>From: bkoike@sdcc13.ucsd.edu (Bryce Koike)
Subject: Early Afternoon.  Late Nite Special.
Summary: Random attempt to write a short story
Date: 19 Jan 92 22:17:27 GMT

[forgive me if this doesn't meet your approval.  I'm writing off the
top of my head for the first time in at least half a year...]

[dedicated to Aylmer who suggested I write one o' these]

	As the wind whipped the hair of the man atop the building,
lights shifted far down below him.  Down the fifty floors of the
crumbling Old Town Housing Projects to the rotting street below.  It
was a thick data stream of knowledge, encrypted, hidden, and busy, a
series of vehicles and people in each other's way, hustling to get
home for the evening.  Hands hurriedly slid thick credit chips
through slots and tossed the day's news above heads as the rain beat
down harder.
	Only a thin rusting bar held the man from falling down those
fifty floors to the street below.  To prevent his body's fluids
mixing with the other unnamed stains on the streets.  The only sound
was the endless rumble of the city's streets.  And to that man the
sounds turned to words.
	The words to meanings.
	The meanings to comprehension.
	The man flung himself away from the rail, his bony face
wretched with confusion, and he fled down the stairs.  His form was
quickly lost in the dark.  Soon, even his footsteps were gone.
	And still the street roared below.

	The lights were kept off to keep the bills low.  Duct tape
held the knobs in the shower off because the monthly water allowance
was already up.  Running off of old batteries was a small radio in
the corner, its LCD screen lit up in sickly green, playing soft
music to soothe the soul.
	And the man in the chair ran his hand over the empty weapon.
Even in the dark there was light -- brilliant neon gleaming from the
sides of the other highrises, lights floating up from the street,
lights from the rooms across the way.  And in that pale light one
could see the weapon was of a matte black.  It was a professional's
weapon, so unlike the slick chrome and gloss of the preppie's
pistols.  Its barrel was long and cold.  And next to it sat an empty
magazine, already rusting in the damp air.  No, you wouldn't see the
red crust encroaching on it tonight, or the next day, but just as
the human body lost layer after layer of skin, so did the weapon
attract to it its own form of self-destruction.
	Somewhere, down below, some person flicked on their stereo
and the sounds of a faceless rock group flitted up through the open
window.  It was a mindless babble to the man in the chair.  He
closed his eyes and wished for it to go away.
	When he opened them, it was still there.  He didn't need
eyes to pick out the mildewing futon in the corner, or the trash
which covered the floor.  He didn't need eyes to notice the rank
smell from the garbage can next to the small sink that doubled as a
urinal.
	Things as they were, the night promised to be long and
lonely.

	I was one of the many people who held a newspaper above
their head.  It LOOKED good in the movies, right?  All I knew what
that I was getting wet and miserable really fast.  I considered
stopping in a doorway until the rain let up, but I doubted that
it would.  No, not anytime soon.  So I stepped up my pace until I
found myself in front of a large chunk of decaying rubble that used
to be a part of the fifth story.  I glanced up and thought I saw
shadows in the hollow where the wall once stood but they were gone
before I could decide.
	The lift wasn't working.  In fact, I don't recall it ever
working.  But one could hope, right?  I grabbed the rail to the
stairs and started up, taking two at a time, avoiding the rats and
feces.  God what a smell.
	I cursed Lars.  Cursed him and his room on the fifteenth
story.  By the time I hit the seventh I was starting to breathe
heavy.  By the tenth my legs were just beginning to protest.  I
grunted and picked up the pace.
	At first the door to the fifteenth floor wouldn't open.  I
put my weight against it and it slowly opened on its rusted hinges.
But the projects weren't known for their upkeep.  Some kids ran
past, the lead one swinging something rodent-like over its head and
screaming.  I helped one to his feet when he tripped and sent him on
his way.  Ah, the fleeting days of childhood.
	I knocked on Lars' door.  The kids were still screaming.
	"Lars?" I said, perhaps too loudly.  Or was it just because
of the vacant look of the hallway and the way my voice echoed down
its length and back?
	The door opened a crack and a tired eye looked at me.
	"Come in," he sighed.

	The world is built on coincidences.  The pure luck that gave
us the genes to make us the most irresistably powerful race on the
planet.  The coincidence that one of our ancestors found a bone or
branch or stone and found that one could use it as a weapon.
	Brady, the bony man who had hung from the railing far atop
the projects and listened to the street tell him stories, by a pure
coincidence, slid on a batch of blood, lost his balance, and split a
part of his skull open on the last stair on the way down to the
fifteenth floor.
	A child found his body there as it cooled and hardened and
mercifully liberated Brady of the jacket he would no longer need.
Mother had a horrible cold and would surely appreciate the jacket.
She was so deep into her fever that she wouldn't even notice the
small bloodstain.
	He would tell her that it was a picture of a rose.  She
would like that.
	The boy pushed on the door with all his might and squeezed
through the opening he created there and ran down the hall with his
bare feet slapping against concrete.

