Jones

He sat at the base of the steps that rose from the concrete sidewalks like roots and enjoyed the sun. It had an almost intimate quality to it, a scent-like wafting quality that brought peace to the ragged environs that surrounded him, the squalor of a city rife with dreams of the grandeur it once lived. Now it shuffled, head in the clouds, while its tattered clothes stained with the rancid smell of sweat, the fermenting substances garnered from sleeping in the streets, and disintegrated before the perpetual grind of reality against its poor, its neglected body.

The sun lit the city as if it stood upon a hill, high above the clouds, clothed it in the cloak of nobility, cast it with a stature of dignity for all to see.

If you told this to the man, he would have nodded, not thinking about it consciously, but knowing it nonetheless, just as he knew that the clouds would rise or the hill would fall and once again the city would be weighted down by dejection. There was no realization of patterns in his knowledge, no analysis. It just came naturally. If we walked together on the timeline, whether trudging forward or running, he was always at the horizon, never looking back. Occasionally, you’d hear his muttered words, but mostly he was just silent. If you were wise, you’d value his words as gold.

His curious intuition stemmed from, or perhaps was a result of, his being a stock market tycoon. Either way, he was incredibly successful judging by the tabs the IRS kept on him.

There was a certain whimsical air about him, perhaps the sun, perhaps the smile he wore, perhaps the wife who would get off work and wait for him at home until five every night, where they would joke and tickle and occasionally break into impromptu dance as they cooked dinner. Mostly, though, it went undone and they shelved the ingredients for another day, sufficing with boiled water and instant noodles. The rest of the night was theirs to claim in any way they desired.

Something about him that day made him stick out, brought to mind the question 'why is he in these parts of the city?' Of course, if questioned directly, he would smile and say, “Nice day out.”

What made him linger, day in, day out, before completing the indirect way back to the train station, was the sheer locus of the place. It was here, in the days before the city’s fall, that he had known his greatest successes, where he had stood atop the city and the city stood atop the world. It was here that he had gotten lost, a young would-be law student on his way to a class he knew he would hate and guaranteed a job he would hate afterwards. It was here that he sat, exhausted from wandering and perspiring from the heat of the bright sun and rested his head upon the heels of his palms, looked down to the sandy grained concrete…and found himself. It was here, at the steps of the coffee house, where he’d met his wife and where he continued to meet her until, in a shower of snow made into willow-wisps by the lamplight and shaking with laughter in his embrace, she proposed to him with a plastic spider ring she’d found at the steps during Halloween. It was here that his success had survived, even multiplied in the face of the city’s decline.

A cloud laid a dark finger on his high brow, and the smile disappeared. The children who had bounced playground balls against the walls, road, sidewalk, lost them on the rooftops and marooned them in the grass…the children were gone, and the city was silent, the realization reaching him like the sudden abatement of a monsoon.

His instincts had been telling him to leave.
His instincts whispered of danger.
His instincts-
!

He got up and walked briskly away, trying not to convey weakness, trying to escape his fate, but angry words echoed down and followed him, ghosts of a different battle gleefully latching onto his spine, digging into his shoulders. Hands spoke angrily, flashed war colors, clawed and fisted and finally snatched up shining metal, harsh teeth that struck without remorse.

He watched, horrified, staring at the news that night, saw his body lifted into the ambulance, watched his lifeblood drain into the concrete, heard the death cries of the men who had shot him, smelled the latex hospital gloves used to prod his body, tasted his wife’s tears

The mouth of his fate engulfed him.
He was gone.
Swallowed.