A Dirty Pair

It was a cool spring night. The stars danced across the sky like the darkness was a ballroom on a sinking ship. Beth was sleeping on Eliza’s lap while the stars danced into infinity. Eliza, meanwhile, was watching out for bandits, monsters, and other such jerks. There had been rumors in their time in the City that such people lurked the wilderness, looking for victims to attack. It had been a week since they had left the City. This strange old world they found themselves in had surprised them quite a bit, though not enough to remove all the prejudices they had accrued in their lifetimes.

They met a few weeks ago. Neither of them had a job at the time, as was the case with most people living in the City at that point. Beth was sleeping on the collapsed remains of a condemned apartment complex when Eliza found her. Beth’s hair was raven dark with bits of grime strutting out like a crown of thorns. She had the hands of a bartender who was long out of practice. With her eyes closed, there was an innocence to her form. A sleeping beauty right out of a fairy tale, waiting for the day her prince would come. But when she opened her eyes and drew a handmade knife at Eliza, that innocence gave way to a more guarded persona. One who had seen the horrors of the City and knew it was safer to act sweet than to be. And yet the specter of innocence still haunted her gaze like the memory of a small town on a lad who returned after years away to find it a ruin.

And when that gaze turned towards Eliza, this is what Beth saw: Eliza was taller than most women her age, though only by an inch or two. Her long scarlet hair was at times an inconvenience to her when going to and fro the City’s landscape. And yet, she couldn’t bring herself to cut it any shorter than up to the middle of her back. Memories of her mother or a former love, Beth assumed incorrectly. Eliza’s tanned skin was light enough to be incapable of hiding the bruises gained over the years. She held herself like… well, not like royalty, more like someone who frequents bars solely to get into fights with assholes. But one could see her being of noble blood in a previous lifetime (though a lady at most). Her emerald eyes glistened in the starless night. She didn’t hide this side of her, Beth could tell, at least not to her. Maybe not anyone, Beth thought. Eliza had the perpetual smile of a Cheshire Cat on her face, as if she was daring her to strike first. Like Beth, she was also armed, though with an extremely crooked aluminum bat that had a puncture hole where it bent.

It took the pair a few minutes of curt conversations that basically amounted to the phrase “Drop the weapon” being repeated over and over again before the two got the sense that the other probably wasn’t going to murder them. When they finally started treating each other like actual human beings, they found a kinship in the other and decided that it would be a good idea to travel together. By the week’s end, it would seem to someone outside the relationship that the two were childhood friends who had since become an old married couple, much to their chagrin as they were only 23 and 25 respectively. (Who was which is a question best saved for people who don’t value their eardrums.)

It was that first meeting that was on Eliza’s mind as she sat outside the City. It was an alien world, all things considered. The City, even at its grimiest, was cleaner than the outside world. Green had infested the landscape to the point whee one could sleep on parts of the pavement. The building they were resting in didn’t have a roof. Indeed, the only reason it could be called a building was because it had a door and two walls. It was as ruined as any other piece of architecture in the new world… or, for that matter, within the City itself (it was just good at hiding its ruins under denial and repression). These ruins couldn’t be denied. A cool wind blew through the remains, tempting Eliza to sleep.

But she knew the dangers of the outside world. Everyone in the City told themselves that it was better to remain in the walls of tyranny than to step into the land of barbarianism and pure cruelty. The state could never be as cruel as a human outside of it, untethered by society. Indeed, the only reason they left the City was… but before Eliza could finish that thought, she decided to think of more pleasant things, things along the lines of how it feels to be dropped into a meat grinder. She thought about these things for a bit before she heard a noise from a nearby bush.

Eliza had been eyeing that bush for the past hour, waiting for something to leap out and attack. Instead of attacking, the creature in the bush simply stalked out with the confidence of someone walking in a room with a bunch of starving people armed with rusty knives wearing a suit made of pig meat. In truth, Eliza had never seen such a creature. Not even the Spiders of the City told stories of such a beast, and they talked about all sorts of fictional beings like unicorns or platypi. The beast was black enough to be near invisible in the night landscape, save for its unnaturally emerald eyes. It had the outline of a cat, though it was larger than any Eliza had ever known. There was blood on its teeth, which wouldn’t stop grinning.

When the feline exited the bush, its gaze immediately met with Eliza’s and froze. Eliza’s hand was hovering over the gun next to her lap. It wasn’t loaded, but she assumed that such a creature might have enough intelligence to buy a bluff. And yet, she didn’t grab it. Instead, the two just looked at one another with a mix of fear and curiosity. What was their life like, one thought of the other, that they would live such a life? Were there others like them? Were they friendly? Were they cruel? Answers would not come that night, as the cat fled once the sun rose.

Eliza would wonder for a few weeks what happened to that cat. When pretending to be a Spider to get some food, she would make up some story about the cat being a magical cat that could shoot lightning from its eyes. A Night Breed, she would call it. The prince of the Night Breed, cast out to prevent a war for slaying the Queen of Deer. It would never know its family again, but it would forge a new family out of strays. An immortal girl with one arm would be its closest confidant, and they would travel the world for adventure. (The story was good enough to allow the pair to travel with Spiders, and it shocked them to learn that there’s not much difference between pretending to be a Spider and being one.)

Before she could think of the cat in that moment, Beth had said something. Beth, Eliza realized quickly, had a tendency of talking in her sleep. Typically it was fragments of old songs and stories. One night, she sang the chorus to a song about sleeping with ladies with fat bums in the softest tone imaginable. Another time, it was a line from a movie about an Alien floating to death in space. Once it was a conversation she had with… But that night, Eliza heard Beth say words she thought should have been sung. And yet, Beth spoke the words as if they were from a children’s storybook. “See the tower,” she began in a whisper, “Through the trees. Give way… to smoky memories:” She then proceeded to fall into incoherent mutterings. In some regards, that was the moment Eliza realized she loved Beth. (Or at least the moment she realized it.) The thought of it surprised her. To find love in a world devoid of it was as absurd as finding hate in such world. What would be the point of it when everything was mere ruin? And yet, there it was. Eliza loved Beth like birds love the sky.

She wanted to wake Beth up in that moment. Scream her desire for her, both physically and emotionally. She wanted her love to be etched upon the very fabric of reality. And then, another, far more insidious thought came to her: What if Beth didn’t love her? She certainly cared for Eliza, their time together proved as much. And yet, Eliza sensed that Beth looked at her as one looks at a sister. Would Beth look at her the same way if she confessed her love? Was this why she was thinking of that first encounter? Eliza thought quite a bit about that first night. How obvious it was that she had no idea what she was doing up against someone as experienced as Beth. When she held the knife up to her neck, Eliza saw no sign of the innocence in Beth’s eyes. If she hadn’t seen right through her persona as a hard-hitting woman, would Beth have killed her? Would she even want to stay with her now that Beth… when she knew now how violent she could be when pushed, especially after the night before? Would she survive?

