This is not a city people can call home. Every building is made of gray bricks, the streets are gray, and the guns are gray too. Guns and other militaristic weapons are a guaranteed sight no matter where you go in this city. You can see police cars and government officials on every street, or staring at you with binoculars out a window in every building, and yet some people still choose to live here. It would be so easy to leave. The only question is whether or not you'd be leaving town or leaving life. More than likely life, unless you've been "outside" from the start. I guess fear is the only thing keeping people here. Stay here and risk death, or leave and risk death. Even if you get out, every city in every country on every continent is the same. Not many places to go.

The conditions are no different where the respectable people who abide by the system's rules live. The people who get up at 7:00AM every day, clean themselves up in the bathroom in such a way that makes every single one of them look the same. Every male is forced to have the same haircut as every other male. The same goes for every female. They may only wear gray dress suits or dresses. Body hair anywhere other than on the head is outlawed. Every car must be painted gray and all of them have to be the same model. Every apartment must be immaculate, every bed made, every floor made of linoleum and properly buffed. Picture perfect, every time. And every time, it's the same picture.

This is the result of our world at war. Government is oppressive and forceful. Dead bodies belonging to people who in life were living outside the system or were trying to wage war on the system are piled in almost every corner, mostly the corners where buildings change shape. They get left there simply as a monument. Gutters on every street are almost overflowing with a mixture of rain and the blood of society's rejects. Trash is piled up wherever people have decided to start a pile, because trash collection stopped years ago. It's hard to see the sun during the day, and the night brings no difference in the brightness.

The skies bring no relief from the lack of color seen on the streets or in the homes. They've turned a nice dirty gray as well thanks to our bombs and poisons that we've decided to graciously dispose of in our air. Everything is gray. I like to think the world is gray because we have lost almost all hope. There's not much that can be done for us anymore except wait until the Earth can no longer sustain our lives.

I was born in a world much different than this. Before the war begun, before the skies were gray, before there were dead bodies decorating the streets. It was in another town where life was a little more colorful. My mom raised me in a small duplex in the middle of suburban Vancouver. Society was based on consumerism. There were stores no matter where you looked, businesses being established and demolished in the time it takes to pour a glass of milk, and the names of people could be seen on underwear.

It was a time of growing. The economy actually still existed, and it seemed to be on the rise. As long as people were spending money, the government was happy. Foreign affairs meant nothing as long as government made money. People could live relatively well off of $24,000 annual salaries. People who identify as various subcultures could be seen walking the streets. Pubs, bars, and liquor stores were abundant. One could see a party on every block, some of them playing live music. You could always tell one was nearby because of colorful drunk people stumbling down the road. There was color in that world. Compared to today, it was a blissful existence.

At the time, I lived like most just-grads and kids did. A party or two every week not without a supply of alcohol or a bootlegger. Everyone around me, including me, liked to talk or sing about living outside the system and being different, but really, they were part of the system. They were all part of the blissful society that had been established by then. In present time, it's different. You're either part of the system or not part of the system. If you're not part of it, you have to run or end up being one of the bodies in the street and no one will miss you.

In practice, living outside the system is harder than most any task any of us have ever done. A lot of the people I knew back then are dead now because they weren't actually capable of living their own way. I chose to live outside the bounds of the system after the war started. Now everyone like me is forced to be creative or die. If we are in the city and anyone of power spots us, we can be shot by police and left for dead. Most people like me find themselves a life outside the city.

The architecture of the city provides us with one safe spot, however. Most non-residential buildings have archways for an entrance. They are mostly one room buildings, just big squares or rectangles. They don't even have roofs anymore. This provides an easy way for police to take down any problems that people might cause. They can just come in with a helicopter and rain down bullets on everyone in the building. One building like that in this city, though, has a roof. And police won't dare go near it because in all likelihood, they will be the ones dying.

The abundance of guns in the world provides pretty much everyone with firearms. People who live outside the system and like to live in the city mostly exist in that one building, and there is no shortage of fire power in that building because of it. There is only one entrance, an archway that has been modified with sandbags piled up to the top to make it so only one person can go in or out at a time. It is not big enough for allow for any vehicle to come in, and the material used in the sandbags is a modified sand that does not move due to explosions. It's a perfect haven for us.

