The Forgotten Ruins

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"The Forgotten Ruins"

by: Wes Robert Ward

They say the future's so bright you gotta wear shades. No, you just have to avoid the fumes and pollution that has destroyed our planet. Life, what a laugh.

All of creation\u2019s a farce. Man was born as a joke. In his head his reason is buffeted like wind-blown smoke. Life is a game. Every one ridicules everyone else. But he who has the last laugh... laughs longest.

"Oh, call back yesterday, bid time return."

As I stand and see what's left of the George Washington Bridge that used to connect New Jersey into New York, I try not to smell the rotting stench of the Hudson River.

Years of people contaminating it with their garbage has turned it into a sludge of shit. Yes, poor choice of words but hey take a look for yourself, it's not a pretty tourist attraction. It oozes and bubbles, it slides it slithers, it's warm in some areas, steaming hot in others, and cold to the bone in others. If any touches your skin then leprosy sets in and soon say goodbye to an arm or a leg for that matter. Mostly it's a toxic sludge that would end your life within minutes.

Robert Frost had once said, "In three words I can sum up everything I've learned about life: It Goes On."

Well Bob, tell that to the dying cats, dogs, rats, and seagulls that live down by the river. If you tried stepping into it, well it was like quicksand. You'd sink in minutes. Ha, won't have to worry about becoming a Leper after that.

It's become a perfect dumping site for murderers and cheap funeral services. Oh be thy Gods that have created such a hell hole such as this, "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, creeps in this petty pace from day to day, to the last syllable of recorded time; and all our yesterdays have lighted fools the way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle! Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an Idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

New Jersey has become a wasteland while New York had become crap central\u2026 a city that collapsed through crime and warfare, "Hell is empty and all the devils are here."

New York, New Jersey, the whole eastern coast, probably the whole whatever became of the United States of America\u2026 "This thing of darkness I acknowledge mine. There is nothing more confining than the prison we don't know we are in."

How did it all become this way you say? Well some country in Asia or Europe infiltrated our defense system, lowered our radar and sent a virus into our weapon defense and sent a tomahawk mega missile at Washington D.C during some political uprival within Congress with all our leaders in the same area at once.

Major General William Tecumseh Sherman once said, "The carping and bickering of political factions in the nation's capital reminds me of two pelicans quarreling over a dead fish."

Well Bill, those Republican and Democratic fish were roasted beyond recognition. Well it was one way to shut up those politicians and the capital was blown to kingdom come. Well it wasn't completely atomic but it did the trick, the capital was gone and so was all the cities and towns around it from Delaware, Maryland, and the top half of Virginia, "What's done can't be undone."

Our US government was gone and sure we had a few Governors from many states but without a true leader many lost their power to something worse\u2026 Warlords.

Power hungry individuals who separated the United States of America into 13 separate territories in their own way. Territory had become the perfect word for replacing our states, the word terror in it was what occurred in each one, "Lord, what fools these mortals be!!! Tis the time's plague when madmen lead the blind."

Sadly I happened to be a world renowned New York stage actor during that time and got stuck in the worst territory. So long Broadway, hello War of New York City. And let me tell you out straight it was bloody. I had to throw away my fake King Lear sword and pick up a very lethal Ak-47 machine gun among other weapons which I had to learn to use.

Try as I may I really did try to avoid bloodshed but when push came to shove I was forced to kill or be killed. I killed many men. I killed many women. I even killed many children. All armed and killing each other. Insanity had replaced the sanity of the city people due to crime and hunger, and I can not blame them.

That's why life is nothing to me right now. I was once the famous Edgar Allan Booth of Broadway, from dramas to comedies to musicals, "Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more; it is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."

I was the King of Broadway, but now as I strive to stay alive all I can think about was my first kill, killing that 10 year old boy who shot me in the right shoulder with a ruger automatic pistol and ran up to me to put one in my head but I grabbed my 12' gauge shotgun I was using at the time and literally blew that boy away with his guts spraying right into a pile of trash, "Why, I can smile and murder while I smile, and cry content to that which grieves my heart, and wet my cheeks with artificial tears, and frame my face for all occasions."

The day that happened was the day the King of Broadway died and what was left was a miserable shell of a man with guilt. Although some old bag lady with a rocket launcher said the little bastard deserved it, it didn't help much as I cried, "So wise so young, they say, do never live long."

