Redemption

                                                    Redemption                    



The ceiling shook with galloping rumbles, the walls, the floor, the whole fucking building shook. Every rattling inch chipping off the old blocks. When I could hear the screeching it was almost over, the last of the train would scream and then whistle away. And for another hour, it would be quiet again.
Actually it was never quiet. If not the trains blustering through all day then nature’s culprit would steal any peace left from this black-hole borough.
The rains and thunder never stopped, or at least there was no such time to remember, they pissed ceremoniously, and one would hope maybe they did to wash all the shit away below, but if anything, I think they just spread it. Gave it the life to grow. Like a bunch of weeds.
Something had to be to blame.

I reach for the clock that’s face down on the night stand, and maybe I’m wrong. Maybe this time I’m awake because it was all a bad dream, a dream that has finally stopped, along with the trains and the rain and the shit below and it’s……
3:14 again.

“shit” I knock the clock to the floor.

The anger is real and it feels good. I use it often and realize that it makes ‘here’ better, it relates me to all the others.
But I’m not sure why I’m the only one who feels that this isn’t all, that this isn’t life, because the people here look like they belong. They don’t look happy, nobody here is happy, but somehow they look like they accept that everything is alright. And I think they can sense that I don’t.

This world is a jungle. Everything wrong that has a name finds a way to breathe and feed and breed out there.
The sirens wail but they never arrive, I hear them in the distance but that distance is never here in Wisle Bay, only the rain and the passing trains seem to seep into this insular world.
I don’t even know where all the dead go. Or who the dead are? I see the same faces everyday despite the screams of death that come to take them away at night. I say the night because of its rising moon, but Wisle Bay is always black, always clouded. There is no sun to shine on these abandoned souls. Because that’s what we are, abandoned souls.

What is the sun and how do I know it? I know things from a life I don’t remember living.

I get off the bed and head for the kitchen. I am always hungry. I don’t eat much but it’s not because I don’t have more, it’s because I cannot eat more. I’m hungry but my stomach is full and if I eat more I get sick and vomit.
So I open the shelf and grab 2 cans of tuna and a loaf of bread. The kitchen isn’t used for anything else and never was, every shelf is filled with tuna or bread. I don’t bother with anything else, because here there is no taste. Everything is as it was since the beginning, although the beginning is probably a wrong choice of word for what I’m trying to say, there never really was a beginning that I can remember. For what I know I have always been here, in this greasy, smogged hotel and there was nothing else before it or between.

I understand that moments pass but are quickly forgotten, as if they were never altered by time. I know that I have been here for long but I have no memory of it. Life moves like a tired play, a plot without start or finish.
If I were to leave this apartment I would be following the same script. The elevator would be broken and I would have to take the stairs. There I would pass the 3 black boys who were nearly alive, if so, inhaling paint or just staring at me, their lifeless eyes haunted by the eternity of this grim life.
A couple stories down would be the topless junkie lying in a pool of vomit, dried blood trailed down her arm, the needle still fixed and erect. I would step into the same piss puddle 2 flights beneath her.
Outside the thick rain would be heavy, sparing nothing. A man would stand under the  canopy trying to light a cigar. I have seen him many times and if I stand to watch him long enough he will ask me for a light. I used to offer him one, a light that is always in my pocket and why? I don’t know because I don’t smoke. But I have it and when I offer it to the man he just looks away and continues to flick his dead zippo. I don’t know if he ever moves, if anyone ever moves.

I then head to the convenience with the broken glass window and sign that warns “I have a shotgun” and move to the last aisle were I pick up more tuna and bread. Always tuna and bread. There will be an old lady walking aimlessly with a basket of matches and tissue and corn syrup that will bump into me and curse insanities calling me “the righteous one. He who shouldn’t be”. I want to avert her, and I try, but she will always come from nowhere and we will end up repeating our course, like everyone else.
The china man at the cash has a scar from his lip to his eye and tattoos of what I believe are dragons around his neck. He looks dangerous but in the daytime he is just an empty prop like everyone else and simply repeats his small lines in sequence. I once asked him if he’s ever been outside of Wisle Bay, could he remember a past. But he was confused, as if my question came out of the context of his set life. It was really sad to watch him think to say anything other that the lines that were given to him in this role, “you pay, or you leave”, and he continued to be busy with nothing.

I then leave and walk the street, which is rather empty, unlike in the nighttime. As I reach the kiosk a taxi will speed past me hurling muddy water from a deep puddle.
Then a man will run with a purse, trip over a curb and not get up. Others walking will not notice the bleeding man under there feet. At this point I stop.
Ahead I hear screaming and crying and I can see not much else. The rain fogs everything beyond and I’m too terrified to go further. That is the point where the others go, to die over and over again, but I am not like them. So I turn back to my apartment and after the first train I sleep.
My dream mirrors my life.
It’s hazy when I awake but I understand the plot. I’m in a car driving in the rain. I know that I am drunk and it’s late, so the streets are empty and I speed carelessly. The scenes are not very clear but there is a flashing red light warning me to stop. I am on a path, the sign says Wisle Bay, I hit something and everything turns black. A loud screech wakes me to consciousness and I turn to face 3 yellows lights speeding towards me. There is screaming and crying and I wake to one of the passing trains and it all begins again.
I understand that in this dream I die in what I believe was my former life, my real life. I die but with it I also kill others. It’s the killing that I believe I’m being punished for, for why I’m here, this is my redemption. My hell.
But I don’t belong here, I’m not like the others. If I had done any wrong I have had my remorse.

I finish my tuna and head to the balcony because today will be different.

My floor is high above the ground. So high that with the rain I cannot see the streets below. I light a cigarette and touch the cherry to my hand. There is pain and I know that whatever here is, pain is real and profuse. I hear it from so many others everyday and maybe they escape like I will too.
So I hoop my leg over and position myself on the railing. The winds are strong and the rain begins to come down even harder as if wanting me to jump. Needing me to jump because everything here is death and I see that dying is the only way to survive.
I close my eyes and let my grip go.

The ceiling, walls and ground shake from a passing train. My eyes open and I reach for the clock that’s face down on the night stand.
“shit” I knock the clock to the floor. The train whistles away like always at 3:14.