I could see it; it could see me, 12 floors into the sky we conquered. I felt naked in its light, exposing my senses to a multitude of sounds, colours, smells, tastes- all blending into a living breathing animal. I could feel its putrid odour, its heavy breathing, its coarse grey-brown skin, its frenzied excitement, swarming...
The city is a graveyard- a cemetery of our civilization. The race is like a colony of ants in the cemetery- insignificant, overshadowed. The skyscrapers uncannily resemble megaliths our ancients used to mark their dead.
It was alive- breathing, living.
It was real.
More real than the race- the race which conquered the steel and the skies to build it. Swallowed by its own creation- the living breathing cemetery of steel and glass, built for the life, for perpetuation. We were buried in it. Buried alive. The horror of the cemetery was garrotting all of us- engulfing every soul, smothering the teeming masses that thrived in it, strangling and choking us, reducing us to nothingness... a brute force defining us, our actions, our thoughts, every aspect of our wasted lives.
I could see it in their eyes. I could see it in every one of them. Teachers, doctors, children, housewives, carpenters, paramedics, executives, government officials, programmers- all of us- dead. Teachers taught, children learned, housewives cooked, desultory conversation at dinner, young people partied and tried to look cool. We were all the same. Ghosts- trying to cling to a life that is forever lost, trying to suck out life from the cemetery we made- the cemetery which was more alive than us.
One day, it must have been two weeks ago- my sense of time has been lost now for many days- a welcome change- I woke up to my regular routine comfortable life and found it gone.
I knew, instinctively, as I woke up and consciously breathed in a gust of cold air floating in through my open window, that it was gone. I would know. We were all connected by the sameness of the feelings in us, held together by the intuitive need for something, glued together, coalesced into a mass of walking talking bodies- all of us- so many, all alike. I am sure all of us knew, that morning as we woke up, that it was over. It had snapped. The strings of our cocoons, built painstakingly over the centuries, were undone, disappearing like wisps of smoke. I knew it would’ve changed.
But the city was still there.
The next days were lost in delirium, in ecstatic happiness. The bliss in which I find myself now.
I think the housewife started it. I don’t remember her name now, though I saw it in the news. She had killed her 8 month old child and her husband and declared herself free. She became a sort of messiah. There was no ripple of shock, no waves of protest by idiotic hypocritical moralists.
There were cults. She had followers.
Even the law enforcement officers were in no mood to enforce the law. A policeman set fire to a gas station, I remember. That was fun. Somebody threw my company’s CEO out of the cool important-looking architectural glass window after dramatically breaking it with the fire extinguisher. I saw him fall. I don’t think there were any pieces to collect. I’d thought he was a harmless fellow, at least as harmless as CEOs can be. But it doesn’t matter. It was fun. Its not every day that you see your CEO hurled out of his office window. It was nice. I think that was the last day I went to my office. What is the point anyway? I can just walk in anywhere I want and get my stuff. No one needs salary anymore.
My landlord is killed of course. And I personally cut up the supermarket cashier. I didn’t know blood was so sticky. There are people, mostly teenagers I think, vandalising the telephone booths and writing obscenities on the walls. Very creative. Makes the cemetery human. The other day I saw my Senior Executive join in the ravaging, leering as he danced a jig in the wreckage. He is a smart man. One of the first to join the cults, though that I don’t think was a smart move.
I don’t belong to any cult of course. Cults are in my opinion, dangerous. They remind me of the past days- of the city that was. They have semblances of what the housewife broke, what she didn’t want. Hell, I admire her. But she didn’t want a cult following I am sure. A cult that would have rules, that would have order and routine, that would have rituals. No, a cult is the last thing we need. It would have more and more followers. And we would go back to an order, a different order, but an order nevertheless. It would destroy what we have now.
It would destroy what I have now. It would destroy my elation, my ecstasy, my euphoria- my existence separate from the brute force and decided by me alone. There is joy in the pandemonium and anarchy. Chaos and confusion have set us free. Hell, there isn’t any chaos now. It is clearer, easier, though one might say life expectancy has considerably decreased. As if it matters! We’ve all got to die one day anyway.
Damn those cults! Those idiots shouldn’t be allowed of course. Maybe I’ll start with my Senior Exec. Will he squeal I wonder?
I look down from 12 floors into the sky we conquered.
The city was still there. It looks naked to me; exposed in all its sounds, colours, smells, tastes...
I am alive.
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