April 14th, 1:56 PM

A man pushes out of a decades old city building. His rented dress shoes pick up pace as he nears the staircase down to the street.

"Well," he says to himself. "Well, well, well."

Bounding down the stairs like a man with a new lease on life, he reaches the bottom and adjusts his ill-fitting pants while city cabs rush by. He looks across the street to a building stretching up more than fifty floors, tracking each one upwards like an optical elevator. Then turning at the top to greet its even-larger cousins surrounding, before he's done a full rotation back from whence he came. His neck stretches and he breathes in deep while reaching for the sun. Elongating just a bit more with each exhale. Big, meditative ins and outs like a slow-ticking metronome. Each exhale adding to the summery, breezeless air. He takes a final inhale as a man in uniform speaks just feet away.

"Sir," the uniform questions, breaking his midday zen. The stranger continues, "Are you alright?" The gold plate on the uniform chest bouncing sunlight back at his face.

Eyes suddenly wide, he covers his panic with a forced smile and nod, ordering his feet the other way as casually as possible. The noise of the city returns while he furiously taps the crosswalk button. A quick look back to see the cop has gone. Thick, dark lines from a heat mirage stretch down the street and further into the city.

Another pedestrian brushes past him before he turns to cross, locking step behind the person until they hit sidewalk again and he breaks off. Weaving in and out of the bustle, steps go by quickly. City life waits for no one, he thinks. It's perpetual motion unbroken by cries, screams, or bombs. First train in line catches fire? Train two leaves in twenty minutes. Third train? Same outcome. You're on or you're off. Without end.

He loosens his thrifted tie as he stops at a light, peering at the nearby bank clock reading 1:46 and realizing its familiarity. He turns ninety degrees to see a shop on the corner, and then again to see a tucked in square with a fountain.

This is the neighborhood of his youth.

He smiles. The nostalgia hits him heavier than the thick humidity surrounding, zombifying his mind for a second before he registers the fountain's appearance. Cracked, covered in graffiti, and barely trickling out water. A shell of what he remembers from long ago in the rays of a summer sun. He was just a child when they cut a ribbon in the square, staring at falling water and lapping up a half-melted ice cream cone while his neighbors ate hot dogs and chatted. Walking towards it, he steps around a young homeless girl.

"Please sir," she pleads, "Do you have anything to spare?"

She goes unregistered as he breezes by, his brain gripped by memory. Older kids would gather here in the evenings. A social hub of flirtation, concealed cigarettes, and abundant hormones. The apartments above occasionally shouting down, but their requests never took and the group would dissipate at its own pace. A slow drip akin to the "flow" now puddling before him; leaving eight, then six, then four, and finally just two young lovers before it. For a few months a year, it was the only place to be.

The state of this thing, he thinks to himself while scratching a heat itch on his neck. He remembers first coming here as a teenager, having only heard the gossip and secondhand tales from classmates. He was too young for the crowd, but convinced by his friend Carlos. Despite the nerves and essentially being ignored all night, they had fun and hoped they belonged. The others eventually warmed to their shorter counterparts and it became a regular spot for the both of them to avoid home. Hiding in the back and sneaking looks at what they'd be in a few years. Then, when their age group caught up, they became fixtures at the fountain. At the spot. They laughed, they flirted, they had their first real kisses, they behaved liked dumb kids. Once, Carlos found a dead spider and everyone pooled a hundred dollars so he'd eat it. A older woman with hair rollers shouted down the poison control number, but his friend later admitted to him that it was a planted spider he bought from a shop downtown. The man at the counter told him it was for virility. Carlos wasn't even sure what that meant.

The corner the spider was "found" in is now covered in garbage and a few homeless tents. The bench he had his first and second make out sessions on presently cracked and tagged with the words, "He sees." Weeds grow out of every crevice of cratered cement. Even the view above looks different; the apartment walls discolored by time and sun, baked from brown to a clay red. The ladders of the fire exits rusted to the top. His eyes trace up the escapes, noting the levels of wear seem worse near the fifth floor. He's thinking one of the main things you don't want a fire escape to do is rust when, in the first window over, a woman appears. She lifts up a small watering can and pours into a few small pots on her sill. He isn't sure what they are, but guesses herbs due to size. She pauses as a breeze hits her level. Closing her eyes in the small summer mercy. He lifts a hand up towards her to feel the windy grace, but there is no respite from the heat down here.