That last one came as a shock. Of course Beth would survive, thought Eliza, she’s strong and brave and all the other stuff one needs to be in order to survive. And yet… There was a time in the City, during the last week they would ever spend in that dreaded place. It was a cold night; the sky was blanketed with ash from a nearby forest fire. They had gotten into a fight with some fellow homeless people over where to sleep. They lost, though not for lack of trying. Beth took out one of the other homeless people’s eye out and broke three of her ribs. The only reason why they lost was because the woman’s child came to her mother to comfort her in her last moments. She was coughing too much to say anything meaningful, but her thoughts were of her daughter. Beth and Eliza slinked away before anyone could go after them. (Unbeknownst to them, this wasn’t the end for the woman, as it wasn’t as bad as it looked.) When they found a place to rest, Eliza saw a terror in Beth’s eyes she had never known. An urge had come over her to just end it all in that moment. Beth looked to Eliza and they held each other for a long time. Thinking back on that moment, Eliza asked herself what would have happened if she weren’t there? And then a worse thought came: What would Beth become because of what she did? Eliza decided not to say a word about her feelings.

Beth awoke moments later. She was drowsy and in need of something to drink. “Hey you,” she said, looking at Eliza as the sky turned a brilliant shade of Emerald and Scarlet.

“Hey yourself,” replied Eliza with as much restraint as possible.

“I had the weirdest dream last night.”

“Oh, what was it about?”

“It… There was a bird, who… I was flying the bird to the City. It was on fire, I could hear everyone screaming. There was this one building, the tilted one, you know?”

“Bron’s, I think it was called.”

“No, no. Bron’s was the one without the bathroom. The Beautiful Flying Ladies?” 

“No. I don’t think there’s a bar like that.”

“Yeah there is. It’s that gay bar where we met those two people who liked to juggle.”

“No, no, no. That was q?”

“Was it? …You know what? It doesn’t matter which one it was. The point is, I was flying towards the tilted building and it was the only one that was untouched by the flames. So I fly in there and become the fire that burns it down. I burn everything down without quarter or care. Men, women, children: all dead by my being. And then, I come to this golden door, and I have to burn the fucker down. And in the room is this black cat with emerald-“

“I love you.” The words just came out of Eliza’s mouth with the force to knock someone down in one punch.  The entire world went silent. Beth froze. No one said anything for a while. The only sounds were of Eliza’s sobs. They were ugly and flooding the world around her. She tried to say words, but all that came out were harder sobs. The tears made it impossible to tell what Beth’s reaction was to this revelation. But deep down, she knew what it was. It was too much, too quick. She shouldn’t have said those words. She should have just kept her mouth shut and let Beth go on with her stupid story about fire. She should have been a good little girl and not -

And then, Beth touched her arm. It wasn’t a grab nor did she hold the arm, but it was a light touch. A stroke, soft like one would a tree or a wall. It was a sign that she was still there. Next, Beth moved towards Eliza. It was a cautious move, yet an unplanned one. When she was close enough, Beth began a kiss that lasted for what felt like days.

Eventually, the two moved on. They traveled, met new people, and lived a wonderful life. Some people need a place to put their roots down to be happy. Others need to move back and forth between familiar places like a bird. There are some for whom there needs to be new places to experience, new people to meet, new people to be. Discovering the new was what made them happy. But there are those who need only the companionship of someone near and dear to them. Someone who will stick by them to the bitter end; perhaps even beyond. For Beth and Eliza, these lovely angels, the world was a magical place filled with strangeness, wonder, and love. Yes, there was hardship even in this idyllic new world made in the wreckage of an old one. But is that not the nature of all worlds? Change is inherent to the universe. It is not always the change that is desired, nor even necessary, but it still happens like a black hole or a hurricane or an encounter with a complete stranger who you never meet again. For this world at least, the one that consisted of these two women, it was a world filled with love everlasting. And that was enough.

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Memories of the Old World and the New

Billy was sleeping alone on the streets of the City, lying atop something soft. Alex had left him a few hours ago to pursue their own goals. Story of his life, Billy supposed. Not that he thought about such things all the time, Billy told himself. He had better things to think about such as killing a CEO, which nowadays seemed like killing the ghost of a king. Billy pondered the implications of that metaphor for a bit. After all, there seemed to be no CEOs left outside of the City walls. Indeed, there seemed to be only the one within. Billy often wondered about whatever happened to those CEOs that seemed to be everywhere when he was a baby. One night, two or so years back, he and Cate discussed this very topic. It might have even been the night she left. Then again, that was so long ago. It’s all a bit of a haze now.

“You ever wonder what happened,” asked Cate wistfully as the full moon shined through clouds, which cried frozen tears.

“Well,” mused Billy without really thinking through what he was about to say, “I suppose they all died horribly since that’s what the police are wont to do.”

“I mean about the rest of the world.”

“Oh that. Well, I’m sure it’s still puttering about, people living their lives and whatnot. Life, as they say, finds a way.” Billy had that smug look on his face that thought such a line would be pithy enough to end the conversation whereas Cate was looking a tad bit annoyed, a face Billy was growing all too accustomed with. “B-but I suppose there’s more too it than that…”

“Yes, I suppose you’re right,” Cate said without supposing a damn thing. “Take billionaires for example. They used to be all the rage before we were kids. Nowadays, you’re more likely to see a jabberwocky than a billionaire.” (This was in reference to the pair having seen a jabberwocky flying in the snowy sky with a screaming person in its mouth less than an hour before.)

“Maybe we sacred them off.”

“Unlikely. When I was a kid, my uncle would tell stories of the billionaires. They would have these meetings where they’d talk about how they were going to make even more money. They’d buy armies with their money. Some even owned slaves. Not just human ones. They enslaved deer! I don’t think beings of such power could be killed by something as simple as us.” The prospect of something being able to enslave deer, even at a time when Billy had never seen one, frightened the young lad.

“S-so what happened to the rest of them?”

“I dunno. When I asked my uncle, he’d just…” Cate moved her hands in a way she thought meant something, “look away before talking about something else. Back then, I think there were like five or six. Nowadays, there’s only one left.”

“So, what’s your point? You usually have one with these sorts of questions.” Cate gave Billy a look of bitterness seen mostly when a minor flaw is pointed out by someone less clever than they are.

“My point is that the world outside needed billionaires. Without them, it’s falling apart.”

“Come now,” Billy said with a nervous laugh, “no one group of people could ever be able to control all those Jabberwockies and Skin-Walkers and Spiders and Deer. Besides, you can’t just tie things together like that. Just because something goes away, it doesn’t mean the bad things happen. I mean… if I were to cough right now, would the snow stop?”

“I suppose not…”

“Well, there you have it.” Billy then proceeded to cough. Not so much to prove a point, but because being stuck in the cold night while it’s snowing in a southwest City tends to make one feel sick. As if the universe existed solely to spite him, the snow stopped. “Err… Have you ever been to the outside world?”

“Course not!” Cate said to spare Billy’s ego. “Have you heard the stories? They have all these vicious gangs and thieves and such who’ll butcher us if we ever left. You hear about those two girls who left the city?”

