Life in the Favelas
The Mad Lads
We always kept the hedges trimmed. Mr. Harrens across the street measured his lawn every week, said the neighborhood’s value depended on neatness. The Everhome Co. men came once a month to check our health, our paperwork and to record if there was any breach of housing contract we had made. Suburbia wasn’t paradise, but it was safe. That’s what we told the kids.
The first sign was the noise. Not the familiar hum of Arcanum, but a broken, rattling growl, like a sick dog coughing sparks. Then came the lights — not lamps, not trams — but flames. Orange fire rolling down the cul-de-sac, carried on the backs of a half-dozen machines that looked like someone had murdered wagons and rebuilt them with hate.
They called themselves Junkjawz, though we didn’t know it at the time. Goblins in rust-plate, orcs with blowtorches for arms, a clanker whose head was just a furnace chimney. They came screaming, chanting, banging pipes together. Some rode on mechanical limbs taller than men. One giant had bolted a door onto his arm like a shield.
Harrens tried to run, but a goblin cut him down with a pipe before he made it off the porch. They laughed like it was a game. The machines crashed through gardens, tore up the painted fences, crushed the parked cars like toys. My daughter clutched my arm so tight her nails cut my skin. My wife pulled our boy into the pantry and slammed the door, whispering prayers to Aurex and Foster.
I peeked through the curtains. Saw a dwarf in sooty armor ripping copper wiring from the walls. Saw another pouring oil on a family’s porch, daring the house to scream. Then the biggest one, a drakona in a fire spitting war rig, lifted Harrens’ new record player like a trophy and howled to the Star above - Mr. Harrens had been so proud to showing it to us - the neighborhood was his arena now.
The looting lasted for minutes, although it felt like a eternity. And just like that, they were gone. As sudden as they’d arrived, back into the scrapyards and shadows with anything they could rip off worth selling. They left behind fire, wreckage, and a smoke heavier than screams. The hedges still stood, cut neat. But every one of us knew they meant nothing. The Brass Oath guard arrived later to catalogue the damages. But even they seemed to be under armed to face the gang. The Junkjawz had shown us: the walls of Suburbia were paper, and the strong can rule not only by rule and money, but flame and violence.