THE UNDERGROUND CITY

Damp. Musty like the innards of ancient Inca pyramids, where every stone keeps a secret about life and death under the weight of time's labyrinth. Visibility sighs through yellow green haze and blears of narrow band amber torch street lights. Cobblestone and brick sidewalks lay flat to the periphery of the street until ninety degree corners turn upward. Ominous front talus window-glass apertures reach toward a ceiling of dolomite. An earthen cosmos of anhydrous carbonate and magnesium formed by Milankovitch cycles. Glitter like the remnants of myths.

This world was once Veridiction's cistern. The olden aqueduct hollows, now corridor walkways and tunnels, snake like verbs in and out of the cavern. Connect the apartments and the Crater to the underground city. Some of the corridors exist as dead end tombs. Crumble and crumple. Vestiges of the war. Many souls lost in the length and depth of bomb blast collapses. From such weapons, the Leonard's poured experimental fossilizing liquids which many Ghost's drowned under before the cave-in. Their broken bones are still buried beneath and protrude for the chiseles and brushes of the archaeological. Emaciate. Aged unnaturally. Like bearing witness to hundreds of false millennia. Dead only a decade.

The remains of those who mattered are honoured by each passerby. Skulls left for such memorial like all the curved earth's a memorial to a billion graves. Earth's mausoleum of an a priori promise upon the cemeteries that have yet to be spaded. Have yet to sink and drown. Cursed by a blessing. Like a plague dead body tied to the helm of a stranger ship. No port. No course. No one left alive. But from a distance everything seems fine. The failure of certainty must reckon with the reality of epistemology.

Beyond the roofs at the steeple point of the underground sky is the cavernous rib cage, like a dead whale's concrete osseous arches. Pitch in place, the curve rock face dome spine. Megalodonic. A true feat of architecture. Simulacra bones of a monster.

The olden part of the city is an aesthetically fleshless sternum that swallows Terra by the circumstance and contingency of her existence. Orders the evening and shows the dusk its place. Her own will is a shadow of such movement within the enormous belly city of Ghosts.

Witnesses the sound of laughter in the distance. Not sure if such pied piper calling comes from where she's heading. Someone's voice talks a high vocality. Inebriation. Won't stop. Grates Terra's mind like a skipping turntable. Imagines an electronic drum beat's tinny high hat and puffy kick drum. Popcorn snare. Thudding house bass thumps with each step. Her annoyance toward the voice dissipates. The high pitch voice seems to fragment and give Terra a wondering, yet unsettling feeling. As the un-language disappears, its sound seems to look directly at Terra, as if it were only existing within a section of her mind. Was it there? Was it ever?

She stops and listens. Echoes fade like dizzy spinning spinal twirls. Continues walking. Remembers her former subjugation. Subconscious shackles. Her older sister. The sacrifice.

'Ah, Judith. I owe you a debt that I'll never be able to pay. Not now, not ever. Why did it have to be this way? I wish I'd had time to get to know you more. My brave sister.'

Somber for a moment. Recollects Judith holding her own heart up for Terra to eat; dying so Terra might live. Blinks a slight tear and lets the troubling thought fall away. Keeps moving toward her destination. Good and Evil and Beyond. Promises of drinks and whatever else Glare wishes. Terra likes Glare. Likes that they could probably climb mountains together. Terra isn't her teacher yet. Not yet. Maybe that won't matter. Maybe it will. Likely. For Terra, when it comes to the memory of Judith and the anticipation of Glare, it's like the sun only rises to set. Like the reason for living is getting ready to stay dead.

What exists outside her thoughts intrudes into them. The city becomes more and more alive. Passes a club with protruding strobe light balconies above a small line of barely clothed Ghosts who wait to enter through black crimson guarded doors. Their faces are paintings of ghastly skeletons. Osteal faces glow with flashing grimaces. Words like fangs and enormous voids like vignettes around eyeballs. One creakily laughing woman wears large white bug eye sunglasses that fill most of her Halloween face. Stops laughing when she notices Terra. Neon green and grape and cigarettes. Cliques and bodies touch and press bitten lips upon napes of necks close to the entrance. Slide in provocation. Intension. Intensity. The woman smiles toward Terra. Nods. Pinches one of her nipples through a black apron dress. Blows a kiss toward Terra.

Above the street, people dance upon the bouncing balcony. Stomp. The air's loud. Rumbling celebration and vibration.

The club has enormous curling medieval font style letters above the door which reveal the establishment known as The Slaughter House. The place to go if she ever wants strange sculptures in her guts.

Keeps walking. Knows full well the woman would ravage her if she wanted such fingers and toes and sweat and saliva upon her. Probably get her fist in there.

Terra's thoughts run away from her and at the same time, the same thoughts climb down into the depths and question certain happenings. Wonders why the club was silent within her ears until the last few blocks.

'It's as if sound doesn't exist until it's standing in front of me. Am I high? How did this happen? When? No. I don't remember anything like this. Maybe it was Janice's refreshments with Patricia today. Maybe.'

Maybe her ears are playing with her mind. Particular sounds aren't even vibrational for her until her body recognizes such. Even now, her body won't give away its secrets in front of her soul. The Slaughter House seems loud enough to be audible all the way in the Crater.

A lanky blonde man walks and watches her from the opposite direction. Smiles at her. Smiles back as they walk past each other. He frowns and looks away. Closes her mouth and licks her black teeth. She doesn't care. These teeth are her teeth. Continues along the street of the city in a basement. Holds no real grudge.

