A groaning city sits far on the plain from where we stand.

It is quiet and on the opposite side is where the land meets the sea.

The city has been as still as the desert that it once was. However, wind blows through and caresses what was once a bustling hub of commerce and society.

Now all that happens is the buildings grown, occasionally seeing someone ruin through the street, for the people rejected the city, or were chased out.

There are remnants of those who once lived there in greater masses.

The buildings stand still, gray, casting a long shadow around the lands it sits within, yet the shadow never sits still for long.

Stores are empty and plenty of houses and apartments lay abandoned.

There is still furniture and there are still goods.

Despite the few remnants remaining there, living on being wary of each other, no one fights over what there is for there is no point. There is more than enough to go around.

Hospitals remain sterile, washed of the sounds of people moving through the halls and cleansed of machines making noise in order to signify something that may need attention.

Whilst there is plenty to go around, not all of it will be there forever. Indeed, little of it will last more than a few years and nothing will be likely to last beyond a couple of decades.

Such is the nature of objects that receive little to no care or maintenance.

Food will eventually become scarce and those who are clinging on to what was once a strong civilisation will eventually be forced to look out of the city that stands as little more than a memory that is best removed from the earth rather than kept as some sort of monument to the past.

Rarely animals are seen in the city. It is not certain as to why so few are seen.

Perhaps they know that is is easier to get into the city than it is to leave, for the defenses are still operational, protecting those on the inside by making it difficult to leave, yet somehow failing to prevent most of the entries into its boundary.

After the first few days of many of those that lived in the city left, it seemed like some sort of gift of entertainment, but of course it was not long before tedium began to set in.

Still, there are some who have managed to find a way to keep the tedium and creeping insanity away by finding something outside of routine that would at least help to whittle away the hours.

This is a city that has stood for a long time but has only been empty for a few years. It remains a mark on the earth, refusing to be forgotten despite the inevitability of it fading away.

It is a city that makes it difficult to leave its boundaries.

It is a city that does not want to let go.

The time it took to write five-hundred words: 09:33:39

When I wrote this it did not save everything after I stopped the timer.

Fun times.

I think that when I wrote this I kept going back and taking this somewhere else.

Interesting premise but really bad execution.

Written at work.