“Can’t say that I have.”

“Well, they found their bodies in a ditch a few miles from the limits.” Cate then preceded to hand Billy a drawing of the bodies. The image was a bit scratchy. There were certainly bones in the picture, though they could be anyone’s.

“Which one’s the red head and which the black?” But before Billy could remember the answer, the Sasquatch he was resting on stood up. In the Sasquatch’s defense, he was terrified by the sudden realization that the squishy rock it was wearing as a hat was, in actuality, a sentient being. There was a period of silence as the two looked at one another in complete shock and confusion with a twinge of “OH GOD, IT’S GOING TO EAT ME!”

Finally, the Sasquatch said, “…You’re not going to eat me… are you?” At first, Billy thought he spoke in a Scottish accent. As he thought about it, the voice sounded more like an American doing an impersonation of a Scotsman, and a good one at that. What Billy couldn’t tell was whether or not the eight foot tall Sasquatch, with hands large enough to crush a head and feet that were relatively well fit for such a height (which was contrary to what people said of Sasquatches as having the feet of a 15 foot man), was taking the piss.

“…No?”

“Are you sure? I mean, I’m relieved that you don’t and all, but I heard you eat deer, so…”

“ARE YOU INSANE!” exclaimed Billy as if someone had casually suggested dancing naked on the moon. “Have you seen their fucking teeth? I still have nightmares because of the fucking teeth. What kind of idiot would eat a deer?”

“…Someone more terrifying than a deer.” 

“…You find humans terrifying?”

“Oh-ho-ho-ho, no. I’ve been around humans for millennia. People, while not my favorite animal on the planet, tend to be…” It took him a moment before the word came to him, at which point a stupid grin came onto his face. “Mercurial! Mercurial in nature, that’s what you are. And yet, when it comes to holdouts like you city folk… I’ve been around enough apocalypses to know things get violent towards the end.”

“The apocalypse?”

“Oh yes, this whole place has the stench of it on it. You more so than some.”

“Me? B-but I’m nobody special. I mean, I’ve been thinking about killing-” Billy stopped himself before he could finish that sentence. It was as if the words were forcing him to speak them aloud. The Sasquatch simply smiled with his teeth bare. It was a friendly smile, much like the smile a tiger makes to a small child before critiquing his darkly humorous snowmen.

“Well,” laughed the Sasquatch, “I suppose everybody thinks about killing from time to time. Doesn’t mean they actually do it. Was it anyone important?”

“…the CEO of the Fuzon Corporation.”

“Ah yes,” said the Sasquatch with an air of wistfulness, “the last of the billionaires. Nobody important at all.”

“But… a friend of mine said they were what kept the world from falling apart and without them…”

“Bah! Billionaires just won the game of capitalism, is all. There were no magic to them, no godly powers. Just a bunch of rich people living how they pleased while dancing to the music of everyone else’s screams.”

“So what happened to them?”

“Well, nobody wins the game of Capitalism forever. And once you lose…” There was a poignancy to the silence. The wind howled and the sun began to rise.

“So the world’s going to end,” smiled Billy.

“No. The world already ended,” said the Sasquatch with some mirth. “I told you, the City’s just a holdout. Last one, I believe. Rest of the world already ended and moved on with its life.” Before Billy could ask what he meant, the Sasquatch continued. “The apocalypse happens every now and then. Sometimes there’s a great dieback where the “Great Filter” consumes everyone. Other times, the next generation up and eats the previous ones. And sometimes people just “realize” that whipping others to work the fields because they couldn’t be arsed to do it is a shitty thing to do. To say that the end of the world means the end of everything is, to be quite blunt, egotistical at best. Life is this ever-changing thing. It adapts to the way things are falling apart and works its way into being something new. Once upon a time, Jabberwockies were merely the creation of some poet. The Thin White Duke was a blurred photograph someone posted on the Internet. And dogs used to eat cats. Everything comes out of the woodwork eventually. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“…I suppose,” Billy said with a dejected tone.

“Are you sad because you’re lonely?” The Sasquatch asked unprompted, but with genuine concern.

“No, I- I am not lonely. I just… I just like being alone.”

“Just because you like being alone doesn’t mean you can’t be lonely.” Billy looked into the Sasquatch’s eyes. They were softer than the legends would have him believe. An ocean of existence had washed away in front of them. And yet, there was still room for wonder; still space for silly things like compassion and empathy; still time to try to help someone in need. Billy didn’t know when he started hugging the Sasquatch nor when he stopped. Such is the nature of hugging a Sasquatch. “Don’t feel so lonely now, now do you?”

“A bit lonely.”

“Aye, but less so. Might as well join you on your trip to the Fuzon Head Office. That is where you’re going, right.”

“Yep. Though are you sure? As you said, it’s not that important to the grand scheme of things.”

“And quite right I was. But some Historian with a capital “H” might decide to say that you caused the end of the world by killing the last CEO, and I’d like to walk up to them and bop them on the nose for being a shit.”

“…That’s not a thing that happens, is it?”

“Oh, happens all the time. History, and especially History with a capital “H,” is seventy percent archeology, twenty percent literary analysis, and ten percent fiction. Rarely do all the facts show up in the ruins. My guess is that some jerk will put up some obscure quotes they found lying about to look like a serious examination of history. Might even be in a foreign language to heighten the importance. Probably have a whole tangent about the importance of your father they made up out of whole cloth to make it so that you were “symbolically destined to end the world.” As if the plot was the most important part of the world’s end. But that’s history for you: not what actually happened, but what the teller says happened.” They didn’t talk much for a bit.

“I should have asked sooner, but what’s your name?”

“Sasquatch don’t have names. I’m just Sasquatch or The Sasquatch.”

“Huh. Well, anyways (I’m Billy, by the way.), Sasquatch… what’s the rest of the world like?” It hadn’t occurred to Billy how long it had been since he was outside until the sentence had left his throat. He didn’t much think of his time outside the City, unless someone else prompted him to. The most he had been was three days prior to being locked up, but that was just to take a piss, only to realize he was on the other side of the border.

“Oh, I’d say it’s a lot nicer than this part of it is. Least the bits I’ve been to. They’ve got some natural things going on. Or, at the very least, the creatures of the outside tend to be more willing to let strangers be. People living in tree houses two stories tall, electric wheelchairs powered by the light of the sun and the moon. Some still live in the houses and apartments and what ever other buildings are still standing, but most people tend to be somewhat nomadic. You’ve seen Spiders come and go, have you not?”

“Yes, I’ve been to some of their performances. Haven’t seen a good one though.”

“Ah. Well, whenever you decide to leave the City, go to a Spider’s performance. They’re usually absolutely transcendent out there. Anyways, the outside world tends to get along quite nicely with one another. Some would say that it’s a genuine Utopia.”

“Yeah, well bet you five bucks there’s some evil underneath the surface of the brave new world out there,” Billy snarked a line Cate had once sold him without thinking too much about the implications.

