the alive

Terra

THE UNDERGROUND CITY

Damp. Musty like the innards of ancient Inca pyramids, where every stone keeps a secret about life and death under the weight of time's labyrinth. Visibility sighs through yellow green haze and blears of narrow band amber torch street lights. Cobblestone and brick sidewalks lay flat to the periphery of the street until ninety degree corners turn upward. Ominous front talus window-glass apertures reach toward a ceiling of dolomite. An earthen cosmos of anhydrous carbonate and magnesium formed by Milankovitch cycles. Glitter like the remnants of myths.

This world was once Veridiction's cistern. The olden aqueduct hollows, now corridor walkways and tunnels, snake like verbs in and out of the cavern. Connect the apartments and the Crater to the underground city. Some of the corridors exist as dead end tombs. Crumble and crumple. Vestiges of the war. Many souls lost in the length and depth of bomb blast collapses. From such weapons, the Leonard's poured experimental fossilizing liquids which many Ghost's drowned under before the cave-in. Their broken bones are still buried beneath and protrude for the chiseles and brushes of the archaeological. Emaciate. Aged unnaturally. Like bearing witness to hundreds of false millennia. Dead only a decade.

The remains of those who mattered are honoured by each passerby. Skulls left for such memorial like all the curved earth's a memorial to a billion graves. Earth's mausoleum of an a priori promise upon the cemeteries that have yet to be spaded. Have yet to sink and drown. Cursed by a blessing. Like a plague dead body tied to the helm of a stranger ship. No port. No course. No one left alive. But from a distance everything seems fine. The failure of certainty must reckon with the reality of epistemology.

Beyond the roofs at the steeple point of the underground sky is the cavernous rib cage, like a dead whale's concrete osseous arches. Pitch in place, the curve rock face dome spine. Megalodonic. A true feat of architecture. Simulacra bones of a monster.

The olden part of the city is an aesthetically fleshless sternum that swallows Terra by the circumstance and contingency of her existence. Orders the evening and shows the dusk its place. Her own will is a shadow of such movement within the enormous belly city of Ghosts.

Witnesses the sound of laughter in the distance. Not sure if such pied piper calling comes from where she's heading. Someone's voice talks a high vocality. Inebriation. Won't stop. Grates Terra's mind like a skipping turntable. Imagines an electronic drum beat's tinny high hat and puffy kick drum. Popcorn snare. Thudding house bass thumps with each step. Her annoyance toward the voice dissipates. The high pitch voice seems to fragment and give Terra a wondering, yet unsettling feeling. As the un-language disappears, its sound seems to look directly at Terra, as if it were only existing within a section of her mind. Was it there? Was it ever?

She stops and listens. Echoes fade like dizzy spinning spinal twirls. Continues walking. Remembers her former subjugation. Subconscious shackles. Her older sister. The sacrifice.

'Ah, Judith. I owe you a debt that I'll never be able to pay. Not now, not ever. Why did it have to be this way? I wish I'd had time to get to know you more. My brave sister.'

Somber for a moment. Recollects Judith holding her own heart up for Terra to eat; dying so Terra might live. Blinks a slight tear and lets the troubling thought fall away. Keeps moving toward her destination. Good and Evil and Beyond. Promises of drinks and whatever else Glare wishes. Terra likes Glare. Likes that they could probably climb mountains together. Terra isn't her teacher yet. Not yet. Maybe that won't matter. Maybe it will. Likely. For Terra, when it comes to the memory of Judith and the anticipation of Glare, it's like the sun only rises to set. Like the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead.

What exists outside her thoughts intrudes into them. The city becomes more and more alive. Passes a club with protruding strobe light balconies above a small line of barely clothed Ghosts who wait to enter through black crimson guarded doors. Their faces are paintings of ghastly skeletons. Osteal faces glow with flashing grimaces. Words like fangs and enormous voids like vignettes around eyeballs. One creakily laughing woman wears large white bug eye sunglasses that fill most of her Halloween face. Stops laughing when she notices Terra. Neon green and grape and cigarettes. Cliques and bodies touch and press bitten lips upon napes of necks close to the entrance. Slide in provocation. Intension. Intensity. The woman smiles toward Terra. Nods. Pinches one of her nipples through a black apron dress. Blows a kiss toward Terra.