Proganist
By: Darren Machado

Then there was quiet along the land of the living. For once the fallings unto these plains devastated this once promising land. People ravaged the plains and destroyed the environment till none was left but bitter scraps of landscape. In remembrance of times where the land wasn’t so ravished and plagued no matter how people look at these lands none can say that the silence did not fall over the land and all who had once spoken fall to the ground, cold to the touch, these dead bodies lay scattered across the land as if plague after plague had hit them; all they can do and all they did was fall upon the entire countryside...







We were partying one night and its was nearing the end of the party and my house is trashed but my friends and me remain. Our designated driver, Amanda, decided it best for us to stay the night because it was about four in the morning. There was a full moon outside without a cloud in the sky, all our beer was out and all our cigarettes were gone. Harley being the badass he portrays himself to be asking Amanda to go get him some cig’s. Amanda is the type of girl every guy wishes he had as a friend, she was stunning, sexy, but she didn’t care how she looked. She was that one girl you meet and you know she is a good person and is easy to get along with because she loves you all and will defend you through everything.
She hops in her chrome-finished Nissan 350z and she starts backing out of my driveway when a Dodge Ram comes plowing through and slams into the passengers seat. Shards of glass and metal fly threw the air. The steering wheel flies through the stained glass window shattering it without hesitation. I dauntingly rush outside to see Harley holding her in his arms. The scene was a violent display of blood and destruction. I rush to Harley’s side to see Amanda reach up towards Harley and whispers “I love you, you bastard.” She goes limp in his arms. I see the tears well up in Harley’s blue ocean colored eyes as I closed hers. The driver of the Ram stumbles out of his vehicle and Harley wipes the tears from his eyes and runs toward the driver. The driver never had a chance to say that he was sorry before Harley had him pinned to the pavement, crushing his head against the dry pavement. Everyone just watched, not a single soul helped the drunk driver of that particular vehicle; we just watched the violent scene in front of us unfold. By the time we realized what had happened to the driver, he was as limp as Amanda. The neighbors called the cops due to the accident but the accident turned into the murder of Kyle Pierson, the former governor of our city.


Our dearest friend Amanda was put in intensive care, where they removed a steering column from her chest. That was four years ago, She is still struggling from the accident. As for Harley and me, we ran from the police, we are outlaws. Harley goes back and sees Amanda occasionally. I myself can’t see Amanda in her condition, I just can’t take it. Harley always comes out and tells himself she is doing great but I can see in his eyes that she is slowing dying a painful, agonizing death. We always walk down the street we used to play on, used to live at, used to know, but now all that remains is broken houses, and broken dreams. We now live in this abandoned shack in the middle of the woods, surrounded by tall oak trees so no one can see us and call the cops on us. We venture out to get necessary supplies to continue living.
Luckily about two miles down the road there is a Wal-Mart, which just happens to have terrible security, which we take advantage of, and that’s where we get our supplies. Now how we normally do such a purchase is Harley and myself create a list of what to get we then split the list. Harley goes around to the produce section of the store and I walk around causing enough havoc around the back of the store to get the security to go for me, while Harley walks right out with all the goods. So when the alarm sounds all the security goes to the front of the store and right out the exit and then I come into play by gathering more goods, snatching a plastic bag and making it look like I purchased what is in the bag. With this it makes it quiet easy to walk right out the front door without security look funny at me.
The one thing that we HOPE to never get is a red rose for Amanda. Amanda had specifically asked for a dozen roses only at her funeral and no other time during her life. The only way I knew this was once on Valentine’s Day I had got her a dozen roses and she freaked at me and cut all the roses to shreds, leaving me to wonder what I did so bad… I thought I was doing something good, apparently not. I learned really quick not to get her roses. Well after we get the supplies we head back to our home and stock pile everything we got making sure we didn’t forget anything because if we do we have to wait till next week. If we do get caught in our plan we just wait outside of McDonalds until we find a decent sized receipt and then we go through the drive-through saying we had placed an order and they had messed up our sandwiches and they give out free burgers to us. The rest of the day is mostly sleeping until nightfall. At nightfall we sneak around trying to find our way around the damp alleys, hoping to find us a little extra money so we don’t have to steal anymore than we have to. We never quiet get to church on Sundays anymore because of our living arrangements. Most people wouldn’t want to see us roaming around through their precious town. Whenever we try and make our way around town, we are looked at as if we are the source of all their problems, as if we cause their pain in suffering. When in all reality it is the beasts in the forest that cause their misfortune. The white haired, fanged, giant beasts known as lycans are the cause of the town’s people’s problems. They rampage through town during the night, so we have been accused of being lycans ourselves. Harley and me we have never seen a lycan we have just been told about them. They supposedly live in the forest around our shack but we are never disturbed by the lycans. Harley believes they will come and kill us one night, as for myself I don’t believe they exist. I thought they were a myth but something must be causing all the damage in town at night. I have seen cars flipped, bill boards knocked down, and windows busted but never have I seen what causes the destruction, only the after math.
However this one night when I was lurking around on Main Street and I saw Harley down an alley. I started to walk towards him and as I got closer I realized he was shaking on the ground. I ran as fast as I could to get to him to see what had happened to him. When I got to him he looked as if he had seen death in front of him. Harley’s facial expression was of nothing, he was blank as if something to from him all his feelings. In his eyes all I could see was fear. I grabbed him by his collar and hoisted him on my shoulder and walked out into the woods to our shack. The road home seemed to take forever; it was as if something was trying to keep me away from our home. We were being followed and I knew it because of the sounds from behind me of rustling leaves that had fallen from the trees around us. I knew I couldn’t do anything with Harley stuck on my shoulder, so I persistently pushed on to get to the shack.
A gush of wind passed me and it looked like a wolf was in the wind. The wolf slammed its legs down in front of our shack and sharply turns it’s head towards us, as if it was beckoning us to come towards it. I had a moment of thought before I realized I wasn’t controlling myself anymore. It was as if I was being pulled in towards the wolf. The only thing I could do was turning my head. I look straight down to see that my feet weren’t touching the ground, at this point I was freaking out in my head. I look towards Harley and notice that he is gone and I can’t seem to find him anywhere. I look in front of me to see the wolf walk casually into the shack. The second the wolf is all the way in I started picking up speed as a blinding light strobes from the shack. As I get nearer to the shack more wolfs start lining up as if it was a ceremony-taking place and I was the sacrificial lamb. I struggle to break free of whatever is holding me and moving me towards the shack. I manage to get my left arm moving just in time to see what looked like people float down out of the sky and start to attack the wolves.
I was free from what was holding me, so the first thing I did was scream and then look around for Harley. Harley was nowhere around, so I try and make a run away from the shack to be blocked by large people with fangs hanging over there lips. I knew either the wolves or the vamps would kill me. I look down at the ground and let out a gigantic roar up towards the heavens. All the fighting around me stops. I could feel them staring at me all of their eyes looking directly at me. I felt empowered, and unstoppable. I could smell the fear of them all. They all rushed at me like I was their objective that needed exterminated. Most of them stopped a good 15 feet from me, except one wolf and one vampire kept rushing at me, as if they were testing me. The wolf pounces towards me and the vampire lunges but neither wanted to kill me. They wanted me to join with one of their sides. I slung my arm out towards the wolf and grabbed it in mid-air by its ear and slung the beast at the vampire. Knocking them both down. The fear has left the spectators and has changed to hatred. Nothing moved and nothing made a sound, they just stared as if trying to burn a hole through me.