In Rats’ Alley
Where the Dead Men Lost Their Bones
I
Rick and I have a new place. Here, on the third floor of this wasp-infested building, we live in an apartment we can barely afford.
He works more than I do. As such, I am often here alone. Half of the time the boy — my nephew — stays with us. He’s here today, but he’ll be leaving in the morning. Then I’ll truly be alone.
Cleaning, nap, bath, work — the day’s itinerary.
The boy is asleep on the couch. I am trying not to wake him, though he should really be up by now. He’s eight; there’s no reason for an eight year old to sleep in this long, but I dare not wake him. The room is cold, and the air has the stale taste of air conditioning, the windows and sliding glass door having been shut all night and morning, the blinds closed, keeping the apartment shrouded in cool shadows.
The king is dead. That’s what started this whole mess. Rick was already going through a divorce, and now dad goes and. . . . Mom was devastated, of course. We all were. First Rick moved in with mom. I followed suit soon after. She needed us there, with her. I think we needed to be there too. I know I did. We stayed with her for six months, sleeping in the guest room. Two twin sized mattresses were set for us. At night we talked some, but mostly we slept.
II
Chichi had nothing to wear; nevertheless, she was determined to go out. Her old friend was coming home, they were saying. She frantically tossed through the piles of clothes which had accumulated in the various corners of the apartment. Screw it. She’d go out in her work clothes. They looked alright. She threw on a coat, changed her shoes — from cushiony work shoes to simple plimsolls — and locked the door as she left:
The creeps will be out tonight.
She walked to Dick’s. The streets were sparsely populated. It was getting late. In a week she would have Katie over. She offered to look after her for her sister. She told herself that she could handle this. She’d weathered the storm and stress of adolescence after all. She could handle a pre-teen. For a little while.
My ears need to pop. It smells like sex in here.
The T.V. screen, mounted above the fire place, plays a short, looped animation featuring an old MTV logo from the late eighties or perhaps the early nineties, colors glowing, shifting, fading along the lines of the logo, retro synth wave accompanying the image, piped through a stereo system and out of speakers, which were installed in the ceiling above the couches and chairs.
There are dudes everywhere, and the women seem distant and unfriendly.
“There are your various substances, for sure — different styles in the same subject —”
But hardly anyone to talk to.
Dick Klaxon’s homecoming party was entering its twenty-fourth hour, having started at 2 AM the previous day. He had become disoriented w/r/t time, having not slept since the flight home, and even then the flight wasn’t comfortable and hardly lended itself to restful sleep, the small jet having little room for him to stretch out his legs. They flew him straight home from the Fractal. They extricated him from the spectral anomaly with a swarm of light drones, which grabbed on to his arms, legs and clothing with insect precision, flew him out and away from danger. Upon arriving at his apartment, he had hardly any time to get situated, kick off the shoes , loosen the belt, before a cadre of everyone he knew — and even more that he didn’t — came to his doorstep offering three cheers and demanding they throw a party.
The thought smacked:
I gotta get out of here.
“All the good books have been written,” he said, sipping coffee in the garden out back.
“What’s left then?”
“To put out useless drivel or to strive to create the worst work possible. Either way it’s got to continue on — writing.”
III
Useless city. Streetlight circuitry, mindlessly droning, like ants in formation, neurotransmitters chugging along tarry passageways. I do not understand the disdain for pessimism. We’ve reached the end of history; this is probably as good as it gets. What, then, is the use of optimism?
There is only one direction from here.
Pixeled people walk the indigo streets at dusk, each an unnatural color, blue, green, purple, cyan. . . . They are slightly amorphous, always shifting, the vague impression of a human , one hardly able to tell where their bodies end and the open air begins, so cloudy and nebulous they are. They hold umbrellas — these too a light show of sorts; they have lights installed in them to help illuminate darker parts of the streets, which there are few. . . . Tagomi VHS glows soft pink above the street, where Comstock sits, smoking. The rain is light, and he’s able to keep the cigarette from getting wet.
“Help me out?” he says to an orange pixel-man, rattling a plastic cup with a few coins in it.
“Sorry — only carry plastic.”
Figures. Money is being phased out. Only the dirtier establishments accept cash. The man leaves and he’s alone again. Enough money for a bottle or a coffin — not both.
Rough.
The rain picks up again. He’ll need shelter or an umbrella. He looks around; in a small wastebasket across the street, in front of a vertical farmer’s co-op building, are a variety for anyone to use.
Cyberpunk reality. He sips the traveler’s cup of coffee he got from the cafe-laundromat down the street, where he had washed his one alternate outfit. He’ll wash the one he’s wearing now in a few days. Part of living the spartan lifestyle is putting up with dirty clothes.
“Though one should always bathe.”
IV
“There’s really only one way out,” she said, fingering a little pill.
“A prison becomes a home if you have the key.”
V
There is redemption somewhere. Somehow. He can find it if he looks hard enough, closely enough. But he’s far off. He’s trudging through the waste lands, dying of thirst among the dry rocks and stony rubbish.
Loveless land. The land on which you were raised . . . but where were you born? How did you get here? Here come the simulacra with pearls for eyes. Look how they glow purple in the night. Look how much they looks like us.
“It matters not.”
They march on, a hive mind. They look like us but they do not suffer as we do. Because you laughed along the rubbled land. A land that could heal if it could know love. But there is no love in the stony land of dust. If only there were love.
A hooded figure follows you when we walk together. You cannot see him, but he’s there. He tells me his name is Gestalt. You cannot hear him; he whispers closely into my ear. He tells me:
“Suicide always comes too late.”
The king is dead. Mother is crying. Still she cries. Eternity is drooping, the secret explanation, behind a moon-grieved theater, his head a lonely disease, a blinking egg, smoking on a wet cigarette, nothing to wear, locked in a lonely life, despairing altitudes; you were errors.
To live forever in one peaceful moment: the dream of the anxious man:
Death, Death, Death.