He sighs and lets his hand drop, only to see the woman replaced by a large male. A switch so seamless it could be a magic trick, or the heat starting to really mess with his mind. The man stands in a white tank that's sweated through till yellow, and he's staring directly at him. His own eyes shoot down to the opposite compass point. With nothing on the concrete to hold distraction but a mass of weeds, he can't help but feel like that greenery. Stuck. Frozen into a small crack by roots buried beneath him. He hesitates for an extra second, then darts his view back up to the window. The man and his black eyes haven't moved an inch.

His legs awaken and push him away. His nervous system still unthawing, but the bottom half is on fire. Picking up pace past the young homeless girl, who grabs at him and mutters something that sounds Italian, but he wouldn't know. He's never been out of the city. He swats her arm before getting one final look back up to the fifth floor. The man has brought his wife back and is holding her at the window, firmly, and staring at him again. Legs keep momentum, backing him up in confusion, but his gaze is interrupted by collision with a middle-aged nun.

"Eternal sin!" she screams into his face. "We have done that which was not forgiven by God. Penance!"

She's still as he continues past, her tattered habit soaking in the afternoon heat. He can't shake the feeling he knows her from somewhere. A deep familiarity of confusion and scare, to such a degree that he begins sprinting away again. Tearing down the sidewalk, the nun's continuous screams drowned out by the accumulating distance and cab horns, one of which nearly hits him as he crosses an avenue. A blip to his haste, he scurries blocks more, before age and fitness level finally kick in and he's forced to slow. The humidity being the first thing to supersede adrenaline, back like a headrush in sweltering force. Every in breath bringing throat stabs and a thickness so strong it makes him question how well the air quality mandates are enforced. And if they even matter when it's this hot.

A final exhale through the density before he looks up and sees Hope Clinic. The neighborhood's rehab facility where too many people he knew ended up at one point or another. Weeks or a few months in there, then back to the streets and a long-awaited knock at their dealer's door. Pathetic, he thinks. A sprint that felt like miles, but he'd barely moved. Like the fountain, Hope Clinic was in a state much worse than in his memories. Seared, like the old apartments, from antiseptic white to ailing sepia. The sign above the door edited by some hooligan, striking out the "Clinic" with spray paint and adding "WAS ABANONDONED LONG AGO."

He looks up at boarded windows. It was never meant to get this far, he thinks before looking back. The first night it happened was one just like any other there at the fountain. No spiders or kissing, in fact he can't recall any events preceding at all. Only that it was normal: people were there, they laughed and had fun, slowly started to leave. And then he was alone. Sitting on the concrete edge, sipping a soda while the water ran behind, barely clocking his surroundings. It could've been the steady splashing or how late it had gotten, but he remembers feeling sleepy. Hypnotized, completely ignorant of all city noise behind, and staring up into the stars. Already dreaming.

And then he heard it. A laugh from the windows above. A woman happily giggling into the night and in full view of all below. But all was one and one was him, as the windows behind were black with sleeping minds. Still unsure if he'd fallen asleep himself, carrying over this calm state as he looked at the unknowing woman. It's funny, he now thinks, how that night there was barely any adrenaline when he saw her. She was clearly drunk, giggling more as she slipped off her purse and shoes. For the first time, reality registered and he looked down. Guilt battling curiosity for a few seconds before the bad shoulder won and he looked back up. She had continued slipping, and now his eyes were stuck, and wide. Transfixed for what could've been a few seconds or a few hours on flesh. Time and sleep were foreign at this point, and knowing what he was seeing he'd never forget. Each layer providing an exclamation point to that memory.

And then came another noise. Her screaming paired with blurred vision, as a man suddenly appeared at the window and yelled down at him. The figure just that because he was gone in an instant. Right leg, left leg pounding his sneakers into the cement sidewalk as blocks rushed by. City noise returned, but merely as a background hum, drowned out by the galloping beat of blood in his ears. He made it home, sweating in bed, eyes glued to the doorknob until dawn. He'd always been one of the fastest in the neighborhood, and that night it paid off. Scared out of his mind, with a smile that wouldn't leave his face.

A bus rushes by as he sits at an ignored stop. A bead of sweat drips off his nose and evaporates before reaching cement. Guess this suit can't be saved, he thinks.

It really was never meant to get this far. That night of unexpected importance should've been a one-off. A secret kept through illness and old age. But one time turned into two, two into more, and the next thing he knew he was going out every week. Climbing buildings, hiding in alleys, his secret obsession negating any fountains or make out sessions. They tell kids to be curious, but never how, and a city is filled with one-way viewpoints. He was a covert criminal in an agency of one. A boy without a plan, driven by impulse. Something — when he actually gave it more than a few seconds of thought — he assumed would go away with age. Boys don't think about phases as much as parents would like, but even he recognized his "hobby" would stop at some point. And it did. Slowly dwindling down in his late teens and completely gone while he worked three jobs in his twenties. The work and the juggling between them left little time for a social life, let alone a secret one. But then he got steady work and a little more money, settled in, and had more time on his hands. Cracking a beer and looking out at the city, reminiscing about his youth. Remembering turned into desire, and desire was acted upon one night while leaving a downtown bar. Here he was again, away from home and a long walk to get there, a slave to his thoughts. He never expected this moment of weakness to turn into something further, especially not one ending in a rented suit and handcuffs.

