We Are

Godforsaken City

New Hill is a hellhole known to few. With its dark alleys and drunken drivers it's a place few would stop by when roaring past, south of the city, on the highway.

To the north of the city the abandoned factory looms with it's impressive metal corpse of rust and bend aluminium. Once the factory had been the source of life in the city, the pumping and steaming heart, sending black smoke to the skies. That time has long since passed and now, nothing but toxic waste and moaning winds comes from the factory.

It's a godforsaken city, with godforsaken people and godforsaken trees.

We look at it from above. Me and Laoel. Our feet dangling over the metal ledge at the top of the platform on the old radio tower, her blue sneakers and my red ones cutting a startling contrast against the gray mass of the city. Nothing more than wet asphalt and dirty houses. In the beginning the walls were probably white, by now they have settled for a less appealing shade of greasy gray.

She smokes. I don't. She runs her shaking fingers through the tousled heap of brown locks that the wind loves to play in and stubs the cigarette out against the metal between us.

"This," She suddenly states. "All of this is ours." She spreads her thin fingers in the air in front of her and signs across the city. "All of this belongs to us."

"No it doesn't." I answer, playing with one of the butts she's discarded beside her. "It belongs to someone. Each house has a family. Each shitty road was built by someone."

Laoel laughs, but there's no real joy in the sound. "Well now it belongs to us. Fuck the families, fuck those who built the roads. I want this goddamned city to be mine, just for tonight. I want to bloody own something for one night, to let it own me back and be in debt to no one." She lits a new cigarette. With the shadow of worry I notice that she's started smoking more lastly. Ever since her father disappeared two weeks ago. It wasn't like she didn't see it coming. We all had been waiting for years for him to finally give up on everything and get lost. Only, when he finally did, we didn't expect him to take everything they had with him.

Laoel's father hadn't been loved, not for years, not by his oldest daughter or by any other of his five children. He hadn't been loved but he hadn't been hated either. Not until recently at least.

"You know, they are probably cleaning out the house right now." She suddenly says taking a deep breath and exhaling smoke. "Wonder if they manage to carry the sofa out the front door." She laughs that hollow laugh again. "Fuck it if I care, they can take the bloody door down if they feel it." I hear the sorrow in her voice. The bitterness is only a front, I know her well enough to see that. The house they're emptying to pay the debts her father left behind has been her home for nineteen years. But she continues, puffing smoke through her nose in short bursts of poisonous air. "They can take the door frame too, and the goddamned porch, all I care. How much money do they even think they can milk from that shithole? It's not like we were sitting on riches."

"I don't know." I sigh and take the cigarette from her, sucking the filter the way she hates and taking a deep drag. "Why do you wanna own the city tonight?" I ask, looking at the dim sunset across the highway. Faded colours against gray asphalt. A painter would have gone mad in this city, calling the colors soft, or maybe odd and intriguing. We call them faded, drained. Of life perhaps, or maybe just of will to live, it's like even the sunset is bitter in this goddamned city.

"Because maybe, that way, I'll be able to stay." She exhales and lits a new cigarette, letting me keep the old one. "Maybe I'll be able to close my eyes and wake up tomorrow and help Drew with his writing. Wash Mickeys clothes and make a sandwich for Cole and tame Lolas wild hair into a braid and send them all away. Then rush to work like nothing happened. Like our house isn't empty, like we aren't keeping out groceries in the goddamned cellar and sleeping on two mattresses all five of us, Like it won't take a fucking while for anything to be okay... If it ever will."

"It will." I say. Maybe I try to calm her, maybe I try to calm myself. Because I can't watch her leave, I can't loose her. So I pretend that it's she who needs the comfort. I pretend that it will be bad for her to leave and I push the selfish thoughts away. Or maybe just disguise them as concern for her, instead of myself. Because they need her, I tell myself, not me. And she needs them. So I sigh and pull my arm around her shoulder and say, in a way I could almost believe, if I didn't know any better: "It will all be alright."

She laughs quietly, not because it's funny, but because laughing is better than crying. When you laugh you can stop, but once the tears come, there's never a way back. 

Smiling softly, with one corner of her mouth she turns to me. "No it won't, Tom," She brushes her fingers gently against the stubble on my jaw and I watch her dull green eyes look at me with a new sort of sadness. "No it won't..." She kisses me softly and I get a paralyzing feeling that this is goodbye. I kiss her back and pray that it's not.

Thank you for reading // Alex