“Oh naturally,” said the Sasquatch much to Billy’s surprise, “but then, the difference between a utopia and a dystopia is the willingness to look for those terrible, sometimes evil, flaws and improve on them. A dystopia is a frozen utopia, as many a Spider and Utopian has told me. In fact, I think I read a book about it once. Shame I can’t remember the name of it. Something… Omelet? …No, probably not. It’ll come to me.”

“If it’s so great there,” said Billy with a little subconscious malice, “why come here?” There was a pause. Billy wondered if the Sasquatch didn’t have a reason for coming here. If he just did things. But that didn’t seem to be within what he saw of his character. Surely such a being as old as the Sasquatch, Billy thought, would think things more carefully that I would. He’s probably playing me along before he inevitably abandons me and goes on his merry-

But before Billy could finish that thought, the Sasquatch gave him a toothy grin. “I was curious as to what happened to the world,” replied the Sasquatch and said nothing more on the matter. Instead, he asked Billy what his last name was, to which Billy smirked.

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This Used to Be a Movie Theater

As I slept in my childhood home for the last time, I had a dream. It started with a memory of conversation with my boss back when I edited books. We were in a mildly crowded coffee shop in New York. For some reason, someone was humming the theme to The Godfather, which permeated the rest of the place. We could see the ninth housing satellite from out the window, even though it was during the day. My boss was sipping her coffee while I was looking at the bank robbers escaping through the computer screen of the guy behind her.

THE IRONIC THING ABOUT HIS RESPONSE, she said in a voice that wasn’t hers, IS THAT HE CLEARLY UNDERSTOOD SOMETHING THAT MUCH OF THE WORLD MISSED. ASIDE FROM THE SUBSEQUENT (AND FUNDAMENTALLY SEPARATE) WAR ON TERROR, THE LARGEST MATERIAL EFFECT OF 9/11 WAS THE PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC WOUND DEALT TO MANHATTAN—THE PERMANENT AND TRAUMATIC ALTERATION OF ONE OF THE MOST ICONIC SKYLINES IN THE WORLD. HE WAS A CREATURE BIRTHED FROM THAT SAME PSYCHOGEOGRAPHY AND UNDERSTOOD IT INSTINCTIVELY. BUT THIS ALSO EXPLAINS WHY 9/11 FUNDAMENTALLY DERAILED HIS APPARENT TRAJECTORY FROM 2000 TO 2016: IT BEAT HIM AT HIS OWN GAME, MANIFESTING THE ESSENCE OF THE TOWER BETTER THAN HE COULD, AND FORCING HIM TO BECOME SOMETHING MORE MONSTROUS YET BEFORE HE COULD APPEASE HIS AWFUL MASTER.

INDEED, I replied in someone else’s words. BECAUSE WHAT CAN BE MORE TRUE THAN FICTION, WHICH IS THE VERY FRAMEWORK WE CONSTRUCT TO UNDERSTAND OUR LIVES AND THE WORLD AROUND US? ALL RECEIVED KNOWLEDGE COMES TO US THROUGH SOME FORM OF STORY. SINCE ANCIENT TIMES ORAL HISTORY AND ORAL TRADITION USED MYTHOPOEA TO SYMBOLIZE THE ORIGIN AND MACHINATIONS OF THE UNIVERSE. SCIENCE CONSTRUCTS FACTS BASED ON OBSERVATION AND INFERENCE THAT TRANSLATES LOCALIZED KNOWLEDGE INTO THE LANGUAGE OF WESTERN ACADEMIA. AND HISTORY TAKES THE FORM OF A NARRATIVE WOVEN BY INVESTED PARTIES. My boss’ response took the form of turning into a wave of paperwork.

Instead of following my memory to its logical conclusion, the camera that was myself shifted to the outside the coffee shop where the screams of those drowning in paper were drowned out by sounds of the city. There, right outside the coffee shop, were two men. The older of the two men had short white hair, a sloppily kept beard, and camouflage pants. The younger wore a backpack, a ponytail, and a smug disposition that deserves, at most, a punch in the jaw. They weren’t part of the dream of a city I was having, so even though they talked, I couldn’t hear a word they said. At first, it seemed like the two men were complete strangers who had just bumped into one another. But there was a look in the eye of the older man that said otherwise. He called to the younger and, surprisingly, the man came back. There was a fury in the young man’s eyes. Not the fury of a youth squandered by forces brought about by the previous generation or the fury of difference, but rather the fury of familiarity. I could tell from the height of the man’s jaw that he was shouting at the older man. There was a snarl to whatever he was saying.

In response, the old man simply walked up to the young man and bit his neck. Strangers without distinguishable faces came and tried to separate the two, but the old man wouldn’t stop attacking the younger man. It was as if he had the strength of his youth. The young man tried to fight back, but too much repressed blood was seeping from in-between his fingers and onto the ill kept sidewalk. Two people who looked like the young man dragged him away from the old man. I flew above them as they turned into what I thought was smoke. Suddenly, everything that surrounded me seemed to be nothing more than smoke. The rectangular buildings that lacked aesthetic uniformity suddenly became a perfected fog of white. I floated up and up through the smoke until I could see the skyline of New York. I looked around for a source for the fire, but only found clouds.

While I was floating upwards, I could hear a chant without a source. It sounded like the guttural howl of a starving bear trapped in a long abandoned zoo, praying to an uncaring unknowable God. I don’t remember all of the words, or even if that was because of the fading nature of dream memories or because the howl was largely incomprehensible. I do however remember a few fragments: “EMERGENCE OF A TUMOR JUST A GOD WHO TRIES TO BREAK INTO OUR WORLD BY THE SHORTEST PATH,” “THING ESCAPES AND DEATH IS JUST,” “ONE I KNOW RETAINS A NAME.” Their meaning is lost on me.

When I stopped rising, I saw two figures. One was a skeletal figure in a black cloak wearing a pair of skis while holding a scythe. The other… it’s hard to describe the other figure. At once, the being was male and female, young and old, thin and fat, black and white and all the other colors one could be. And yet, the being wasn’t an amalgamation of all these things. Rather, the being shifted its form constantly, never once repeating the same face. It spoke with the tenor of a lion in its prime, capable of scaring off the most ardent of scavenger with a single roar. And with its voice, the shapeful being said, GO INTO THAT CITY AND SLAY HALF OF THE DWELLERS THEREIN, YET SPARE A HALF OF THEM THAT THEY MAY KNOW THAT I AM GOD. The skeletal being obeyed what I presumed was its master and flew past me with an air of resigned melancholy.

I followed the figure as it descended down and down and down towards the city. Despite it’s skeletal form, its wings were feathered brown and soft. It gracefully descended upon the city with the ease a child has going to sleep. It tilted its eternally grinning head towards me. There was a void where its eyes should be. The words weren’t so much spoken as implanted into my brain with the voice of my own thoughts. (But then, what other voices appear in our dreams than our own?) They said BUT WE MUST CARE. FOR IF WE DO NOT CARE, WE DO NOT EXIST. IF WE DO NOT EXIST, THEN THERE IS NOTHING BUT BLIND OBLIVION. AND EVEN OBLIVION MUST END SOME DAY. I could see the city in all its grandeur and monstrosity. All the people were tiny from my height. They were buzzing about like flies in the ointment of the city’s architecture. It was then that I realized that I didn’t much care for this perspective of the world. I liked being around my fellow man in the muck of the world. Sure, there was some beauty in this perspective, but there was something missing from it to make it just right. Before I could put my finger on what that was, my companion pointed upwards towards the descending station. It then said something else to me, but I awoke in a sweat before the words could be interpreted and retained.

