Prologue
The golden sun set over the horizon, kissing the peak of the empire state as if they hadn’t met in centuries. The fading sunlight tuned the water bronze as Lady Liberty’s torch lit aflame. The Hudson at this time was paradise on Earth. Few people were walking on the cobblestone ground, looking over the copper railing to see America’s prize of freedom. This is New York City, the Empire State. It is also home to one of the most vile and forgotten artifacts. The artifact that ruined lives. The artifact that drove many to insanity. The artifact which was burned and thrown to the bottom of this very lake.
New York City is not all sunshine and rainbows. Behind the pretty faces, behind the rich entrepreneurs, behind the buildings and skyscrapers, is a much darker place. The New York Underground. It is a nasty place; a mess wherever you step. Our story begins here, with a man named Vexus Scuris. He was in Italy on April 20, 2009. The day history repeated itself.
I
The sun shone brightly on the busy Italian street. Merchants were shouting,
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people were eating, and Vexus was off to work. What was his work? He was an archeologist. His investor, Alberto Alazoni, had paid for 30 acres of Italian land for Vexus to dig up. Arriving early at the dig site, Vexus took in his surroundings as he waiting for his team. The grass was artificial and the water had a tinge of green. He also noticed that the dirt was artificial. Natural dirt has a consistency comparable to softened candle wax. This dirt was flakey, but so well made that it was hard to tell the difference. People normally put down fake grass, but the only other time fake dirt was put down was when it covered the Rosetta Stone. Perplexed about what it could be, Vexus got to work digging, muttering to himself in the process. The team arrived 2 hours later just as Vexus began to section off the land. Three hours later, the diggers had discovered something. An oak casing with words engraved on it: Death did us apart. It was carefully lifted out of the ground and settled onto the grass. The workers pulled out crowbars and began to open the casing. Inside lay the skeleton of a woman in a wedding dress clutching a vase by her side. The vase was bronze with silver and gold patterns and the outside was randomly encrusted with copper beads, all reflecting his face. A quickly scribbled note attached to the vase said, Questo Vaso Porta La morte. “This vase brings death”. On the bottom of the note were two words. By Basano. The vase was 15th century Italian and so was the body. The note read, “This vase brings death”, the woman was clutching the vase. The vase may have killed the bride, but that was just an assumption. Dollar signs went through Vexus’ head. He would get the vae appraised and sell it for thousands. The moonlight shone down on him as the world held it’s breath as a horrible fate hovered over earth. The fiesta of death was uncovered again.. The curse of the Basano Vase was unleashed. II The chain reaction began.
Vexus sold the vase at an auction for $180,000. He took his money and moved to New York. The man who bought the Vase, Jack Flora, went to New York in the same plane. When they landed at LaGuardia Airport, Vexus and the man left the plane and headed to the exit. In a freak accident, Jack's shirt got caught in the door of a car. When the car moved Jack did too. Vexus watched in horror as the man screamed frantically. It ended when Jack hit a brick wall, destroying his skull.
It had to have been a coincidence. Vexus tried to reassure himself it was just an accident. Jack’s suit was stained a scarlet red. Vexus could have sworn that for a second, he saw a pale, smiling man in the darkness. Then he disappeared. The driver exited his vehicle and franticly ran onto the pavement, dialing 911 in the process. Vexus swooped down in one fluid motion, picked up the vase from Jack’s bag, and ran
off. Walking the streets of New York with the vase in hand, Vexus wondered that if the vase actually commanded death itself, it could be used to kill villains and gain money. Vexus traveled deep into the New York Underground. He entered a dark store, near an apartment building. The walls were a deep gray, and the floor was made of cheap, messily laid tiles. A lone man at the counter was selling various firearms, and illegal drugs. He wore a black leatherjacket and a pair of tattered blue jeans. Vexus offered the vase to the man for a hefty price of $9,000 dollars. The man at the counter merely grunted in approval and forked over the cash in exchange for the shining vase. Vexus left the room and called the police and informed them of the man and his trafficking business. The police after a short interval to arrest the man. Upon breaking down the cheap wooden door, the drug trafficker pulled a .45 caliber pistol on the police and began to open fire. In self-defense, the police shot at the man piercing his chest, and splattering his blood on the back wall. Vexus quickly grabbed the vase and ran. The last thing he saw off that room, in the corner of his eye, was a pale man smiling before vanishing into the darkness. Vexus kept killing