The Sign

I had thought that I was being saved by some kind of messanaic sect of true believers, but it turned out not to be true. The chanting crowd were just sweeping me away from their safe place, like a faceless fleshy amoeba encircling me, absorbing me, and finally jettisoning me into a mud pool when they thought any danger I represented had passed. They had more than me to worry about though, as a gang of marauding children appeared out of the rain and launched skirmishing attacks on the now silent crowd as they retreated back to the temple-like building. Some of the kids kicked out at me as they passed, but they could see I offered nothing even they would want. I got a bloody lip but it must have been my lucky night. I pulled myself up and hobbled on my torn knee off through an open gate in the stone wall that loomed out of the darkness before me. A sick moon kept breaking through the scudding clouds and around me I could make out decapitated and limbless human forms standing high enough to be sillhouetted against the bilious sky. The wall around the graveyard gave shelter from the wind, but not the rain, and I stumbled on. This had been another stroke of luck for me - I could see a graveyard from my safe place and perhaps this was the same one. I just had to keep by the wall and try every gate that I came across to see if the other side of the wall was familiar to me. The third gate I passed through was the one - I recognised the street and the derelict buildings. The tenement walls and broken paving were illuminated by an unnatural electric light coming from somewhere near but the source was not visible. Perhaps some of the survivors had finally got together and marked out our place with a show of power to end the hell our lives had become. I reached my street door and shouldered it open, then slammed it shut behind me, barricading it against...against everything and everyone who might try to come behind me. I made my way to the stairwell and felt my way upwards to my safe place, my shuffling steps echoing in the empty space. Twelve floors to the top of the tallest building left standing in this part of town, and I had a view which protected me. I was careful going into the rooms, but no-one had found them or been there whilst I was gone. The rooms were lit with the same strange light as the street below, and I crawled to the shattered window to see where it was coming from. My heart leapt as I saw the sign - blazing in the sky over the square several streets away. They had done it! No more empty hope, no more waiting to be saved. No more magic. Maybe now we could start to come back.... I raised my camera and rested it on the window sill. A blip for the day, and maybe for the days to come too...





With thanks (and apologies) to Nathan Coley.