Before I left my childhood home forever, I shook the hands of the families who let me sleep in their home. There were three in total, and they seemed to be good people… or, at least, the kind who wouldn’t steal all my stuff while I slept. When I asked if I could mention who they were in this… what do you call it? It’s too short to be a journal yet too long to be a note. Snippet? Entry? Fragment? Regardless, they said no. But they did allow me to explain the structure of their living. They had split the house up with one family on each floor. The basement went to a lesbian couple and their three children. The children got my brother Patrick’s second bedroom while the couple slept on the couches where I’d watch some of my brother’s old VHS tapes. Some of them were still on the shelf. The rest probably got traded for food or were stolen before the families moved in. The laundry room was communal and I was surprised to see the plastic laundry baskets I had known since my childhood were still being put to good use. The mark on the wall between floors where my brother punched a hole through it was still there. We told him to fix it, but he always kept pushing it off until we all just got used to it. I guess no one has the tools to make it invisible.

The family that lived on the main floor was a polyamorous quartet with six children. The only part of the floor that wasn’t slept in was the dining room, which was missing its table. And yet, the painting of the Last Supper I got from my grandparents was still there. Indeed, a lot of the stuff attached to the walls was still there, even the needlepoint picture of a unicorn in the bathroom. It wasn’t as if this stuff was permanently fused to the walls. People back during the bad days tended to steal artwork for fires and what not. At the very least the plates could be used as, well, plates. But nothing was stolen. Hell, my great grandfather’s sword was still on the mantle place, and the case for that was broken.

The only room that was regularly used by the families staying at the top floor of my childhood home was my parent’s bedroom. The occupants consisted of a single father and his daughter. The giant bed that once lay there had long since disappeared. All that remained were the faint scratches it made on the walls. I slept in my brother’s childhood bedroom, as the bedroom that was once mine had a giant hole where the window used to be. Most of my books were gone. So many years spent collecting them, all for naught in the grand scheme of things. I couldn’t carry the remainder of my library, but I did take a few favorites. Though I left my most favorite book for the children of this new, post-capitalist age to discover.

My departure from my childhood home was, all things considered, quite banal. The families had seen many a traveler come and go, though never one who lived in the house before them. They never did go into details about those people. I suppose there’s room in this world for some mysteries, like what made the sounds in the attic or who was sleeping in the extension of our house we built once my grandmother got too old to stay alone in her house in the Expanding Woods. (Though, I was curious. Am curious [I’m rubbish with tenses at times, I’m sorry.] Then again, there are many a thing I’ll see on my journey that you will never know. Who knows what I’ll find or who I’ll see. Maybe I’ll find out on my travels. Or maybe it’ll gnaw at me for the rest of my life because I just can’t live without complete and utter closure.) The families found me generally polite, though my minor insomnia and penchant for monologues did get on some people’s nerves. I helped out for the entire month I stayed with them, to the best of my abilities, and generally got on with them. There were some growing pains. But then, I am a writer, whereas they were a farming family. (The entire backyard was full of fruits and vegetables. The front was full of rabbits.) Differences were bound to come up. But we worked through it, and I think we were happier knowing one another… I hope.

As I walked away, I turned to give my home one last look. I’m old enough to know I will never see it again, so I might as well say goodbye. The dark blue paint had faded long ago and no one seemed to care to paint it again, though the red door still had its pop. Save for my childhood bedroom, the house looked to be completely intact. The vines that seemed to consume many of the homes in the area only ate the chimney side of the house, which is to say the side that wasn’t where my old bed was. The tree that I always thought was going to fall and crush me while I slept in my old bed had yet to fall. In fact, it seemed sturdier than ever. All things considered, it was a good house. I’m going to miss it.

I suppose now I should mention where it is that I was heading to. When the world ended and became what it is now, I was living in London. I had been married for some time, though my love was lost last year. We lived a good life, helping wherever we could and other such things. One day, I looked into a mirror and saw that I was getting older. I was still healthy, but it looked like my time was going to come soon. And if I was to die, then I wanted to die where I was born: Santa Monica, California. I could have taken a boat directly to the state, but I wanted to visit my childhood town one last time before the end. I spent a month simply living in the town as if I was a tourist, virgin to the place. Now I was to meet up with a troupe of Spiders heading to a “city” on the west coast, which they claimed was a short distance away from my birthplace.

When I reached Sheephill Road, I decided to turn away from my grandmother’s house and towards the Post Road. I was on a bit of a time crunch and were I to head towards her home, a tribe of deer might confront me. Besides, the Expanding Woods had long since consumed that area, as I learned the hard way. I played it safe. On my way to the Post Road, I saw a small house. The house was more rectangular than my childhood home, probably because it only had one floor. It had been consumed completely by vines and other natural things. The only thing that was visible through the vines was a compass. It had a star of eight points at the center of it that seemed to be made of copper. It was the first time I had ever noticed this house in all the years I had lived here (or at least the first time I recall). I never knew the people who lived in that house. Indeed, I barely knew the people who lived in the neighborhood. But then, my childhood was a time of paranoia and privacy. The world’s changed since then.

Take, for example, the bridge at the intersection between Sheephill and the Post Road. I rarely crossed it as a kid. In fact, I think the only time I went across it was when I was 18 and went for a half hour walk around the train station that took an hour to complete on account of getting lost. Even back then, the woods seemed to consume it. Now, that took on a more literal meaning as the ruins of the bridge (destroyed during the bad days) was healed by a series of vines, roots, and plants that inexplicably grew to connect the path. To heighten the supernatural nature of the new bridge, I could see a fucking Bigfoot conversing with one of his deer friends on the other side. Neither one seemed to notice me.

I ran before they could, until I reached, for lack of a better term, the farmer’s market that used to be a strip mall. The inaccuracy of that term refers to the fact that capitalism as an economic system has long since become incompatible with the modern world. What use are credit cards in a world with minimal electricity? What use is cash aside from kindling? There were no longer any landlords to pay back, nothing to spend the money on, and no one could account for it all. Everyone was, for all intensive purposes, equal. There were rumors that there was a “city” on the west cost that still used money in a capitalistic sense. Then again, there were also rumors of tribes in the desert that worship money as a God, so anything’s possible. Regardless, the area I decided to rest at was a place where one could get some fruits or vegetables to eat. People left them in baskets or, in the case of apples, the trees they grew from. I took a granny smith from a tree growing out of a shattered window of an abandoned CVS and continued on my way.

