"The Hanging Gardens of Arcadia"
A short story by Anthony Joseph Buffa
There once was a country in Caravan called Arcadia. It was once a province of the Odessa Republic called Beersheba before they seceded from the Union a century ago , but not for reasons that concerned the rights of citizens nor the abuse of power from the federal government as many of the other provinces had done over the years before returning to the Union of its own free will. Once it had seceded, the people running Arcadia’s government committed many unconstitutional actions and heinous acts against humanity, transforming itself into a totalitarian nightmare. Its government had gone against everything that the Odessa Republic had fought for, committed to its ideology and playing god with the human race.
It was once a beautiful place in Odessa before it became a dreaded barren land of reds and yellows, where the growth and health of its crops remained inconsistent and almost impossible to grow as healthy as they once were a century ago. The lower classes endured the famine that plagued their country as the people in their high castles laughed and ignored Arcadia’s ordinary citizens as hunger, disease, poverty, discrimination, even petty crime consumed the lowly streets of towns and cities.
One day, a suntanned, agile traveler with long grey locks visited Arcadia’s capital city known as Red Dawn. None of the Arcadians knew the stranger’s name nor where he came from. It was as if he appeared out of thin air from the wastelands of the Arcadian desert, riding on a pale horse like the deity of death.
The suntanned man and his horse arrived at the hellish cityscape that was as red as the cloudy sky above the city. To the distance were high towers plastered around the city of Red Dawn here and there, where the rich and powerful reside away from contact with any of the poorer classes below the trash-filled streets.
As the stranger and his pale stallion entered the slums of Red Dawn, they came across many poor and homeless citizens, sitting on the streets or in the alleyways. The alleys filled with strays smelled of piss and manure, and the streets were just as dirty and repugnant as the homeless, with faces and clothes rugged and dirtied, who slept in this mean-spirited atmosphere. There were a handful of strays who had eyes that were blood-red, and their skin was pale and yellow. Flies buzzed around the poor, sapped citizens with the stench of death hung over them.
Some of the strays only glanced at the newcomer, indifferent to who or what he was, before they continued sulking over their misfortune, while others simply ignored the existence of the stranger, too consumed by their misery and woes.
Suddenly, men, women, children, even teenagers, ran up to him on all sides, begging for money, food, medicine, anything that could bring them a little happiness or hope to survive another day in this infested city, but the stranger ignored them as he continued riding his horse down the street, his eyes focused on one of the towers that overlooked much of the city.
The stranger and his stallion finally approached the large, looming tower, its shadow casting over the suntanned man and his pale horse like a man looking down upon the ants.
The tower reminded the suntanned traveler of the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the Seven Wonders of the world of Caravan that was built in the city of Babylon along with another of the Seven Wonders called the Tower of Babel. Like the ancient city, the two Wonders had been lost to time since the Great Flood that Perun, the chief god and protector of Caravan, reigned down upon the Babylons, punishing them for their hubris, who saw themselves more powerful than the gods and sought to reach the sky as they did.
These towers that were built throughout the city of Red Dawn were tall, spiral-shaped homes that housed many of the rich residents of this city, even some of the government officials who forwarded and approved the construction of these buildings in the city. These were lavish, expensive apartment homes for the upper class, 70 floors filled with large, open apartments, hanging gardens on each floor big enough for 20 people to walk around on. It beat having to live in a house or any other ground-level property on the filthy streets of Red Dawn, but nothing can stop the cries and woes of starving men, women, and children that keep even the rich from 10 stories high awake at night.
The stranger hitched his horse by the front entrance before walking to the front entrance. He poured through one of the windows and saw the lobby was as grand and lavish as the hanging gardens that the stranger saw above him. Fountains were plastered between the hallway from the entrance to the lobby, as well as many beautifully grown plants. All this beauty inside the tower was absent in the streets of Red Dawn that the stranger saw throughout his journey here in the city. Such magnificent architecture would invite anyone from the outside world to enter, although the stranger would’ve entered through the front entrance of the tower if he hadn’t noticed the poster stuck onto the other side of the window that reads:
NOTICE
PROOF OF BEING
VACCINATED
REQUIRED
WE HAVE ZERO TOLERANCE FOR TREASONOUS,
ANTI-ARCADIAN STUPIDITY.
THANK YOU FOR PONDERING.
