Forever Hallow

The town of Miotog has a unique location. It’s built over a chasm with no visible bottom. One could toss a rock over the edge, and it would seem to fall infinitely, as there was no obvious sound to indicate whether it landed or not. For all everyone knew, there was no bottom.

Every building was built upon a thick wooden platform that hung from a few chains connected to the rocky walls far above. The rusty metal often creaked, and there was always the distinct earthy and damp smell of rotting wood. It was a constant reminder of the very real possibility that the occupants of Miotog would one day fall to their deaths. Children would tiptoe in fear of being the one to kill all of Miotog’s occupants, and many would stay away from the center of the town, as that was where the wood was weakest. The town was built upon uncertainty.

The founders of Miotog did this with a very specific goal in mind. It was to punish the cannibals in society. Everyone, from children to elderly, would be thrown down to Miotog, increasing the weight on the rotten wood and tension in those weak chains. The occupants would eat each other to either lessen the weight on the platform and live another day, or to simply curb the agonizing hunger. Believe it or not, not much food happened to fall into the chasm. Down there, it was an endless famine that would likely never end.

It was inhumane. But it was justice.

In this world, those who committed such horrid crimes would suffer fates worse than mere imprisonment. Petty crimes like robbery were nothing. People such as murderers and rapists went to hell, died, and entered hell once more. Cannibals, in particular, would either receive karma or die trying to survive. Such was the way of the world’s rules.

Those who fell here were stripped of everything. Their very identity was even snatched away. Everyone here was given a name that couldn’t quite be called a name.

Twitch was one such boy. He was given the name when the royal guards who threw him down here found his inability to stay still funny. He had rather vivid memories of them poking fun at him when he kept drumming his fingers against his thighs. He ended up scratching one of their eyes in retaliation. Further punishment was the cause of a lengthy scar on his abdomen.

He lived near the center of the town. The rooms here (there wasn’t enough space for people to live in houses, so everyone lives in a mere room) were small, even for Miotog standards. Twitch was dirt poor, as occupations here were scarce, and even more so money. His ‘job’ was pickpocketing the richest down here, who were arguably also poor. Not that there was much being sold. It was a pitiful excuse of a civilization.

Twitch looked out of his window that was smaller than a prisoner’s cell window. It didn’t even have glass, just a hole in the wall with a pathetically thin blanket that barely passed as a curtain covering it to keep bugs out. It was raining. He had a bucket outside of his door to catch rain water, as that was the only source of the liquid down here. He had nailed it to the floor so that no bratty child could steal it, something that had occurred countless times. He may have also been the perpetrator more than once.

Twitch truly had an odd relationship with rain. It quenched his thirst, prolonging his life. It also accelerates the weakening of the chains and wooden platform keeping it alive. Rain will kill him one day, but it will keep him alive today.

He turned his gaze away from the downpour outside. Today was a rather special day. On the first day of every month, the new batch of occupants would be thrown down to Miotog. These days were typically the most violent ones of the year. Panicked cannibals and extra weight straining the chains made the already paranoid occupants go mad. Twitch would be lying if he said he felt calm at the idea of more deadweight.

When the clock struck 12 – not that there were any clocks down here to tell the time, but it was a decent guess considering the sun’s position – he hurried outside. Everyone was expected to be outside to ‘welcome’ the outsiders. Those who didn’t were forced outside by the guards in a rather loud spectacle, and more attention on one was never a good thing down here.

Twitch wormed his way through a rather sizable crowd that had gathered around the middle of Miotog. Everyone there was, without exception, malnourished. Even so, they all looked manic and crazed as they stared at the land far above them, unreachable for such sinners. It was sunny and bright, but the sun’s rays couldn’t reach so far down.

A ladder was tossed down to the center of the platform. At the top were a pair of guards dressed in dark blue leather. Each one wore a shako that had a golden emblem of a chariot. It was known as the symbol of the royal family across the globe. Even the uneducated barbarians of Miotog knew this symbol.

The guards shoved forward several people in chains. Some looked to be in despair, some were hysterical, a few particular psychos looked even excited. The first looked absolutely horrified. The rags didn’t save his dignity, either. Even from this distance, one could tell that he had pissed himself in fear.

The man shakily tried to climb down the ladder. Of course, the guards didn’t feed prisoners before sending them down here. That, plus the harsh promise of landing in the arms of hungry cannibals if he were to fall, made him horrified.

At the bottom of the ladder, one overly eager woman stepped forward. She had white hair, but she couldn’t be any older than 30. She grabbed the ladder and began to climb. Up, she climbed, but she didn’t even make it to the fifth rung before one of the guards pulled out a gun and shot her right in the head. The bullet landed exactly in the spot between her eyebrows, spurting blood onto her face and neck.

