The land was barren when the ancestors had come. The Sun glared and the hot earth hissed. The boiling wind tore at the flesh. It was an inhospitable place. The natural order of things here was antagonistic to these common men. What seemed like unshakable forces ruled over them, and made their short lives difficult.

For generations the labours of the pioneers seemed in vain as they hardly reaped anything worthwhile. The feudalistic gods took everything from them, harvest, lives, wives, children, hope, and left them with almost nothing. However these men were many and the powers that be were few.

Overtime it was discovered that things could be changed, and these forces could be, if not reasoned with, then coerced. No longer did survival need to hang in the balance of arbitrary Lords that granted life here and death there. In time they learned.
Rather than beg for meagre rains upon the lands at all the right times, trenches could be dug. Irrigation could be built, rationing the fields with the rare divine graces of rain. Plentiful crops could be handpicked and bred. Fields could be rotated, and the soil replenished. Grain could be stored in years of plenty for the years of less.
Thus piece by piece the men and women took their lives out of the hands of the cruel sky.

It was back and soul breaking labour for the citizens, but they broke together. Each citizen had built a little house around the field, but they were empty all day. Upon that soil is where they almost always were, collectively toiling away. Many a pathetic and seemingly meaningless life bit the dust on the harsh field of that struggle, but those citizens managed to wrest the power over their fate out of the hands of the Lords and into their own. Haughty edicts controlled them no longer. They now had a voice on the course of their lives.
In victory they built a great big grain silo. Its vibrant red brick was their passion for life, and the blood of those who died in sacrifice and who would never see it. In it they stored what little they had in reserves. They stored the resources of collective against the endless assaults of the Old Order.

Together they made something; together they watched it grow.

Then came graceful days when the field was overflowing with green life. The harsh dusty wind of yore was no longer, but now caressed in a cool breeze. The pompous skies and jealous Sun could do relatively little to squash this independence. The toppled forces grumbled defeated, for now.

The newborn generations never knew the brown sky of toil. They did not work a third as hard as their forefathers had, yet reaped thrice as much. Born into abundance and leisure, they soon forgot that the rewards they harvested grew from the dusty remains of their father’s sacrifices. Only boring old voices warned them of such truths, but they too were soon dust. The breeze blew that dust far away, and all soon forgot it.

Now it was a soft blue evening. The air was cool but not cold, the crops were green, and the plates full. There was little to be done. Simple maintenance of these works is all that it would take.
Surely a life of ease and liberty was to be had here now. Yet the pale children of leisure surrendered onto it too greatly. Why toil to fix an irrigation canal when there are so many others, and already so much food set aside? In fact who would even bother to wander so far afield as to see disrepair? Little by little, the painstaking works of those harvesters who had never reaped began to crumble.
The harsh Sun was forgotten, but that Sun still had power blazing in its ever-watchful eye. It did not forget, and patiently it waited for its chance.

The citizen children grew plump, and grew lazy. They spent their time in their separate little houses, having no longer any need to unite in the communal field. Thus they forgot each other. Not bleeding the toil of sufferance together, they forgot their bond of blood. Rather than strengthen together, they grew soft apart, and became viciously selfish in their own ignorant and petty pursuits.

Into such world had been born and bred Mr. Citizen. Middle aged and overweight he was of an overall averageness. A tuft of brown hair crowned his egg-shaped head though it was almost always hidden under a fancy little bowler hat that protected his delicate pasty skin. His moist face was constantly sweating from the activities of his exerting life. He had large eyebrows, and a bushy moustache from under which escaped his heavy wheezing breath. A belt ran the circumference of his spherical body, and held in place his plain gray pants and jacket.

His wife, Miss Citizen, was similar in almost everyway. Remove the moustache, change the brown tuft to one of blonde, and the grey suit for a large yellow dress and there she is, red lipstick and makeup and all. She held a fan in her hand to cool off her sweat and to give flight to the gossiping mischief that always seeped out of her mouth. She had a pair of blue earing dangling from her ears, but they did not twinkle so much as the petty cruelty in her eyes.

