Night Mind's Statement about Midnight Marinara

Rich Fountain
It's difficult to create a utopia, and Rich Fountain was not that. At first glance, it was a lawless reservation town where people did drugs in broad daylight. There were fights and gangs, and people carried guns out in the open. Everywhere you looked, you saw that life could be imperfect and frightening.

But that was just because the underbelly of Rich Fountain was right out in the open. The drugs, the gangs, the guns - it almost never led to murder. People laughed at those who participated in this stuff, then tried to help them through their problems.

That was because Rich Fountain had only one law. It wasn't against drugs, or gangs, or killers. The cops didn't implement it, and neither did the people - it was implemented, like all death, from on high.

Unless there was a real, real emergency, everyone had to stay inside and try to shine as little light into the street as possible, from when the sun went down to when it went up. When you looked up at night, you could see the Milky Way.

There were streetlights in Rich Fountain. Normally, they turned on during the twilight, shut off as soon as the sun set, and flickered back on when it came up.

But when people went out at night, and it wasn't a real emergency, the streetlight where you stood would turn on. When you moved out of its light, another streetlight would start illuminating you.

No matter how fast you ran, the streetlamps would follow you until two or three Helpers arrived. They tore you limb from limb, and they let you scream in agony, just so people knew how painful it was.

Then, under the cold glow of the streetlight, they ate you, ripping the clothes off and crunching the bones, until your body was gone. They put the clothes in front of your house, so your family could mourn, but trying to stop them from exacting justice was treated the exact same way.

Naturally, what counted as a "real emergency" was relatively well-known. If someone hurt themselves so badly during the night that they needed to go to the hospital

If there was a fire inside the house, you opened the door and hollered. The Helpers would rush in and beat the fire into submission with their bare hands, then mosey on out. Fires outside the house got put out as soon as the sun went down.

But if you let light out at night, The Helpers would come knocking at your door, and if you didn't open it, they'd let themselves in. If you were lucky, they'd break the lights and leave you unharmed. But three nights in a row, and when they left, you'd be in their guts instead.

The people who didn't follow these rules died gruesomely. If you didn't like it, you could leave. There were always people coming in from outside, a place filled with huge jails where people did time for getting addicted, and while some of them settled down, most of them left after a while.

By the time I was eighteen, I was the only "ethnic" Rich Fountain resident under 20. It wasn't like The Helpers or the Rich Fountain people were killing the others. They shot themselves, fell out of buildings, stumbled into deep holes, or just left.