Toward the centre of the conurbation, a shudder of electricity hits her insides. Raises goosebumps on her arms. This happens at the exact moment she walks in front of an alley. Darkness built of two long smooth concrete walls and a third at the very end. A bearded plastic owl sits upon a ledge like a Tartan guard. Eyes glow lambent malachite. There's no exit to the cement corridor beyond the entrance. Upon the walls, notices what appears to be a simulacra forest of tangles. Painted branch tips like curls of fingers whisper to her, 'come here.' Bulbous oaken branches like glans penetrate knotty deep hollow orifices. Sable eye boles peer out at her like moans from shadows. Directs her steps into the caesura between buildings. The forest simulacra looms menacingly with thin boney fingers stuck upon an invisible fourth wall. A double blade axe and a fireman's axe hang like branches from a bole which has the countenance of a giant bearish human skull. The forest is a very realistic painting. Encompasses all three walls of the hallway yard. Terra touches the street art and reaches to touch the double blade weapon but she isn't tall enough. Decides not to climb. Her skin tight red dress is new and for one night, she wants to keep it in a state of such fancy.

Attention catches something of a glisten in her side eye vision. She turns away from the axe wall and notices an old van parked within a nook of the opposite wall from her position. At first, the rust and metal and rubber seem a part of the painting. But the van is a van. It's like a sunken ship in a bottle, like an s.o.s. that will never float away. Wonders how anyone drove it into such a small space and how anyone could possibly drive it out. Shadows loom upon the midnight metal torso like long strands of turkey foot grass.

She has an outlet flash burn behind her eyes about an unknown memory that wrenches her heart for an unexpected eternal moment. The shadows shift, at first bleary and then clear. Witnesses the van through the apparition of a soaking downpour near to where her own apparition stands completely naked upon a slippery large flat stone. Her memory looks down at her soaking, rivulet flesh. Green eyes glow and watch her and she looks up and notices Lord slide off the van's roof and windshield and walk toward her forever barefoot. She's older and beautiful and wears only her skin. Lord climbs the rock and presses her torso flesh upon Terra and kisses her. The unknown memory halts in the breath of anticipation. The vision fades.

Her loins are like the rain. She wants to rip her clothing off but stops herself. Pants and licks her lips. Witnesses back at the way she entered the alley. On the ground, just before the street are letters she thinks only her eyes can witness from this exact position. "Jane was here." Remembers witnessing these words on a bike ride.

'Jane. I wish to know you. I thought I did. I know who Judith is. I would love a chat with you. I know you're me but you're not. I remember you because I have your memories as well. It seems like your life reveals itself when I'm reminded. It's like your past is a part of my past. I was never there and yet I was. And Lord? Why am I thinking so much about Lord? Guilt? No. There's more. Jane and Lord...me and Lord. It's like I want her. Like I'm attracted to her. But I destroyed her. But David resurrected her. And I'm very sure that he resurrected Paula, as well. Maybe because Muerte touched her first.'

The weather inside Terra turns and her inner sunshine becomes the barren world of a dead subconscious planet, existing along an orbit heading nowhere. Her mind feels a shadow loom and grow and cast itself upon her mind's topography.

A voice within Terra opens it's eyes and nudges her. She turns around to find no one. The voice nudges her again, harder this time and from inside her belly. Terra touches herself where she felt the nudge. Her fingers feel someone else's fingers nudge her again.

'What the fuck?'

"Hello, Terra."

Many voices of deep distortional reverb crackle like a record player needle noise. Perform the syllable and cadence of Terra's worst fear. Legion. Shivers and feels like ice is in her blood. Frostily unbinds her from the reality of her body.

'Who are you?'

Laughter rings and echoes against every palace hall within her mind.

"You know. We never left. We've always been here. You know. We know you know. We know exactly and we know more than you, Terra Coal."

'What do you want?'

"To live. We want to live. And we will do so without you if necessary. You know what you really are? You're one of us. And so let's not pretend reality is what you think it is. We won't lie to you. We are hungry. We can smell this place. Let us out. What makes you think you're the real Terra Coal, anyway? What makes you think she isn't buried in here with us like some skeleton in a ceiling?"

'Shut up.'

"We've been so silent since we ate up our sister. She was delicious. Don't you remember? You took a bite, too."

'Shut up!'

"We bashed her face open and enjoyed those tasty treats!"

'Get out of my head! Get out!'

"We are your head. You get out!"

Terra turns back to the van and the all encompassing painting. The alley sheds away the simulacra. Glows emerald green. The eyes are everywhere in the painting, watching and blinking. Terra clenches her fist and runs toward the bulbous giant skull simulacra tree. Her black flip flops fly from her feet. Jumps high upon the phenomenology of the alley wall and climbs using the thinly painted grout joints for fingers and toes that become branches. Reaches the double blade axe and sinks her hand into the street art. Pulls the axe out of the hidden simulation portal. Falls to the ground and lands on her bare feet. The axe wasn't a painting at all. She knows the fireman axe is displayed within another portal but it's not her's to take. Not yet. Witnesses up at the two portals and focuses on the one she freed the axe from. The open torso of the painting of the tree is a simulation of another room with another door. That final door is closed upon the inside and shadows dance upon its candlelight proclamation.

The voices sink back down into the ether of Terra and laugh like echoes as they bubble from her knowledge. She stands in the alley, not knowing or remembering the last few moments. Except she feels the residue of an emotion. Remembers confusion mixed with fear and that something just happened to her. Glances back down toward the secret letters but they aren't there. Remembers like her mind was pretending to forget. It is a strange feeling to exist in confusion but at the exact same time to also know and remember and wish to be entirely confused instead. The deadly knowledge is unwanted but unavoidable.

'Maybe Jane was never here.'