It was then that I reached a pair of obelisks. When I was a kid, they were simply advertisements for the various shops at the nearby shopping center, but again, the world has changed. I had heard a rumor that magicians were using them as a means of traveling to the lands of fairies. I think it was either called Barsoom or Ookbar, though I could never a straight word on what they were called. (Magicians are highly finicky when it comes to fictional terminology, especially when you call it “fictional.”) There were many places like that in America. In some ways, the country was a land of pathways much like England is a land of margins. When I saw an active sigil on the sidewalk besides one of the obelisks (in the shape of a pair of TIE fighters laid out like a broken ladder with one of them connected to a stylized sharp “S”), I decided to not step on them. I was lucky, as I saw a fellow step on one on the opposite side of the street and disappear in a puff of smoke. He must not have seen the cum stains.

I eventually arrived at the aforementioned shopping center to find a trio of Wolves heading towards the old Stop and Shop. (I think I went there a few times as a kid, at least back when they sold comics. It had a Playstation 2 to demonstrate whatever game they were trying to sell. More often than not, we shopped at the Shop Rite across the street. It was either because it was cheaper or nicer.) What the Wolves were doing there, I did not know. I could tell they were Wolves on account of them wearing the felt of said animal around their necks like a scarf. (An… odd look for summertime.) They appeared to be in their mid-teens, which was about average for Wolves. There were rumors about what those girls in particular would do if they caught you. I decided not to test those rumors (especially since they looked like they were sneaking into the Stop and Shop) and ran as fast as I could. I was so distracted by the screams from behind that I tripped over an abandoned lawn chair on the side of the road.

When I picked myself up, I noticed that I was by one of those indoor theme parks that seemed to be everywhere when I was young. It had closed down long before the bad days and I think I only went there once or twice for some other kid’s birthday, I honestly don’t remember. And yet, despite my unfamiliarity, there was an air of melancholy in seeing it abandoned like this. The dragon’s head mounted upon the brick exterior, now decayed to the point where it was missing its green paint and left eye. The child in the airplane that held the banner that advertised the park was missing. The windows shattered, though someone who cared swept up the glass long ago. Inside the building, I could see a small fire. Surrounding it was a tribe of children. They were conversing with an elder, though they didn’t seem to trust the man like a father. Their trust seemed to be more akin to one a child has towards Spiderman or Doctor Who. I couldn’t get a good look at him, but he had the grin of a stuffed dog.

On the corner of Fairfield and West Main a block or so away from the decaying dragon’s head, there was a broken electrical box. (I was surprised by the presence of those signs, though I suppose it’s easier to use maps if you have signs. I was shocked when I discovered, against all odds and sensible explanations, maps survived into the modern world. But then, we are a race of detectives. All of us are in need of clues…) It was painted over, as all the boxes of its kind were in my hometown. I was always fascinated by what was in them as a kid (especially the one that was painted to look like a box of crayons), but even more so by the designs used to obfuscate the banality of their contents for the benefit of dumb kids. There was another that had the designs of Charles Atlas on them and another that had superheroes on them. The broken one seemed to have once had an alien invasion by a race of little green men. There was a cow or two in the tractor beam and the city seemed to be burning from a heat ray. Evidentially, the alien cults of the bad days didn’t take kindly to people “mocking” their beliefs.

On the other side of the road, I could see a small forest growing within the remains of a Taco Bell and a few nearby small apartments. The ruins were minor in the grand scheme of things, simply decommissioned buildings from before the bad days that had been ignored when those days had begun. The Taco Bell had its roof and one of the walls torn asunder shortly before the trees began to grow within them. The maple tree growing out of the next-door apartment was but a sapling compared to other trees I’ve seen since the bad days. And yet, it was still able to shatter out of the roof of the building like a hand rising out of the sea. There were still people living in there, eating off of and sitting on the tree as if it was another piece of furniture. The other trees around it grew in a similar manner.

Above the electronic box and past the trees, I could see one of the last remaining high rises. The rest were either burnt down during the bad days or overgrown by various bits of vegetation to make living there untenable. But there it was, still standing. It was a tube in shape with each floor stacked together like a pile of Oreos—and not the good kind either, the kind that had yellow cookies and yellow filling (Birthday Surprise, I think it was called). Even when it was new, the high rise looked old. I never knew anyone who lived in that specific building (though I remember picking up my cousin at one of them to see a movie, though I forget what we saw). But it was nonetheless a sign I was nearing Stamford and, subsequently, my destination.

My path was blocked by a long abandoned car, which had long since been stripped of parts. It was silver in color and looked as if it just left the lot, save for its missing wheels and broken windows. There was a body in there, a skeleton decayed and left behind from the bad days. The skull was cracked, barely recognizable as human. There’s a small hole at the back of it. I do not know why the body remained there rather than getting buried or removed. Some of my childhood friends (who returned home when the bad days started to care for their parents) said that it’s because the man was a pedophile. Others claimed attempts at removing the body cause people to get sick. One guy said that this is how the man wanted to be preserved. To be honest, I don’t care much for the actual reason behind the corpse still being there. I found it to be a highly evocative image, but one with a probably banal explanation.

Whatever the reason, there was a sadness to the skeleton. The things this man had done in his life seemed meaningless in the face of the sadness. There was no sickness when I grabbed the body from out of the car, no universal breakage as I moved to the river. At most, a flock of Canadian Geese walked past. And while I had a justified nervousness towards those birds, they did not move to attack. Only one looked in my direction, but that was just for a brief moment as it turned its head away from a crumb on the ground. Maybe the body would be destroyed in the rapids. Maybe it would reach the ocean (or some lake or wherever the river ended) intact. Or maybe someone would take the body back to where it was as punishment for the crimes the man committed. I do not know.

I sat on a wooden bench a few feet away from the river. I could see a man and a woman walking their dog. The man was wearing a black sweater (again, odd for summer) and a tan fedora. The woman wore long blue camouflage pants, a buttoned up denim jacket, and sunglasses. Both had more style than I (I was just wearing a pair of black gym shorts, a collapsing satchel bag I’ve had for a few years, and a faded t-shirt of a once popular Spider themed superhero). The pair seemed to love each other, but one could never know I suppose. And or first time in my entire life, the dog didn’t bark at me like I was plotting on eating them alive.

The clear blue sky and the cool air had a soothing affect on me. I would have fallen asleep then and there, were the bench lacking in its metal arm rests. Instead, I sat there thinking to myself about the life that I had led. It was a good one, all things considered. I tried to be a good man and succeeded. There was a bit of doubt, as there always would be. No one can ever be sure if they’re good or not. That’s for other people to judge. But still I sat there, stroking my short white beard and adjusting my glasses, thinking of what I had done. I loved, I lost, and I didn’t know that much. And yet, I felt as if I led a pretty good life.

