The City Life

It started as a sleepy rural town; you know the kind. A few cottages here, a little church there, and a single store run by a greasy little man with a fake smile. It wasn’t much more than a few buildings that happened to be near each other, just a baby really; you wouldn’t even be able to find it on a map. But it began to grow in its hibernation, and the years flew by like a blowing breeze, until brick by brick, and person-by-person, it began to hit that awkward stage between township, and full-fledged city-hood. It was young, naïve, and easily influenced by others in this time of its development. The architecture took on colonial overtones, and a rebellious modern phase gave rise to the appearance of a few chains here and there. It started getting broader and taller eventually, filling out and making something of itself. The population grew to the point where the constant pressure of movement and feet on it woke the city, and it stretched upwards as it woke, rising with its new skyscrapers and steel fingers grasping at the sky. It was an example of achievement, a true rags to riches tale, and it grew and grew until it could grow no more. But people stopped caring, eventually, as they always do. They moved away, or aged and died, until even your grandfather's grandfather wouldn't remember a time when it was prosperous.

A little known fact is that cities die just like anything else, it's just a slower, and more painful process. The major facilities began to shut down over time. The streets were dry and wrinkled with the weight of the centuries pressed down upon them, and no one walked the roads any longer. Eventually it just slipped away, like a patient quietly taken off life support. Nobody even noticed, or would have cared if they had, and it is hard to say which hurt the city more. Eventually it began to decompose, scavengers picking its bones clean of any useful resources it had possessed, until only husks of dirt, and half-shaped steel skeletons were left. Thus lived and died the city you will never remember.

"But it began to grow in its hibernation, and the years flew by like a blowing breeze, until brick by brick, and person-by-person, it began to hit that awkward stage between township, and full-fledged city-hood."

"Nobody even noticed, or would have cared if they had, and it is hard to say which hurt the city more."