City Voices

Wired around the torso and sedated, I was waiting only for the mask. Athono asked if I wanted the full guard or only the half-piece. I chose the full guard for comfort. The sedatives took longer to begin working; I was gaining a tolerance to them, but soon I wouldn’t need them at all.

I closed my eyes. I opened my eyes. I was in the dream state. The whispers I heard when I was awake were now the shouts I implied to soften. 7^th street ached for repaving. Each day the potholes sank deeper into the gravel flesh as cars with foolish drivers couldn’t swerve away from the large voids in the street.

The Meintz-Leanord Trading Tower urged for someone to stabilize its foundation. The depletion of the original mineral resources beneath its foundation had left empty cavernous layers. The tower stressed that it had begun shaking. The building personnel shrugged the tremors off to fault lines of which there were none for over eight-thousand miles but it was the stress of a multi-ton building erect over hollow ground.

A damaged lamp post in the Lacosta district wondered when the city workers were going to take it down. A drunk driver had swerved into it two weeks ago, bending it; leaving it in constant agony. Meanwhile, a house in the neighborhood called La Chuza cried. The dad was beating the mother again after knocking the daughter unconscious in kitchen.

The Mithune Hotel shouted that a murder was happening on the fifth floor. The serial killer known as The Red Lace Romeo was in the midst of carving another victim.

This is my city. I am its shaman. I hear everything.