Continuation of Earlier Story

Darren runs, he runs and runs. An alley dead-ends, and, after a moment of panic, he starts to climb a maintenance ladder leading to the top of a two-story building. Rust flakes flutter to the ground like city snow. Blood drips in his eyes. Not his. It’s cool on top of the building, and he pauses to light a cigarette. The smoke reminds him of home. From his perch he can see all the way to Greenwind Bay. The roads are filled with taxis and police cars, and he imagines them rushing past too quickly, blurry and obscure, a time-lapse photograph of metal and fume. The roof seems to have escaped gutter-filth and ground-stench; the salt air even overpowers the meatpacking district lying to the south. The city is stretched out like an exhausted lover, he thinks.

A sinking terror, like a brick thrown into water, plump, fills his head. He thinks he will never see her again, that tonight has ruined any chance of finding her. Seraphic wanderer, fleeting and illusory with dark eyes and skin that must drink in moonlight and glow till morning: now nothing more than a discarded vision, destined to be carried over the sea by a barge that will cross Styx and Acheron on its journey towards the coruscating gates of heaven’s trash-heap.

The rooftop air has lost its battle against grime and stench. Darren takes one last drag of his cigarette and flicks it off the building. The smoldering butt scales the sky like a rocket or rainbow, arcing and assured, until cruel forces halt its flight and it tumbles downwards, bounces off a lamppost, hits the sidewalk, rolls into the gutter, and plunges into a storm-drain at the northeast corner of 7th and Greenwald.

The ladder will only allow Darren to retrace his steps, and even thinking of doing so makes him feel stiff, like he’s near the breaking point. He sees a way down. Facing away from the drop, he balances on the ledge, extends his arms, leans backwards and falls, watching the sky rush by, predatory and ugly.

A dumpster breaks his fall.

----
Morning comes like an incessant bastard that won’t be turned away. Propping himself up on his elbow and forearm, Darren groans. His muscles feel torn and useless, and his arm is already trembling underneath his weight. “Son-of-a-bitch.”

“Heh. I thought you might say something of the sort.”

Darren scrambles backwards into a corner, holding his shoe in front of him and snarling in a pitiful display of ferocity. In the far corner of the room, a squatter’s den from the looks of it, he sees an old man, dark-skinned and heavily bearded, who is busily shredding cigarette butts and dumping the loose tobacco into a gallon-sized plastic bag.

“Where the fuck am I, and who the fuck are you?” Darren tosses the shoe aside and looks for his gun, before realizing that it was lost the night before.

“I, young sir, am William Tintamar, and this is a safe place.” As he answers he shakes his head, as if somehow disappointed, and Darren notices that his neck is ringed with a thick, white scar.

“Well how’d I get here man? Last thing I remember last night is passing out in a damned dumpster.”

William chuckles, a deep, boisterous rumbling that seems to run throughout Darren’s body, easing his tensed muscles and calming his nerves. “I was out scavenging a bit before sunrise, and I noticed your poor white ass all laid out unconscious in that dumpster you mentioned. And, well, me being a kind old soul, and you looking like someone who’d seen better days, I lugged you into my shopping cart and brought you’re here. And by doing so, I might add, saved your witless ass from dying in a garbage truck.”