{"id":213,"date":"2010-08-10T09:41:10","date_gmt":"2010-08-10T13:41:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=213"},"modified":"2010-08-10T09:41:10","modified_gmt":"2010-08-10T13:41:10","slug":"city-of-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=213","title":{"rendered":"City of my Life"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I walked through the city of my life, and I stopped in at the convenience store. A few moment&#8217;s search found me the drugs that I wanted, and I was off again. I flew like a kite above the urban landscape, and looked down at the parks that contained my happy memories, the devastated areas in need of urban renewal, and the prisons. The prisons&#8230; I didn&#8217;t like to remember what was stored there. Perhaps I couldn&#8217;t any more.<\/p>\n<p>\tThe drugs stole away with worry, and I pranced and danced on the thermals until they wore off. Then I stopped in at another convenience store and turned myself into a frog, and hopped down main street. No one moved here, no rush hour in my life. Instead, a lassitude overlay the city, broken only by my ribbiting.<\/p>\n<p>\tSoon my skin began to dry, and I jumped into the local swimming pool. That ended with a thump and a yelp. It was dry and full of old trash. As I wondered how to get out, the medicine wore off, and I was humanoid again. I decided to try being human again, and climbed out of the pool and wandered around.<\/p>\n<p>\tAn explosion turned my head, and a skyscraper fell across the road in front of me. Damn construction crews. The skyscraper had broken another two buildings. I guessed they&#8217;d have to come down soon.<\/p>\n<p>\tClambering through the ruined building, I found every chair filled with a manikin in suit and tie. I shrugged and walked on.<\/p>\n<p>\tAfter an hour I looked up from the ground. Here, the buildings were decayed, ruined facades of an older generation, their brown stones littering the street. I recognized a few, but couldn&#8217;t remember why, or what might have driven me here. I found a little boy on a corner and asked if he had something for me. The boy looked back, featureless and sightless, and shook his head. I patted the kid and wandered away.<\/p>\n<p>\tI needed more drugs, and I wandered in search for a convenience store. It took a while, but then I was a horse, galloping down concrete streets. The ground hurt my hooves, and I neighed in frustration. The whispered breath of hot air. Damaged buildings crumbled in the distance.<\/p>\n<p>\tI found a park and nibbled on the grass. A bum tried to ride me, but I bucked him into the dirt and galloped away. A mother screamed for her child as I thundered by, but she mattered not. My hooves left prints of burning fire, and I snorted black ash. I cantered for a wall, and then turned upwards, climbing the outside at speed. Soon I stood atop the derelict skyscraper.<\/p>\n<p>\tThe city of my life spread beneath me. Parks of brown and grey, buildings of the same shade, people faceless and crying. I was no longer a horse, and I lay down to sleep. Then the building under me was dynamited. It was a long way down.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I walked through the city of my life, and I stopped in at the convenience store. A few moment&#8217;s search found me the drugs that I wanted, and I was off again. I flew like a kite above the urban landscape, and looked down at the parks that contained my happy memories, the devastated areas [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":[]},"categories":[36,4],"tags":[21,22],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pRIK4-3r","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":466,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=466","url_meta":{"origin":213,"position":0},"title":"Old Friend","date":"April 4, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"A hand swept across the earth, taking in a great plain, little more than weeds and dirt. \u201cThis was our home, once. A city stood there. It was stripped bare as the fire came. Those of us who fled remember the smell of burning, the screams of pain of all\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Flash Fiction&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":221,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=221","url_meta":{"origin":213,"position":1},"title":"Writer&#039;s Carnival: City of Sadness","date":"August 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"This particular story was inspired by a friend of mine, and is as much poetry as prose. Or at least tries to have tendencies in that direction. It's also rather short. I do hope you enjoy it. It's also the first of my three entries into the Writer's Carnival. It\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Flash Fiction&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":423,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=423","url_meta":{"origin":213,"position":2},"title":"Cages of Light","date":"January 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"This story takes place at the same time as the events in Tarranau,in the city of Bhreac Veryan. Canlynedig panted as he ran through the streets of Bhreac Veryan, his eyes glancing behind him. He could hear the shouts as the Brawdoliaeth chan Danio charged after him, knocking aside pedestrians\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;The Four Part Land&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":710,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=710","url_meta":{"origin":213,"position":3},"title":"The Last City &#8211; Part 1","date":"May 21, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"The Last City is the next in the series of short stories and novellas that take place in the land of Arhosa, a long standing setting of mine. The city of Yn Dref floats among the clouds of the Ogleddol Mountains, the great expanse that spans the north-eastern region of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Arhosa&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":247,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=247","url_meta":{"origin":213,"position":4},"title":"The State of the Land","date":"August 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"Originally, this website was set up to help promote Tarranau and Chloddio, my upcoming novels in The Four Part Land. Since then, it has become much more than that, a forum for the Writer's Carnival, and for the flash fiction that I write weekly. The Four Part Land itself has\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Chloddio&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":721,"url":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/?p=721","url_meta":{"origin":213,"position":5},"title":"The Journey North &#8211; Part 1","date":"June 15, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"This is the next part of the story that began with The Last City. The days that followed that first step through the portal were tiring, but not especially noteworthy. Ira led the small group as it trudged up the wild but sparse terrain of a hidden valley, and then\u2026","rel":"","context":"In &quot;Arhosa&quot;","img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=213"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=213"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=213"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/thefourpartland.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=213"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}