Mob Mentality
The world was all masonry and wood, dirt and rust, brown fabric and the pale, fleshy beings they enveloped. All the colors were metal: iron, brass, copper. I could smell little but gas from the brown, tan and black station wagons that occasionally clattered by. The first one I saw made me bolt; I happened to be in the middle of the road when it passed over me, enveloping me in stench and metal clattering. It was gray with wooden doors so to my inexperienced eye, it looked like the rest of the world. After my encounter with it, I stayed off to the side. I was nearly crushed again by a horse's hoofs and the narrow wheels of the carriage it was toting behind. It was then when I skirted the gray bricks and slabs of concrete that made of the houses to either side of the street. The bricks smelt like dirt and sediment; I liked the smell of them better than the concrete, which just smelled unnatural. I came across some discarded man things: a watch, a business card, a wallet with a photo of a young girl, a coin. I might have collected them, but I didn't realize at the time that I could have been my own storage unit. My middle created with nothing in it by my spine. I was hit with the instinct to store something, but I felt far too rushed to think of where so I left them alone.
While on the far left to the road, a small number of men and their mates passed me by. Clearly, they were of some sort of rank or upper class, since the gentlemen were clad in fine cotton blacks and browns with tall, plain top hats; the ladies were in ruffled dressed in any color from black to beige and in elaborate, often flowered or feathered, things on their heads. I froze like an animal when they were in my sight so they did not see me. I could feel they had something heavy on their minds that was distracting them from seeing the road ahead and me. It seemed they just wanted to get away. They didn't run off or even go briskly. What I understood was that whatever it was that frightened them they, for some reason, could not get away from it so all that was left was to accept it. I was discovered once, but only by a woman's greyhound who quickly let me be after his woman tugged his collar (and I swatted him on the nose when he backed me into a corner made by a stairwell).
I stayed scrunched up in the corner for a few minutes until I got the bad feeling again: that feeling of doom I had when the Chancellor came. I left the rich part of the city as briskly as I could. At one point, behind me I heard men's footfall stomping in turn. Luckily, I was swift enough to quickly have the marching get out of my range of hearing. I wasn't allowed to be spooked by it for too long before I heard a familiar sound again: the clamor of men's voices I had first noticed when the Scientist dropped me off. I could scarcely make out their chant. As I moved in, I saw them. Poor families all huddled together, throwing their hands into the air at a small group that was up on a makeshift podium. Even from there I could feel their intensity. Whatever they were demanding, they weren't prepared to give in until it was gotten; it was something to be admired. Against my better judgment, I moved in right amongst their warm, cotton-covered legs.
Weaving and squeezing, I went through ankles and over shoes. The gaggle was massive and that meant eyes were everywhere. If I had attempted to skirt the very tiny space between them and circle of houses around them, I would have been spotted for sure. Something in my gut just told me I did not want to be seen by humans – not one. I made my way up to the front of the rambling humans. The people were all too occupied on rallying to notice my soft feet (and occasionally hands and body) pass over them. That was until one woman scuffed her slipper away from me while I crawled over it, screaming, "Rat!" I sprinted away too fast for her to be able to spot her "rat". While she almost blew my cover, I briefly empathized with her. She was wary and uncomfortable, which was why she so sensitive to me passing. I knew she felt something heavy lingering over her just like I did; it was the marching again. It was following my path.
But you know what they say about curiosity.
I popped my head up in-between a father and son at the front and watched the podium people shout. It was very hard hearing them because near everyone in the crowd was chanting in turn. I didn't catch the exact words because their massive voices were harming my small ears, but it was something like, "Unite for peace. Tell our Chancellor to join the alliance." I couldn't make much out of it. Listening to those on the podium told me that their leader, this Chancellor, has apparently refused an alliance with other leaders. They insisted that uniting with those other leaders would be the only way to overcome the machines. So this was what the men had been freaked out about; they feared the rouge machines. When the Scientist told me, I had no idea how huge a threat they were to the world, but this certainly proved it.
I almost felt inclined to introduce myself to this wave of people because I so strongly agreed with them, but then something turned. The rally began to skew their message. What had started out as a reasonable protest started to turn violent. I felt myself jostled in the legs of the people like a raging storm. Yanking myself away from them, someone called out for the blood of the Chancellor. This peace rally was turning into a mob. They were all so scared and frustrated that when they were all put together they quickly became rash and arrogant. It disturbed me. What struck me even closer was that these were family groups. The children didn't understand and were turning fearful. Even some men and woman didn't find the turn comfortable.
The mass of humans started to twist and writhe. I eased further and further away from them, moving up the podium to the top where the seven or so ringmasters stood. Staying concealed slipped my mind for the moment. There must have been a thousand people in the cobblestone common area. What had once been a virtual forest of warmth and comfort for me had turned into a mess of browns, whites and blacks all topped with pale wrinkles of snarls, standing hair, the whites of eyes, long teeth and red gums. They became to push and lash out with fury, almost appearing to be fighting each other. I once caught in the grating circle of guttural howls that they were about to do something about the Chancellor themselves. Every now and then someone, usually a child, ran out from the mob to get away from all the sweaty bodies slamming against each other. Even those on the podium were becoming zealous. Their hard-soled shoes stamped down upon the flimsy wood until it snapped in half. I heard the crack and in an instant a claw of splintered wood shot up before me and the ground slipped away sideways. I was thrown onto my back and slid down where the men broke the podium and into the dirt. Bewildered for the moment, I scrambled to my feet and ran back toward the mass of people. Even though their stand was shattered, the podium people continued on their yelling as they had been. Dust was kicked up from their movement so I had a difficult time seeing.
