Into the Light

Chapter 3: time to get weird

Chapter: 3

"A change in the weather is sufficient to recreate the world and ourselves." Marcel Proust

The evening hovers above the streets and stains the light coming from shop windows. Blake picks up his limping pace as mounds of black and green trash bags on the corner collapse in front of him. The winds pick up and toss plastic bags into the streets. A few unlucky drivers strike the tumbleweed trash bags. Splat! The street, sidewalk, and sides of their cars are littered with garbage.

Blake lifts his nose up and sniffs. The tip drips. The rain covers his face in a cool mask. The scent of coffee hangs over him as he drafts by a boutique coffee shop. His footsteps become harder and harder to drag up off the slick sidewalk ass he passes by a Best Buy and an Urban Outfitters. Blake hobbles past Bleecker and starts shivering as he reaches Bond Street.

As he turns the corner on to his block, he hears, "Whoooooooooo Youuuuuuuu."

It must be the wind blowing through the subway grates he surmises. Blake passes the alley next to the Thai take-out place. He shoots a look into the alley and yellow orbs, disembodied eyes, float in the swirling pitch and lock in a fragile gaze from the rectangular columns of darkness. As he jumps back, a gust peels a wet newspaper off the ground and slaps it across his face. The drenched daily paper encases his head. He tears the newspaper off his face and with his sleeve wipes his face and spits. Watery streaks of ink are left on his forehead as he looks back to investigate the spheres. They vanished.

And so it really begins. Did I say something to that effect before? Sorry. It was just a trick to keep you flipping the pages by depositing a question in your over-marketed consciousness. Humans can't stand not having questions unanswered and will accept the most ridiculous answers just to close the loop. You flesh machines will believe almost anything as long as it relieves your primitive anxiety, but as a few wise humans in that complication of a city called Hollywood say... perception is reality. So you know, the spheres weren't real. There simply projections of Blake's paranoia but some of the strange vision to come aren't figments of his transforming mind and those neural pathways are getting twisted.

Going to step out for a bit to indulge in some sensory manipulation but I'll be back to give some comments where needed, and soon you get to meet my favorite goofball. So until then, give Blake some slack. You could be him.

After dredging up Broadway, he gets to Great Jones Street and the rain comes down in barrels cascading down the city of windows. The maudlin man's brown hair looks black from the soak. His building, a broken-down brick faced walk up, last renovated in the Seventies, stands just a few majestic yards ahead across the street from a parking lot where cars are stacked four high in elevated metal rows. The door is a glowing beacon and he quickens his pace never noticing that he is being watched from across the street as he grips the guardrail.

He leans against the wrought iron rail and climbs the three stairs to finds that some person left the entry's thick glass door blocked open with a crumpled magazine. Anger percolates. He shakes off but cannot stop trembling as the chill has penetrated his core.

The wind surges and takes hold of the door making it hard to heave open, but he manages with a violent tug. The door seals and into the cream-colored vestibule to check his mail box he goes leaving wet foot prints behind on the tiled floor.

Through the plexi-glass window on the back wall beside the security door, Blake sees the stout elderly gentleman from two floors above descend the narrow stairs. All Blake knows is that the man is a retired mounted patrolman and his beat was the south side of Central Park. He thinks he looks like a Cuban version his grandfather donning a bowling shirt. The man waddles, legs bowed, as he turns down the hallway behind the electronically locked security door and dissolves into the shadows. The anger fades in Blake. He has been living in the same building for over two years and feels ashamed for never learning the man's name