My grief lies all within, and these external manners of lament are merely shadows to the unseen grief that swells with silence in the tortured soul.

Conscience is but a word that cowards use, devised at first to keep the strong in awe. That sums up my guilt day by day, year by year. Grief makes one hour ten. Farewell, boy! God knows when we shall meet again.

I wanted my life back. I was moderately wealthy, living like a King in New York with an expensive high rise suite, but now I live in the gutters of what was left after the Warlords fought for New York. I looked at what was left of the city and many skyscrapers were in ruins. My beautiful skyrise the day I killed that kid fell on hundreds of lives. Like 9/11 twice in one swoop, some are still buried there.

The Warlord of New York at this time became a tattoo freak of nature named Frank Burnwater. Yeah, I know\u2026 sounds like the accountant from hell, "Beware the leader who bangs the drums of war in order to whip the citizenry into a patriotic fervor."

Frank was once a young representative of the New York Senate, the youngest during his days, he had dreams of a beautiful career in politics only to be crushed by civil war. He wanted to become a Senator someday maybe as far as President, but alas, he had become the cruelest Warlord on the northern eastern coast, "A politician... one that would circumvent God." Alas God would have no pity on him for God had no pity on King David either.

Also Frank was my half-brother from another mother, "In time we hate that which we often fear. And he goes through life, his mouth open, and his mind closed."

Although he thought I was wise beyond my years in theater, he also thought I was the fool for being what I am, "Jesters do often prove prophets."

Well my brother would rip you a new one and slit your throat with a switchblade. Sadly, with Burnwater on the New York throne, "There is throats to be cut, and works to be done. One may smile, and smile, and be a villain."

His castle is the Empire State Building, yeah go figure. And he uses the Statue of Liberty as his sea resort. He's turned it into his own playground of debauchery and entertainment, "Woe to that land that's governed by a child. Liberty, to unpathed waters, undreamed shores. Fish live in the sea, as men do a-land; the great ones eat up the little ones."

Liberty still stands but she's got so much graffiti on her it's like she's a tattoo freak now, "You will never age for me, nor fade, nor die."

Her light still shines at night but has a sniper up there with infra-red goggles on to take out victims walking through the city with a long-range rifle with scope. He went by the name of Mister Snipes, and he took a deep pleasure in his job, "He that is proud eats up himself: pride is his own glass, his own trumpet, his own chronicle."

What do I do for a living now, you say? Well since the war has died down for the last decade or so I've become what you can say a Scavenger. I go out and collect certain items for a certain buyer by the name of Silus Neidermeyer, "A beggar's book outworths a noble's blood."

One time I was sent out on a most important mission to retrieve an antique food processor. I killed twenty men for a freaking food processor!!! I brought it back and Neidermeyer had said there's a few decapitated fingers in the food processor and I said they were there when I found it. He said it was still fresh and bloody. I yelled for him to just take the freaking food processor and give me the $100 bucks he owes me. Man, I was royally pissed. And yes, I still work for that dick. Two days ago, it was a blender, I so wanted to stick his tongue in it.

So anyway here I stand looking at my crappy city from an old broken road nearby and the old Washington Bridge on the New Jersey side that was torn apart by war and bad weather, both bridge and road that is. And yes, that's an old Ford Taurus automobile down there. That's how old New York is. It has broken automobiles from here to Niagara Falls, "I like this place and could willingly waste my time in it."

The bridge itself has seen better days. Though half gone there is a guide that helps you cross with rope and gear. I also enjoyed the deep blue above there, my soul is in the sky. For everything else is dirt.

My crown is in my heart, not on my head; not decked with diamonds and Indian stones, nor to be seen: My crown is called content, a crown it is that seldom kings enjoy. I feel within me a peace above all earthly dignities, a still and quiet conscience.

Suddenly my thoughts were dismayed by a nasty cat fight. It seemed Romeo tried to rape Juliet, "O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo? Deny thy father refuse thy name, thou art thyself thou not a montague, what is montague? Tis nor hand nor foot nor any other part belonging to a man. What is in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet, So Romeo would were he not Romeo called retain such dear perfection to which he owes without that title, Romeo, doth thy name! And for that name which is no part of thee, take all thyself."

Juliet slapped a pawed claw across Romeo's furry face and ran off with him chasing behind her, "The robbed that smiles, steals something from the thief."

Suddenly someone just then tried to take a pop-shot at me with a loaded handgun and it missed me by a hair, "Let every eye negotiate for itself and trust no agent."

