During a moment of distraction - while turning a corner, perhaps, or rubbing his eyes to assuage the worry and weariness - the reality around Gabriel fades unnoticed and a different reality asserts itself.
At first it's subtle, hardly even perceptible, but soon it becomes apparent that he is walking through empty streets in an empty city. Here and there a high, arched stone doorway into a shaded courtyard subtly proclaims strangeness. The buildings get lower; glass and steel give way to brick, which gives way in turn to stone, and that occasionally to wood.
Something isn't right here.
Alternately, perhaps, it is righter than it should be.
Okay, he's not quite sheltered enough not to realise that this is bizarre.
It's far too quiet. That, rather than the buildings themselves, is what he first notices: growing up in New York has accustomed him to a constant background hum of traffic, of voices, of far-off music and close-by footsteps and, in fact, everything that is so conspicuously absent here.
He looks behind him, but it's the same.
But it can't possibly have...? It can't be real...?
His footsteps come to a faltering halt. Then the nearest building finds itself under an inspection that's almost microscope-like in its intensity.
Comments 51
At first it's subtle, hardly even perceptible, but soon it becomes apparent that he is walking through empty streets in an empty city. Here and there a high, arched stone doorway into a shaded courtyard subtly proclaims strangeness. The buildings get lower; glass and steel give way to brick, which gives way in turn to stone, and that occasionally to wood.
Something isn't right here.
Alternately, perhaps, it is righter than it should be.
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It's far too quiet. That, rather than the buildings themselves, is what he first notices: growing up in New York has accustomed him to a constant background hum of traffic, of voices, of far-off music and close-by footsteps and, in fact, everything that is so conspicuously absent here.
He looks behind him, but it's the same.
But it can't possibly have...? It can't be real...?
His footsteps come to a faltering halt. Then the nearest building finds itself under an inspection that's almost microscope-like in its intensity.
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One of the windowsills is painted defiantly purple, and there is a stuffed parrot perched on the chimney.
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And that's a good thing. It's new, it's unusual, it's out of the ordinary. It's everything Queens isn't, in that respect.
A smile curls up one side of his face and he goes on, faster, through the silent city. Does it get stranger the further in he goes?
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