Shadows of a past... Opening

The shadows of the alleyway were almost preternaturally consumptive of light.  I knew that Satan and his demons were working overtime in this place because I got my itch back.  That itch I hadn’t scratched in a very long time, well it seemed like a long time for me.  My head was swimming with fear, but I knew for a Brother and Sister’s sake someone had to dive into this morass and pull their daughter out.  As I stepped through the veil of the alleys edge, it felt as if I had stepped into another world.  In the long moments that my eyes fought with adjusting my mind raced at what was brushing the edge of my duster.  The alley reeked of too many useless habits, a sudden splash made me look up as someone just dumped a large bucket of  very wet trash into the midst of the alleyway.  It was in that moment I realized that between the close lines, and fire escapes, and the roof level bridges some had built it was a miracle that the slightest  sliver of light made it down to the ground at midday.  As my eyes finally made their adjustment, rats that is what brushed my jacket.  Noticing one pass a  small wood, and cardboard shanty, a long shiv jutted out and skewered the rat as it was passing.  As quickly as the shiv appeared it disappeared with the rat in tow.  The bone wrenching screeching came to a sudden end.  Walking past on the far side of the alleyway I almost lost my boot to an unidentifiable muck. 

The bearded man in to box shanty looked at me with his eyes squinted, and said “none for you” as he went back to butchering the rat and cooking it over the blue-green flame of a sterno.  His hovel glowed with an intensely dim light most of him and his box was in shadow from the shadow of the alleyway. 

The wetness of the mire soaking through my pants above the cuff of my boot brought my mind back to the task that dragged me into this hive of scum that had trapped its residents in its wretchedness.  The smells that wafted through were from extensive rotting, and they burned the senses against the occasional bucket load of dirty mop water that seemed to make its way down here as well, as if it would help clean this alleyway  that was so steeped in muck and mire that the alley walls were slick to the sight.  Like they were a trap greased as to keep whatever was inside… inside.

I could not imagine how a suburban girl raised in a clean environment , and a good home could have fallen to this in only six weeks, but then my itch returned and I remembered how easy it was to throw away my life and sink into nothingness.  A slave to the drug that rode me like a horse.  And designers of these “toys” new how to make them more efficient, more addictive so someone was now instantly a slave to their addiction.  Addiction made it somehow sound as if the person had an easy choice past the first yes.

Reaching in my pocket, I still feel the shape of my cell, and take it out for a quick look at the time.  3:14pm.  And, as I look up again I now realize how bright that backlit screen can be for I am momentarily blind again.  As the world steadies back to its black-grey haze, I notice the hovel I am looking for the remnants of a semi-burned out shop’s back door.  Tags over tags on the door so that none is intelligible.  The door hangs loosely on its industrial hinges, the ragged rememberance of the security door it once was.  It scrapes across the shattered tile floor.  The gut wrenching smell of death hangs ragged in the air.  Its blast in my nostrils almost tears my stomach out.  I have smelled worse, but I am not sure when, maybe even momentarily in the alley.  All manner of trash laid strewn about the floor, and up the stairs.  Also on the stairs was sitting a confused preteen that looked like she was in her mid-thirties.  Shaking and out of her mind she had consumed something as was evidenced by the shattered glass pipe that was between her feet.  Strolling through vistas in her mind she was half smiling, half drooling upon herself.  Her right had was occasionally twitching as was indicitive of a nervous system set to burn out.  The world had been tragically harsh to this young one, but I had to continue my search.

Nothing seemed real when looking at the trash strewn along the floors upstairs.  But you could tell from the detrius that someone had been lying here and there.  It was at that moment when I realized that most of those who were killing themselves here this past night were probably out finding their way to their to their next fix.  What form of villainy did their new slave master require of them?  Were they prostituting themselves, or just stealing for their non-living?  Whatever they were choosing it was going to end in the smell that pervaded this space.

A thunderous crash in the stairwell brought my mind back to the here and now.  I raced over to investigate, and there lied the young one at the root of the staircase.  Twisted as any would be from a senseless fall.  She lay there like a broken doll, still in her mused disconnection from the reality that was surely not hers.  Bounding down the stairs, realizing that a small pool of blood was forming near her head from where she split open her scalp just over the ear.

I pulled a tampon out of my pocket that I carried for bullet wounds, and I pressed it against the gash, then bandaging her head with a bandana that I had in my back pocket, I bound her head to slow the bleeding.  Pulling the cell phone from my pocket I realized that I had no signal whatsoever, so I scooped her up to get her into the daylight of the city.

We were through the darkness of the alley in no time, but the reality of the afternoon sun was harsh even to my eyes.  As the sunlight struck her eyes she began to squirm like a giant earthworm in my arms.  Suddenly she was marginally aware of a world outside her mind.  Setting her down long enough to dial 911, her squirming stopped as her eyes rolled into the back of her head, and she went back to the half smiling drool of bliss she was in despite her injury.