In the Beginning
This city is festering. Usually I am stuck peering into the streets below from the rooftop of this brick prison. Hot summer days seem endless and have left the ground parched and dry. Everything looks brown and dead. Trees barely hanging on to their green leaves. When I am lucky enough to escape the home I usually go walking for hours. I pace the streets and stare at the architecture that seems to lean, ache and bend with the heat each year. The old Victorian city resembles a crooked old man pained by arthritis.
I find trouble…tall and dark trouble. I would see him occasionally on the street, talking to gangs of equally troubled looking characters. Smoking and with creased face he would glance at me, exhaling as if acknowledging me. His pale flesh resembled moonlight hitting the whitest of stones. I knew. Unfortunately, as soon as I first saw him, I knew. This would be the beginning.
Each time I arrive home I have to walk through corridors of flickering fluorescent lights which tint the dirty white walls a sickly color green. Putrid, directional, yellow stripes of grime painted the walls like sad lines to nowhere. My feet are covered in the filth of the day, my sandals forever stained by the street. I don’t want to go home; I try to pass the time walking slowly up and down the halls before I enter. This is so bad…so very bad.
The house nearby was famous for the slaughter which took place in it years ago. It was a draw to the local youth. It was perched on such a steep hillside; it seemed like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. The house was like a tiered wedding cake or a stack of rusty tin cans leaning over and ready to collapse. Rotting wood staircases followed zigzag patterns up the side. A weathered Victorian, so decayed it was nearly impossible to imagine that it could have ever been a suitable home for a family. It seemed as though the sun never shone on it because it maintained a dark brown color which added to its foreboding presence.