The suntanned stranger did not know he could find people in Caravan with so much ignorance and inhumanity in them as the rich and powerful who live and breathe in Arcadia. Then again, he was no stranger to having come across such arrogant and discriminatory behavior from the likes of Caravanians throughout his journey.
Unfortunately, the last thing the stranger wanted to do was get himself into a fight with the authorities that had a very low tolerance for any citizens, including travelers like him carrying guns on their person, so he decided to sleep elsewhere, finding it best to avoid confrontation altogether with this predicament that the Arcadians made for themselves.
Night fell on Arcadia. The stranger stared up at the stars in the night sky, counting the constellations that he could find.
He had set up his tent on the pebbled rooftop of a four-story building, just a few blocks across from the tower, while he hitched his horse in the alleyway by the side of the building. The stranger hoped the police would never find him and his horse tonight or tomorrow before finally heading out of this broken-down city.
All was silent when he suddenly heard glass shattering from a distance. He stood up and peered near the edge of the rooftop to investigate the commotion going on by the tower.
A group of strays was huddling up in front of the entrance of the building, carrying torches and any lethal weapons they could carry besides a plank of wood. They had gathered around a man who appeared to be their leader, a balding, long-haired homeless man, carrying the national flag of Alexandria.
“We have endured their oppression long enough!” cried out the leader of the enraged crowd of strays. “It’s about time we show them what it’s like to endure the suffering from this Red Plague, to let them experience the pain of this disease without lending a hand to help our community, we poor folk who slowly starve and curl up in this abysmal heat until we all die! They don’t give a damn what happens to us as long as they hide in their ivory towers away from the sick and poor who we once depended on to make things normal again! Well, no more will we stand by as the rich and powerful wait for us to die like insects! We shall punish these fools who have closed the doors on us for seeking shelter from the infesting plague that has corrupted our city! We shall make them pay for all the misfortunes and woes we endured, the famine and plague that has killed many of us! I say we bring the fear to them for once! We will storm their home in this tower and take their food, water, and other necessities that they’ve taken for granted! They have failed us, and we shall show these fools what happens when they look down upon people like us!”
The radical leader lit up the lighter and held it under the national flag. It erupted into flames, burning brightly in the dark streets of the night as the enraged and infected homeless rioters cheered in unison, prompting them to charge toward the front entrance of the tower. They broke through, breaking the glass windows of the entrance, and headed inside. Each of them traveled from floor to floor up the elevators or the stairs, breaking and entering the tower’s apartments. The rioters allowed their actions to speak for them, hurting the male residents and pummeling some of them to death as their wives and children looked on in terror. The women suffered the most, enduring nonconsensual intercourse from the likes of sex-craved hungry strays who wanted to have a good time as they took part in these acts of uproar and rampage upon the upper classes that inhabited this tower. Of course, security tried to fend off the rioters, shooting them one by one with their guns, but soon, the strays overcame the small group of security guards and they beat them to death with their planks of wood, crowbars, tire irons, anything they could grab and use that did some serious damage to their oppressors.
Inside the tower at the lobby, the stray rioters were yelling and causing much anger and bloodshed to the remaining security guards, tied up by ropes and either bound to the lobby’s pillars or on their knees. The rioters took turns killing each of the incapacitated guards of the tower, either shooting them in the head with the guard’s home firearms or beating them to death with their own primitive weaponry.
Suddenly, when it came time for one of the rioters, a young boy with black straight hair, to execute the defenseless guards with one of their own revolvers, somebody cried out that someone was coming inside the tower through the front entrance.
Everybody gathered by the lobby and saw a lone suntanned stranger standing by the front entrance, wearing a belt with a small firearm holstered.
“What the hell are you doing here?” The boy with black straight hair questioned the suntanned stranger. “Are you another one of the upper-class residents who live here? Well, buddy, this just isn’t your day!”
The boy aimed his revolver at him, but the suntanned stranger was quicker, drawing his gun from his holster and shooting a hole through the boy’s head, his brain matter and blood splattered all over the white marble floor.
The rioters turned their attention from the corpse of the black-haired boy to the suntanned stranger wielding and aiming his lever-action pistol at them. The gun’s barrel and receiver were made of brass metal with a dark brown wooden grip.
On both sides of the pistol’s receivers were two ovals shapes colored in brass, but the shapes revealed themselves, opening their monstrous eyes. They were almost human-like, but they had an uncanny and other-worldly appearance to them with their veins showing.
