Curran Geist is today's featured Author on One Thousand Worlds. The first one thousand words of his novel The Sity are printed below. Words which promise a great story of an unimaginale world. See for yourselves and let Curran (and yours truly) know what you think.
The Sity by Curran Geist-
THE SITY paints a dystopian, post-apocalyptic, extraterrestrial landscape that mirrors many modern day social issues, including: the exploitation of children, sexual slavery, and cruelty towards animals. The lead characters embark on a harrowing journey of survival and vengeance while trying to unravel the mysteries of their pasts and forge a destiny to save humanity.
About this author-
Curran Geist grew up in the quaint town of Schwenksville, PA. As a home educated student, Curran often lived within books and his vibrant imagination allowed him to escape to fictional worlds beyond the tiny town where he was raised. Writing is and has always been Curran's passion. By the age of 12, he had already begun writing novels. As a teenager, he won multiple youth poetry competitions and started his own independent art newsletter entitled Inbetween Dreams. While studying Religion at Gettysburg College, Curran participated in numerous poetry slams.
Human rights has also always been very important to Curran as evidenced through his experience in the Americorps, with Amnesty International, and at the Museum of Tolerance New York. In writing his first self-published novel THE SITY, Curran Geist has merged his love of science fiction, fantasy, and horror genres with his belief in combatting social injustices.
The Sity
It was the grating sound of clicking levers and spinning, rusting chains that awoke him. The screeching cries of metal scraping against metal sent a cold shiver up his spine. He clenched his fingers together, trying to control his nerves. His teeth began to chatter as the rattling chains grew louder and louder all around. The sounds could only mean one thing.
They were coming for him.
There was a flicker of movement in the corners of his eyes. It was the movement of one of the shadow forms encroaching upon his cage. And now, more darkened bodies were emerging from the depths of the cloudy haze. They encircled all around him. They closed in tighter until he could feel their breaths on his skin and could feel their presence crawling through his bones, suffocating him. He clenched his fingers tighter, paralyzed in fear. A wetness formed in the corner of his eyes.
The shadow beings loomed over him just beyond the cold metal claws that formed his prison. This prison was his home. This prison was the only thing that now protected him and separated him from the others.
The faces around him were of those beings he could barely recognize. All he knew about these others was that they bore no resemblance to his own skin. His skin was pale and scarred. His arms were thin and gangly. His own face was ghostly and his hazel eyes, bloodshot. The first time he’d stolen a glimpse of himself in the water bowl, it was then that he realized…realized what a freak he really was.
He slipped away again – inward - into the blank, empty void to hide. His eyes glazed over now; unwavering as the world passed before him. There was hardly a flicker of life in those pupils. They had become like mirrors capturing the dancing reflections of a grimy world. This darkened, strange world had used him up and corroded away any sense of hope and any sense of who he was. He didn’t even know his name. He didn’t even know his age.
For those shadow forms had taken it all.
The rough chains clamped on his limbs were now dragging him forward toward the light. The shadow figures around him became a swirling wall of flashing colors and a sonic mass of sound. His delusions now escalated into a pounding, thumping wall of voices. There was crying, screaming, fear, and laughter. Laughter…laughter…laughter…
Deep within his bruised shell, the laughter consumed every pore of his body. His spirit - deadened by abuse and lack of food - was now tormented by the ongoing laughter, which struck against him like the biting lashes of a whip. As his vacant eyes just looked straight ahead, he could only muster one wish now. His only singular wish was that nothing would look back. That nothing would look back at him and into him…
“Step right up and look at it. It is one of a kind from a foreign world. A proud race of things called HUMANS!” the voice bellowed. The crowd cackled louder in anticipation. “This is a real human. It once walked on exotic lands before the expedition found it and brought it below.”
The tall figure Zaku lurched above the iron cage. He jerked down upon a long lever.
“Now all see. It is safe. I promise. We have strong chains to hold the miserable freak down. Before, you only had a glimpse. Now see the freak for what it is.” As Zaku dropped the lever all the way down, the iron cage was ripped up from off the ground. It disappeared toward the arched ceiling of the auditorium. The crowd gasped at the sight of the human strung up on the stage.
“Look at the vacant eyes…only two…the disheveled hair and the unprotected weak pale skin. This beast cheated life with the puny wits of its brain and could never survive on its own.”
The human was just about 6 feet tall and barely moved. Only the sporadic flinches in its arms showed that it was alive. Zaku lifted up a long rod, electric flames shooting from its tip. He quickly swiped it against the human’s body, which sent the human into spasms. “See it try and hide. See its unprotected flesh burn with the contact of the slightest electricity!” The crowd laughed harder and louder. They flung objects at the stage. A bottle made direct contact against the boy’s head, leaving another bloody bruise.
“See it,” Zaku howled.
“SEE IT!!! SEE IT!!! SEE IT!!! SEE IT!!!” The wall of noise from Zaku’s shrill voice and from the jeering spectators became louder and louder, pounding into his eardrums. The bright spotlights blinded his quivering eyes. A new wetness now trickled down from his forehead to his eyelids and then to a puddle of sticky crimson on the stage. He could still feel the glass chard from the bottle lodged in his flesh. He could still feel the shocks of electricity from Zaku’s rod poisoning through his body. His once cold body now felt overcome with a fever, soaking his clothes. Hot beads of liquid corruption had formed on the skin of his face, cheeks, and lips – pulled forth by the strike of Zaku’s rod.
‘It will be over soon at least,’ the boy murmured to himself, struggling to hold in the pain and to resist screaming out. As the aftershocks of electricity jolted through him, a different type of warmth and throbbing now screamed from within his chest. The pain had turned to fire. There was fire within his veins. There was fire swirling around his chained wrists. There was fire taking over his entire body. His fear had melted down into a new rawness, anger. All those months locked up in the darkness flashed before him. All of those nights he had been awoken suddenly to the screeching metal wheels, forcing him into the bright lights and taunts of the crowds.
Where to buy The Sity:
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