I raised my rifle and shot a crackhead who thought he'd get me before I got him. How wrong he was. Ahhh life, it goes on without one less crackhead, "Having nothing, nothing can he lose. We waste our lights in vain, like lamps by day."

The crackhead grabbed his bleeding chest, gasped once, then fell down and died, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once. Of all the wonders that I yet have heard, it seems to me most strange that men should fear; Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come."

Another dead by my hand, although I had no choice for the man wanted death but for my own he did not get but the opposite, "A fool thinks himself to be wise, but a wise man knows himself to be a fool. In a false quarrel there is no true valor."

The better part of valor is discretion, in which better part I have saved my life. Yet heroism eventually kills a martyr, a thief in the night lives longer.

A seagull landed near me on a guard rail pole and coughed up something nasty, I said, "Instead of weeping when a tragedy occurs in a songbird's life, it sings away its grief. I believe we could well follow the pattern of our feathered friends."

The seagull looked at me oddly, I said, "I would challenge you to a battle of wits, but I see you are unarmed. I must be cruel only to be kind, thus bad begins, and worse remains behind."

I said to the seagull, "Wisdom cries out in the streets, and no man regards it. Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all."

The seagull turns his head as if wondering if I was crazy, I cried, "God has given you one face, and you make yourself another. Why, what's the matter, that you have such a February face, so full of frost, of storm and cloudiness?"

"GET OUTTA HERE, BIRD!!!" I screamed it away and the seagull flew away cawing, "More of your conversation would infect my brain. Ignorance is the curse of God; knowledge is the wing wherewith we fly to heaven. Now where was I\u2026."

"Ahhh yes," I waved my hand about through the nasty smog, "Fair is foul, and foul is fair: Hover through the fog and filthy air."

I picked up a rock nearby and said, "All that glitters is not gold; Often have you heard that told: Many a man his life has sold but my outside to behold: Gilded tombs do worms enfold had you been as wise as bold, your in limbs, in judgment old, your answer had not been in scrolled fare you well: your suit is cold.' Cold, indeed, and labour lost: Then, farewell, heat and welcome, frost!

And I threw it in the sludge of the river, "Brevity is the soul of wit."

I picked up my binoculars and looked to the opposite shore line to see a pretty brunette arguing with a bald tattooed man, "The lady doth protest too much, me thinks. Women speak two languages - one of which is verbal."

I recognized her right away, she went by the street name of April March but the name I knew her well by was for my own ears only, yes she had two calendar months as first and last name, but either way those months had nice boobs, "Dirty days hath September, April, June, and November. From January up to May, the rain it raineth every day. All the rest have thirty-one without a blessed gleam of sun and if any of them had two-and-thirty they'd be just as wet and twice as dirty...ahh but April hath put a spirit of youth in everything."

The bald man slapped her, "Ahhh, if music be the food of love, play on. To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day, thou canst not then be false to any man, my dear."

Pity the bald bastard, "Words spoken can not be recalled so think twice before you speak. I say there is no darkness but ignorance."

The bald man screamed at her for more money, "A girl takes too much time to love and a few seconds to hate, but a boy takes a few seconds to love and too much time to hate...bad mistake, mate. You speak an infinite deal of nothing."

April peered at the bald man with daggers in her eyes, eyes that could murder, "Beware the ides of March. Dispute not with her: she is a lunatic."

April pulled out a small handgun and put a bullet in his forehead, "Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow, that I shall say good night till it be morrow."

The bald man fell down dead and said no more, "Men of few words are the best men."

April spit on his corpse and then looked towards my way across the river and winked at me, "Have I thought long to see this morning\u2019s face, and doth it gives me such a sight as this? She's beautiful, and therefore to be wooed; She is a woman, therefore to be won."

And yes we have known each other for many years now even though she's twenty odd years younger. For on stage I was her Professor Henry Higgins and she was my Eliza Doolittle, a fantastic My Fair Lady with many words to speak, especially with bullets.

People\u2019s good deeds we write in water. The evil deeds are etched in brass. April was my Angel and a Demon in bed.

We were once lovers and from time to time we still are as long as I treat her as a woman and not a bitch. The bald dead man was a good example of how she feels with abuse in a relationship, my problem was that she caught me with the three Witches from Macbeth in a hot tub naked doing sexual things Witches shouldn't do with Kings.

