Minecraft: The Terror Beneath the Stone
A Wholesale Recollection by Steven Brine
Prologue
Do you think its possible that the world...is sentient? That it knows of the horrible things that occurs right atop its face, thanks to our hand? All the pollution, industrialization, and destruction that happens over the course of years; do you think it sat there and let this happen for millions upon millions of years until one day, it just snapped?
I don't know, and it sounds like a stupid question to ask. Yet everyday, I am forced to contemplate an answer as I trek out across this land; this angry, fanged land. It was a normal day, nothing exciting about it whatsoever. Everyone was on their morning routine, either plugging up the roads to work, crowding into their buses for school, or flushing down gallons of super-shot coffee. It was a regular day in the life of humanity, until suddenly, without any sort of warning or preemptive word, the ground speared and ruptured out from underneath our feet, as if it were trying to reach out and devour the sky.
The claws of rock ripped the streets and buildings apart, the soil bubbling itself up into colossal mountains in seconds. Between these chaotically-formed mounds of nature formed deep dark holes, cavernous pits to the dark innards of the planet that gnawed society down and swallowed hundreds of thousands of its denizens. Like a terrestrial porcupine, the earth shed the skin that humanity had littered with modernization, and let its true, raw form out in an overpowering torrent of global seismic reformation.
I was out in the woods just doing my morning hike; I woke up cradled in a bed of dirt.
A sliver of midday sun gleaming through the web of trees was what woke me. As I tried to move, I found that the soil had come to clasp around me, everything except my hair and forehead being quilted by the stuff. As consciousness slowly rose back up, I pushed my arms through the clump of earth, and broke the dirt's hold on me. I clamored out and quickly swerved around, trying to remember where I was. Trees, trees and more trees occupied every direction I turned to, until what I think was the north showed me a gravel path, now winded and scattered across the entire woodland. At that moment I remembered why I came, my morning hike, routine hill-scaping for an hour before I head off to work. Now much more familiar than when I was in the ground, I quickly rushed down the path, hopefully to the direction of my apartment.
The path was originally an even plain all the way across, but for some reason it now had a very steep downhill slope, so steep in fact that I couldn't run without the risk of tumbling over the gravel. Taking care to avoid glittering my face with sharp pebbles, I finally made it to the forest entrance right before my...apartment...
The first thing I saw was the corner of my apartments roof, buried into the street with the outside of the second floor attached to it. Above that stood the remains of the building, two massive gaping holes punched into it like termite-laden wood. I walked up to it slowly, taking all of the destruction in the best that I could. My neighbors entire apartment room could be seen thanks to the rips in the structure, its contemporary look also wrecked and ravaged by whatever disaster had burst into the scene. I guess the shock heightened up my sense, as the sound of glass crunching beneath my feet sounded extremely loud, so much that it drew my gaze back down. I wish I could've just kept staring at the goddamn building.
A hand lay beside the shattered pieces, a few bits of the heated sand cuddling under its palm shadow. Right at the elbow of the limb was where the fangs of brick and wood cleaved into it, clearly hiding some sort of mangled, horrid body on the other side. The crackled window tempted me to look inside, but I knew I wouldn't be able to handle the disgusting sight. So I forced myself away, lunging back into the remains of my first-floor apartment. As I guessed, everything was where it shouldn't be: cabinets were torn from their hinges on the walls, my oven had exploded and sputtered its mechanical pieces into the walls like darts, and my stairs appeared to have imploded like a crumpled piece of paper.
There was only one thing that appeared salvageable from this cave of contemporary wreckage. Splayed out on the ground in the center of the room was my strong-box, something I always had just in case I had to leave my home due to some sort of public uprising or undertaking of the city. I wasn't a conspiracy nut but I knew how to keep myself prepared, even if it was such a slight provision. Weirdly three of many lamps and a small brushing flame surrounded the chest, as if guiding me to it, so I wasted no time prying it open and collecting the provisions inside.
Inside lay a hatchet with a large blade, capable to cutting down a full grown tree within minutes. Though it was of the cheap sort, made of some sort of hardened stone rather than metal, it would suffice for now. Neighboring the axe was another tool of the same stone material, though this time molded to shape a pickaxe. I'm not quite sure what I'd use this for or if stone on stone would even work, but its better to have it and not need it than to need it and not have it.
Below these tools rested some pieces of starting wood, formed in the shapes of boards and sticks for which to build future tools maybe. Then finally, at the bottom were some edible provision: four pieces of petrified bread and three abnormally large apples. These I had gotten from a friend of mine who was into growth experimentation, claiming the bread would not stale and the apples would not darken and wither after taking a bite, giving them a nice life span.
With my items in hand, I rushed towards my closet, which was thankfully still standing, and plucked out my travel backpack, stuffing everything inside. Then finally, knowing that this entire building could come down in any second, I just clutched my khaki hiking vest, slid it over my turquoise shirt and blazed out towards the gaping hole in the wall. I leapt through the concrete maw, just as the sound of wood, stone and metal pillars crackling and splintering began to play. I couldn't look back because I knew the awe would root me to the ground and let me be crushed, so I just kept running outwards to the street, hearing the massive structure collapse and meld into the ground.
The harsh blast from the building's fall knocked me off my feet, sending me flying amongst the veils of dust and debris. I spin and bore into the pavement, trying to brace my fall as best as human skin could. I tried to ignore everything, the ringing in my ears, and stinging scrapes on my arms and elbows, and dizziness from being hit with such concussive force...but I just stumbled and tipped from side to side as I tried to walk. I had to let a short while past as my jigsawed senses put themselves back together, finally allowing me to get a firm stance on the ground. I glanced around to try and see what was there, where I could go, if anyone else was around here; again, my common sense treats me to a horrible, unsettling sight.
There was a bar about two houses down from where my home once stood, a nice quaint place that was very fond of using the color red in its décor. I can't remember the name though ironically I frequented the place on my less-than-celebratory days. But the roof had spidered up from the building itself, casting a massive shadow across have of the street. Inside that pocket of shade...stood something ugly. It was grotesque even from this distance, with red breaming eyes and slitting claws, garbed in the tattered clothing of a civilian. I didn't like it, and I knew it didn't like me, but for some reason it would not leave the darkness, taking steps in my direction but stopping right at the cutoff.
Was it going to pounce, was it just waiting, would it summon others? I wouldn't give it a chance. If this was the first thing I saw when trying to make my way to the city, I couldn't possibly fathom what else is in that crumbled, dead place.
I ran for the woods, the place I was the most familiar with besides town. I don't know why I would choose the untamed wilderness over what was a cataclysmal version of the city I knew the inside and outside of. But those eyes on that creature, from a mere look I could feel that there were dozens, hundreds...thousands more just like it.
The city was a now a nest of hungry eyes; I couldn't go back there.