and gaining. Greed slowing taking over him like a parasite. With every death came huge profit. With every death came huge rewards. With every death came a glimpse at the pale, smiling man before he performed his disappearing act. Vexus was being slowly driven to madness whilst drowning in his own pool of money. Vexus the millionaire. Vexus the murderer. Vexus, the man who rediscovered the Basano Vase. III That’s where our story ends for now. What ever happened to the power hungry Vexus? The man driven by greed and desires of wealth. Well you are about to know first hand, because when his story closes, I’ll be there with my pale skin, just smiling and watching as my 15th century vase takes more lives. A vase made by my own hands. For I am the creator of the Basano Vase. EPILOGUE NEW YORK TIMES MARCH 12th 2012 Vexus Scuris, 32, was confirmed dead this morning after a motor accident took his life. While driving down on main street, his Ferrari skid on the icy winter road, violently crashing into a brick wall. He suffered a broken skull, arms, and other bones. Witnesses have informed us about seeing a large, pale man with a smile on his face watching with what we assume to be happiness as the car crashed. The reason this man is important is because people have also spotted him looking over the Hudson River at the time of the attack. He could also be seen in a 15th century Italian picture, standing next to a bride who was clutching a vase. Could he be the killer? Police are still investigating and so far, no evidence is found that the vehicle was tampered with other than writing on the side of the car that reads: By Basano.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, several factors contributed to the growth and expansion of cities in the United States. The 1850s saw a fantastic peak in the immigration of Europeans to America, and they quickly flocked to cities where they could form communities and hopefully find work1. The rushing industrialization of the entire country also helped to rapidly convert America from a primarily agrarian nation to an urban society.
Colson Whitehead ponders the essence of New York in his collection of essays titled, The Colossus of New York. Throughout the entire collection of essaysWhitehead inquires about what New York stands for based on the journey’s of its inhabitants and visitors. By establishing a sense of authenticity and creating an intimate relationship between him and the reader, Whitehead effectively provides his readers with a genuine account of New York. This genuineness found in Whitehad’s writing has not been met without criticism. Wyatt Mason’s critique of Whitehead’s essays reiterates throughout the review that Whitehead’s account go New York isn’t unique to New York and that the essayist isn’t particularly attentive to detail. While I agree with the
“It got to be easy to look at New Yorkers as animals, especially looking down from some place like a balcony at Grand Central at the rush hour Friday afternoon.” (Tom Wolfe). “O Rotten Gotham” argues that New Yorkers are in a state of behavioral sink. It would not be long before a “population collapse” or a “massive die off”.
On 7 June 1969, hundreds of Puerto Ricans gathered in Spanish Harlem, New York City to protest the arrest of Juan" Fi" Ortiz for a series of falsified crimes.[2] As a crowd gathered outside the People's Church in El Barrio, Felipe Luciano addressed those assembled asserting that, " We will not allow the brutalization of our community to go on without a response. For every Puerto Rican that is brutalized, there will be retaliation."[3]Luciano's statements were not ignored, and as the crowd filtered into the streets their shouts of Despierta, Boricua. Defiende lo tuyo filled the air.
The public and the police, whom also see them as deviants, label them. They don’t live like we do in clean houses that have electricity and running water. They live a different standard that makes most uncomfortable. Toth explains how New York also has a high rate of substance abusers and mentally ill in the underground population (41). This proves that there is a broader problem here that reflects on how the structure of the U.S society. Based off of conflict theory, the reason the “mole people” are like this is because we secluded them from our society, with alienating them. They end up turning to drug use for an escape or some of them became this way because they were addicts and mentally ill and we didn’t supply the help needed to fix them. Our society is set for the individual and what we can do to improve ourselves that we often forget to help the less fortunate. In a capitalist system, the definition of alienation is defined as being unconnected to one’s work, product, fellow workers, and human nature. Reading the numerous accounts of people Toth has interviewed, we learn about the homeless that ended up there due to a poor upbringing or some who used to be somebody that sadly ended up homeless and seeking refuge in these tunnels. Some choose this life others are destined here because of the fault in the U.S
Ellis, Edward Robb., and Jeanyee Wong. The Epic of New York City. New York, NY: Carroll & Graf, 2005. Print.