Alas Horatio, I lost something beautiful, "Her passions are made of nothing but the finest part of pure love. Affection is a coal that must be cooled; else, suffered, it will set the heart on fire. For she had eyes and chose me. The Eyes are the window to your soul. Love does not see with the eyes, but with the soul. A light heart lives long. A good heart is worth gold."

I looked at her and she still stared at me, "The course of true love never did run smooth. Love is heavy and light, bright and dark, hot and cold, sick and healthy, asleep and awake, it's everything except what it is. The sweetest honey is loathsome in his own deliciousness, and in the taste confounds the appetite: Therefore love moderately\u2014 long love doth so. Love is the greatest of dreams, yet the worst of nightmares."

April held up her hand in a wave and put it to her ear with her thumb and pinky out and her others fingers bent in, she mouthed, "Call me, and we will\u2026" she mouthed a filthy word.

Hear the meaning within the word. Dear, dear Shakespeare do you have a word that starts with 'F' and ends in 'K'? No, not fork, but close.

April then made the screw sign with two fingers in the hole, "Few love to hear the sins they love to act. Self-love, my liege, is not so vile a sin, as self-neglecting....in English, a hand won't do tonight I'll need a woman."

April giggled and walked away slinging her handbag over her shoulders, wiggling her short skirt caboose, "What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Of all the flowers, me thinks a rose is best. Words are easy, like the wind; Faithful friends are hard to find. Adieu! I have too grieved a heart to take a tedious leave. I do desire we may be better strangers."

Eleanor Isabella, my lovely Eleanor, alias April March, I whispered into nothingness, "Now I will believe that there are unicorns."

Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none, my Eleanor is a good kind soul yet vengeful, she will be the Queen in my royal court someday even it be in Connecticut. Though let us hope it not ends sadly like in Hamlet's court.

I tossed my binoculars back into my backpack and said as I breathed deeply the rotten air, "To be, or not to be, that is the question. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or to take arms against a sea of troubles, and by opposing end them? To die, to sleep. No more, and by a sleep to say we end the heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, 'tis a consummation devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep. To sleep, perchance to dream. Aye, there's the rub, for in that sleep of death what dreams may come\u2026"

Something took my eye then, if your mind dislike anything obey it, and yet this item shined at me. Something that I've been looking for that Neidermeyer had hired me for. I scavenged through the remains of a shelter by the bridge where rotting skeletons still remain and finally found what I was looking for, "Better three hours too soon than a minute too late."

I held it in my hand like an ancient urn of long forgotten times, but alas it was no crystal skull or whatnot, but an antique bread toaster, shiny as King Richard III armor, it was too good to pass up, "Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio. A fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy. He hath borne me on his back a thousand times, and now, how abhorred in my imagination it is! My gorge rims at it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed\u2026"

And I kissed the toaster that would make me $500 dollars, "Oh Lord that lends me life, lend me a heart replete with thankfulness!"

I will get my kingdom back one way or another and this Holy Grail will bring me my crown again, "Be not afraid of greatness. Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and others have greatness thrust upon them."

And with that I walked into a brighter future, "It is not in the stars to hold our destiny but in ourselves. If you can look into the seeds of time, and say which grain will grow and which will not, speak then unto me. Oh Heaven! That one might read the book of fate, and see the revolution of the times."

I will rebuild New York with this toaster, bring Broadway back and evict the hatemongers that dwell there. My Holy Toaster Grail, it has spoken to me without words in what I must do. No, it will not fall in the hands of Neidermeyer the dick, for I will cut off his head, take his small kingdom, then attack the bigger ones in time, "All the world's a stage, and all the men and women merely players: they have their exits and their entrances; and one man in his time plays many parts, his acts being seven ages."

There's an old saying that applies to me: you can't lose a game if you don't play the game. If you prick us do we not bleed? If you tickle us do we not laugh? If you poison us do we not die? And if you wrong us shall we not revenge?

To climb steep hills requires a slow pace at first. Go wisely and slowly. Those who rush stumble and fall. God shall be my hope, my stay, my guide and lantern to my feet.

Nothing comes from doing nothing. You know who you are, but know not who you could be. Let every man be master of his time.

This just be act one, my dear Shakespeare, this be just act one, "Come Yorick, we have a Kingdom to take. The golden age is before us, not behind us. What must be shall be. There is plenty of time to sleep in the grave."

To do a

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