A "Test Taste": Black Mesa

[Occulus]

This is the opening of a concept I've had for some time now. The whole idea was inspired by a sepia-toned CG image of windows and doors and bridges and balconies on the side of a cliff. I Photoshopped that image to be black, and this idea was the result.

PROLOGUE (Test writing- tell me what you think)

It was the pounding of surf against creaking, tar-smeared timbers that intruded John's dreams, dreams of judge and jury and judgment to exile. The bloody knife in his hands, the red-coated constables, the gallery at his trial; the black-robed, white-wigged judge and the jeering crowds and the harsh tug of chains at hands and feet, all overlaid by the phantom swish and swirl of winter-cold ocean water. They were dreams of confusion and loss, and also of his shipboard cell and the inescapable smell of bilgewater and unwashed bodies and half-rotten food here below the prison ship's deck. Reality and illusion and memory flickered back and forth and back again in his half-doze, and even in his dreams, John knew he was lost to all he had ever known.

"Be ye awake, boy?"

The gruff voice suddenly jerked John out of his half-sleep, a dry, rusty sound as of gravel on broken slate. He scrubbed at his eyes, eyes red and raw from the smoke of the cheap oil lamps hung in the companionway, combined with the ever-present salt of the endless, rolling sea. Bracing his hands on the rough planks of the ship's prison deck, he pushed himself into a sitting position, gaining a sliver in his palm for his trouble.

"Ye know where we be bound?"

His fellow prisoner wasn't the sort that inspired a great deal of trust. Clad in filthy rags that not even the most unscrupulous innkeeper would have used for cleaning, the man John saw through the bars of his cell would have given the most streetwise cutthroat pause. He didn't know the man's name, and from his look, John decided it would be best if he didn't ask even that question. Besides, John didn't need to know the name of his fellow prisoner; even from the twelve feet or so they were parted by cell and aisle, John could smell him, a rank odor of stale sweat, beer, and unwashed week-old vomit.

"The judge didn't say," John replied cautiously, sucking at what felt like a small tree embedded in the meat of his palm. "All he told me was that I was being sent into exile." He lowered his hand and peered at the filthy figure across from him. "Why do you ask?"

The man on the other side of the prison ship laughed harshly. "Exile only means one thing, no matter where ye be born in the nations of the Strait," he declared, raising a finger like one of John's old schoolmarms. "This ship be bound for Black Mesa."

John involuntarily shuddered. From the time he had been a child, he had heard stories of Black Mesa, of the horrors that lived there, barely human animals with no compassion or mercy or sense of right and wrong. It was a place where murderers and thieves and rapists ruled, a place without law or custom or dignity or even the smallest sense of right and wrong. Every parent from both nations bordering the Straits terrified their unruly children with the idea that, if they weren't good, they would be sent sent to Black Mesa. A cold pit formed in John's stomach as he came to realize that he was to be sent into that living hell.

From the time he had been a child (and, very likely, long before), Black Mesa had been the ultimate destination for the worst criminals of the nations bordering the Strait. From the coast of each country, the Mesa was visible only as a dark smudge on the furthest edge of vision, a shadowy threat visible to all. Rising from the ocean like a great, rocky molar, Black Mesa was home to the deepest dregs of humanity.

Nobody knew precisely who had built the prison at Black Mesa. In point of fact, nobody knew that it was ever meant to be a prison. Legend, story, and actual history painted Black Mesa as, at one time or another over the past three thousand years, a fortress, college, colony, city-state, and (most recently) prison, yet nobody could exactly pinpoint the date of its construction, nor its original purpose.

The fact that it was now the harshest jail known to man was what formed the cold pit in John's stomach. He could actually feel his face going white as the man through the bars pronounced his fate. At those words, John knew he would never see his home on the mainland again.

-----

Black Mesa is a very, very ugly place. Think Alcatraz, multiplied by the isolation of a horizon of rough, storm-tumbled ocean in all directions and set prior to any industrial revolution. That said, Black Mesa has a long, long history, and Our Hero, John, just might play a part in that.

There's almost certainly more to come. I have several ideas for this world, but for now, I'm pretty tired, and I think I'm going to go to bed. I might post more on this tomorrow, or the next day, or not.

I feel as though I need to write this. I don't know why, but something about the overall concept- which I haven't completely revealed here in any spoilerific detail- compels me to write something.