Chapter one:

 

 

It’s 8:15pm.

I’m normally home from work by now, but there was an extra delivery today and the guy wouldn’t stop talking to me. I know this guy’s entire life story now, and all I said to him was “how’s it going, buddy?”

Apparently he took that as a cue to give me the lowdown on his shitty divorce and how his mother-in-law always hated him anyway. I should have told him to stop talking. I should have told him I was going to miss my bus. But I didn’t, because I’m polite. Now I’m sitting, waiting for the bus, the cold rain pelting across my back and shoulders like a hundred toy drummer boys. Their little sticks beating out a tune on my skin.

Rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat rat-a-tat…

I look across the road and see a man hail a cab. He has a black umbrella in his hand, held high above his head to protect his slicked-back haircut and expensive suit. Fancy asshole.

A flash of yellow in the dark night and a cab pulls up to the sidewalk. He climbs in, never even seeing me—never looking my way—and then he’s gone. On his way home, no doubt. To his big house. A beautiful wife and 2.5 kids.

So typical.

So normal.

The American fucking dream. Right?

I’m invisible. I’m a ghost. I’m a shadow among men, and I sit in the dark, wet night all alone.

The rain continues to beat down on me. Tiny fingers trying to reach inside. To touch me all the way down to my sad, sad soul.

Rat-a-tat rat-a-tat rat-a-tat…

I’m soaked through, my jeans sticking to my legs like a second skin. I don’t like the feeling. It makes me uncomfortable. I feel claustrophobic in the rain. Invisible walls closing in on me. Clothes sticking. Skin soaking.

The bus pulls up and I stand. One foot in front of the other as I climb the small steps, feeling the trickle of the raindrops move down between the crack of my ass, and I grimace. I pay the driver, move to my seat, and sit down. The windows are fogged up and I use my wet sleeve to clear a section so I can see outside.

The air is thick and heavy on the bus. Too many breaths. Too many people. Too much rubber and steel keeping us all trapped.

The bus begins to move. It lurches forward, wheels splashing through the rain, wipers furiously swiping at the window. The driver whistles, happy fucking fellow that he is. Not a care in the world as he drives us from one place to the next. “Onwards and onwards,” he says each time he stops and someone gets on or off. It makes no sense. Maybe that’s why he likes to say it. Because nonsense is better than reality sometimes.

It’s time to get off and I stand. I ask the woman next to me to move her stroller out of the way, and she does. She’s attractive, pretty features, and the kid is cute. I smile as I pass them but she scowls and looks away.

Screw you, lady.

Whatever happened to manners? Whatever happened to being kind and helping your fellow man? Everything is messed up. Nobody cares about each other anymore. We’re all just bustling through our lives without thinking of the next step. The next day. The next moment. As if there will always be a tomorrow.

But there won’t be—not if we continue to live like this.

We need to grab life with both hands, tug it to our bodies and make it ours.

Seize the fucking day and all that.

“Onwards and onwards,” the bus driver calls as the doors shut behind me and I’m thrust back into the rain. I wonder if it’s intentional, the way he gets the phrase wrong every time.

I keep my head low to keep the rain from going down my shirt, my chin to my chest, and I walk to my small apartment.

I pass dark men in even darker corners. Sad, lonely people walking toward sad, lonely futures. Gotta love my neighborhood. Dealers on every corner. Pimps sitting in cars while their women duck into back alleys. There’s always crying coming from someone’s window. A child. A housewife. A dog. A baby. Crying and crying and crying. It never fucking stops.

My apartment is smack in the middle of misery. But I like it here; at least it’s fucking alive.

I pull my keys from my pocket and look back over my shoulder as someone walks past. He could be black or white or anything in between. I don’t see anything but his eyes as they connect with mine. I hold his stare until he passes and then I put my key in the lock and go inside.

The door shuts behind me, and the crying continues.

Upstairs.

Downstairs.

It surrounds me. Suffocates me. Just like the rain.

I climb the stairs, passing closed doors, the soft squeak of my sneakers sounding out with every step.

My door is red. Like the color of blood.

Dripping from the ceiling. I swim in the blood. I can smell it. I can taste it. She laughs because it means she’s free. I cower because it will destroy us.

Red, red everywhere…

I hate the door. It’s chipped and dirty, and someone sprayed graffiti on it many years ago. I can’t even read what it says anymore, and that annoys me. Irritates me to my core. I’ve stared at it for hours, trying to work out what it says. It was either that or burn it down. Because it’s red like blood. So red it burns my eyes. I know it’s not important, not to anyone but me. But to me it consumes. It takes over.

I could paint the door. A nice brown. Maybe yellow.

But I don’t.

Because red is the color of memory.

“Are you all right?” No. I’m not. I never will be again…

I stare at the faded black words of the graffiti, tracing a finger over the letters that make sense. Something and then an r and then something else and an e. Rainwater drips from my hair and into my eyes, and I blink it away.

A door opens on the floor above me, and I look up the stairs, wondering who it is. I live on the third floor of a five-story building. There are twenty apartments with no vacancies. The people in my building aren’t all bad. They’re not all drug dealers and pimps, hoes and crackheads. There are some families, mothers and fathers trying to make a decent life for their children. Bad mistakes in their youths led them down this dark path, and I can sympathize with that.

But it’s not enough, I want to tell them.

Because it’s not enough, and it never will be.

Your kids will all cry behind locked doors too one day, I think.

One of the prostitutes from upstairs comes down. I know she’s a prostitute because she fucks all night long. One man after another. One fuck fades into the next. I hear her bed slamming against the wall and scraping against the floorboards at all times of the night. I hear their grunts of shame and I hear her moans. Her cries of pleasure and sometimes pain.

I sometimes jack off to the sounds when I can’t sleep. It feels dirty. And wrong. And then I’m grunting in shame too.

Her eyes meet mine and I attempt a smile. But she doesn’t smile back. So I open my door and go inside, shutting her out of my world.

You don’t belong in here with me anyway, I want to say.

None of them do.

This world is only for me.