"Everyone knows," a voice says next to him.

He looks over to see an old woman in frayed clothing, face dirty and tired. The bus stop itself was in bad shape, but she somehow looked worse. She's staring straight ahead.

"What?" he says.

"All," she says, unmoving. "Know."

He gets up, eyes still on her, and slowly moves away. Slipping behind the bus stop while she remains still. Her head a gargoyle's, fixed on the wall of graffiti and broken windows across. His pace quickens before he turns into an alley, the sound of the woman cackling blending in with the traffic behind.

City alleys are never the ideal path, and the one before him is paved in years of misery. Hung tarps of faded coloring and tents overspread with holes. Liquids of brown, congealed green, and red flow into a plugged drain at the center. And with nothing to block entrance or exit, a wind tunnel that blasts through it all. Nylon flapping, eyes squinting, and mixed liquids misting into air and onto faces. A few hundred feet of good turned bad, human weathered something else.

"Welcome," a man shouts above the howling, his mouth smeared in bright pink lipstick. "To the place of queens."

He wears a children's crown, and leans in an attempt to kiss him. He pushes the queen away and onto a ratty tent, the crash of impact drowned out by another huge gust. Pressing on, the rented dress shoes submersed in the brew of human liquids and soaked garbage. He leans into each step, amazed by the tunnel's power. The gale never resting, pulsing between strong and violent at a bipolar rhythm. A city's contained tornado. Another burst of air as a group of women approach him.

"From the shadows, from the shadows. He sees them," one says.

"Carried away!" another screams. "Drifting into the howling darkness."

"Two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two, two" another repeats. Unstopping, looking at him as if it's a complete thought.

The old women claw at him, clothing and faces so haggard they appear to be cousins of the woman at the bus stop. Each repeating their chants, pleading to him as he pushes through hands and wind. Another violent thrust as the man in lipstick barges in and rips one of his suit sleeves off. A souvenir he bites into like a rabid dog. His crown falls to the ground as the women grip tighter and the wind picks up yet another octave, this one much more than a gust. He pushes forward and the women hold on as it all reaches a fever pitch. Howling like mad, he gets a single step forward into what feels less solid than that above it. Hot air rushing so fast past his head it feels scalding. Dust from the alley microscopic knives into his eyelids. He shields his face away, careful to keep momentum going forward so they all don't blow back thirty feet into whatever's left at the drain. His eye forces open a sliver and he sees a snake slithering up his back, its movements tranquil against the climate surrounding. The reptile halfway to his head before fight and flight kick into another gear. Pressing forward, grips loosening, he is so close to the end of the alleyway. Less hands on him and a hiss near his ear, he makes a final step onto the sidewalk and falls over.

He bounces off the cement and lets out a delayed scream. Scuttling away from the opening and throwing the suit jacket off his back. But there is no snake, just as there is no trail of women and transients behind him. There are no hung tarps, or any evidence of human life. Just dumpsters and dust gently blowing through it.

Silence.

He feels deaf and crazy as he gets up. He scratches a bare arm and squints back, waiting for some evidence. But it remains empty. A child's bike bell rings on the street and a rumble is heard from above as a man in high-vis orange carries a ladder past him. The world around behaving as if nothing has happened. He holds the sight a second longer — just in case — but nothing. He smiles and shrugs, turning around to face the street.

For the first time in what feels like days, there's a chill touch on his face. He looks across to the rushing blue that cuts the city in half. Nature's cooling system of a river's wind, just two lanes and a sidewalk away. No cabs, or car, or human in sight. The river a splash of color in a sepia world. He steps onto the street, each foot squishing down and leaving a vaporous cloud behind as the smile sticks to his face like glue. The bell rings again and he looks over. A second of inattention as his foot falls short of curb and he trips. The second leg attempts to restabilize, but it is too late. His momentum carries forward and with it his head into the concrete guardrail.

The meditative sounds of the water. Intermittent honks from the seagulls above. A young girl pedals on the opposite sidewalk, her pigtails swinging behind. Minutes pass and the streets stay empty. Quiet. The man unmoving as red flows from his head and ears into the river below.