid the latches. With a flourish, he pulled out a blanket and lay it down flat on the ground. He took out a sandwich and a bottle of aged Martian wine, closed the briefcase, and sat down on the blanket cross-legged. He began to eat.
The rushed monotony of city life was gone. No more rows of numbers and sales figures, no more deadlines and budgets. A breeze blew at his hair and flapped his shirt. The ancient city stretched out in all directions, smooth and white as snow. He was the only person for miles. The thought was oddly comforting.
A faint tapping sound came from the stairs. A bright red fox jumped the top step and onto the flat area. It looked at Owen, head tilted. Owen stared back, sandwich in hand, and before he could react, the fox lurched forward and grabbed his lunch. It ran back and quickly descended the stairs. Owen sat for a moment before rushing to his feet to follow. He took the stairs two at a time. Owen reached the bottom, but the fox was nowhere in sight. The square stood hauntingly empty. A gentle wind whistled through the abandoned streets. Owen crossed his arms and shivered. The humid day suddenly seemed chill. Thick clouds moved over the sun, filtering the city in a sickly yellow light.
Connected to the main square were four wide roads, lined with hundreds of shops and restaurants, empty and dark. Owen walked down one such road, a small figure in an alabaster valley. The silence, once comforting, filled him with unease. He could feel the eyes watching him from above, the city itself looking at him. They whispered in hushed tones, the long dead, angry at his trespassing. Owen regretted coming to the city. He had so much work to do, he had no time for this. He didn’t belong here.
A flash of red appeared in the corner of his vision. Owen turned to see the fox, perched on a marble table beside a canal, sandwich still in mouth. It jumped down into the dry canal, and Owen ran after it. Reaching the edge, he lowered himself down. The fox was now a red spot in the distance. Owen chased after the distant fox, panting as he grew more and more tired, but the fox never seemed to get closer. The fox rounded a distant corner. Owen’s vision blurred with fatigue. He turned the corner and ascended a set of steps. The fox was waiting, sitting on top of an elaborately decorated fountain in a garden of stone flowers. It looked amused.
Owen collapsed to the ground, panting. His gasps echoed through the dead garden. He actually felt good, tired as he was. The depressing numbness of the capital was gone. He felt alive in this dead city. He stood up, and slowly walked through the frozen garden to the fountain. His hand followed the winding swirl of a marble vine, the joyous explosion of flower petals, a long and slender stem. He reached the base of the fountain, and the fox jumped down and trotted towards a large building with a dome overlooking the garden. The building was adorned with complex carved columns and beautiful illustrations. The entrance lay at the summit of even more steps. Owen, exhausted, sat on the stairs to rest. The fox waited at the top patiently.
Owen closed his eyes. He was finally here. For the past month, Owen had drifted through most of the day. All the joy of life had been squeezed out, and he was left feeling like a husk of his former self. When he was at work he dreamed of sleeping, and when he was sleeping he dreamed of a bustling city, painted in vivid colors, where people lived and loved life. Cozy boats meandered down long canals, and people from around Venus came to trade goods. At the center of the city there was a tower, and around this tower people danced and laughed, at peace with the universe. Owen always felt empty when he woke up from one of these dreams. His sad life paled in comparison to the vibrant lives of those in the ancient city.
Owen had found the old city almost completely by chance. A couple of days before, he was driving down the highway when he spotted a familiar white shape jutting above the trees. He did a double take and drove down a small side road to check. It was the same tower from his dreams. It had just started to rain, and Owen had to cut his visit short and drive back. The next day he packed his briefcase and returned, not caring that he was speeding or that he was skipping work.
He opened his eyes. The saffron-colored clouds were darker now. A stinging drop landed on Owen’s arm. He winced and quickly ascended the stairs. The fox was sleeping at the entryway to the domed building. It awoke at his footsteps, and walked in. Owen followed it.
The interior of the building was so vast and impressive that Owen involuntarily gasped. Hundreds of stone seats lined a series of concentric stepped circles that converged at a single podium at the center. He had a brief flash back to his dream, to a room full of people yelling and arguing in a room just like this. So this was where their council convened, he thought to himself. The fox followed the outer circular wall, and took a turn down a perpendicular hallway that shot off from the main room. The hallway stretched on into the distance. Owen absentmindedly followed the fox, who had eaten the sandwich at some time or another.
The city felt much different from his dream. Where his dream’s city was an explosion of color and life, this city felt deserted. The elaborate murals of planets and stars were gone, erased by Venus’ acidic storms. The busy streets crowded with wagons were abandoned, and the canals lay unfilled. The city felt hollow.
Muffled thunder shook the walls and echoed down the hallway. The rain sung a soothing song as it hit the vacant buildings and dripped down smooth roofs. The rain wore down everything on Venus. Trees had developed a partial resistance to the rain, but gradually decayed from it. Young plants on the jungle ground depended on the rain to break holes in the canopy and bring light down. The animals and native venusions of eons past had similarly evolved immunity to the acid. Native cities were built of strong white stone that was mostly unaffected by the constant precipitation. Newer cities were covered by large transparent domes that repelled the rains. Modern-day Venusians were the descendants of colonists from Earth, seeking a new life on the humid planet. Who knows why, Owen thought to himself. Life was miserable here. Torrential rains pounding over and over again, mustard yellow skies and uninteresting lives. Day after day, rain after rain, until one was ground down to the point that they ceased to truly exist.
