Archive for June 28th, 2008
The Visible Man–1
You shall have a place outside the camp and you shall go out to it; and you shall have a stick with your weapons; and when you sit down outside, you shall dig a hole with it, and turn back and cover up your excrement.
– Deuteronomy 23: 12
When Jack Rankin finally navigated himself out of a cavern of nightmares, he awoke lying on a concrete nook some forty-five feet below the oldest city in North America. Everything was dark, damp, and disorienting. From the inside pocket of his black Company jacket he dug out his Zippo and snapped it on, a flange of light dented the darkness. He could just make out a network of tunnels knifing off into the darkness while at his feet a sluiceway sent a river of condoms, puke, and urine swirling off into the city’s underbelly. Pheilm Rankin was at a crossroads of sludge and shit.
He rose up and tried to get his bearings. Through the flickering lantern of his Zippo he could see a labyrinth of irregular cavities, niches, and recesses pockmarking the walls. He stood up on the ledge and pressed his ear to the wall. A faint hum filtered down from the immortal city above and he thought he could hear the muffled rumble of cars rifling down the street, someone (who he pictured in a grey business suit) yelled for a taxi, a horn faded off on the ribbon of Doppler’s Law and although he normally detested this collision of sound, it was comforting to him now. But the feeling didn’t last long. New, alien sounds crept out of the darkness. A moan swept through the corridors. Pipes rattled. Things creaked.
Something drip, drip, dripped.
And he followed it. Reckless and confident at first he cursed loudly as he knocked his head off of a pipe or smashed his knee on a steel-wheeled gauge. But he carried on believing that the drip must be coming from a manhole, his way to freedom.
“I’m almost there,” he reassured himself as the sound of the dripping pipe increased. But, invariably, when he thought that the drip was just around the corner, it would leap off far away into the darkness and he would start out again trying to find it.
His thirst burned, but he was unconcerned. All he had to do was find the drip and the manhole. It all seemed easy enough. But at this point any true understanding of his situation was far, far off. How could he have guessed that the darkness and the rats would become his friends and allies, the sewage his sustenance?
Drip. Drip. Drip.
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