He walked along 5th Avenue to the wails and the soft, ever-flickering glow of the babylights.
Along each long street side, they burned ceaselessly, a reminder of who now was in the night, and who it was that gave man freedom. Their formless screams and gurgles had disturbed Martin for the first year or so, but he knew instinctively that there was no way to correct their situation any more than he could correct his own – that is, they could no more die and leave the burning earth any more than he could.
He walked up to one of the canted telephone poles and for reason he couldn't explain at the time, stared up towards the guttering torch.
He could tell that it was in pain...it mewled and moved it's arms and feet ceaselessly and it screamed the odd, unformed scream of a throat that had never known words. He wondered without compassion or hate how long it had been there in it's post, on fire, lighting the way for whatever monsters might follow this empty city street.
Turning, he strolled into the darkness by the side of the street, avoiding the jerking bodies hanging from the lampposts, pretending he could not hear their pleas, whistling, humming, anything to not to have to acknowledge a thousand voices, all with the same whispered agony: “Please make it stop. Please kill me.”
In the alleys he could see the Last Men, fucking wildly and howling in delight. What it was they were riding, he could not tell, but it was small and screamed and that was enough for him to know.
He hastened.
Ahead, in the wan and finite glow of the dying moon, he could see the skeletal embers of New York City poking from the earth like broken ribs, spires of broken steel and fire poking into the sky as if to say, “I want to go THERE, to leave this place too, but you are keeping me here, you people, you monsters”.
Three days earlier, the Empire State had given a final groan and with a defiant roar, had collapsed in on itself.
For one brief moment, it had been as if there was a remembered humanity, and the people had stopped in quiet, ceased murdering and raping and burning and fucking and stood stock still while the dust settled on them. After a little while, they shook off the death of the great spire as if their call to reality had been a nightmare and returned to their revelry.
Martin wanted so very badly to hate them, to despise them, to JUDGE them, but he could not. In his own small way, he had made them.
“Do you want some?”
Martin turned, his thoughts disrupted, and saw before him a boy, maybe nine years old, carrying a tray.
“They're fresh,” he said, and Martin saw the worms in his teeth.
Looking down, he saw the boys wares and was almost sick. They were...parts, mostly what appeared to be vulvas, but also lips and eyes, all artfully arranged like a chocolate sampler.
“C'mon, asshole...you want one or not?”
Martin paced away quickly.
“FAGGOT!” the boy screamed after him.
He knew from whence those things had come and he knew that the women from which they had been painstakingly carved now loped through the streets squirting blood and screaming, and they would until the end of time.
New York is forever, you see.
Friday, June 13, 2008
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