Child of the Gallows
an excerpt

Prologue.

At the front of the Western Bridge that led to Worlds Eternal; high above the occasional, hunchbacked figure, towering above heaps of smouldering rubbish, painted black, floodlit and guarded by two towers containing men with snipers, someone had placed a Wish Box.

The box was large, grubby and very plain; its sides were crooked, with a small gap to shove your wish in, welcomed only by the smell of damp wood and rotting fish.

The Western Bridge on a frigid December evening was very daunting, floodlights sweeping everywhere, dogs barking, the sound of a gun every so often as a tramp on the ground was shot for ignorant entertainment. No one would’ve guessed a person would creep up and place such a rotting heap of junk not a hundred yards from one of the towers.

Worlds Eternal was a large castle that housed military personnel and a number of secret projects, surrounded by a run-down, dirty, uncared for city that was mostly abandoned; some sections burnt, others flooded, the water polluted by blood, dirt and human filth. The countryside around it was mainly marsh or forest; largely abandoned, with wild animals roaming the crumbling, deserted farm buildings and villages. The only villages that survived were those of bandits and murderers, and they lived mainly in the woods and hills.

People and bandits came from everywhere to place wishes into the box, causing much concern for the guards in the towers. They didn’t know how so many people knew about it all, and simply destroying the box would cause an uproar that even they didn’t think they’d be able to control. They didn’t really want to shoot this many people; how would they clean up all the mess?

One day someone posted a bomb inside the box, and it exploded, taking down one of the towers and part of the Western Bridge. Wishes rained down within miles for days.

Somewhere, on an abandoned farm, someone picked up one of the pieces of paper, and on it, in small, scrawled black letters, were the words, ‘wishes don’t come true.’