NB: The Search (BoyxBoy)

Preview 3

There’s a chill outside.  It’s dark out.  It’s always dark out these days.  Some say that the sun died, that it gave in to the infinite darkness of the universe around it.  I don’t believe that’s true.  I’ve talked to travelers who’ve seen the sun.  They’ve felt its warmth.  They say it’s right there up in the sky, hidden behind a permanent veil of darkness.  It doesn’t really matter.  The point is that it’s always dark.

The main source of light in the city is Essarid’s tower.  Her lighthouse is the tallest structure in the city, and it basks us in her green light, giving everything a sickly hue.  The light is a beacon to draw in new souls, and a constant reminder to those of us who have already made our home here of Essarid’s energy flowing through us, binding us to her through our unquenchable desires. 

Walking through the city, I am surrounded by grey stone buildings jutting out from the ground like slabs of rock forced up from the desolate earth beneath.  Had I not been inside so many of them, it would be easier to believe that the windows were merely carved into the stone surfaces, rather than being gateways to dwellings hidden within.

The narrow streets are almost claustrophobic, but I find them to be a comforting distraction from the cliff no more than three blocks away.  The city is built on the edge of a great abyss of unknown territory, so far above that we can only see blackness within.  Victoria’s apartment was right on the edge, a fact she prided herself on.  ‘It’s the best view in the city,’ she would say.  That should’ve been the first sign that I should run before I got too attached.  When I slept over, I would dream about the crumbling cliff and falling down forever.

As I pass through a commercial district, I think about picking up groceries.  A distraction is tempting, but errands are hardly the relief I’m looking for.  The commercial districts look a little different from the rest of the city.  Generally, the buildings are shaped like whatever they sell.  A shoe store is shaped like a giant shoe, a hardware store is shaped like a giant tool box, and so on and so forth.  Although, sometimes a store goes under and something else takes its place.  I look inside a giant hamburger.  Now a pet store, you can catch some hungry tourists inside and see the look of horror on their faces when they get offered a puppy instead of the fries they ordered.

I don’t live too far away from Victoria’s, but I’m not in the mood to walk all the way home, so I decide to hazard a trip on the subway.  The whole city is connected by underground trains.  As I walk down into the tunnels, the air is thick and dry.  If I were to jump, I could form a cloud of dust and block out what little light is down here.  Nobody runs the trains anymore, but they come on their own because people expect them to.  Although, they’re still always late, because nobody can imagine a civil service that runs on time.

When the train arrives, there are only a few people on board.  I quickly slip inside one of the rail cars, thinking that it’s empty.  As soon as I’m inside, I know I’ve made a terrible mistake.

These days, the subways are haunted.  It’s not unusual to run into some remnant of your past.  As I enter the train, I see the familiar face of a girl I once knew, Marcie.  When she was alive, I always thought she had this sweet innocence to her, but looking at her now, with her smile subsumed by a faint otherworldly glow and the spark of life absent from her gaze, she looks more like a statue than a human being.  She was always a free spirit.  It’s a shame to see her trapped down here like this, especially since it’s my fault she’s dead.

Most ghosts are decent enough.  They just need somewhere to be.  There’s normally a bunch of them sitting on the platform, passing the time.  Ghosts used to be everywhere.  They would walk around the world just like everyone else, but the city council has been really hard on them lately.  I think it all started when the mayor’s dead ex-wife tried to sue for custody of their kids.