text: Please give feedback and be harsh. If it's possible, could you score it out of 30? Thank you reading and I hope you enjoy. &#x200B; **Lost to the city** Bleak industrialisation, verging on the depressive. Towering blocks of blackened buildings blotted and choked by the ash they spat out so many years ago. The buildings, sulking awkwardly, bundling and hoarding the dreams they broke. So, blinded by soot and hatred, the people shuffled past one another minds fogged with man’s innate greed. Huge crumbling, concrete condominium's blobbing like cancerous tumours from the knackered tarmac. The people wandered the blank streets, leathered with blank minds and mirroring the austere blocks that surrounded their industrial prison. But there was one outlier. An anomaly among all. Archon Pickkard; He was waiting for his meeting with Charon. He lived among the people but dreamt for more. Archon needed to make others see the harmony they could achieve. Free in his prison; he was a simple man not asking for ornate features or words but spent his life pushing for euphoria taking cheer from his boring schedule. Archon found a way to love all things he saw, resisting what the city forced upon him. The man wished for nature to take its land back, for the days of new to end. He was waiting for his meeting with Charon, not that he knew it though. For years Archon walked the city. Archon thought of the lush pastures of past-times and submerged his dreams with a blind optimism. Archon was authentic unlike the doldrumic people. He was happy. Life was repetitive but Archon was not a man to complain or criticise. He wandered on with his life finding joy in the menial and the boring. Not a moment came that Archon hated or regretted, he was pure. Archon saw such colour in the world, such vibrant colours that overloaded the senses. But the city corrupts all. Gradually, the colours dulled to his eyes. His mindset beginning to slowly shift, and Archon could feel the pull of the city’s tide. The joy he felt became unfulfilling. Optimism began the descent to pessimism. The city lingered on, unaware or uncaring for Archon Pickkard’s wish for simplicity. It stumbled on blindly killing the soul of the one individual man. His mind slowly crumbling like the cracked cobbled streets. The fibre of his being, his very soul was systematically smudged, until he started growing to be the man that he hated the city for. His emotions losing their colour and becoming blank. Soon the city would, with its coal infused air, dank sewers and dim inky skies, deplete the consciousness of the last conscious man. Archon Pickkard realised it was time and raised no controversy. Archon knew what was happening, he tried and forced himself to feel the euphoria of life again, but it was simply not the same. Haltingly, he was being eaten by the city. But Archon could not accept himself to fully fall to the city. Time was all that was needed in his mind, for the mechanical structures to shrink back to the caves and for tranquillity to emerge once more, but Archon could no longer muster the strength to wait. His one refusal to accept the dark mood of the city led him to his decision. His crumpled manic depression edging him towards the cliff of despair. His dingy apartment, grimy on the outside and grimy on the inside was the epitome of the city. The man wished for nature to take its land back, for the days of new to end and for the mechanical structures to shrink back to the caves. Through his paper-thin walls rattled the call of the city, insects and rats. One man, he used to think, was all it took to change the city. Standing in his bitter cold apartment, the winter raging outside and the decay of the city limping forward, Archon Pickkard stared at his ceiling. He fixed it up to a hook on the ceiling and looked around at his apartment hoping for hope but filled with only disgust. So alone in a world with blank slates he saw no point in continuing this sham. He wished for a world that humans hadn’t ruined, but what was the point in complaining. But... what was the point in staying? He was leaving... mind fully made up, he placed a small stool and stood upon it. The city groaned and wheezed smog in laughter, defeating the last individual. Rather defeated, Archon placed a small coin under his tongue. The fattened pigeons squawking outside, the last life - along with the insects, rats and bugs - to be left in the city. With a sharp kick, he did it. The city ignored his death. Clouds slowly blotted what remained of the sun. The streets were piled with evidence of humans but no ‘humanity’ filled them. The buildings rose higher separating themselves from humans. Fogs, storms and rains descended upon the beast pattering and lashing upon its stone walls and pane glass, to no avail, however. The construction workers laboured on, regardless of the weather, dotting their ore skyrises across the broken skyline. The clanging of their hammers rattled through day and night tearing through earth, metal and stone. Workers of this city beast clasped in reflective neon clothes - a façade for the destruction they committed. Winds slowly blocked by blocks of man's creation the howling died down and was replaced by the beating of the hammers. By now, Archon Pickkard had moved on. He had left the complex world and had entered simplicity. He gave an obol to Charon and stepped on the wooden raft and sat down. Archon steadied himself as it rocked waiting for Charon to drift him down the river Acheron. The land was bare and barren, but a beauty lay that Archon admired. He found peace, ease and simplicity - the things he had longed for. The hell he headed for was better than the hell he’d left. But, as before, the city had not noticed. The city stops for no man or woman. It stops when the ticking of humanity falters, but for one man it does not hesitate. It had not recoiled at the loss of Archon Pickkard, its chimneys bloated on, unaware of the individualism it had beaten away. The meaningless buildings grew higher and grubbier, killing the humans that birthed them. Lost to the city. The city limped forward, filled with nowhere people.