Obedience and slavery
Well, I had to do a short introduction to a story for an English lesson assignment, and as I had no idea what to base it on, I decided to use BioShock as an inspiration. I've already handed it in, and it's nowhere near as good as some of the other, proper, fanfiction I've seen on here, but was wondering what you guys thought of it (no explicit references to BioShock or Rapture, mind, in the first chapter at least):
The corridor was cluttered with litter and the occasional mutilated corpse. The decaying body of a police officer, dressed in full waterproofs, lay against a smashed bench, while the bloody body of a female factory worker, lying in the foetal position in the middle of a nearby puddle of cloudy sea-water.
The glass walls were not in a great state either; small cracks and tiny holes allowed streams of sea water to seep in, culminating in several shallow murky puddles on the corridor floor. The fish outside, unaffected by the city and its debris for the most part, swam on by, ignoring the dead body floating alongside them and the flickering neon lights besides them.
A ravaged, injured man entered the corridor. He had an old dilapidated lead pipe in one hand, while his other scarred hand was holding an old cigarette and twitching erratically. Pausing only to cough and splutter, he proceeded to limp doggedly down the underwater corridor. He stepped on the factory worker's corpse, however, he was too caught up in his own thoughts and insanities to care where his feet were taking him. Rubbing his temple with his cigarette-holding hand, he muttered an unintelligible rant under his breath before putting the cigarette back in his mouth. Taking a puff and exhaling, he paused briefly to stare through the wall at the decaying utopia. Rotting skyscrapers covered in coral, litter floating aimlessly through the sea and neon lights struggling to stay illuminated.
Sighing, he continued on his way, taking another laboured puff. He hated these cigarettes with a passion. They used to be tolerable, but they'd steadily gotten worse with time as the condition of the city itself decreased thanks to war and decay. His wife always use to say that's another reason to quit smoking, but she was always high on other even more unhealthy drugs, so she couldn't talk, the bloody hypocrite.
And she was dead, he couldn't forget that. Found her lying on a crate with a bullet in her eye, scorch-marks all over her scarred skin and blood splattered everywhere. That prevented her from talking as well.
Anyway, the cigarettes.
The quality was vastly inferior to the ones the rich snobs and business tycoons enjoyed, and even by tobacco standards, they played havoc with his old lungs. But these artificial fags were the only ones he could afford, particularly in the current economic climate and the fall of the city. Still, at the end of the day, he couldn't really complain. Wouldn't help matters. No one ever built a successful life out of complaining, he always said, except for journalists.
He had reached the other end of the corridor by now, and he threw his cigarette on the floor and crushed it underneath his boot, smearing the ash on the floor. The watertight security door slid open to let him in, and he entered the dilapidated pub. Since the city's downfall, the pub was no longer the pillar of the community it once was. Today, it was a bloodied, looted mess. Newspapers and scraps of paper were sprawled on tables, beer bottles were smashed on the rotten wooden floor and the jukebox looped the same song over and over. Until some clever sod had hit it with a crowbar. Now it just loops the same word over and over again instead. Nobody thought that was a great improvement.
Aside from his own wheezy coughing, pained footsteps and the repeated looping of "maybe", the only sounds were the other survivors of the city in the distance muttering or fighting each other (gunshots and screams of pain and horror were not uncommon), and the occasional advertisement or propaganda line from the city PA system.
A spider scuttled along the floor, acting like it had better places to be than here watching the city kill itself. Now, the man wasn't an arachnophobe, but he felt like taking his anger out on something, and the spider was a prime candidate who conveniently had a reputation of being helpless and useless and not putting up much of a fight. So he swung the lead pipe at the arachnid, who continued his walk oblivious. Angered by this arrogance, he took aim again, once again failing to hit the creature. Sweating and muttering curses under his breath, he swung even harder. This time, he hit his own foot.
Dropping the pipe and swearing incessantly, he grabbed at a table for support, massaging his old foot in a vain attempt to make the pain subside. Blocking out the grating sounds and smells of the city, eventually the pain went. He picked up the pipe and went on his way to the counter, unknowingly stepping on the troublesome spider as he did so. Pulling a dusty bottle of cheap, tacky beer from the shelves and leaving a tacky, rolled-up note on the counter (where most of his payments remained uncollected) he shuffled to a darkened corridor, pulled off the lid and downed the bottle in a few quick gulps. He stared out of the window, looking over the city on the seabed.
Corpses, old junk and the occasional bit of rubble floated through the deep blue waters, or just lay dormant on the seabed. The fish as always just ignored it. They had bigger things to think about probably. An occasional fish would get strangled by a discarded shopping bag or fishing net, or get choked by the occasional stray source of city pollution that was still polluting, despite it being redundant. Every now and then, a massive whale or squid would swim past, them viewing the dystopia as little more than rocks that need to be dodged.
Placing the empty bottle on the table nearby, he began to walk home, kicking an old crate filled with hypodermic needles out of the way. He sighed and began to mutter more incoherent, irrelevant rubbish.
As he walked through the corridor, he took out another cigarette and as he was lighting it, he stepped on the factory worker's squishy corpse again. This time, she grabbed his foot, causing him to stumble and drop the lit cigarette.
He tried to kick free, screaming and throwing outlandish threats at her as he did so, but she pulled herself up and withdrew a bloodied, grimy meathook from her pocket.
This mad woman had obviously played dead in an attempt to draw her prey into an evil trap, and it worked. While the last, lingering threads of her humanity tried to stop her from killing the man, now firmly at her mercy, she still plunged the hook straight into his chest.
Pulling it out after twisting it around a bit, a large stream of blood burst from his chest. He begged for mercy and redemption for his sins. Her cruel face began distorting even further as she burst into sadistic laughter, this former mother, previously a sane, kind member of the community, had been driven by circumstance into a complete monster, like almost everyone else still alive in the city, forced to scavenging and murder for survival and entertainment.
She stabbed his chest a few more times, and as he gurgled and bled, his face eventually turned a sickly grey colour and his struggling and desperate screaming stopped. Satisfied, she let go. She wiped the blood of the hook with a cloth, and turned to stare at the ugly corpse of the policeman.
He was now standing upright, dusting himself down, readjusting his cap and looking around. After letting out a quiet yet crazed cackle, he muttered "I get to kill the next one, alright?"
"Yes, sure" came the reply from his companion. The policeman went to assume the ambush position in the muddy water, yet she stopped him.
"We won't be getting another one here for quite a while. Damn freaks seem to be catching onto us" she explained.
Pausing to think, the policeman suggested "What about we hang around at the old market? Heavy traffic, plenty of hiding spots…"
"Yep. Sounds great." They turned around and headed away from the pub, leaving the corpse of their victim lying in a pool of his own sickly blood.