The piercing, leering eyes of the demonically-possessed pistol stared at the rioters with malicious intent. It hissed and glowed a darkly red aura as the suntanned stranger began to open fire on the rest of the rioters. The stranger gunned them down repeatedly with gun-powdered bullets and dark magic that pierced through their bodies like they were made of cardboard.
The rioters ran away in fear of the suntanned stranger's deadly pistol, running to the elevators, the stairs, or the entrance as they were mowed down by the demonic pistol’s bullets encased in powerful dark magic.
After the rioters had scattered and left the lobby, the suntanned stranger chased down those who remained inside the tower, chasing them up the stairs and shooting down the rest of the fleeing rioters. Some who were shot fell down the stairs or over the edge of the railing as their corpses met the marble floor at ground level.
The suntanned stranger continued ascending the stairs, gunning down the rioters one by one until they reached the 8th floor of the tower.
The rioters tried to warn the others of the mad gunslinger mowing them down one by one, but it was too late for the suntanned angel of death as he appeared before them and shot them to kingdom come. He couldn’t kill all of them, of course, but just enough to send the rampaging fools running away with their tails between their legs while he made his attempt to save the residents of the tower. Those that witness the bloodshed committed by the stranger and survived continued to flee from the gunslinger, hiding in rooms or cowering behind their comrades before they were shot down along with them by the gunslinger. Some were desperate to not want their lives taken by the suntanned gunslinger, dropping off the hanging gardens and plummeting to their deaths.
In each room that the stranger inspected on the 8th floor, he only encountered more corpses of the upper-class residents who were murdered by the rioters. This day of rage became a massacre for the residents of the tower. They stood no chance against the enraged mob.
He heard a child crying, a young girl, in one of the rooms. He entered the room, only to find two of the residents, a man and a woman. He followed the sound of the girl’s sobbing and found the girl, a teenager of 15 or 16, in her room, cowering in the corner, shedding tears down her cheeks.
The stranger offered her hand to her, but he saw that her eyes were red like the strays he saw who were infected with this unknown virus.
Unfortunately, there was nothing he could do for her. The stranger left her there to suffer the horrific effects of the virus.
When he appeared back in the lobby, he noticed many of the residents, probably from the 9th-70ths floors, descending the stairs and running toward the exit as the sound of sirens wailed outside. Some of them were coughing as they exited the building. No doubt that many of them will become infected with the virus, too.
The stranger passed by the authorities unnoticed by hiding amongst the crowd of fleeing residents before slipping away to his horse and riding off out of the city of Red Dawn for good.
It left behind a horrific impact on the people of Arcadia, including the residents of the tower who survived the massacre that would haunt them for the rest of their lives. Most of the residents who had survived the massacre were left infected by the rioters and were soon killed by the virus along with the surviving strays who were involved in the rampage of death and destruction upon the tower that was once a shelter of safety and peace for the upper classes.
This bloody day became to be known as the Bloody Sunday Massacre. People named it so since the event occurred on a Sunday.
No one, not even the authorities, knew of the suntanned stranger's involvement in the massacre that took place, although some eyewitnesses recalled his existence amongst the crowd of fleeing residents. A woman also cited her encounter with the stranger when she was a teenager, saying that he came into her room when he heard her crying. She recalled the stranger lending a hand to her once he saw her, but he held it back once he noticed that she was infected with the virus. The woman didn’t blame her, knowing that he didn’t want to be infected, too. Luckily, she survived after being infected with the virus thanks to her natural immunity, though she still wished her parents, two of the many victims of the Bloody Sunday Massacre, were still alive and with her.
As for the rest of the Arcadians, no one knew what the future held for them after the massacre that took place. Those who were of the upper classes feared the lower classes more than ever, and the lower classes feared that they would face more discrimination from the upper classes, as well as eviction from the government to get them off the streets.
Much of the population lost their trust in the government to solve this matter, nor did they seem to trust each other, still fearing the looming virus that plagued their once beautiful country. Their lives would forever change from then on, leaving the fate of Arcadia unknown.
As for the suntanned stranger, no one knew what happened to him or where he went. For many Arcadians, he was a distant memory, fading away into obscurity as he continued his journey elsewhere into the red barren wasteland, riding on a pale horse like the deity of death.
The End