THE CITY IS A FOREST. An undergrowth of pipes; writhing and hissing as if were a pit of blind snakes. The buildings are trees, crushed and calloused in their vicious attempts to find sunlight. Night is savage; the city is mad.
The streetlights are hunched over like the stems of a dying bluebell. It is crushed, as I am, under the weight of the city. The darkness is thick, soupy. It blurs the city as if it were under a spell.
Click.
Great metal beetles scurry past. Frantic, disorientated.
Click. Click.
Their engines splutter, their wheels clumsy as they are blinded by their own lights. They only scurry in circles because they don’t know where they are.
I turn into an alleyway guarded by scratchy concrete. I am not alone.
A creature trots past. Its face is flushed a baby pink; soft, boneless fingers squishing together to wipe sweat off brow. The mouth is open, fat lips glossed over with a coat of oil. It is gasping for breath, nostrils flared-jerking open and closed in rapid succession as if trying to inhale the grease and meat from its fingernails. The belly spills over the tight, crisp jeans in waves of fat. It is a swine; wandering the city forest and leaving muddy footprints in its wake.
I move on. The smell of animal seeps into the cracks of the pavement. The buildings part as I near the end of the alleyway. Bright lights dance like sick fireflies. Here the forest clears, allowing space for a bustling highway of its inhabitants.
Girls flit in and out, drawn to the lights like moths that crush themselves onto light globe after light globe. To be blinded for pleasure must be one’s most desired state of existence.
Business men, circling around with beady eyes, survey the forest for prey. They run their hands over their bald heads.
Sheep are everywhere. Flocking together, keeping warm in their woolly coats that must be as thick (if not thicker) than their furry skulls. Tresses of hair fall over their eyes to stop from seeing their own ugliness. They trot like pigs in their heels.
A dog is walking his keeper. The human stumbles; it crouches by street corners smelling its territory. The canine has to loosen its lead to stop it from strangling itself.
The city is a forest. A dark corner of domestic savagery. I tread the streets carefully until the rising sun dissipates the blur between human and animal. But some madness still lingers in this forest. Sometimes, if the streets are quiet and the air is dense, I can almost hear the great metal beetles scurrying about in their endless circles.
Click.