They spent their lives secluded in their house with no real purpose. Judging the neighbours they never truly knew they gossiped and gossiped to pass time.

They were not evil no, but having never planted anything themselves wickedness had flourished in the soil of their ignorance. They, like every other citizen of this little land, thought that they were the best. They had all day to stroke their two-bit egos.

“Look!” gasped Miss Citizen, peering out the window “they’re already going at it. Get out there now!” she commanded her husband with her snide voice.

With a huff Mr. Citizen hustled out the door of the small house and into the cool evening air. All houses were built upon the only one road of Citizen Ville that curved like a “U” around the field. Only one stretch of it went into the field.
There laid the silo.

The windows of each house was alight, each a separate beacon of self-importance; none of which glowed brighter than the other’s except in deluded eyes. The field was plunged in total darkness. In the gloom Mr. Citizen could make out the other citizens drifting in the same direction, towards the field. The circular men were bumbling towards the grain silo. They were hard to pick out from one another. They all looked and acted quite the same.

Mr. Citizen did as they, and shuffled along. They massed like beasts before the great construction of the past. They were uneasy at being so close to each other. Nervous and meaningless conversation splattered about the group. Excessively fake laughter was but a thin veil to the fact that they all secretly derided each other. Their hollow masks barely covered the crippling insecurities they all shared in their loneliness.

In spite of this, the tension was bearable. Their stomachs cried, and here was food. The silo was half full; there was plenty to go around, and a relative patience, birthed of laziness rather than virtue, assured its distribution went smoothly.

Mr. Citizen tried to strike up conversations with the others. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t. Some just glared at him, interrupted in their mumbled scheming and insults. Mr. Citizen however was a simple man, and took no offense. So he shuffled forth in the perspiring mass of men, and looked at the silo. As a child he had always been impressed by its huge build in shinny red bricks. That had been before, in the daytime. Now night was falling, and that glory was hazy.

For sometime the reserves of the silo had been steadily dwindling as the citizens ate and were merry. They failed to replenish it for their lack of work, and failed even to grasp what would come if they did not replenish it.

Every meal they would fill up their bags with the reserves not even being careful and spilling much of the precious feed in the mud. They just perspired, salivated, and huffed heavily away.
As the vibrant red silo was drained night fell, and its colour began to fade. Pretty soon, the soaring architecture of its noble ideals was lost in the gloom; the passion of its build was rendered invisible.

A mass of moist parasites was sucking it dry. Every time the children citizens took and took and put nothing back into the framework that made their easy and free lives possible.

They were blindly scattering again into the wind what had taken generations to gather all in this one place, in this monument of triumph over the dark days of voiceless and pathetic lives. They did not know.

Famine, helplessness, despair, pestilence, these ideas of the total domination by greater forces was a complete abstraction to the plump men.

So it was that all just did as all the others did without question. Mr. Citizen filled his bag with grain, and huffed and puffed back to his home. Heavy beads of sweat pearled on his uncomfortable face, red with exertion.

Walking along the dusty road he crossed another man, coming in from the field. He was not as the others. He was by far the thinnest, for this man took his feed from the yet abundant field. Both men were startled. There was an awkward pause as Mr. Citizen and the man faced each other in the half-light of far away windows. In the gloom he seemed a spectre from the past.
The thin man gazed steadily into the eyes of Mr. Citizen from his leathery face. His eyes were blue like the sky, but they shone with melancholy. There was a slight sad smile upon his thin lips. He waved a calloused hand in greeting.
Terrified, Mr. Citizen darted his eyes to the floor and mumbled a greeting and hurried home. The shoulders of the thin man dropped. He also walked back to his home, but with shoulders hunched as though they carried a crushing burden.

Back home, Mr. Citizen quickly washed the film of dirt that had covered his hands in this labour. He could not hide his fluttered complexion, so he told his wife of the encounter. Gasping with indignity she chastised the thin man. He was on the fringe of this society and was thus an easy target for the ignorant mockery that flowed liked currency here.
Mr. and Miss Citizen sat down on chairs that creaked for mercy, and ate a plentiful dinner whilst they snickered at the thin man.