Eventually, I got up and continued my journey. Fortunately, the artificial path by the river that I found myself on would lead directly to the street where I was to meet with the Spiders. I could tell because the path by the river ended right at UCONN Stamford, which was only a block or two away from the where I was heading. The campus was relatively intact; especially considering the T UMP TO E was across the street. There was many a building that had letters stolen from it. I heard rumors that someone made the obvious joke out of North Mianus School, but that was along the path of my Grandmother’s house, so I didn’t check. (Growing up, I would typically take those roads to get to my destination as opposed to the one I took.) And yet, T UMP TO E seemed to be even more destroyed than all the rest. I could understand why, and indeed felt the same disgust simply looking at it as I assumed the people who attacked it did. The only thing that surprised me was the fact that it was still standing. Bar a few broken windows and its historical implications, people could theoretically live there. But then, I guess the proper tools for its destruction no longer exist. All that’s left is for nature to consume it as it has so many buildings. There were a few vines growing around it, certainly, but I wouldn’t call it consumed quite yet. Rather, it was held in the way I was holding an apple at that moment: about to chomp down on its green skin.

More interestingly was what was happening at the building a block from where I was to meet the Spiders. Shaped like a wave, I could see within its turquoise windows a small group of people having a gunfight. Naturally, I went inside to investigate. From what I could gather, there were two men fighting against twenty others. It seemed to be a sort of buddy cop scenario wherein one was the grizzled veteran broken by the system and its inability to stop the real criminals while the other was the hotshot rookie who didn’t play by the rules. Said rule breaking appeared to have gotten the rookie shot in the arm. The twenty were descending in on the pair, armed to the teeth and prepared to kill the duo. With no other choice, the older officer was forced to open fire without proper warning.

“BANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANGBANG,” went the officer as he rapidly tapped his thumbs to his index fingers. Each shot caused some amount of damage to the attackers. Some were even killed. One such body landed right in front of me.

“Oh, hey Sean,” the corpse said to me, more tired than anything else. “We’re just finishing up here, would you mind waiting at the theatre? Breaks emersion, you know.” Not one to disagree with a dead person I exited the building stage left and sauntered towards the meeting place.

When I was a kid, this used to be a movie theater. The Avalon, I think it was called. Some of the letters that would light up its yellow sign had been stolen such that only the “A,” “V,” and “N” were left. I started going to the theater when I was in middle school. I remember inexplicably seeing Day of the Dead in 35mm as part of a surprise double feature with my dad. The Master immensely bored my parents and I, despite my brother’s claims of the film’s greatness. I saw so many things on those two screens that impacted who I was and how I think, that I consider it my favorite movie theater. I sat in the slightly carpeted, slightly grassy, mostly used lobby and waited for the Spiders to conclude their play. There were other people there, some I recognized and some I didn’t. One such person was a lean man. There was a gauntness to him even though he wasn’t all that thin. He was balding, though he tried to distract from this by growing a long beard. He was about a year older than me and he looked almost as tired as I felt. The man had recently lost one of his arms and someone I hoped was a Doctor was patching him up. His clothing was ripped and the holes had twigs and vines sticking out of it.

I approached the man and said with a slightly smug, but mostly melancholic, smile, “Hey Patrick. How are things?” He looked at me with tears on his cheeks. With the Doctor’s permission, I hugged him. We left at around twilight, never again to see that theater again.

[I left this at the movie theatre as payment for traveling with the troupe. I do not know the story of how it went from one coast to another, though I do know it ended up in the hands of a group of good people who were kinder than I’d ever deserve. I miss you.]

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The Working Class

If there is anything that defines the final days of Capitalism, it’s the mutually agreed upon disdain towards the oldest profession. Even those whose sympathies lie with prostitutes often have an air of “They shouldn’t sell their bodies for money someone else only to die tragically due to their chosen lifestyle” to their comments. There are numerous stories, both within and without the City, of prostitutes being treated as if they’re less than cattle. Some are tragic stories of rape, murder, and other banal cruelties. Others feature far more interesting cruelties like being subjected to having one’s hands flayed finger by finger and then being forced to eat the skin. There are far too few stories of happiness and joy when it comes to the City’s relationship with prostitutes. What follows is one of them…

Francis lived in an apartment with his father Victor and his sisters, Lucy and Donna. It wasn’t a nice apartment, probably one of the less valued in an area of terribly valued apartments. Not even the Fuzon Corporation used it for their employees. (It wasn’t even their first choice for City living. The family was kicked out of their previous homes over their unwillingness to sleep with their landlords as a small part of their rent.) There were numerous reports that the building was haunted by some malevolent force that wished nothing but pain and misery for those who lived in it. An absurd notion when considering most things, but the history of this one raises some suspicion. 

In the years before the building was even conceived of, the land it would be built upon was said to be the sight of numerous cases of the supernatural. When it was a parking lot, a couple was reported being abducted by aliens bent on discovering the fourth dimensional secrets of water. When it was a strip mall, there were 17 counts of gang violence, each carrying a body count well into the double digits (the smallest of which being 43) and all ending with the last victim writing the words “I love you” out of their own blood and guts. During one of the construction jobs, seven construction workers and three foremen found themselves defenestrated at various points. Even back when it was a mere field, several anthropologists theorized that numerous encounters between the Native Americans and various spirits occurred within that area.

But perhaps the most pertinent and bizarre case would be that of the apartment building itself. To start, it was not intended on being an apartment building. Rather, it was meant to be a beacon of the future. A fully automated complex built to house ideas and new technologies that would recontextualize the entirety of the 21^stcentury. Each room would have had enough space to house an entire family and the planned food center could have fed the City and then some. It has been theorized that were the building and Brilliant Resourceful Intelligent Artificial Network, the artificial intelligence designed to run every system within the monument to technological futurism, ever completed to its initial design, then the very concept of cities might very well have survived well beyond the 22^nd Century.

Sadly, this was not meant to be.  The construction on the project was delayed by several deaths caused by the radiation of the AI’s main power source, numerous protests over the rights of artificial intelligences led by three separate snake cults (who, in a bit of mystical coincidence, all worshiped the same God), and said AI malfunctioning during simulations, projecting a robot apocalypse in four of them, among other complications with lesser death tolls. (There were also negligible issues with the AI such as its inability to make a good cup of tea or recognize the faces of people of color.) The budget for the project bankrupted several arms of the corporation, such that official sources claimed the City had to pay off the debt it incurred by having a single percent stake in the project 10 years after it was abandoned.

There were several attempts at stopping construction all together, most notably by the corporation’s board of directors two years into the project. The proposed budget was almost laughable in how absurdly much it cost, but the actual cost well exceeded that two weeks prior to the meeting. It was easy to see this was going to end up destroying the company should the project go any further. A vote was cast amongst the top shareholders of the corporation. Unfortunately, Jonathan O’Malley was the majority shareholder and he saw the tower as a personal project of his and was able to bully enough of the shareholders into submitting to his singular vision.

It wasn’t until 12 years into production that O’Malley was finally bought out by the Fuzon Corporation and construction could mercifully end. Unfortunately, an earthquake struck at that very moment, causing the building to collapse. That isn’t to say that it was destroyed, but rather it had been tilted into a perfect 75-degree angle with the skyline of the City. Not only did this make continued construction impossible and killed countless lives, but it also had the unfortunate side effect of making deconstructing the ruin ill advised as it wouldn’t be cost effective to do so. And to top it all off, it was an eyesore on the City’s brutalist architecture, more so than even the head quarters of the Fuzon Corporation (though, saying that would be akin to saying that a pimple is an eyesore on a corpse).

