Tom Moses

“…have been burning well into the morning.  The third such fire erupting since the predawn hours, we are still waiting word from Global Securities chairman Marc Spector, but to this hour no one has been able to reach Marc Spector.”

There hasn’t been anything new in the news since before I can remember.  Just a load of heartless hate mongers with their own agendas to push down peoples’ throats.  I wanted to relax for a Saturday, take a load off, rest up and plan my next move; but the phone will probably start ringing in the next few minutes and I’ll have to find something to say to the Press.

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Flames lick my skin; singe the hair at my legs.  I walk through the fire and yet I feel no pain.  I look all around as would a curious child, everything seems so upside down.  It’s like a fever dream, the floor is above me, yet I walk upright…just on the ceiling.  I can feel the prickling texture of the drywall at the bottoms of my bare feet.

It’s so very strange, where am I?

{You humans are funny creatures,} a voice calls out to me, familiar, I’ve heard it sometime before.  I look behind me, expecting to be sucker punched by another pansy but I see nothing.

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I hand the driver a twenty.  In my slowest, most unbroken English I can manage, he understands my request to wait.  The moment I step from the cab, I take in the deepest breath I think I ever have, for a second I’m actually light headed.

The putrid body odor several paces behind me, my nostrils are definitely thankful.  My heart rate hasn’t taken the chance to calm.  I’m still shaking.  I can feel the blood running through every artery.

I’m not angry.

For the first time all night, I’m not angry.  I’m not numb.

I’m excited.

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I hate hospitals.  The sterile smell of the halls, the soft colors on the walls, I’ve been to too many in my life time and there are too many memories attached to them.  None of it matters right now; I think my brain is entirely numb to anything except the anger.  Cops said this was a mugging, but what kind of mugger leaves behind an envelope of cash after shooting a man?

“Frenchie, what the hell were you doing with that money?”

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My mind is a wreck.  I haven’t slept in two days, and not even the boredom of a cross country flight was enough to lull me.  I hear Seattle is a nice place, I think I’ve been there a few times in my life, but at the moment I’m not too sure on much beyond the present.

Frenchie arranged for everything, as usual he’s the one friend I can count on that will never lose his level head, always watching out for me.  Sometimes I’m not sure how he does it, other times I don’t bother to ask, but the two of us are like that.  Either one will do anything for the other at the drop of a hat, we’ve saved each other countless times and continue to do so everyday.

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The street lamps were dim and yellow; the few that worked hardly provided enough light to keep the streets safe at night. Jackson kept his eyes roaming while he canvassed the area from the safety of his Honda. Counting the illicit customers coming and going from the yellow house on the corner of Third and Elm, seeing no apparent pattern at this time of night, but all the same the plan did not matter to whatever pattern the customers took, there were no innocents in this equation.

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Just as evolution takes it part to cleanse the earth of useless species, it can be said the same thing happens to societies.  Small towns will eventually give way to larger districts, small cities and eventually a sprawling metropolitan area will consume what had once been just a small frontier town on the basin of a river.  This is the same sort of story that happens to locales all over the country, but there are few cities quite like River City in the heart of America’s Midwest.  Snuggled in close to a large enough river, smugglers found it home almost two centuries before and until recently the criminal element decided to grow quietly, content with its place in the socio-economic system.  But just as evolution had it in for the dodo, it seemed too that River City was doomed to a life of lessening social grace every year.

Now Entering:  River City, home of the 1993 state champions, girls volleyball team.

Population:  1,203,559

Est. 1798

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The train hissed to a halt and the masses exit like cattle led to their deaths. A slow death unfit for cattle, these men and women moved through their terminals and their turn styles, counting for the census bureau and giving job meaning to a useless endeavor. The stairs were dirty, a homeless man sat to one side and routinely kicked. He didn’t seem to mind.

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