Yet from somewhere in him, a bit above his stomach, Mr. Citizen did not feel entrained by this mockery. He had seen the thin man out there in the fields from his windows. Mr. Citizen wondered what he was doing for truly he did not know. He lived in old ways that no one understood, and in the past the thin man had preached uncomfortable messages that no one wanted to hear. They were too gloomy to consider, so they ostracized him. The thin man had since then ceased his activism, yet still lived in the old ideals of work.
Mr. Citizen had almost gone out once to speak to him, but he could see the pasty faces of the others all plopped against their windows starring at the freakish thin man. A chorus of individual cruel rictus and slander constantly surrounded the thin man. Seeing this Mr. Citizen had hesitated and changed his mind about approaching the thin man and his ideals, as perhaps many others had, much to the teary relief of his wife.

He had had a chance this night, yet had let it slip by. He did not know why, but that gaze had chilled him to the core and stirred something he desperately wanted to keep asleep.

Such thoughts floated about Mr. Citizen as he ate, but soon flitted away. Having devoured his meal and naturally being tired from his heavy labour, Mr. Citizen was drifting off to sleep. He bid his wife a formal goodnight. Heavy footed he left the relieved chair to make the wooden stairs cry in pain instead.

He got to the room where he slept alone. His wife and he slept separately. There was less perspiration this way. It soon became the norm. Since then they had started to drift apart, each having a whole room for their egos. Mr. Citizen could not be sure what kind of remarks his wife made about him in her room, nor could she be of his. That evening that even the beds were separated in the individual homes of Citizen Ville the bonds of community had utterly ruptured.

Mr. Citizen put on his wide pyjamas. Boyish looking in his nightcap he sat down on the bed. On his bedside table was a candle, flickering with all its might against the encroaching darkness. Beside it was an alarm clock. It had belonged to Mr. Citizen’s father, and to his father before him. It looked impressive, being shinny red and all just like the silo. It had two bells and a hammer, but they had not rung in quite some time.

The hands still ticked faithfully, but Mr. Citizen had no idea what it was for. Time was more of a novelty than a necessity to him, his reality having no need for such a thing.
Still he kept the old thing around, it reminded him of his father. He looked at it tonight in the flickering light. The wax dripped slowly down the candle.

His last thoughts of the thin man flickered and fluttered within his mind, dancing like this last little light. They nagged at him for some reason.
Then Mr. Citizen banished his pesky thoughts and blew out the struggling candle, and it was totally and abjectly dark.

From this forlorn darkness, Mr. Citizen plunged into a heavy sleep. He secluded himself in cocoon of comfort.

He was so comfortable that he slept for many days. He was not concerned with the world. Why should he rise? His belly was full, his head rested, his body cozy.
He would stay here forever. Calmly he snored, gently blowing the nightcap’s pompon away from his face only to have it fall back down again: the bliss of unconsciousness.

The hands of the clock went round and round. In the depth of the night, dreams started to come. At first they had been his typical dreams. Food, shinny things, trivial comforts, and other superficial sights that made him want to lull in sleep forever.
However from the edge of these dreams crept in harsher visions. With a creased face he tried to push them back. Images of fire, of drought, of the thin man, of famine, of war harassed him. With effort he pushed them away, and rolled over persisting in his unconsciousness.

Still days went by, and still he slept. The visions troubled him once in a while, and feverishly he would toss and turn in sweat refusing to wake up, soothing himself with paltry images instead.

One day a fly came into his room. The crops were wilting. It pestered him for hours.

“Wake up,” its presence buzzed, but still he did not rise.

For long hours Mr. Citizen tossed and turned away from the insistent buzz. He hid his head under his covers until at last he managed to kill the messenger, and then he bit into sleep harder than ever. Round and round go the hands of the clock.

