Gritty first chapter of book/short story (havent decided)

“It’s not like you ever know where you’re going. It’s never a set course. You just start walking somewhere, and one step leads to another, until finally you find yourself at a place you feel you belong, and you settle down there. In fact, most of the time it’s not a place anyone ever even imagined you being in. Life is a journey… we all know that. We’ve been brought here for a purpose, a mission. But we don’t know where the road will take us. However, what we can do, is stay away from the harmful things in life. Like drugs, or violence, or sin… We must love our fellow human beings, our brothers and sisters… and no matter what anyone says, you know God cares about us… And he cares about you. He’s up there, looking down upon his children, knowing that each one of us is special in that unique way he in-intended-d-d…. I-I-I-I think that… God-d-d-d-d-d i-s-s-s-s……..”

Nonexistence.

“What the fuck?”

Apparently, the projector was down again, and the priest on the wall, who was preaching not a moment before, vanished into thin air, leaving not a trace of his momentary existence behind. Not like the fucking thing ever worked well in the first place, but it looked like it was dead for good this time. Wisps of black smoke drifted from the reels.

Not again… “What the fuck is this?!” “Get the freakin’ show back on!” cries went up around the room, and, like a sudden wave, the voices reached a crest in a few seconds’ time. People got up and started to leave, some silently but most of them throwing their cups of pop and half-filled cartons of popcorn at the blank white screen. Well, they were either half full or half empty, but you know what I mean. A security guard walked in, but simply stood staring at the scene, not daring to stop the vandals, or rather, the mob of ruffians, lest they find a new place to vent their aggression. That place being, namely, himself.

The theatre was located in the worst part of town. Streets crowded everywhere with the homeless and the sick, walls sprayed over with black and green and blue paint. We had actual lepers roaming the sidewalks, and no one did anything about them. They couldn’t give a flying fuck about us, they just picked up the stoners and the junkies since they yielded the maximum penalties for their ‘offenses.’ After all, we lived in a ‘zero-tolerance’ country. Druggies filled the prison cells, and no one really gave a fuck about them since they were outcasts. Of course, they had deals with the real offenders, the gangs of rapists and serial killers who were too risky to apprehend. ‘They’ being the police, of course. As long as the gangs stayed out of the rich area, the rest of town was fair game. The local law enforcement was underfunded anyway, and the pay was shit so most officers needed an ‘alternate source of income.’

I can’t really remember how I got here… my first memories… or, at least, the earliest ones I can remember… were those of me dragging my teenaged self across a distinctly wet street, my jeans moist and heavy. It wasn’t raining or anything… the sky was open, and I think I had a slight sunburn on my left arm… I was clearly stoned out of my mind. I was thinking how the concrete felt so much like rock candy as it scraped across my knees, peeling skin down my legs like pieces of string cheese. I didn’t see the road itself, but they say smell is the strongest sense connected to memory… then I remember bloody air, horrid, decaying air… a hint of putrescence, suggesting stagnant bodies unmoved from the place of death… mixed with the sweetest, most innocent scent of warm and freshly baked bread drifting across the gore from the friendly neighbourhood bakery located in the general direction of the police car heading straight towards me.

Then, I collapsed, a trickle of chocolaty blood running down my scalp and forehead and onto my closed right eye. Next thing I knew I was sitting in a hospital bed, half my face bandaged up in thick casts as heavy as blocks of lead.

Not like anyone really gives a shit. Everyone here has a sob story or a tragic ending to tell about. The churches are always full of the hopeful dead on Sundays, praying for a way out of this hellhole, waiting for their savior to swoop down and deliver them from the sinful and plague-infested Babylon they dwell in.

Then, after mass, all the believers go home and trade in their crosses for switchknives and bibles for porn mags. Some of them even go as far as spreading bud butter on the bread that’s supposed to represent the body of Jesus Christ. Well, what do you expect from people who are so poor they depend on the church for unspoiled food and the Bible for rolling paper?

But still you can hear the sounds of children playing in their front yards, despite the fear swirling in the town’s air, like fragrant marijuana smoke emanating from my lungs.

 

I like it

it really seems like a person talking, alot of first person stories forget that and seem too formal

I really want to see where it's going and such

good luck with it