Elio's Giant Power: Struggles of a Corrupt Africa

The building was a mess.

It had probably been beautiful once, back when its walls were still pristine and its roof was still whole. But now it was a mess. Someone could tell that the place had been nice just by walking in, if they were looking for those kinds of details. The way the desks were set up at the front of the room, aligned with the bookshelves on either side, gave away that someone had tried to make this place look nice.

But now, as Elio stared out the window of this building and into the darkening sky beyond, he couldn't help but think that no matter how hard people try to clean up after something has gone wrong, you can never really fix it. It would be like trying to paint over rust; eventually it would come through again and reveal itself to everyone.

Elio sighed. He was turning eighteen soon, and he knew it. The only thing he didn't know was what he should do with himself after that happened. He'd always wanted to join the military and get out of this hell hole, but his parents didn't have much money left these days so he'd have to earn his own way there if he wanted to do that. A guy in town named Felix had said he'd pay Elio's dues if Elio would help him out with some jobs he needed done. Elio had thought about it, because what else did he have going on? Nothing really. Maybe Felix would take him under his wing; from what Elio had heard from other townsfolk Felix used to be in the military himself before he got kicked out for "going rogue". That sounded interesting enough for Elio so he'd decided to go talk to Felix about it tonight. Tonight being now, apparently.

"I'm here," called Elio as he pushed open the door of the old schoolhouse-turned-office building at the end of an alley between two houses in town and stepped inside. "You said you needed me here at seven?"

Felix was standing next to a desk, flipping through a binder full of papers. He looked up at Elio and smiled brightly as he closed it shut and slid it off of the top of his desk toward himself with one finger. "Yeah yeah yeah," said Felix as he flipped through some more pages within the book until he found what he wanted and pulled out a small folded piece of paper from within one of its chapters. He handed the paper over to Elio as well as a pen. "Sign this first," said Felix with a grin as wide as his face allowed for, pointing to where Elio should sign on the dotted line next to his name on the paper in front of him.

"What is this?" asked Elio curiously as took up both items and signed his name where indicated while keeping an eye on Felix all along (after all, you never knew when someone might try to stab you in the back). When Felix didn't answer right away after watching Elio put down his signature onto a contract he'd written up himself, Elio looked up at Felix's face finally to find it screwed up into something like disgust or maybe frustration - something unpleasant anyway - while looking back down at his own work behind his desk across from where Elio stood by the door waiting for an answer. "What?" asked Elio again when Felix remained silent for too long for comfort before finally raising his eyes once more to meet with those on Elio's face directly across from him now where they stood by their desks in a row facing one another at opposite ends of their shared office space -

"This writing is awful," said Felix flatly after seeing what state his own handwriting was in after reading over what had been written down by his hand moments ago without thinking about how awful it looked now compared to how good most other people seemed capable of writing these days thanks to schools like those which used to stand outside in every town just like this one but were now gone thanks to... whatever happened that made everything go bad anyway but hadn't stopped them from swelling back up in size once again somehow since things started getting better again recently only nobody knew why because nobody was talking about anything anymore since they were still scared they might get put back into slavery or whatever if they kept talking or something even though nobody actually ever tried doing that anymore because there wasn't anybody left who even owned anyone anymore so why would they? And besides even though they didn't own anyone anymore they still still needed people like Elio who could do things like fight monsters or drive trains or whatever else people needed driving trains around for these days because no one else could do stuff like that anymore and nobody had ever taught anybody else how so nobody else even knew how! Did everybody forget how? Or did no one teach them how? But then who taught them? Were there teachers for those things before? Because... Wait...)