Project Artemis. [Futa]

Story by Olivria Noel

Apologies for the rather small title, as I myself want to keep an air of mystery about the story. This story follows the events of a year in Seattle and a specific character whose name and past become revealed over the stories progression. It involves the dissapearence of homeless people in large numbers over a single year and exactly what and why the reasoning is for these events. I welcome critique as I want to become a better writer, simply put. For now, the complete prelude.

Seattle, June 20th, 2011

LOG FILE 2123, SEATTLE BASED INCIDENT

I wouldn’t have dreamed it. It’s like something you read in a horror film or in those creepy sci-fi films where the worlds’ coming to an end and no one pays attention. Yet it’s neither the end of the world nor is it murder. As far as I can tell that is.

I’m getting ahead of myself. I’ve made so many of these logs over time, I’m weary. I’m so, so tired. They keep vanishing you know. People say that it’s normal, people slip through the net. And every time I write a new entry, it comes back to me, the uncaring nature of those who have lives they need to lead. But I don’t forget. One minute I turn and see someone, holding out their hand and asking for change, giving it to them with I feel looks like pity to them, the destitute, the homeless. They seem tired, as tired I’ve been but from constant reminders of where they are.

And then I turn for a moment, I hear a yelp, I turn back and then, where they are is nowhere. No place can I see. I kind of took it for granted but the more I met those who live on these streets, the more times I saw this happen. I’d smile, come bringing a sandwich or something. I live in a half ventilated apartment with a broken fridge and I’m sure mice somewhere. Even when Seattle’s cool, then it’s mostly raining. Too hot, too wet. I just go amid tall buildings and shadows that stride over the huddled people I meet and give them a chicken stuffing sandwich. I swear it’s the best sandwich, on my life, what little of it there’s been.

I work a day shift in what most people look up to in awe and wonder, the great building achievement of Seattle, as famous as anything we got here. The Space Needle, where most of the time I get paid to look casual and I guess act like the moral guy. Look out for jumpers mainly; trying to do what I believe is right, though mostly paid to stop the Needle’s owners looking bad. Maybe. Maybe it’s more moral then I give it credit for.

Why I mention it is because I spend most of my work hours sitting and just talking with people, trying to make them feel happy or at least something close to worth something within an environment that doesn’t always give them the attention they need or just want. It’s nice to believe that after a chat like that, they’ll go home, maybe have a drink of something, maybe non-alcoholic, and maybe not and at least count one or two blessings. With those I met on those streets, it’s not gonna end like an episode of ‘Frasier’. Which is also another grand tourist attraction I think? They aren’t going home at the end of just chatting with them. Maybe not for a long time. The city both embraces and devours them. And as of late, the city seems to be literally devouring those more and more.

This file is numbered two-one-two-three because it is as I’ve mournfully realised, the twenty one thousandth and twenty third file that I’ve written involving these cases. I shouldn’t have to write that many. I can look away and pretend everything’s alright and that people vanish and die every day and I can’t, I just can’t, I shut my eyes and all I can see is those street corners where I’ve found sheets abandoned, dogs or cats that they’ve had for company mewling and barking at thin air, rags, their only possessions, boxes they have to rest in, crumpled, empty. Something is stealing away people and for the first time after twenty one thousand and twenty three disappearances, I think I know where to start looking. But to do that, I have to go back, to that long faded first and discover why something I found out about on an unrelated matter may be the key to the missing and lost that have grown over the past year. I’m scared because if what I know is true then… so many more are going to be lost soon.

And god help me, I may want to join them.

LOG END.