Faust

The smallest church

I lay upon the asphalt roads gilded by the afternoon sunshine. The uneven white lines of parking space by the pavement inbound the radiant like blocks of concentrated grounds by the cemetery.

This is Parral. North border of the lanes, of Faust, where nothing happens. Inappropriate city design led to the outskirts west of the luxurious valley of Monclea just a shallow slope away turned into a small village. Initially, after the first wave of immigrant workers failed to buy a place to sleep by the shore or the central train station and the housing plans were nowhere in sight at the time.

Where used to be a three football fields in size, of barren sand and broken rocks, transformed into horizontally placed, five blocks of bungalow thanks to sloppy ownership restrictions.

From the older generations and their father's occasional reminiscences over dogmatic systems, they remembered it was not until the idea of Monclea came to be do they had to relocate again. Since the construction of an entire bloody mountain slope would sure as hell raise the pricing up north, the entire north. Which includes Parral.

After dozens of recorded protests that ended in rubbishes and botched helmets all over the road, the residents gave up in hope of the public housing project down south of Nochnaya ain't a pile of horse shit.
        In truth it wasn't, even though construction took a couple of months longer than promised but the congress delivered and the residents are more than thrilled to relocate to a place much closer to downtown and the docks where most of them will work in building the columns and rows of skyscrapers bridging towards the sun.

And so the narrow seam between iron ladders climbing onto red bricks, and pillars under the breeze block pavilion. Parral was reduced to two vertical streets before the road stretches to a curved highway across the slope, to the back of the mountain where none of the shit on the other side matters.

Fun fact: The road doesn't have a speed limit. As Viv nicknamed it Indianapolis
speed away.

    You'd think all is happy in this arrangement, which is not far from true. But a small detail everyone overlooked is that the congress never mentioned converting Parral into a part of Monclea. They just didn't want the prime residential area to be right next to bungalows infested by the poor. And since they can't think of a better way to utilize the plain. They perfunctorily mark it as public cemetery.

The cursed irony is both disgusting and hilarious as the size of 'Parral' grew involuntarily towards the north. Dojo once estimated within a decade. The well-fed preferred folks will see hundreds of tombs grow like daylily in the edge of their backyard.

As for the last street of Parral, it had become a part of the lanes a decade ago. And on the verge of everything, in front of a small tranquil plaza lies the smallest church in Euforia. It welcomes all, though some more than others.
***

         The broad daylight of napalm sky at three in the afternoon flooded the celadon blue sea at the furthest reach of the street to my left as Parral lengthens at the border of Faust all the way to the shoreline. But the perfect white wall pressing down on the horizon couple of hours away notes it will catch the city before the moon does.

Between the shimmering, single dot of blue and the burning saffron sun engraved by thin traces of cloud it bestowed them the same graces until the entire corner of my eye dialed the same.

And in between them, in front of me. A couple of barefooted kids are playing football using two chalk white frames on a steel rolling door on either side of the trapezoid plaza as gates. Each time one of them breaks through the other side's defenses and intentional trips and pulls to score a resounding shot that echos against metal like a gunshot traveling afar. One of the two middle-aged women sitting by the exterior stairs up the rooftop addition of old, blue bungalows would spit some of the most vile Spanish curses at them for disrupting the afternoon broadcast on the radio.