Instincts

"Go on, Hersh. You'll give us away."

"Spare me the bleating you call an accent and listen up: metoprolol, you eunuch-diddling Azzurri. That's what I paid for -- not atenolol!"…

You return to the faded billboard.

"Back again."

"I believe... this is where I'm supposed to offer you a deal."

Cold, moistened air raises the hairs on your neck.

This place is not as you left it. The world moved on behind your back.

Old chairs thrown into a new purpose.

The bin is no longer hungry.

Flyers detailing horrible communicable diseases.

Drunk enough that if the building collapses, he won't care.

Jump.

Two species of ivy crawl over the railing -- a joint invasion.

Ad for shrimp. Fat, crisp, fried.

Far above, past the concrete, the wind carries the sweet sting of salt and crushed grass.

Rickety stairs leading downwards, towards the canal.

Amid the chaos and disrepair, the ghost of what this room used to look like emerges for a moment:

'Viscera Dreams: Three Nights of Live Rustamian Disembowelment'

Eviction. Threat word. Danger.

Uppers. Forgotten.

Cozy.

Armour for weak spot. Take it -- yours now.

Even metal decays eventually.

Good spot for eavesdropping.

Fat residue on old cardboard.

Medicine bottles. Good stuff's gone already.

Could crack this open.

Find rope. Can hang yourself from here if it goes wrong.

Landslide. Unstable foundations.

A single leather glove with the middle finger cut out.

Your flashlight beam pans across a series of steel shelves on floor rails. Some aisles sit half open.

Something is rooting through the bin in the alley below.

A kingfisher keeps watch from the high branches.

No wall lasts forever when built against the tide.

Smashed. Dead.

Small white flowers have opened up at the touch of a sunbeam, tight buds unfurling. Pale, fragile things.

Flickering light. Stirs something.

Sticky papers, messy.

A great corner to take a piss in.

Locked steel shutters, a door slammed shut even before your arrival.

A whiff of old ammonia. Still burns the throat.

Someone's given it a beating.

Grass stains. Memory of mud.

Power. Still humming.

Flowers bloom from cracked cement, wilt in the pots.

A beer bottle, gutted and discarded.

A house drawn in crayon by either a child or an idiot.

Vroom vroom go boom boom.

Concrete's cracked. Tree roots attacking.

Don't fucking look down!