After I stumbled away from the mob and turned around to watch them flail, I couldn't help but to feel responsible for the decline in intelligence. While I was standing on their feet, I felt as if I were a part of their group: even more than that. It was in my nature to believe that I was someone of rank within their gathering. Without me realizing it, my subconscious adopted the throng of humans as my own family. At that time, I was the only one of my kind and a desperately longed for the others so I took them as a placebo to fill the gap. I was not entirely delusional; I realized I was so small that I could do nothing to stop the rage.
Then I could hear it again: the marching.
Suppressing the urge to flee, I dug my feet into the ground as I saw a squall of men all clad in gray uniforms. They moved in unnatural lines, all together creating broad rectangles of gray. My eye caught a series of bright flashes. The sun reflected on the rods of shining metal that they all carried. I didn't like those at all. I felt my legs ache and turn weak, like I couldn't keep standing anymore. It was bad. Something very bad was about to happen.
Run away. Run away, I kept telling the mob in my head.
I didn't take my own order and neither did they. They mob all turned around to the gray men. It seemed to be what they wanted; they wanted a battle. I could feel the rotten electric stench of tension. The clusters all had their faces at one another. The younger ones let out noises to get out. Some of them could feel just what I felt:
Please, no. Don't fight. Whatever you do, don't fight.
It started off with just a dozen. My head filled with popping and there was a burning smell. The brown cotton ripped and pale shards came out with a spatter of black. Then a short choke ending in a sudden cut off gag. Thud, ripple and then they were still. The first men had been shot.
A mere second of nothing was followed by the entire world running into itself. The mob lurched in two directions. One was all nails and teeth and threw their lives away trying to resist the steady stream of bullets that let out constantly in a horribly mechanical fashion. The others started to stampede in the opposite direction. The mob had lost all their ability to see, hear and smell. Those senseless with fear gaped open their mouths and craned their necks as they flailed, struggling and wailing to get away. Feet came down upon those unlucky enough to be heading in the opposite direction as the cluster around them: splatter, squash and crunch as they were forced into their painful deaths all over the stones. Constantly was the sound of pops to the ground as those shot and those tripped by the mob all fell into the ground. Nothing was in the heads of the men but to run but they were not unified in where to run. They clashed as they went into opposite directions creating blocks in the crowd of kicking, clawing, screeching, stuck bodies. This was how more trampling occurred. In bursts of human forms, some of them broke free to gain their goal. Every now and then a man with a gun was beaten by the oppressed and every now and then someone escaped alive, shrieking and grabbing at the air as if it would move them faster. But the children, oh the children, they stood little chance of breaking free of the mob that was packed together like stone. The shrieking, sometimes clogged with liquid, became constant.
My eyes remained fixed on the trampling and shooting until I heard something from a new street. It was more marching. I looked over there, but saw no gray men. What I saw drove me to run toward it. There was a small crowd of fleeing families heading for that street. The gray men were up there. Just to their right of the fleeing people was a safe path. I tried to warn them.
"That's the wrong path! This way is safe!"
But my voice still refused to agree with me. I didn't believe they could hear me, until a woman slowed to a stop and looked behind her with her wide, wary eyes. I remembered her – she was the one who felt me move over her feet. Her blue irises focused on me. The rest of the world went away and then it was just me and her. We stood in whiteness and quiet, communicating through the wind.
Her head was pulled foreword and her hair flopped over her face and then she recoiled. The blue eyes became glossed. Her body tilted foreword and then came down. Inches before me hit her head of brown hair, leaking black from the top. A shining lock came over my feet and her blood drained out from the hole in her head.
She was gone.
The world was back and the fleeing humans were scraping their feet on the ground to get away from the new line of gray gun-wielders. A child squealed like a swine to my right. I went with them to get away. The popping and smoke of the guns went on behind me as I bolted. A shadow swiftly covered me and then I saw stepped on.
My ears filled with ringing. I refused to stay down and harassed my throbbing legs to carry me on. My path was uncontrollable. I moved at random as the feet passed in what seemed to be a direction that always changed. The ringing became louder and then changed into the squeal of the child. It didn't stop. It went on unnaturally with no breaths or change in volume or pitch.
My head was playing tricks on me and made me stupid so I didn't even see the second foot coming. My spine bent to the shape of a cold, steel-toed boot. I went around in the air, making me sick to my stomach before the back of my head stopped dead on a concrete wall. My skull rippled from the place it hit and my felt electricity in my sinuses. Involuntarily, my body convulsed from the stock to my head. I still felt the flying even after I hit the wall. The squeal in my head faded in and out before the voice cracked and then went away with a defeated sigh. My grip on reality was slipping.
No longer able to hold it up, my head flopped onto my shoulder. My arms failed and I was on my side by the wall. My muscles stopped convulsing. After that went my eyes and then my hearing. All I was aware of was touch.
As if I were in a state of half-dream, I felt the cold cobbles below me jump off and become air. I was strung up by the ankle upside down. My arms fell down and my other leg folded up on my hip. My neck stretched. My jaw was held shut by gravity. Believing I was human, my mind gave me the sensation of sticky, warm blood falling down my throat and mouth: cold water from my eyes. Gravity turned around and pulled on my back as I was placed into a rough skin-covered hand. I could not control my body so my belly was flaccid and stunk in, and my jaw fell open. The fingers of the hand curled around me. It was all hot.
Then there was the open nothingness again.