	"Where's the light switch, Lars?" I asked as my eyes
struggled to adjust to the dark.  My hands groped against the wall
but couldn't come up with it.
	"I don't use it.  No money," was Lars' reply.  His voice was
weak and soft, quite unlike the strength and vigor behind it that I
was used to.
	I cleared my throat.  "You called me," I said, "a month ago.
You knew I was out of town.  You could've called Chris or Janet to
give me the message but you left it on my machine.  Why'd you do
that?"
	Silence.
	"Lars?"
	He was sobbing.  I wrinkled my nose at the smell in the
room.  What had he been doing in here?  Some of it I could recognize
-- rotting food, dirty clothes, new rain on concrete.
	Lars was sobbing.
	Rigid, I sat next to him and watched his silhouette shudder
in the dark.  I swallowed nervously and gently placed an arm around
his shoulders and dragged him into my pitiful embrace.  His hands
clutched at me desperately, uncut fingernails digging through my wet
jacket.
	Feeling like a faggot I held him.  I held him.

	Mrs. Greers was walking up the steps, her arms straining as
she hugged her new groceries to her sagging breasts.  Her foot
stepped down on something soft yet unyielding.  She looked down and
screamed as the dead eyes of Brady Nelson stared back up at her.
Mrs. Greers' groceries tumbled down the stairs, trying to follow
gravity back down to the street.  They only made it to the end of the
flight and then collapsed against the greying concrete wall.

	"C'mon, Lars, it'll be okay," I whispered as I rocked with
him in my arms.  "Shhh..."
	Slowly his crying stopped and he pulled away.  Gratefully, I
pulled my arms back, away from him.  He turned away from me and
looked out toward the city from the lone window.  I followed his
gaze but saw nothing.  Nothing important, anyway.
	"I'll turn on the lights now," Lars said and his hands found
some invisible remote.  The lights flickered weakly before they
came alive.  I recognized the source of the smell then.  Part was
from the overturned garbage can, full to overflowing with trash.
The other was from the old woman rotting in the bed.
	"Who?" I asked.
	"Mother."
	With tears streaming from his face, Lars knelth next to his
dead mother and tenderly stroked her white face.

	"That's right, there's a dead man in the stairwell!" cried
Mrs. Greers.  "Yes, that's the Plaxton Housing Project, fifteenth
floor.  Well of course I'm sure he's dead!  What do you mean it'll
take a while for you to get someone down here?  I want that body out
of the stairwell now!  What if my child sees that?  Do you have
children Mr. Police Officer?  Do you want your kids..."

	"Hey, let's get her out of here," I said, a hand on Lars'
shoulder.
	"NO!" he shouted, bloodshot eyes boring into my skull.
"No."
	I sighed.  "Lars, I don't want to be cruel, but she's
rotting.  She's dead.  She's not coming back.  Don't you think she'd
be happier in a grave?"
	He shook his head.  "No.  No.  No."
	"Lars..."
	He slapped my hand away with a force I hadn't seen him use
in a long time.  "NO!  LEAVE ME ALONE!" he screamed.
	I backed away and settled in a chair, thinking.

	"That the one?"
	"Yeah."
	"Nice cold one for the storage."
	"Looks like the eyes are pretty well-reserved."
	"Mm.  Good thing he only cracked his skull open."
	"You ready?"
	"Yeah.  On three.  One, two, *three*!"
	"Mph!  Jesus, he's heavy."
	"Little fucker probably ate out at McDonald's too much."
	"Heh heh.  Speak for yourself."
	"You think I get paid enough in this chickenshit outfit to
eat somewhere nice?"

	The guy from the mortuary was something out of nightmares.
But I guess you've got to be a little twisted to enjoy this line of
work.  His name was Moss, I think.  Hard to tell from his thick
Japanese accent.  He pinched the woman's flesh and muttered to
himself.
	"How long has she been here?" he asked me.
	I shrugged.  "Long enough to start rotting," I answered,
quietly enough so Lars wouldn't hear.
	"Hm.  What sort of funeral were you planning?"
	"Small.  Just the two of us."
	He nodded and wrote some notes down.  He reached into his
pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper.  "That's the bill,"
he told me.  I winced when I looked at the price.
	His men put her on a stretcher and took her out, down the
stairs, into the street.
	I watched the cars on the street below inch by.

	A rat carefully crawled from its hiding place, lured by the
smell of something appetizing.  It came to a wet spot on the floor
and sniffed it carefully.  Realizing it for what it was, the rat
started licking.  It snapped back in shock when it saw a form
hovering over it, but it was too slow.
	Something snapped and then a kid grabbed it by a tail.  Now
there were two rats to swing by their tails.

	The funeral was short and sweet.  They dug the grave and
tossed her in among the other bodies, safe in her
hastily-constructed wood box.  Then they replaced the soil above
her, hiding any evidence that a grave was ever there to begin with.
	Lars knelt down and carefully placed a wilting rose where
the grave was.  He knelt there a long time.  Finally, I kneeled down
beside him and helped him up.
	"C'mon, Lars, time to go home."  I took him home, cleaned up
his place, and tucked him into bed.  I decided that I didn't have
anything really important tomorrow and so I fell asleep in his
chair.  I was so tired that I didn't even notice the gun on the
table.

	Brady's body was carefully separated from its important
parts.  Those went into the storage vats.  The rest went into
tomorrow's food.
	Somewhere, up in the sky, a being looked down and saw that
it all was good and gave mankind a big thumbs up.
	Then lightning tore across the sky.  The rain began again.