I have lived in this building since almost the start of the war. I have no guns to my name, but know someone who can provide me with almost whatever weapon I choose. He lives outside the city in the forest of fake trees. About the only thing other than the clothes on my back that I have to my name is a blanket that my mom gave me right before she died, and it has saved my life on more than one occasion. It has proven very useful for going from the innercity to the outskirts where you can see the forest. My list of friends has been slowly dropping due to them being killed. Just yesterday, Nora was shot dead on our way back to this building.

That's another sad reality. If you travel with someone, and that someone ends up getting killed on your way to wherever, there is no time to stop and do anything. You are forced to leave that person where he or she was killed and just go on. It can happen any time. Right in the middle of a conversation, during a break, while avoiding getting killed, or any other possible scenario. There is no room for the weak at heart anymore. This world will force you to be what would be considered "cold" by the old world's standards. Anything you do out in the open can cost you your life. If you're part of the system, though, you're pretty much immune. They have it pretty bad, too, though.

Any imperfections in how they drive can result in execution. Any visible body hair is grounds for "justifiable" murder. Clothes must always be clean. Just one slip up, and it is all over for them. One could argue they have it even harder than we do, but that's pretty opinion based. I compare them to domestic pets of the old world. As long as they don't bite, don't piss on the floor, keep themselves groomed and pretty much stay behaved, then they live. But any problem can cause them to be put down. Domestic pets were slaves then, and members of society today face a similar type of slavery. We are the stray animals, we can be impounded or killed by, say, antifreeze in the form of a bullet. I guess in some way, things are working in a new balance, and the power has shifted.

Society isn't the only place that the balance of power has shifted or is in the process of shifting, either. Among people living in the forest or in this building, power shifts every couple of weeks. There are multiple bands of people, and the loss of life causes whatever group the now dead person belonged to lose some of its power, and things have been going like this for a long time now. Originally, my friends and I had the most power. We were the first to live in this building and were nice enough to understand the unstable life that existed outside these walls and let others live here with us. People respected us and did not question us at all. Now I am the only one who is still alive and living in here. The only other friend from the originals moved to the forest months ago.

His name was Zieg. He was the biggest of us all in a muscular way rather than overweight way. He has had his entire body tattooed a light orange, and two green stripes starting from his forhead right over his skull to the base of his neck. He has more connections to weapon suppliers than most people have strands of hair on their head. An all around frightening person if you're not a friend of his, because he can have you killed faster than a light can stop emmitting light after being turned off. After everyone else ended up dead, he left in a hurry saying he had to help someone stay protected elsewhere. That was the last time he was seen in the city. I still go see him every once in a while, he's usually hiding out in the forest somewhere. I've never been able to find out exactly what he's doing in there, though.

That leaves me. I'm huddled in the corner covered by the blanket my mother gave me and hoping some random person in the building doesn't decide the sight of me bothers him. I'm a small guy, pretty much anyone could throw me around and not even call it a work out. Sometimes I wish I took the self defense classes my mom used to tell me to take. It's almost like she saw this future coming. She was always pressing self defense and gaining avid knowledge in weapons use. I just figured she was slightly batty. I've been sitting here in this corner for about half a day now. I've heard several police sirens whiz by outside. There is too many bullet casings to count just sitting around in every direction I can see. There is even a pretty noticable pile behind me from me having moved them so I could sit on concrete instead of metal casings.

In the time I've been sitting here, arguments have sprung up everywhere. There's fresh blood from a stabbing just a few feet away from me. I can still hear the poor woman sobbing. She was screaming about her children earlier. I kind of wished someone would make it quicker for her, because she doesn't know her children are dead.. she didn't have to see that. I did. She's made her way to the wall and sat herself against it leaving a blood puddle and trail obviously from her wound. She will die there. A sign of the times, it is.. when anyone can tell what will be fatal and what wont be. With blood, though, there is death. And death leaves a smell. Everywhere around me is the smell of death, all the time. Rotting bodies of people killed or died naturally lying about on the floor. Some haven we have. I miss when being here made people happy, not glum.

I am 33 years old, and there's not much left for me to do except wait to either die or be killed by police or other people like me. There is no power for me in here anymore, and I can tell that some people are thinking of killing me for my blanket. I've become a great observer, I can come up with a good guess what people are talking about even if I can't hear them over arguments or bullets or sirens.. consider it like a crystal ball, if you will. If a plan involves more than one person, I can probably give you the point of the plan. Maybe not the details, but what the overall goal is. One person plans are good, because they require no trade of words. This is how I know that I have to get out of here soon, or I will have a fate similar to the girl who just a few minutes ago was alive sitting against the wall, but has already taken her last breath.