No prompt used.
Challenge: 1 cataclysmic event, 2 genres (one literary and one musical), 3 survivors. Optional element: include Survivor by Destiny’s Child or another song with survival-based themes.
My choices were: the invasion and devastation of Earth by another civilization (the Fiirddokha from some of my other stories), sci-fi and heavy metal and the three groups of people who made it into the heavy metal sanctuary despite of the invasion: 1) the metalheads, 2) the shamans, 3) the rest of the survivors. Naturally, the song Survivor was included in the story.
If the movie industry ever recovered from Earth getting invaded and thoroughly ravaged, the first soundtracks would be mainly heavy metal: loud and aggressive just like the destruction over our heads on the surface. I had found myself in an underwater sanctuary filled with artists and… quirky people, so my personal soundtrack was whatever the musicians happened to be playing. It echoed down the metallic halls every day in the small facility we were stuck in.
The musicians usually played heavy metal, pouring the destruction, loss and death into their lyrics and melodies. It was virtually impossible to escape it; the powerful bass and drums could be felt at least slightly in the floor and walls no matter where you were.
I wonder how the nearby fish and such took the music. They must have heard it; the rumbles were powerful enough to traverse in the water for sure.
The shamans, as they called themselves, certainly minded it. While they had tried to talk the metalheads into keeping it down, their efforts were fruitless to the point I feared that the two groups might start a miniature war inside the sanctuary. However, despite of being seemingly kind of detached from the normal society, the shamans knew better than to try and pick a fight with the metalheads. I’m pretty sure that the incident in which a poet played an insanely old pop song — Survivor by Destiny’s Child, if I recall correctly — then insulted the metalheads and got beaten up for it had something do with it. I personally didn’t mind the incident much since the poet’s taste in music was boring, but I’m sure that everyone in here knew not to mess with the loudest of us after that.
Until the surface is safe to walk on again, we shall live by the tunes of the heavy metal sanctuary.
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