Inspiration: “The streets are extended gutters, and the gutters are filled with blood, and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.” (Rorschach in Watchmen (1987) by Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons).
Picture Credit
From Mehmet Suat Gunerli on pexels.com.
There’s a dank smell in the air. So strong, even the rain can’t wash it away. A dog rots in the alleyway.
Scurrying eyes pass by with quick glances. Thoughts echo through their heads, thoughts that they must act, that they must do something. Of course, no one does anything. And the dog rots.
Across the street stand the hookers. All but naked, their flesh is like a sweet apple…waiting to be bitten. There’s a couple dirty, unshaven beggars with them now; their smell is so strong it almost drowns out the stench of rotting dog. They reach for a Black beauty – her name is Diamond, if I recall correctly. A pimp steps forward to tell them the rules: the darker the skin, the more you pay. More exotic, so they say.
More exotic. That thought makes me laugh. Light or dark, they’re all trash. But the rain does not seem to wash them away. If Noah’s flood was ever needed, now was the time.
Them and the beggars with their greedy arms outstretched. Hundred bucks for a bite of an apple. They really must be starving. Diamond takes them – and their money – and the door to the motel closes behind them. She doesn’t even leave a one for the other girls, who stare jealously after her.
Each of them so eager to sacrifice their dignity. I sigh and shake my head. For money? Or is it like a drug? They have become so addicted to it, to those filthy beggar hands on their skin, to that rancid breath in their face… They can’t imagine a world without it.
I walk past the rotting dog without even a cursory glance. The hookers snare me in their arms, and I’d be a liar if I told ya I weren’t half tempted. There’s a look in those eyes, a lilted look, a little hazy, as if they’ve been drugged on their own beauty. Unfortunately for them, I’ve been stuck in rehab a long, long time.
I push them aside with a growl, enough menace to scare them off but not enough for their pimps to leap up to their rescue. Gallant knights, those pimps. They all gather in the corner, in their little round table, and scheme of how to infect the world with their trash. Their beady eyes watch me, and I worry they see me for who I really am. They wear almost as little as the hookers. I try to decipher the meaning in that, but my brain has started to burn.
I grumble my way through the rain, head bowed beneath the stone stares of tower blocks. The rain couldn’t wash away that rotten smell, couldn’t wash away that hooker trash; it couldn’t even wash away the bad thoughts in the back of my head.
“Here was a man who would not take it anymore.”
Blood pours down the Black hooker’s front, from the imaginary knife I slip into her back. The pimps lie behind her, smeared with red like a new dawn. The other girls – pale as a delicate frost – lay silent, with throats slit. It is only when I hear the sirens and the screams that I realise my daydream has taken far too long to fade into the recesses of my consciousness.
I stare down at the bloody knife in my hand. The blood is already darkening, congealing into dried goop. The rain cannot wash it away.
There are footsteps and shouting. A rush of blood spills off the sidewalk, pouring down the drain. I can only wait for the drain to scab over, for the street to flood, and for the vermin to drown.
—
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