As the woman’s corpse fell to the ground, a shiver ran down Twitch’s spine. Not at the woman’s death, however. He was far too numb to death and fatal injuries to feel any more than fleeting pity. What did make him shiver was the guard’s aim. The chasm was deep, and the surface was ridiculously far. For the guard to make that shot, Twitch estimated that the guard’s bullet had to cross around 4,000 meters. Not only that, but he shot her perfectly in the space between her eyes, an even more impressive feat when once considered that the lighting further down was incredibly poor. He wondered what the king fed his guards.

The man climbing down the ladder screamed as the bullet whizzed right past his head. The sound of the bullet was deafening, especially with the special echo the chasm produced. He lost his footing and fell into the arms of the crazed cannibals below. It took less than five seconds for his body to be torn into pieces. Even his clothes weren’t spared from being taken. Well, save for his pants. No one was eager to take the wet cloth that reeked.

Twitch looked away from the sight. He ensured to keep a decent distance from the ladder, despite the constant pushes of the crowd that wouldn’t stop shifting. He wasn’t particularly fond of human meat in the past. Obviously, hunger that lasted for years changed his mind.

It wasn’t an exaggeration to say that he would kill for a decent meal. The last time he ate something besides human meat had to have been years ago, and that was the gray slop the guards fed him before he was tossed down here.

How he was still alive was a feat, if one took in the nutritional value of human meat. He should’ve been long dead. Though he did remember the guards injecting something into his neck before he arrived in Miotog. Perhaps it altered something in his body that made it more nutritional?

Oh. All pointless thoughts.

As the rest of the prisoners made their way down, only a few made it. The ladder was long and by no means sturdy. Several rungs broke off, so those coming last in line were the most unlucky. Out of approximately 40, only about 3 survived, as even after the long descent, they had to survive hungry cannibals that had no qualms about eating their fellow neighbors, let alone strangers. They would often shake the ladder for pure fun. There wasn’t much entertainment down in Hell.

The prisoners would run away from the crowd. The few that made it to Miotog often had to live in hiding for a few days before no one would bother to remember their faces anymore. It was then that it was safe (or rather, as safe as it could be) to come out of hiding and actually try to make a living.

It was when the last prisoner began his descent that Twitch suddenly got interested. The prisoner didn’t let out a single scream or even tremble. He had the confidence of a man who graduated at the top of his high school taking a kindergartener’s exam. He easily descended, and when he was about 15 rungs away from the bottom, he suddenly jumped off. He managed to jump rather far, landing outside of the crowd, even if it was a small one. He quickly weaved between buildings before anyone could catch sight of him.

Twitch stared at the alleyway that the man had hurried away in. A few with more food in their stomachs had the energy to chase after him, but most didn’t. They ended up letting the man go and splitting the meat they had already acquired. Of course, they had to make even that endeavour bloody.

The obnoxiously loud laughter of one of the guards made everyone shut up. Guards were almost considered gods in Miotog. One merciful guard could mean a free vegetable or a cup of rice. It was an incredibly rare occasion, obviously. It only happened once every year or so, maybe twice if Lady Luck felt particularly kind, which she never seemed to do.

After managing to snatch some smaller chunks of meat from the floor, Twitch scurried back to his little room. He pushed his bed to block the door from any overeager crazies. After blocking his window with an unused picture frame to hopefully try and block the tempting smell of meat from drifting outside and catching the attention of his neighbors, he turned on the stove. It took five tries before the fire lit. He couldn’t help but giggle when it did. He internally recoiled from the sound.

He put the meat straight on the stove. It wasn’t like he had a pan lying around. He tried his best to make it cook evenly, but he was never a good chef. One side was burnt, and the other was a little undercooked. He could honestly care less.

His stomach growled as he simply ate the meat straight from the stove. It was hot and burned his fingertips and tongue. Really, he couldn’t wait. The meat wasn’t safe anywhere but his stomach.

Internally, he felt disgust at himself. He wanted to vomit. Even so, he ate it all. Though he wasn’t keen on being a cannibal, he found himself being even less eager on dying and then being food for some other sadistic freak.

He was cut off halfway through his horrific meal when someone suddenly reached an arm through his window. He stiffened before coming to his senses. He set the meat back on the counter before hastily grabbing a broken piece of metal that doubled as a knife. If only it had a handle. It cut a shallow wound into his palm, blood dripping down its shiny surface.

The hand suddenly pulled the picture frame covering the window off and pulled the curtain aside. Twitch couldn’t help but gasp when he saw who it was. It took him a few seconds to remember who this man was. The image of a man who was older than him (maybe 35 or so) with hair cleaner than the average joe in Miotog and almost creepy green eyes sparked a bit of familiarity within him.

Then he remembered – it was definitely that brave man who jumped off of the ladder earlier that day! Twitch didn’t know why the man came to his house of all things, but he couldn’t afford to think about that right now. Act now, think later.

The man seemed to remember where he was before he put his hands up with a crooked smile that was a rarity in Miotog. “Hey, kid,” His voice was deep and rather raspy, a telltale sign of a drinker. “I just wanna talk.”