That is where the new cinema complex was going to be. Next to it was supposed to big a bowling alley, both buildings would have gone as high as level four! Of course just like everything else it fell through. The shopping centre was supposed to be opposite them, over here. They say it would have only gone to level three, but it would have taken up a lot more room, sixteen thousand spaces!
They started with good intentions, all the buyers, they saw that we were the new commuter town: Hoodshill. The place everyone would want to live, where they could have a four-bedroom house and still commute into the capital. So they bought all the shops on the high street, closed or not. They bought the worn-out library, they bought the neglected park, the run-down leisure centre, the old dilapidated steel works, even the not fit for service council offices. They bought everything except the eight-storey council flat block in the middle of the city, no one wanted that.
They started demolishing without delay. Reassuring us at the town meetings that the new shopping centre and swimming pool were going to create jobs and bring Hoodshill into the 21st century. We would have an influx of new blood. Eager young executives ready to spend. Our house prices would skyrocket! The local councillors joined in with the enthusiastic call for progress, some giddy with the possibilities they saw. Others no doubt happy enough with their pay off to ignore the possibility of what failure would do to our town. It didn’t really matter; they were going to do what they wanted. Trying to comfort us was just a public relations exercise.
It was the investors of the leisure centre, of all things, that pulled out first. They could see that the projections were wrong, that Hoodshill was just too far away from the capital, that no amount of modernising would bring the ambitious and wealthy this far north, not in the numbers they needed to justify the expense. So they abandoned the heap of rubble they had left in the wake of their demolitions and put the land up for sale, never looking back. It was just a setback, the councillors said, someone would buy the land and build a smaller leisure centre or maybe a block of flats or some new build houses. The panic in their eyes did nothing to assure us as the value of our property fell through the floor. It was the bowling alley next, then the shopping centre and soon all of our generous stakeholders had pulled out of their projects, leaving our town a mass of broken debris with no amenities to speak of and no hope. That was when HE came.
HE bought the all land for a paltry sum and created the world’s largest car park. Eight stories tall and 8 million square feet wide. Where did we all go you ask? Why we’re still here.
HE had no intention of buying our houses, he already had the land all around us. So he built the car park about us, paying off the right people and buying off the media. Now we live in Eight Storey City, our homes surrounded by a lightless concrete prison. Day after the day the car park fills with commuters, catching the many trains to the capital from level two and turning a blind eye to our suffering. The noise deafens us, even through our double glazing. Not just from cars, but from the air conditioning and the escalators, forever running to transport people from their vehicles to far away from here. Our sight struggles to adjust to daylight anymore. We used to try and have gatherings on the roof, but they stopped that. So now if we ever leave, we have to wear sunglasses even on a cloudy winters day. Even our lungs have shrivelled from all the fumes, we wear masks but it makes no difference, the sickly, sweet smell of exhaust soaks its way through our walls into us and no number of showers can take away the smell. No amount of medicine can take away the little cough that all of us have, whatever the season. We have to leave at four in the morning if we want to drive to work, else we get caught in the worst traffic jam you have ever seen. Paying customers get the priority you see. So we work from home and slowly lose our senses.
Most of our homes are on Level one, buried under tons of steel and material. But some, that used to live on Becks Hill, are now Level three, but the real lucky ones live in the block of council flats, the centre of our new automotive city. Closest to the exits, closest to the amenities in the station (that we must buy a train ticket to use) and just a lift ride to sky.
The first few years were the worst. Our homes are worth nothing. A few moved anyway, leaving with whatever they could carry. We never heard from them again, I don’t think anything happened to them, I just think that they couldn’t bear to think on what used to be our little town. Then you wouldn’t see a neighbour for some time, when you went to check on them you found that they had given in to despair. There were so many that first year. It still happens, more regularly than we would like. We try to keep an eye out, support one another, but everyone has a limit.
The kids loved it at first, playing hide and seek, jumping from car roof to car roof, running away from the security guards, riding the escalators. But now children have turned to broken youth, defending what little space remains from each other, and from other vultures who flocked to our sad subterranean city, moving into abandoned homes that hadn’t been demolished for more spaces. They know the police don’t come here and security care more about cars than lives. They look at our meagre possessions with envious eyes and we add whatever protection to our territory we can. All out war hasn’t erupted yet, but its just a matter of time.
So now we live our slow and lightless lives, taking comfort in small mercies and moments of joy, like when we meet up online and pretend we are still human beings. Our days measured by harsh neon digital clocks mounted on the wall. Minutes counting down until all of us are gone and all that is left is spaces. Spaces where our lives, our love, our hopes and dreams used to be.
If you read this and want to experience what its like to live in Eight Storey City. Don’t.
Don’t.
Craig Edgar is a stay at home father of two in Hertfordshire. He tries to write and act around school runs, play time, dinners and naps.
His theatre and film writing credits include: The Agent and Escape V2.0.
He has written the LARPs Burn the Witch and Starfighters.
Currently, Craig is writing and acting in the Rolling Alone podcast on Spotify, in which he plays solo rpgs and then dramatises the events in the game as an audio drama.