Don't get excited about this. These re only being posted so I have access to them online in case they need editing. I say 'in case' they're obviously going to need editing because they're rubbish, and first drafts. But anyway....
The assumption in the group had been, in the six months they’d been away, Cardiff Centre should have been finished by now. Rows of people carriers lined up accordingly on the rooftop, you’d be able to make out the tiny see-through boxes tottering up and down the edge of the structure, and the sinewy alleys would be pumping little families, clustered and huddled together around the complex. But they’d seen enough as they flew together in land that it was no longer a surprise when the group began their descent over the city, and the centre was still a tangle of snapped girders, abandoned digging equipment and breezy, angular grey crumbling rocks. From a metal gauze, a putrid-smelling gas was billowing into the night.
The mystery, if any, was that none of the people responsible for this hulking eyesore had stuck around. Maybe it had something to do with all the fires they’d seen, he thought, as they passed directly overhead the geometric blot. He craned up and over the tip of his right wing he could see the Spike Tower was also on fire, and the left hand corner of the giant indoor field was also lit up, like a paper flare waving towards the sea. There had been dozens of similar fires all along the choppy water, all along the lost coastlines. It was as if Wales had ignited every major landmark to warn others to stay at sea, to keep off the jagged, dangerous rocks that seemed to be the entire island, now. They’d stopped for dinner on an archipelago, just off the coast of Pembrokeshire. Even out there, The House of the Gods at Caldey Island was aflame, the spirals of smoke dissolving into the evening sky much, much thicker than a typical chimney stack. As they swooped in at the bay and progressed home, it was obvious this was happening inland as well.
As they descended towards the lake, the sky had become thick with arid and coarse smoke. This didn’t carry the scent of any natural bush or grass fire, not that there was enough of either left around the edges of the lake and encompassing homeland to cause such intense, acidic plumes. It smelt like rain. The group ducked between the dust clouds and made their landing in the shallow water at the edge of the lake. The water was oily black, with icy reflections of orange, red, mud and gold splashed everywhere as their bodies flapped down into the gunk. Not a place to settle, even for a minute. His mate had already swum and started fussing on a verge by the time he’d even taken in his surroundings – she was always so bloody resourceful! –he watched her as she awkwardly smudged the bitter water from her feathers. He joined her on the bank and did the same.
He scuffed and wondered aloud where everyone was. Sky was dark, people should be in their nests, feeding and mating. Usually when one nest was ablaze, a noisy red people carrier would soon appear and power a hearty stream of water to quench the flames then people would go back in, to feed and mate. Today the whole Roath acre was burning; from across the lake it was evidently not one fire here spreading, but the result of several different fires joining in together. If one catches fire, the red car would be there straight away. So why, when everything’s burning, is there nobody around at all?
The sound of commotion behind him caused him to crane his neck and look towards the noise. A man he recognised, but could not place where, was leading a group – males and females together – through the metal hedge to a hexagon of grass near the water. He was clearly a leader, he was talking fast, loud, and nobody else was talking over him. He mopped his brow with a white cloth, and kept tugging at the hair on his face, then looking at his hands when he gestured. The group were all nodding as one, silhouetted, but none looked very happy. People usually looked happy when they nodded. It was probably because not many people had come to their meeting. He sneezed a glob of black water from his beak and looked down into the water. Silly goose. He watched as the rest of his flock descended into the black water like a meteor shower, splashing dusty water onto the bank.
He realised he recognised the male from hundreds of bits of paper he found while snuffling through discarded things, on wooden, wiry poles, on the side of nests. The male was definitely in charge. Maybe he’d do something about these fires. After all, if they were going to stick around for the season, it’d be nice amidst this wreckage to have shrubbery and clean water to wash, hide in, and drink from together. Together in this gathering storm.
Dystopian novels and short stories often take unusual yet distinct approaches to narrative in order to provide their sense of place and character. For example, in J.G. Ballard’s novella ‘Concrete Island’, the story takes place in just one location, and with just one character, which heightens the sense of alienation and isolation, reflected by Ballards stark descriptions of the locations. In order to create this sense of alienation, I decided to use an animal narrator, to provide a non-human view of a human-dominated society. I opted for a goose above other animals because they are undomesticated by humans, have the luxury of flight, and in the context of the story, can be isolated from human life for six months, and then return to find things very different indeed.
To create character, I decided to use the same approach to anthropomorphises as Richad Adams in Watership Down; the characters can interact, comprehend and narrate with accurate lexis, but have no concept of man-made nouns and uses vocabulary suited to their own surroundings; hence a house becomes a nest, cars become, a sports stadium becomes an ‘indoor field’. I wanted to make specific locations universally named, to frame the action in a recognisable place.
I decided to make the physical attributes of the apocalyptic scenario keeps indistinct and unspecified. Although the text infers the fires are man-made, fire is a naturally occurring phenomenon, and so one which the characters can identify with perhaps more than the humans. Human survival is one of the key components of dystopian or apocalyptic fiction, usually against a totalitarian system. Although the world creates in ‘Together’ is part of a larger scenario, I wanted to suggest a regimented human society, by the protagonists repetition that they only use their ‘nests’ for ‘feeding and mating’ and nothing else. Towards the end of the piece I wanted the human gathering to be a positive conclusion, although the goose has yet to conclude the reason for the grouping, there is an evident leader, whom we can assume is a prominent figure in their society.
In JG Ballards work, in particular High Rise and Concrete Island, the landscape is often a principal enemy, with the power to trap, isolate and disorientate the characters. He achieve this through description and allegory, and I used the initial flight of the birds to achieve this. Contextually, the centre of Cardiff, South Wales, has recently been designed, and has been rebuilt over a number of years. By the point of the birds return, the large retail outlet (“Cardiff Centre”) should have re-opened. The birds’ reception to this is that of negativity (“a hulking eyesore”) but I wanted to use Ballardian phrases such as “a tangle of snapped girders” and “angular grey rocks” to create a distant, cold vision of a modern, human creation (designed to improve life). The idea of things created for good ultimately harming the society that created it is a consistent dystopian theme, which is why I chose the ultimate source of the apocalypse as this building. I chose locations in Wales rather than more obvious settings to provide a more localised, familiar look at apocalypse, rather than the often clichéd destruction of major cities and landmarks, in order to create a more identifiable story.
In order to create a sense of menace, I wanted to create a sense of menace and that the situation was beyond of control. The fires are of no direct threat to the goose, in fact he continues relatively as normal, pausing to study the situation (and not fully appreciate the severity for the humans) and use relaxed, colloquial rhetoric (“silly goose”) but I used phrases such as “intense, acidic plumes” to emphasise the severity of the smoke, and “the whole Roath acre was burning” using a sizeable measurement normally reserved for rural contexts. I also used the simile “like a meteor shower” as a more direct use of imagery.
I wanted to use the recurring use of ‘Together’ as the title and recurring throughout the piece, partly inspired by the phrase ‘birds of a feather, flock together’ and also the sense that a united group have a better instinct to survive than an individual. It is taken that animal instincts like geese to flock together, is given, but as the thoughts of the protagonist at the end suggests, only the humans cans put out the fire and make their future secure, and this can only be achieved together.
