Sour-funky-staleness. A bit of lint from the bottom of the bag fuzzes against your tongue, but you taste none of the tell-tale earwax and aspartame flavor of ecstasy.

Hazy memories flick by. Among them, you see the amalgamation of bitter flesh that birthed you, sitting like a creature in her lair.

Sniff test determines you may be dehydrated.

Sign our name to that shit, so she knows better than to fuck with the gäng again!

No boots in the house. A tidy, meticulous occupant.

A hundred old women's eyes watch this alley from behind the lacy curtains of their windows.

An electric shudder passes through the deepest canals of your body. Painless but concerning.

OPEN IT. ALL PARCELS MUST PASS THROUGH PROCEDURAL SCREENING AND CUSTOMS. JUST IN CASE.

It's quiet. No activity behind the door. Once open, you should be in the clear.

An intricate configuration that reminds you of the night sky.

There is only one security system that uses that setup, the Abwehr-Pastorius Mk. III. A legendary keypad and lock duo.

A cheat? There lies the scoundrel's way. No thrill in that, no panache!

Ghost gäng. Huddle up.

THE ENGINEERING HAS EMBRACED PERPETUAL REVOLUTION.

The earth is alive; it breathes and shifts in its sleep. Concrete does not. The building is going to collapse.

He's... Lichgäng?

You mark the features. The imperious nose. The fleshy cheeks.

PUT THIS FASCIST ROADER IN THE GROUND.

The bones of the plot are set. Already you can feel muscle and sinew begin to weave themselves around the frame.

Your stomach twists. The precipice opens.

The yellow tree. His favour.

Yellow tree. Yep, all leafed up.

Cicatriz Frontera, La Luz. Fabricators from the Ministry of Cosmonautics present three custom spacesuits for inspection. A young publicist with severely angular hair scans them, then shakes her head and says, 'She'll want one in all purple'.

Exquisite.

Or maybe somebody's just been left in the dark.

You're in -- as a poet. Don't let them believe you're anything else.

Intercom looks expensive, the interference suggests a building-wide system. Nothing 'light' about this security.

The kind of places that need security intercoms: Gated communities. Government buildings. Prisons.

Seems you need a good reason to be here. Fortunately, you are trained in reverse reasoning.

Of course. When an industry dies out, its buildings are repurposed into offices for that contemporary, utilitarian feel.

WHAT IS THIS, THE MAKING FRIENDS INTERCOM? IT IS IN YOUR WAY, BATTER ITS DEFENCES.

Translucent and grotesque, like an electronic gecko molt. It will never be skin again.

Genuinely upset.

With a certain weariness, you discern.

Blaming us 'cos this bitch edged her peel game. Sick shit.

Holiday phone girlfriend. Claim her.

Skin it. NOW.

Strip that plastic off. Now.

Only ghosts can pass freely between such crevices.

Your human situation.

They didn't really talk, but she gravitated toward his presence like an animal to an abandoned building.

Now they remind you of her.

Leather jacket, moustache and military cut. A face that could fluctuate wildly between innocence and depravity depending on the setting.

Your double. Together you assembled the crew from the ground up, but he never crossed professional boundaries the way you did.

And yet so many do -- the eternal and the doomed.

Then why does everything hurt?

You can feel the tension going out of her shoulders, her diaphragm slackening as she straightens in her chair.

Ice crystals fractal in your veins.

It's like she's handing you a trophy cup with the corpse of a small animal in it.

One more relationship smothered with a pillow and buried in the courtyard.

Checks