of nurture’s wildness - a novella (ch. 7)
by Tom Stuckey
VII
On the out skirts of the city, where normally people did not go, the in-between, where the metal of railroads and power plants intertwined with brambles and woodland, a large group of homeless people were beginning to develop a shanty town. Since the war, slowly but surely, society had begun to crumble. The war being more of a technological and financial one in nature, than that of actual warfare. Since the beginning of the downfall it was apparent that the already homeless community were at a great advantage over the indoor folk who had a lot to learn from them; such as eating out of bins and dealing with the elements. SURVIVAL. Society had long looked down on the homeless as the losers of society, but when that society began to fail, they found themselves looking to the people who knew how to do the rough and unstable side of life and to deal with the madness of the wild. There were all sorts of people in this town, ex-police, builders, cooks and of course the unemployed, but they all had to begin to live as much as possible as equals. What the “burbs” did bring from the suburbs was lots of guns, most of them having weapons for home protection, until their homes were taken from them due to the dramatic rise in inflation. It turned out that both sides from the pre-war era now agreed that a stable government was needed to maintain a stable economy, and that when this stability was changed for a volatile regime, run on fear and threats, the economy simply ceased to be effective.
There was no apparent centre to the town, just rows and rows, and like bees they continued to build, almost in a natural and spontaneous way. A centre would come soon, it was inevitable, and a form of hierarchy, and then the rebellion. For now though people talked and cooked meats on the BBQ’s and sussed one another out, finding where the new boundaries of their town lay.
*Read Tom Stuckey’s next installment of Of Nurture’s Wildness on June 26, 2025, at 6PM CST.
Photo of Tom Stuckey
BIO: Tom is a writer from Devon in England. His work can be found at A Thin Slice of Anxiety, Bristol Noir, Nut House Press, and Pulp Magazine. He is the author of The Canary in the Dream is Dead and The Sun Marches upon Us All. Learn more about Tom Stuckey at www.tomstuckey.com.