The City of Iron Tears
Rain cascades off the front of my hood as I slowly move through the city's cold urban canyons. Bowing my head to avoid the hammering rain, I focus on the motion of my feet through the puddles. One moves slowly forward, stops partially submerged, and the next soon follows. This repetitive sight fills my vision as I hunch over to ward off the frigid rain.
Where am I going? I can’t even remember anymore. This life is naught but a series of problems and obstacles; each time I overcome one, another springs forward to take its place. My mind drifts to thoughts of my small dark apartment, pressed in on all sides by identical small dark apartments. There is a small bed in the corner, a minimalist kitchen, a bedside table with a buzzing 40-watt lamp. Each apartment is alike, with minor personal products designed to hint at individuality. A picture here, a vase there--we seize anything to make our homes feel different from everyone else’s. My little slot is in Complex 48-D, but this doesn’t matter. They are all the same: grey and dismal, like everything else in this city. The hive-like residential complexes rise like prison walls.
You can’t leave. The city won’t allow it. The further from the heart of the city you go, the more maze-like the streets become. As you move away the city gropes after you, calling you back via the perverted siren-calls of the commercial loudspeakers. They call out advertisements that can even be heard in your sleep. You stop noticing it until you can no longer hear them, and then their absence leaves an empty ache in your bones. Something that had been present all your life is suddenly gone. As you continue through the streets the ache will grow, the city will press down onto you, your steps will be like lead. It will be difficult to breathe. With all its strength the city will fight you, and before you know it you are back in your apartment among factory-stamped items that the loudspeakers and billboards have convinced you were necessary. The city has you once again.
Sure, we've all heard of people who escaped, leaving the city far behind. But they were always whispered of in private, and they were always the friend of a friend of a friend. We would sometimes notice someone disappear, and we would secretly hope they had found their way out. A few days later they would reappear, trudging solemnly through the streets with that blank visage we all carried. We came to know it was a hopeless dream.
I bump into something as I walk through the street. Looking up, I see a woman standing before me. Her head is bowed against the rain, clad in the same slate grey jacket that protects me from the rain. I see her face for a brief moment, ashen and devoid of hope. She persists merely because there is no alternative. I wonder if I look the same. I lift my head to look around. I had not noticed them before, but there are people milling all about me, heads down, not noticing each other, moving like puppets controlled by an unseen hand. The woman I had collided with sweeps past me without a glance.
I decide. I will not to stop walking until the grey city is far behind me. I raise my head and straighten my back, joints popping at the unusual posture. My feet are lighter than ever before, and it seems as though the rain lightens its incessant pounding. I steel myself and walk, no longer shuffling. Now I have something I had never had before: purpose.
I feel the call before I hear it. It is as they said: the loudspeakers call me by name, promising happiness alongside my brothers in the city. I move on. The speakers warn me of the emptiness that awaits. It calls in the voices of my friends, my family, everyone I ever knew and ever loved, trying to find a purchase for the hooks that will drag me back. It finds none. I move on. It calls one final time, a haunting lilt in the air, before ceasing completely. I feel a dull ache in my bones, but I move on.
The people I had passed with ease moments before suddenly block my path. The throng thickens, a sea of churning grey rain jackets undulating against me. I press against them, forcing my way between bodies, shoving them out of the way and watching them melt into the mass. Looking over my shoulder, I see the street behind me is empty. The path leading back to the city center is clear, a street inhabited only by puddles of rainwater and swatches of electric light. I turn back to the living wall that blocks my path. I press on with all my might.
Suddenly, they are gone. I stumble forward as all resistance disappears. I look around and find no sign of the people I had fought against only seconds earlier. The city has changed: it is no longer the mute and lifeless place it was before. Now it is black and foreboding. The clean concrete streets have become viscous mud that pull and suck at my boots with every step. The rain is now sleet, cutting against my face and pushing me back towards the city's heart. It is warm there. It is safe there. My friends are there. What is there elsewhere that the city cannnot grant? The buildings loom high above me and press down upon me, forcing me into the muddy ground. I walk with bent knees, barely able to move under the weight. I see my mother, loving and caring, in a cold and unfeeling nursing home. How will she survive without me? I see my father, tall and broad. What will he think of me now? That I ran? That I abandoned everything?
I grit my teeth and press on, head once again bowed against the obstacles I face. Tears stream down my face as I fight against life's apparitions, childhood friends calling me from the city’s heart, lovers begging me to stay, old rivals mocking me as a coward. The wind whips against me in a maelstrom of memories as the rain pierces my jacket and soaks me to the bone.
