Light Like Life

[pre] Light Like Life

Light, spent all its worth for the day, lost to a maniacal moon, hell bent on spreading long skeleton-like shadows across the steps of each front porch.

But my city lies dreaming.

Creeps, crooks and scoundrels bring destruction a sidewalk away from blissfully sleeping families. They do it not for the money, nor for the high. They do it because, in this city, my city, it’s the easiest trade to learn. Guns, drugs and a low profile, the three things people like that understand and relate to. They think they go unnoticed, and to an extent, they do. But they don’t get passed me, these eyes, these broken dilated pupils strain through each night watching them continue their desecration of what I built.

This was a quiet suburban town when I first moved here. Dreams, ideas and a briefcase full of good intentions. But that was some 40 years ago now. Don’t get me wrong, there was a time I had gotten everything right, my dreams stood as they do today, only they were the benchmarks of change, these buildings excited and drew people in. I changed everything here. Maybe I changed a little too much.

I looked down at my blunt battered hands. My pulse more visible than usual, I’d come to take interest in the way the flow of my blood connected with the thoughts that flowed through my head. It gave me one more thing to ponder. As if I needed another.

My eyes once again adjusted to the scenery from my penthouse balcony, and allowed me to gaze upon my city the way Dr. Frankenstein would have as he watched his monster defy him and the work he had done.

The sun once streamed through the main street creating long distinct shadows on the sidewalk chasing in vain the true version of the form they are seen in.

It’s amazing what 4 decades, $50 billion and this overzealous mayor can do to a city.

I drew this city into the age of darkness, with promises and ideas built 150 stories into the sky. Scrapers and towers made us nocturnal, made us fear, made us afraid of the streets we once embraced.

Year after year I am forced to re-evaluate my intentions for running this disgusting cesspool of filth that sickens me to the very pit of my being. But every year I come to the same conclusion, every year the families vote because they know not of what goes on and the criminals vote because they know I cannot beat them. So I don’t stand down, but I don’t take up arms.

In my earlier years I had recurring nightmares of a world very distant to that of which I belonged. Where a crime was to love and not let go, where buildings were better abandoned than restored, where the air was so thick and chalky that it left a foul taste on the tongues of all that inhaled it. Everything was dull and brown as if it was printed in sepia tones, every fire could not be put out, every window remained broken and every war could not be stopped.

Sometimes I dreamed I was inside a plastic bubble as it melted, suffocating me with every forced breath of its toxic air. I would try and scream but all I would hear was the muffled laughter of an auditorium full of people, watching as my lungs scorched with the pain of a thousand lost loves vanished in an instant.

These images stained my head with worry. Every night I would offer my soul for half hour increments to put off the inevitable. I prayed to my friends to not let me sleep. A promise they couldn’t keep, as night after night I was met with the usual sepia world until one day. I woke up in it.

It wasn’t a gradual thing; at least I don’t think it was. The nights around then just blur together in my mind. For all I know, I fell asleep one night, I dreamt, and I woke up like this. The longer time drifted away from that morning I’ve wondered whether or not I actually did wake up. Wondering If I’m just paralysed here in an imaginary nightmare like some painful coma, if someone is sitting by my hospital bed whispering sadistic tales of murder and bloodshed, of a city gone mad, with no means of salvation.

I shuffled my way back into the apartment and sat down at my desk. The padded leather frame I moulded in to had been my counterpart through everything. That one chair had watched me silently as I made every decision that had influenced the rise and plummet of this city.

I’d spent hours spinning a pen around my with my index and middle fingers debating. Its strange how I needed hours upon hours to change a parking violation code or to add a pedestrian crossing here or there, but for a decision of such catastrophic consequences, tonight, my mind was already made up.

I opened the bottom draw and retrieved a small stack of papers I’d been putting off for a while now. Nothing different to the usual legal prattle I had to go through each and every day. Just lately I hadn’t felt like anything I approve, anything I change can have a positive impact on the world I created outside my window. After all, this is how it all began. I sat down at this very desk, took out a pen, and approved everything. I wanted things to change. I wanted everything to change. Now I’d give anything to have that chance again.

So just like all those other times, I took out my pen, and I signed, I signed not in hope of any improvement. Just so I could feel as if I’d never given up trying. To me, my name meant nothing but a title, but to this city, it meant approval, it meant evolution. I can’t remember the last time I signed my name without feeling the pressure of if I didn’t cross that last‘t’.

I finished up and took a last glance out the large glass windows surrounding me, strolled out of my office, and retreated to the lobby.

I stepped foot onto the shabby concrete sidewalk of my urban, modern day ghost town as my memory clicked through old images of each corner of each street like a slide show. I often enjoyed these long walks home, but this night I felt uneasy the whole trip, I felt as if the towns’ eyes traced my every footstep with dreaded insecurities.

My head knew they were sleeping but the beating of my heart told me everyone knew. I was a bullet away from infamy, although that never occurred to me at the time.

I counted each of the 4021 steps it took to reach my front gate despite the constant wandering of my mind. It was something I had always wanted to know, it was a night of last chances.

When I arrived in my library everything was in place as I had left it. It resembled an empty disaster film set waiting for the call of ‘action’.

My beautiful mahogany bookshelf had recently toppled spilling Hemingway and Melville across the magnificent marble floor.

I turned away from the scene that lay before me and entered the kitchen. Pots and pans stacked the sink almost high enough to reach the distant ceiling. I had stopped doing them when I discovered the news. I was decaying, rotting slowly from the inside, ravished by age and a trace of lung cancer. Poisoned by the same thing that destroyed my city. Alcohol and cigarettes, both of which I am responsible for bringing to this town, so I guess, I indirectly brought this onto myself.

I watched my skin sag, felt my head drown in thoughts of extinguishing itself, all this time whilst my city, my one true possession, began to whither away to nothing.

Maybe my city is getting its revenge on me? Maybe this is its way of declaring independence? Maybe it was never my city at all? Maybe I’m just a fool, a ship too proud to ever sink.

Bending down to pull open the stove I let out a deep heart aching cough that echoed through the 32 rooms of this house. I placed my head into the oven and slowly turned the gas knob on. The smell hit me instantly so I stepped back watching as the light shining from the lamp above me bent and twisted through the heavy gas as it lifted itself from the stove and floated through my house.

I allowed the stove door to remain open and quietly stepped into the library checking that all the windows seen on the way between the two rooms were closed so that no air could escape. I quietly retreated to my favourite chair, comforted by the faint squeak it let out as I reclined back to my favourite position. I leaned over the edge of the chair and picked up my new first edition copy of “A Farewell to Arms”.

Hemingway made me feel safe in my own skin, no man quite brought problems onto himself like Hemingway, and he produced some special things. I always thought I could do the same despite everything I put myself and these people through.

How fitting we should meet a similair fate.

By now I could feel the gas slipping in and out of my lungs, leaving more and more carbon monoxide in the pits of my stomach each time. I shook last thoughts out of my head and returned to my book.

It took a while for my eyelids to begin to droop, but it was soon over. My head fell back onto the cushion I had strategically placed, and I drifted off to sleep.

And you know what?

The nightmares were over.[/pre]