Wednesday, June 20, 2007

A New .....

The walls of the buildings on either side of the narrow street loomed so high and leaned so far in that neither day nor night could be seen. The ground was darkest grey and if there were sidewalks and a pavement there was no indication of where one ended and the other began. The buildings, too, were shades of grey with an almost metallic sheen and here and there a touch of blue. Blue? Windows perhaps? Could there be someone looking down on the street from above? There certainly wasn’t anyone on the street.

Two figures stood at the street corner. One wore a black leather jacket, the other was in police uniform. They were smoking, talking between themselves, their attention now focused on him. His attention now focused on his feet. One foot in front of the other, straight line, watch out for that crack. He walked into a post. Not a standing structure of any kind for blocks upon blocks and he had walked into one. It wasn’t even serving any purpose. No lamp, no sign, no wires. Just a post.

Just a post!

“Good evening,” the man in the leather jacket whispered – he was that close – through a plume of smoke. He looked curiously familiar.

“We couldn’t help notice that you walked into one of our posts.” One of our posts? Strategically placed to catch the careless and the inebriated off guard?

“Have you been drinking?” asked the leather jacket guy with a sneer. Of course!. He was a character from a TV show – Shane from The Shield. Or he was the actor who played Shane. Either way it was a worrying development.

A pointless dialog would follow in which his sobriety, his honesty and his integrity would, one by one, be called into question. Shane struck his Zippo to light another cigarette. A vision of him dropping a grenade into his friend’s lap. And then running.

A screaming came across the sky. The Zippo, now a huge ball of flame arced toward the running man. On the side of the street a little girl, clad in a tiny, shiny blue raincoat, tugged at the hem of her mother’s dress. “Mirada, mama, una estrella fugazi!”

Then. White.

Just white.