There’s fried chicken and then a cigarette stood in the doorway of a store that’s been empty for years. Yet again it’s pissing it down, and even though I keep trying to rise above it, failure and the end are in every shadow. The streets are empty as they always are. The parks and fields that surrounded me, they too are without traces of life, for the animals are safely hidden away until morning. In a garage not too far away, unseen homeless people shoot dreamy liquid into their veins, and further along back towards the centre of town, the beautiful ones dance and feel beautiful unconcerned by the world at large. They mock me with how easy it is for them to breathe, and as I pick my teeth and spit out tiny pieces of bone before sucking on my smoke, I wish with all I have to be like them. It’s a moment of weakness. A desperate plea for release. As time ticks away and a gust of wind blows rain into my face, I turn my back and breathe in the funk of wet leaves and piss beneath my feet. Only it’s not long before my eyes are once more searching the sky, for I can feel it calling to me, whispering my name like a needy lover. And there it is, far away on the horizon, a red smudge in the swirling clouds. A faint glow that shimmers and hypnotises. It could be an eye, perhaps, or a portal to a place far removed from the prison I now occupy. Gazing at it as it floats above the rooftops, everything fades until it grows and swells and the music it sings gets into my bones turning them into glue.
Author S. K. Nicholas 
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