The New York City Subway is one of the oldest public transit systems in the world, and Manhattan has its fair share of it, especially in the form of abandoned subway stations.Subways are great mean of transportation, with great historical and geographical value. Interborough Rapid Transit company built the first subway in 1904. The subway consisted of what is today the IRT Lexington Avenue Line south of 42nd Street, the 42nd Street Shuttle and the IRT Broadway - Seventh Avenue Line between 42nd and 145th Streets. 28th Street is a part of the first IRT line of NewYork city. It a local station on the Lexington Avenue Line of the New York City Subway, located at the intersection of Park
Following the steps of the Dutch who first came to Lower Manhattan, we embarked on the Staten Island Ferry on Sunday, Nov. 10, and we could see one of the world’s most famous figures: The Statue of Liberty, a gift from the French to the U.S. that was put in such a strategic and historic place. The view of the green icon from the boat that was transporting passengers from Staten Island to Lower Manhattan, with the skyline of New Jersey in the background, and New York to our right, was a delightful experience. Not one person on the ferry was like the other, one could see people from all over the world, joined together and representing New York’s diversity, trying to relive the same experience that the Dutch had centuries ago. Some people take this ride every day for work; others were simply tourists or inhabitants of the New York metropolitan area.
The Underground Railroad is famous for the things it has done, but most people don't understand or fully know what it was really about. First of all, it has nothing to do with an underground train or railroad as it may seem. The term "Underground Railroad" actually has different stories for its inception. One of these stories was of Tice Davis, a runaway slave in 1831. While running away from his owner he dove into a creek and was out of the owner's sight. His owner said "he must have gone off on an underground railroad." (http://www.whispersofangels.com/opposing.html) Although highly unbelievable, it can be found quite amusing. The logical explanation, though, is that the word "underground" is a term for secretive, while "railroad" represents the working together of people like train cars to "ship" the slaves. The main reason for the Underground Railroad was the effort to abolish slavery. None of the other efforts were contributing as much, and it was definitely our country's first major anti-slavery movement.
Erik Larson’s nonfiction novel, The Devil in the White City, focuses on the building of the World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, to celebrate the 400 year anniversary of Columbus’s discovery of the United States. Larson throughout the book demonstrates that where there is good there is evil between two characters: Daniel Burnham and H.H. Holmes. When people of America were given the task to build an architectural masterpiece for the Chicago World’s Fair, there were bright visions to make the celebration well known but also a brilliant man commits to some very dark deeds which effected American history.
Dostoevsky’s Notes from the Underground and Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, written by Paul Schrader, both tell the same story about a man who is lonely and blames the world around him for his loneliness. The characters of Underground Man and Travis Bickle mirror each other; they both live in the underground, narrating their respective stories, experiencing aches and maladies which they leave unchecked, seeing the city they live in as a modern-day hell filled with the fake and corrupt. However, time and again both Travis and the Underground Man contradict themselves. While the underground character preaches his contempt for civilization—the ‘aboveground’—and the people within it, he constantly displays a deep-seeded longing to be a part of it. Both characters believe in a strong ideal that challenges that of the city’s, an ideal that is personified by the character of the prostitute.
My America is a very beautiful place, not only because of the big cities, tall buildings, stone statues, and pretty flowers, but also because of the people who make America what it is today. Knowing within every blue, black, brown, green, and gray eye you see on the streets of America – and like me, every window you look through – there are stories, hopes and even dreams, this thought brings me the greatest pleasure, as it did Alfred Kazin. Kazin’s greatest pleasure came looking at the many historical landmarks that New York had to offer and thinking of the many people who struggled to make those astonishing contributions.
The year was 1910, A young and eager William O’Dwyer slowly walked out of the ship to take in his new surroundings. He could feel the crisp New York City air on his face like a cool fan on a hot day. All around him he could see smokestack chimneys, frantic businessmen, and performers who dreamed of stardom. People come to New York City for a fresh start. And that was exactly what he planned to do. With $23.34 in his pocket he set out to start his new life. Little did he know that in 36 short years, he would be the mayor of the greatest city in the world.
...e historic monuments since they have been through most of the history of New York. Getting rid of such symbolic element of the city tarnishes the city’s image. Not only would take away a symbolic image of New York’s landscape but also represents New York’s movement towards a drab and uninspired city.
Without a doubt, Times Square in New York City is a unique experience, but the image created by TV and movies does not show the gloominess that accompanies the euphoria of being in the Big Apple. The atmosphere is so exhilarating and exciting, you don’t even know what to do for a few minutes, but it is tinged with the bitter reality that sadness and melancholy also trail closely behind the positive. With most, if not all, of your senses being stimulated – sometimes all at once – Times Square creates a memory that will surely be cherished, and haunt you for the rest of your life.