With no other alternatives, the Fuzon Corporation opted to let the building fester within the City, a decision that has been argued quite poorly as being the direct cause of the City’s demise. As it stands, numerous clandestine terrorist organizations, a few rogue hackers, and one or two mimes conducted illegal operations in what became an apartment complex for those too unwilling to work directly for the corporation. But most recently, an entire floor of the tower has been used as a brothel for various clients of ill repute colloquially referred to as the Tilted Tower. Which brings us back to Francis and his family.

They had been living at the apartment for well over a year, working for their room and board through various odd jobs from cleaning a shit hole with their mouth to polishing a rod until it ejaculated to simply fucking the landlord while speaking in a posh accent as opposed to paying the rent. These were typical customers and nowhere near the strangest people the family encountered in their time at the apartment (Donna still has nightmares about the man with the glass eye). But it was on that day that Francis would encounter one of the strangest people he would have a sexual relationship with.

It started on a typical Sunday afternoon. Lucy was out of the house with a freebee, as per usual. Donna was caring for Victor while the machine that was his lungs did its duty. She had a look on her face, Francis noticed, the same look she always had when she was around Victor. It was the look of a deer being kept alive after being mauled by a mountain lion. He had always wanted to ask her why she made that look (and, for that matter, why her hair was grey), but whenever he considered doing so, Francis would always decide to be a coward instead. But Francis wasn’t in the apartment at that moment, but instead on the streets of the City looking for a gig.

Most of the time, finding a gig isn’t too difficult to find. By and large, customers came to Francis for a “good time.” But that night, the streets were inexplicably empty. It wasn’t like there was a riot going on in the area or anything (though there was one brewing on the other side of the City, waiting to burst like a bottle of soda on a bumpy road). Nor was there the smell of a raid in the air. Francis knew damn well that the police are impossibly unsubtle about their raids and “being too quiet” is not the kind of unsubtly the police tend to go for. Instead, the streets seemed almost abandoned. There were a few vagrants here and there: a sleeping couple protecting a cat like it was their child, a mad man muttering about the end of the City for the third time this hour, and countless other stories too sad for Francis to contemplate.

But what caught his eye was a lone man standing on the corner of the street. He wasn’t the kind of man to typically court these dark, abandoned streets. He was far too well fed for the City. He looked to have been Hansel to someone’s wicked witch, the scars on his arms told Francis as much. The man’s hair was surprisingly grey for someone who had just become 20-something. His clothes were too finely washed. They weren’t nice clothes like a collard shirt of pants that require a belt to wear. They were the clothes of a field worker, Francis thought, though he didn’t look like one of their kind. The man’s dark skin was probably from being out in the sun for too long, he told himself. On a whim, Francis approached the man.

“So what’s a guy like you doing in a city like this,” Francis asked. There was an aborted answer before the man spoke.

“Nostalgia. I grew up here, you know?” The way the man spoke was as if he was trying to remember how to speak and was only inexplicably doing well at it. Maybe once he was an expert at speaking, but as the years grew on, he had less and less use for the spoken form. Indeed, any form of its kind was for a long time alien to this man.

“Really,” inquired Francis, “When was this?”

“Oh. Some time ago, I suppose. The memory’s a bit… foggy, especially in my old age.”

“You don’t look that old, if anything you look a year younger than me.”

“And how old are you? 100?”

“27.”

The man let out a small, sad, single syllable laugh. “Looks can be deceiving, old man.”

“Yeah… so, I was wondering-“

“How much?”

“E-excuse me?”

“You were about to ask me if I’d like to pay you for continuing to be in your presence while I decide what we do during that time. Is that not how the oldest profession works?”

“…Yes?”

“Well then,” said the man while he fished out a wad of cash larger than Francis could ever comprehend, “How much?”

“Ah-Ah-About that much!” The man looked down at the money in his hand and considered only briefly.

“Heh, fair enough I suppose.” There was a sense of nostalgic sadness in the way the man said those words. Not in the typical way people express such sadness. It was as if, in that singular moment, the universe shared that sadness with the man and forced everyone else’s hearts to break, if only for a second. The man led Francis a few blocks away from where they were to a small motel. It was located almost directly on the edge of the City. The parts that weren’t within City limits had been consumed by the various vegetation that dominated the outside world. It was as if there was an invisible dome protecting the City from Nature itself. The room they ended up in was itself nearly symmetrically within and without the City, such that the vines and weeds seemed to recoil at the exact midpoint of the room. This had the effect of stimulating Francis in a way that he hadn’t felt since he was a young boy. A pity that the sex itself wasn’t much to write home about; it was pretty run of the mill anal, with Francis getting it in the rear over and over again like he was land being dug into by a mechanical drill. There was no foreplay, and certainly no conversation afterwards. When the sex was done, the man left without a word. Francis was given all the money he asked for and then some. For once in his life, Francis knew what it was like to have two dollars and ten cents on his person. He would never again know such wealth.

But there was one moment of oddness, one moment where the man seemed to acknowledge Francis as an actual person as opposed to the “fuck-hole” his other clients treat him as. It was during that dull, ordinary, not even all that great sex that Francis noticed something about the man. The man was talking. Many a man talked during sex, usually about how they’re better than their wives or their husbands or whoever was making their lives miserable. Sometimes, they would talk about things thematically related to the fetishes they were about to experience. But this was different. The man was talking to Francis himself. He was telling him a story (his own, Francis believed). He didn’t remember much of the story, a few fragments, maybe one or two lines. What he did remember was the feeling of the story. At first, it felt like a miserable story; it brought the mood down so much that it reminded Francis of those bleak days when Donna disappeared for two weeks with Victor, only to return with grey hair and a dead look in her eyes. Francis nearly pleaded the man to stop talking, that it was turning him off and not because it was making him feel bad. But suddenly, the tone shifted into something completely different. A minor moment in the telling of the story recontextualized the whole thing into a tale of triumph. It wasn’t a story of how life brings nothing but pain and misery and there is no way out, but rather one of overcoming impossible odds to gain one’s freedom while still acknowledging that freedom has a price.

When the sex was done and the man long gone, Francis sat on the bed covered in weeds and thought about his future. What was he going to do with all this money? Would anyone let him spend it? Would he be arrested for carrying so much? And what about the story the man told him? He realized in that moment that he didn’t remember a single moment, a single line of the story, a single thing about the story, bar the feeling it made within him. That wasn’t quite true. He did remember one line, the first line. It didn’t mean anything to him and it wasn’t even all that memorable, and yet it stuck with him. Francis didn’t know why “It returned to the City on a Tuesday” stuck with him, and he suspected he never would.

Francis returned to the tilted tower they called an apartment complex and did another couple more gigs before turning in for the night.

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