Still not dead...
Night comes quickly here, much more so than the marshy suburbs I came from. Dark climbs and races from the Eastern waters to snuff out the last daylight on the looming industry in the West. The cold follows and pours itself over every trace of heat the old brick, asphalt and cobblestones hold until the world exhales a damp amalgam of musty age. Night gnaws at uncovered flesh; reaching out to smother the small pocket of warmth passing through. It swallows the incandescent streetlight amber, leaving black pits in any corners or cracks. Nighttime pushes the dwellers of brick and mortar indoors, sweeping them away with its unwelcoming touch. By nightfall, the ones left are drunks, denizens, and those with little compass to guide them.
Perhaps I am all three.
I take to the night, likely out of spite for the day. Night comes easy to me; loathing and paranoia live and grow in the dark. As the scrabbling, clawing masses recede the night people take their place, loping and uncurious, on the streets. Its a silent changing of guard performed in ritual by two parties all too unwilling to mingle with each other out their element. Night-walkers stumble from the morning light and the frantic occupants of the day run from the night.
Like many in this city, I am not native to it. I am from the oceans and planned communities and family values of the not-quite-South: Florida. Unsurprisingly, it has few opportunities for the nocturnal. It’s life is lived in the inevitable day and what employment remains is very often selling very cheap chemicals at high prices to very untrustworthy people. I often suppose I could follow my upbringing back to the families in banal suburbia, but that lifestyle does not willingly accommodate one more familiar with the Night. Or, to complicate matters somewhat, there’s the issue of my number of outstanding felonies.
And my gun.
Perhaps I am all three.
I take to the night, likely out of spite for the day. Night comes easy to me; loathing and paranoia live and grow in the dark. As the scrabbling, clawing masses recede the night people take their place, loping and uncurious, on the streets. Its a silent changing of guard performed in ritual by two parties all too unwilling to mingle with each other out their element. Night-walkers stumble from the morning light and the frantic occupants of the day run from the night.
Like many in this city, I am not native to it. I am from the oceans and planned communities and family values of the not-quite-South: Florida. Unsurprisingly, it has few opportunities for the nocturnal. It’s life is lived in the inevitable day and what employment remains is very often selling very cheap chemicals at high prices to very untrustworthy people. I often suppose I could follow my upbringing back to the families in banal suburbia, but that lifestyle does not willingly accommodate one more familiar with the Night. Or, to complicate matters somewhat, there’s the issue of my number of outstanding felonies.
And my gun.