The person in the next room had obviously decided not to accept his fate as calmly as Thomas had. They were throwing something against the glass panel set in the doorframe. The glass itself was safety glass and had wire run through it to prevent such an attempt at escape but with enough force, the glass itself could shatter and then it would just be a matter of trying to find a way to bend the wire out of the panel. Thomas considered this course of attack as the crashes repeated from the next room. Finally, he heard the glass break, followed by a voice of his inmate neighbour. The voice held a jubilant note but it was overshadowed by a crazed quiver of fear. Obviously, whoever it was had not counted on the wiring holding through their barrage. As the cries went up, Thomas again slid into memory.
He had sat there in the alley, staring at the bottle, complete with the requisite paper bag. He laughed at the stereotype he suddenly found himself a part of; homeless, alone and out of options. All he wanted was to fall asleep and not wake again. He cracked the top of the bottle and took a long draught from the cool glass. The taste was not at all what he was expecting and not at all as unpleasant as he had expected. It wasn’t exactly good, but neither was it horrible. He drank deeply a second time, this time a little too fast and found himself coughing back up half of what he had drank. As Thomas recovered, he took note of his surroundings for the first time. Directly across from him was a brick doorway that had been closed in. At one point, perhaps, it had been the back entrance or service entrance to one of the many night clubs in this area. Now it was simply a barrier. A little further down the alley was a fire escape that was rusted and quite obviously broken at the joint where the ladder met the landing. It swayed slightly in the night air, creaking with a noise that seemed to obliterate the sounds of the city that was all around him. Below the fire escape sat a dumpster that had seen better days. The hinged top was nowhere to be seen and the sliding door on the front had been beaten into a shape that was almost unrecognizable from its former self.
“Much like himself,” thought Thomas.
He took another long pull from the bottle and then glanced up. Light was spilling down from the apartments that sat on top of the bars and storefronts. There were no laundry lines in this part of town, he noted. The balconies/ fire escapes were bare, and many of the windows were open. The sounds of different types of music and television shows all filtered down to Thomas’ ears, even overriding the groaning metallic creak of the broken ladder. One sound in particular seemed to ring louder than any of the others. It was the sound of a woman’s voice. She was softly singing along to something coming from the stereo. He didn’t recognize it but he could make out some of the words.
Tomorrow I was nothing, yesterday I'll be…
……………………………………………………………………
Nothing in this room but empty space
No me, no world, no mind, no face
But it was the voice, more so than the lyrics that grabbed his attention. The sounds were almost ethereal in nature, ghostly and barely above a whisper, yet they sounded so loud and true against the din of the city. Suddenly everything went black. All sound, all light disappeared in a single instance. It took several seconds for Thomas’ eyes to adjust to the newly darkened alley. By the time that they had, the silence brought on by the blackout was beginning to fill with the sounds of confusion. People were stumbling around their homes, trying to find candles or matches. A dim glow began to creep out of each window as people found alternatives to their electricity.
Thomas glanced along the alley again. At the entrance, he could see people moving back and forth along the main stretch of sidewalk. Occasionally a car went past, and the headlights split the darkness of the night like a spear. Each passing vehicle meant a minute of readjustment to the now limited lighting and Thomas was forced to shield his eyes whenever a vehicle went by. He took another long drag from the bottle and then absentmindedly tossed it towards the dumpster. The clatter that the bottle made as it hit first the lip of the dumpster and then shattered was matched by another loud crash.
“Wait,” thought Thomas, “it didn’t happen like that.”
Once again he was brought around by the sounds from within the building. The klaxons had ceased at this point, and the traffic outside the building was now non-existent. His neighbour had managed to get the wires twisted in such a way as they were able to get their arms out, from the sounds of it. And now, whoever was next door was tearing their skin against the bits of metal and broken glass. The screams were a mixture pain, ecstasy and fear. But now there was more than just his next-door neighbour’s voice. He could hear several more voices in the mix. Some were coherent enough to use words, others just let out shrieks of panic and pain.
Thomas decided to take stock of his situation, he glanced at the clock.
“Well at least it doesn’t read 666,” he said aloud.
lyrics from K's Choice "Believe" from the Cocoon Crash album, 1998.
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