The girl from the mire

5

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The slithering train passes along the crook crane flat roofs of crumbling, weather discolour brick buildings. Some erections are severely damaged at the upper walls and appear as poorly constructed crenellations. It's a long drop to the pavement from atop the perceived embattlements. And there're only so many roofs to run and jump upon as the train restricts, so she must hurry if this's where she wants to get off.

The mire girl wraps her poncho around her waist and ties it under her almost non-existent belly and backs up until she places a hand on the opposite side of the car wall anticipating the right time to run. Sweat and hair crust mingle her brow. The timing hits and she stomps her bare feet into the patter of skin and metal and dives out of the boxcar mouth as if the tesseract were spitting away a piece of gum.

She lands upon the unstable roof, scraping her palms raw and then flips into a somersault, standing straight atop the ruin with her hands on her hips, feeling triumphant and truly alive for the first time since waking up in the mire. The wounds on her hands heal quickly. The grin on her face is of authentic pulsing adrenaline.

"What a goddamn rush!"

She sprints to the opposite edge of the building and plants her feculent bare feet on the crumbling crenellation and flings herself into the air, flying above the fissure between buildings like running across an invisible arced drawbridge aloft a yawning moat. The blowing force of the air is a tiny tempest upon her cheeks and arms and feet and her smile is dangerous and alluring and gasping in relief. Her hair is coated with so much dry blood that it remains a sanguine statue upon her head like a myth of bedlam in mid air.

She lands upon the next crumbling embattlement, head first into a somersault and when she stands, her momentum allows her to do a front flip and land in a crouching position with her knees bent and one hand upon the cold cripple tar to balance herself.

She gets up, proud and satisfied and walks to the edge of the building, leaping up the ancient broken ledge without a care for something as pathetic as gravity.

People exist beneath her, walking below with a pre-morning purpose. The working class stand around outside yawning with arms stretching in the air and coffee breath mouths open wide like wild primates civilized by an urban jungle. There're wife beaters and exposed womanly breasts with solid pink and brown areola and nipples lingering in the darkness of windows she can witness as clear as headlamps. There's much urination and defecation on the breeze and a lingering bodily humour within her curious ears and city oder nose. Bicycles become unchained with the clicking sounds of combination locks. People are preparing for work, preparing to continue rebuilding a city that is dying.

She can smell coffee and fresh bread and bacon and eggs. All of it also smells like the insides of mouths breathing temperature and traveling through language.

Then she witnesses the purple beginning of the dawn creep upon the horizon. It's a majestic event pouring itself across the bright black sepulchre desert of cement topography.

A number of brittle bricks and chunks of mortar crumble beneath her feet and smash into powder upon the street below. This time she's aware of her body going stiff and for a brief moment, the thrill of falling. The thrill of dying while flying.

                                            ****

She wakes in darkness, feeling a metallic pearlescent chill upon her nudity. She touches her goosebump thighs and smooth hips and curve belly and rib breast chest. Dry skin and muscle and bone. She can't touch her feet because she can't lift her head very far without banging her skull into a ceiling that thuds like ductwork. The space that she's sardined into is like a wobbly smooth coffin on her flesh. She's stuck in and upon metal like sleeping a nude night on a pleather couch. The mire girl peels herself off its surface as best she can with nowhere to move.