Published in 826 National's A Place Worth Being (purchase here)
Perfect.
That’s what they said the city was.
Blue skies, clouds that drifted like an artist had brushed them across a canvas, always covering up the sun when it got too hot. A gentle breeze tickled your neck and caressed your face as you would walk. It never rained during the day, allowing those who inhabited it to live their life without the threat of plans being canceled due to weather.
The smell of perfectly gardened flowers that rested on the windows of the buildings floated through the air that came from the vibrant green trees. Bookstores sent out the comforting scents of paper and ink as you walked by, enticing you to walk in and purchase a story. A baker sold her goods on the street, her stand of warm, perfect, chocolate chip cookies made you feel like a child that had come inside from a snowstorm.
People of all different origins lived in harmony, each strung together by the place they resided in. As you walked down the street, you noticed how every person wore a smile, and each spoke in positive, uplifting tones, beautiful voices drifting past your ears. Musicians sang out on street corners, the different genres of music seamless, providing a lively backdrop for the people as they made their way to wherever they were headed that day.
If they did not want to walk, it would never be a difficulty, because the traffic always flowed smoothly. The cars that were driven drifted across the veins of the city, following the side streets and main ones without ever having to worry about a delay in their arrival.
Perfect.
That’s what they said the city was.
If they said that the city was perfect, I don’t think they’d ever seen it at night.
The sun fell below the horizon, giving up the last illusion of perfection in the form of washing the city in gold. The people who lived there hurried into the ever-clean buildings, their positive views of the city going with them behind triple-locked doors.
The moon rose, the silver light a calm before the storm.
The city at night was an entirely different place, unrecognizable from the pictures you found of it online.
Now, the darkness of the city began to show.
The stars didn’t shine, swallowed by the caliginous sky. The air seemed to be at a tense standstill as it waited for the nighttime inhabitants to make their appearance. If it rained, this is when it happened, drenching the sidewalks in cool water and covering the little light that came from the moon.
The streets began to reek as they came forth. Human sweat attacked your senses. The flowers died and molded, giving off a sickly sweet scent that was as enticing as it was repulsing. The paper smell was replaced with that of chemical fire, trapping smoke inside your lungs. The perfect cookies grew stale and disintegrated.
They arrived from the abandoned outskirts of the city. With the smiles of crazed psychopaths, they spoke without moving their mouths, the expressions stapled to their faces. Their words were the ones you thought of in the dark recesses of your mind, pulled from the shadows and given a channel. They told you that your greatest fears were true and played your regrets on a warped movie screen. An out-of-tune piano clanged from somewhere, slammed on by angry hands, keys shattering and lodging their pieces in the skin or falling onto the ground for a shoe to crunch on.
The streets were empty and full at the same time. You would run to a corner, hiding in a side street, finally away from the chaos and pain, and as you began to feel safe, you would hear manic laughter from a shadow with eyes and start running again. Sometimes the running was better than finding an empty street though because it was never truly empty. Even if it was quiet, it was the loudest silence you’d ever hear, and crawled into the open pores of your body, seeping in and reaching slimy hands into your mind to pull on your pain.
Perfect.
That’s what they said the city was.
As long as you never turned the lights off.
Commentaires