Then it ceases. The rain and the wind are still. I look up to see a single door in a simple stone wall. As I reach for the handle, a final tragic call floats through the air behind me. I open the door. I do not look back.
Where am I going? I can’t even remember anymore. This life is naught but a series of problems and obstacles; each time I overcome one, another springs forward to take its place. My mind drifts to thoughts of my small dark apartment, pressed in on all sides by identical small dark apartments. There is a small bed in the corner, a minimalist kitchen, a bedside table with a buzzing 40-watt lamp. Each apartment is alike, with minor personal products designed to hint at individuality. A picture here, a vase there--we seize anything to make our homes feel different from everyone else’s. My little slot is in Complex 48-D, but this doesn’t matter. They are all the same: grey and dismal, like everything else in this city. The hive-like residential complexes rise like prison walls.
You can’t leave. The city won’t allow it. The further from the heart of the city you go, the more maze-like the streets become. As you move away the city gropes after you, calling you back via the perverted siren-calls of the commercial loudspeakers. They call out advertisements that can even be heard in your sleep. You stop noticing it until you can no longer hear them, and then their absence leaves an empty ache in your bones. Something that had been present all your life is suddenly gone. As you continue through the streets the ache will grow, the city will press down onto you, your steps will be like lead. It will be difficult to breathe. With all its strength the city will fight you, and before you know it you are back in your apartment among factory-stamped items that the loudspeakers and billboards have convinced you were necessary. The city has you once again.
Sure, we've all heard of people who escaped, leaving the city far behind. But they were always whispered of in private, and they were always the friend of a friend of a friend. We would sometimes notice someone disappear, and we would secretly hope they had found their way out. A few days later they would reappear, trudging solemnly through the streets with that blank visage we all carried. We came to know it was a hopeless dream.
I bump into something as I walk through the street. Looking up, I see a woman standing before me. Her head is bowed against the rain, clad in the same slate grey jacket that protects me from the rain. I see her face for a brief moment, ashen and devoid of hope. She persists merely because there is no alternative. I wonder if I look the same. I lift my head to look around. I had not noticed them before, but there are people milling all about me, heads down, not noticing each other, moving like puppets controlled by an unseen hand. The woman I had collided with sweeps past me without a glance.
I decide. I will not to stop walking until the grey city is far behind me. I raise my head and straighten my back, joints popping at the unusual posture. My feet are lighter than ever before, and it seems as though the rain lightens its incessant pounding. I steel myself and walk, no longer shuffling. Now I have something I had never had before: purpose.
I feel the call before I hear it. It is as they said: the loudspeakers call me by name, promising happiness alongside my brothers in the city. I move on. The speakers warn me of the emptiness that awaits. It calls in the voices of my friends, my family, everyone I ever knew and ever loved, trying to find a purchase for the hooks that will drag me back. It finds none. I move on. It calls one final time, a haunting lilt in the air, before ceasing completely. I feel a dull ache in my bones, but I move on.
The people I had passed with ease moments before suddenly block my path. The throng thickens, a sea of churning grey rain jackets undulating against me. I press against them, forcing my way between bodies, shoving them out of the way and watching them melt into the mass. Looking over my shoulder, I see the street behind me is empty. The path leading back to the city center is clear, a street inhabited only by puddles of rainwater and swatches of electric light. I turn back to the living wall that blocks my path. I press on with all my might.
Suddenly, they are gone. I stumble forward as all resistance disappears. I look around and find no sign of the people I had fought against only seconds earlier. The city has changed: it is no longer the mute and lifeless place it was before. Now it is black and foreboding. The clean concrete streets have become viscous mud that pull and suck at my boots with every step. The rain is now sleet, cutting against my face and pushing me back towards the city's heart. It is warm there. It is safe there. My friends are there. What is there elsewhere that the city cannnot grant? The buildings loom high above me and press down upon me, forcing me into the muddy ground. I walk with bent knees, barely able to move under the weight. I see my mother, loving and caring, in a cold and unfeeling nursing home. How will she survive without me? I see my father, tall and broad. What will he think of me now? That I ran? That I abandoned everything?
I grit my teeth and press on, head once again bowed against the obstacles I face. Tears stream down my face as I fight against life's apparitions, childhood friends calling me from the city’s heart, lovers begging me to stay, old rivals mocking me as a coward. The wind whips against me in a maelstrom of memories as the rain pierces my jacket and soaks me to the bone.
Then it ceases. The rain and the wind are still. I look up to see a single door in a simple stone wall. As I reach for the handle, a final tragic call floats through the air behind me. I open the door. I do not look back.