Echoes of Anarchy

They called it a riot.

The newspapers printed words like "violence," "chaos," and "unrest." But those who had been there—who had felt the burn of tear gas, who had tasted the fire in their lungs—knew better. It wasn’t just a protest. It was a scream.

And something had heard it.

No one knows where Anarchy first appeared. Some say it rose from the ashes of the old textile district after the workers were driven out. Others whisper that it came after the child was taken in the night raid, the one the officials said never happened. But wherever it began, its presence spread like spilled blood across city stone.

The first reports were almost laughable. A masked figure, faceless behind crimson wrappings, spotted at the edge of burning streets. Holding a brick. Unmoving. Watching. People assumed it was a protester. A symbol. A ghost of the living.

Then came the disappearances.

A local officer vanished after mocking a roadside vigil. A politician dropped dead at a rally, eyes wide and mouth stuffed with ash. Cameras glitched and shattered. Graffiti appeared where there were no walls before, always the same—an A within a circle, scrawled as if in blood, often just above a crimson handprint. Each one fresh. Each one wet.

The survivors spoke of dreams—marches with no end, burning skies, and the sound of bricks clattering across pavement with no one to throw them. And always, always, the masked figure walking among them, silent and watching.

Anarchy was never a person. It was a memory. A curse. A response.

Every time a voice was crushed, every time boots cracked down on hope, it grew louder. Stronger. More defined.

A group of researchers at a forgotten university tried to catalog Anarchy. They created timelines, mapped appearances, tracked rumors. Their last known message, hastily typed and never completed, ended with: "It's not just haunting locations anymore... it's following ideas."

Witnesses describe impossible phenomena. Blood seeping upward from cracks in the pavement. Bricks that materialize midair and fall without a sound. Radios tuning to static and then a voice, repeating phrases like "We remember" and "We are not gone." One man in Marseille claims his television bled from the screen. He moved the next day. No one has seen him since.

In time, it stopped haunting only the places it was born. Reports emerged from other cities—masked shapes flickering in alleyways, blood-speckled bricks on empty doorsteps, face coverings left folded atop gravestones. Each new sighting carried whispers of the same message: This is not over.

In Prague, a subway mural was painted over in the night, replaced by a sprawling crimson depiction of Anarchy standing atop a mountain of bricks. No artist came forward. The paint was still wet at dawn. Two days later, the building above collapsed without warning.

In Philadelphia, a child drew the masked ghost in her school notebook, complete with the anarchist symbol. When asked where she’d seen it, she pointed at the empty hallway. When pressed further, she whispered, "He’s not angry yet."

There are rumors of a cult—if it can even be called that. No names, no leaders, only the masked. They leave bricks wrapped in red cloth at police stations and city halls. Not one has been caught. Surveillance fails. Alarms glitch. Dogs refuse to enter the rooms.

Some believe Anarchy is justice given form. Others believe it is punishment.

But the truth is darker: Anarchy is the weight of every injustice never answered. It does not forgive. It does not forget. And it does not die.

It builds.

Brick by brick.