He entered a cavernous room lined with hundreds of rectangular forms. The dim light shining from the hallway windows shined off the tops. Owen approached one to get a closer look. He leaned over one of the marble boxes, squinting to make out what was inside, under the clear crystal lid. He shouted and recoiled. A shadowed skull lay within; this was a tomb. Images flashed in his brain, images of Venusians covered in blisters, of wagons piled high with bodies. He grabbed his head and covered his eyes with his hands, but the images didn’t stop. Buildings quarantined and set on fire, their residents throwing themselves out of windows to be slain by the mob. The colorful paintings of space that decorated every wall in the city, now faded and forgotten. Heated arguments in the council room turning to fights. Armed men rushing the room and running the councilmen through with spears. Men lined up and executed. A succession of authoritarian leaders. Paranoia, panic, death.
The images stopped, and Owen gasped and opened his eyes. He found the fox standing on his chest, its deep violet eyes staring into his with a look of concern. It hopped off and walked a short distance down the hallway back, stopped, and turned back to watch him. Owen got up and followed.
They descended the stairs and passed through the garden. The rain had stopped and the sun was setting. It reflected off of deep puddles and slick sidewalks. Owen gingerly stepped around the acidic liquid. The people here didn’t disappear suddenly, he realized. They fought and destroyed themselves, caught up in greed and mistrust. They couldn’t see beyond what was in front of their faces.
Owen and the fox went another way back, through narrow alleyways, avoiding the canals filled with shallow yellow water. The alleyway opened up to a wide street, which led to the main square with the tower. The fox walked in, and instead of taking the stairs up, descended below ground. Owen followed. The air got cooler the deeper they went, and it got so dark that he had to guide himself by touching the walls. A faint blue light appeared, which slowly increased in brightness until Owen could see the stone walls around him. He emerged into a spacious cavern lit by a blinding cerulean light hanging from the ceiling. At the center was a strange contraption of writhing tubes and stilled gears, from which pipes shot off in every direction. Attached to it was a chair. This was the heart of the city. The fox stood beside it, waiting.
Owen made his way to the large machine and sat in the chair. His dreams always ended here. Here, bearded scholars held their ears to the multitude of tubes that connected to the machine and frowned, hurriedly scribbling notes. Princes and diplomats in outlandish garb traveled to this sacred place. Owen reached up and grabbed one of the flexible tubes with what appeared to be a funnel on the end. He put it to his ear, and listened. He heard nothing at first. Then there was a slight humming, then an explosion of noise. It condensed into a beautiful harmony of sound that weaved its way into patterns and stories. Creation, destruction, the existence of the planets and the stars. The music of the spheres. It was beautiful. It sung of the solar system. There was Venus, covered in swirling clouds. There was the capital, and Owen’s home. There was his purpose, his life, his loved ones, within a larger universe that danced with energy. It was utterly humbling for Owen, to see his life so small yet part of a larger system. He put the earpiece back onto the machine, and touched his face to find it was wet with tears. The fox was gone.
Owen slowly climbed back up the tower’s stairs. His briefcase and blanket were completely ruined, but he found that he didn’t mind. There were more important things in life. He left them where they were. He exited the tower, and found himself running. He ran past the blank walls and ivory alleyways, under dark windows and weathered balconies, over long puddles of sunshine, out the gate. The fox, delicately perched on the wall above, watched as he pulled his truck out and drove down the overgrown road back to the highway. Its crystal eyes glinted with the knowing. As Owen’s truck disappeared into the jungle, the fox turned and went back into the city.
The crushing canopy of monotony had been pierced by a newfound purpose. Owen felt renewed. The dark clouds of depression had dispersed, and light shone and danced across his face as it filtered through the leaves above.
The green jungles faded behind Owen as he entered the dome. The drab grey concrete of the capital’s buildings blurred to each side. This was truly the dead city. A million dead people wandering the streets, doing their daily commute. The drab routine of modern life. Their minds were stuck on Venus, Owen thought. Stuck in their little rituals and checklists. It bled the joy from life. Owen arrived home and parked the truck. He headed inside; there was something he needed to do.
The sun hung just over the horizon when he returned. He chose a close wall and got to work. Swirls of color, dancing and embracing. Beautiful waltzes of cosmic dust and spinning planets. Venus, the sun, the Milky Way. Owen painted what he had heard in that subterranean cavern. And he painted a pair of deep purple eyes that, if one looked closely enough, could see themselves reflected within.
The sun dipped below the horizon, and the paint started to glow, faintly at first. Owen sat, the paint still dripping from his brush. Passerby stared and took pictures, but he didn’t mind. He had found his place in the world, a small speck among thousands of specks of light that together lit the universe in a beautiful vibrant light that swirled and danced in the sky.
