Men of the City

“The birth of a universe is a terrible thing. The unknowable peace of true nothingness is split, rent, torn by the instantaneous and unstoppable eruption of infinity. As the infinity that is the newly born universe expands the howl of anguish that accompanies all births echoes throughout the vast nothingness that is everything; carried on the fiery winds of exploding stars whose lives pass in the blink of a cosmic eye. The howl, in some places, coalesces, becomes thick like cooling blood. It accretes about the shards of creation, giving them form and breathing life into them. This is how the world was born. The bitter vengeance of a universe angry at its own creation.”

~The Book of All Passing 01:01-02

Karla awoke to the sound of her neighbour, Jenny, murdering her husband. She pulled her pillow over her head but the walls of her apartment were so thin that his pleas for mercy might as well have been coming from within her own bedchamber. Peeking out from below the pillow she watched the bony shadow of the Lintelmast building creep across the floor as the sickly yellow light of the rising sun fought through the permanent roiling smog that coated the city skies. When the finger jabbed the foot of the bookcase on the far wall it would be time to rise.

The shadow was barely half way across the room when Peter, Jenny’s husband, abandoned his begging and pleading for a slow rasping pant. Soon the only noise he was making was the moist slapping and crunching of his flesh and bones as Karla bludgeoned him with whichever weapon he she had been using this morning. Realising she could no more go back to sleep than Peter could stop the assault she decided to shower and be early for work for once.

The shower room in the Krestal Building that housed Karla’s apartment complex was wide and far too many of the floor tiles were cracked or splintered to make showering a relaxing experience. Selecting a nozzle on the wall nearest the entranceway she turned the tap and stood below the falling dust as it flowed across her naked skin. Using the bone scraper left behind by Rick, her last lover, she peeled the layers of grime from her body before the flow turned from dust to air and she shook away the last of the dust; and the grime with it.

She bumped into Jenny as she left the showering room. Her arms were red up to her elbows and she had a satisfied, relaxed, look about her. They nodded to one another as they passed in the narrow corridor.

The door to Jenny’s apartment hung ajar and Karla stopped a moment to observe the gore that was once Jenny’s husband. She had done a brutal job of dispatching Peter. Bone protruded through his torn flesh, organs had been exposed and drawn from his body to lay beside it as though on display in a butcher’s shop. Already his broken form was being absorbed into the floor of the apartment. The pool of black-red blood in which the mess lay was slowly thinning as the exposed organs began to bubble and liquify.

The wall to Karla’s left coughed and moaned.

Peter’s face was emerging slowly from the building, his skin the same wan colour as the plaster from which it was forming. The plaster bent and cracked as his face pushed outwards. One eye opened sending a little shower of plaster dust down his new face. It glared accusingly at Karla.

“Cunt” His lips split. His breath erupting in a little cloud of dust.

She flicked his nose. “Oh do fuck off, Peter.”

As she closed the door to her apartment she heard him rasping after her. “You could have done something you fucking bitch. What the fuck are you any way? I am the fucking cit..” The door slammed behind her cutting off his inevitable rant about how he was as ancient as the city, born of the city, blah, blah, fucking blah. She didn’t have time for an existential argument with a half made wall boy; she had to leave for work.