One-day sounds from the thin man floated in through his window. For long excruciating hours his voice came to Mr. Citizen. First were sounds of desperate working in the field followed by various shouts of alarm. Then came these dreadful and awfully pesky cries from that thin throat almost as though they were deliberately trying to wake up Mr. Citizen.
Frustrated with this disturbance Mr. Citizen pulled his nightcap over his ears and covered his head with his pillow, seething in his hatred towards the thin man.

“For Heaven’s sake! How long can a man scream?” Mr. Citizen grumbled to himself. Still he did not rise.

He persisted in sleep all the way through the broken lamentations and sobs that floated to his ears from the throat of a crushed man. Then the voice died. There came sweet silence, and all the sleepers were relieved that the problem was gone.

At pre-dawn of the final day, there was a boiling stillness. The Sun would rise hot today. The sleeper was drenched in his sweat.
In the stuffy darkness of the room all was still but for a small tick. A faintest heartbeat yet lived in this abandon. The red clock, built in sturdily hopeful days still whispered the ancient tongues.

It pulsed with an archaic purpose forgotten to all but it. Somewhere within a trip in the mechanism of some divine kind called it forth to its bygone duties once again. Sensing that grim time, the clock prepared for its sacred duty. It would ring once again.

Just before sunrise, its heart erupted into the rhythm of the ancestors!
The hammer thumped its truth on the bells which rang violently. Its shrill cry was the echoes of those voices now dust, and together they smashed the idyllic trance of Mr. Citizen to tatters. It screeched at him, ripping him out of the cozy darkness.

With a blind and unconscious rage Mr. Citizen’s hand swept out! He blindly felt after the clock, trying to silence it yet did not know how. He felt himself falling, falling out of the cozy illusions and into the harsh light of reality. He needed to stop it, before it was too late!

In furious desperation, he threw the clock to the floor where it smashed to pieces. Its glass shattered, springs shot out the back, the hammer broke, and the hands stopped moving. The last inkling of life puttered out of it, and the heart of the ancestors was broken. Time had run out.

With a sigh of relief, Mr. Citizen rolled over again, having bought himself a bit of time. His last respite in sleep was awful. He was boiling and having nightmares, but he clung on with all his plump-fingered might to the blanket of his unconsciousness.

Moments later, the Sun rose blood red, glaring with sinister intent over the fields. With glee it knew:

Today was the day.

The temperature in the room steadily rose, and Mr. Citizen was soon drenched in sweat. A harsh dry wind, a wind that had been banned from these parts long ago, had escaped and came to scratch upon the windows. On its scalding breath was the dust that had long since disappeared. With vile and vengeful rictus it blew through Citizen Ville, making windows and doors screech upon their hinges as they blew back and forth. The citizens were free no longer.
In the dusty gale was the lament of those who had heard it before. Tossing and turning feverishly Mr. Citizen heard their cry, but he tried to ignore it.

Wake up you lazy fool… what we built with the blood of our hands over a dozen generations you have lost in days… wake up… WAKE UP!!!

Mr. Citizen shut his eyes as tight as he could, but darkness was no longer to be found. The Sun was burning through his windows, through his eyelids, and even squinting he saw only the colour of blood, the blood he had forgotten. The cool soothing darkness was nowhere to be found. It was no longer his choice whether to sleep or not.

At long last he opened his eyes. He looked at the clock, and felt relief for a baffled instant. It was not that late. However the clock was broken. Those hands had died in their labour. They had done their duty, and had carried on as long as they possibly could. They had died nobly on the last hour, which was now past. The valiant clock could go in peace. It need not see the horrors to come.
As Mr. Citizen rose and gazed out his window he gasped. The blood Sun was high in the noonday sky, towering in its might. The sky was yellow and the ground red. The fields were burning dry and the brown wind ravaged everything. Under its screaming gusts, the silo was crumbling, its institution returning to dust.

With one simple glance all this chaos burned into the eyes, and from somewhere within, from the roots of his blood Mr. Citizen knew it was much, much too late.