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Alley: Michael
(i) Edifice
I have built an edifice of my soul, and it is this building. Anonymous, it rises in a large mid-western city filled with just such anonymous buildings. Steel gray and sheathed in glass, the windows reflect the light in such a way that you can't look at it for more than a few moments. It is that dull blend of modernism and cubism that naturally deflects the gaze, that makes a neutral impact on the brain. It is dull and featureless and bland. But, like many such buildings, it is an altogether different edifice on the inside.
Since this building, on several different planes of reality, is me, it is populated by a motley crew of sinners who have no better place to expiate their sin than against the iron-clad infrastructure of my soul. They work at jobs that drain the spirit, as mail-room clerks and faceless executives with nothing to do. They toil in the slave pits of modern, mass-produced corporate purgatories, endless mazes of scarred wooden desks in a directionless hall bathed in green-white, barely flickering fluorescent ambiance. They fill out forms without meaning, until they've worked out whatever menial transgression they committed while viable, and then they move on. All in all, quite boring. It's one of the worst parts of my existence, but one I take a certain relish in.
In a penthouse suite, at the top of my edifice, at the apex of my soul, I watched a sudden storm whip its way out of the late summer heat through the tastefully darkened windows. I was struck by a sudden confusion making me disoriented and queasy, somehow...not right. Thinking it would calm me, I took off my suit coat, loosened my silk tie and wandered around my office, not thinking, just exploring. The dark grey carpet is coated with a special kevlar-based material that does not stain, but retains the look and feel of natural wool. Convenient. On the neutral off-white walls are faintly abstract paintings, soothing yet strong...statements of the masculinity of power. The desk is a technological marvel, having every convenience in its polished curving-black guts.
Taking off my carefully creased pants, and immaculate starched shirt, I clambered onto the desk and faced the window to the back of the office. Settling into a lotus position, with my chin clasped deep in thought, the track lighting swung slightly to frame the curve of my stomach, the stretch of my thighs. The knobs of my spine stood out, and the faintest flutterings of the air behind me were the only traces of the wings that are hidden. I began to sweat in the air-conditioning. As the first droplet rolled from my brow and burned a smoking hole into the top of the desk, I lost it completely and slipped into humanity. Wondering where the hell I was I got off the desk, stretched my sore muscles and, clad only in a pair of loose, black boxers, began my descent.
There is a staircase in the middle of this building that traverses the entire height and breadth of my soul. It starts just outside the door to my office, through an ornate, brass embossed gate and runs down to the maintenance sub-level exit. Originally constructed in the late 1800s, it winds along the outside of an enormous atrium meant to provide natural light in an age of smoky gas lamps. This building is essentially hollow, with beams of steel supporting 99 stories of air and smoke, broken dreams and the harsh realities behind the pretty illusions. Near the top, I turned, confused and opened a vinyl-wood door, seeking help.
In the vestibule, a distressed secretary with large hoop earrings looked up at me and told me to please sit down, he would be with me in a minute, and turned back to a large electric typewriter. From inside the inner office I heard the sounds of panting, crying, pleading, the sounds of punishment and gratification, the sounds of the tormentor and the tormented, the sounds of innocence ripped asunder and the heavy hand of the oppressor. Opening the door, the secretary only glanced wistfully at the back of my long legs as I walked in.
The door led out again into the light well, and the steps continued down and as the sounds receded behind me, the step changed from carpet to concrete. I began to sweat from the exertion of going down, the undersides of my arms sticking to my sides as the air lost its chill, and became dank and humid. Finally, exhausted, I slumped in a cool passageway, soaked and bewildered. I kneeled, my heels to my buttocks, my head to the cool concrete floor.
Presently, a janitor swept by, immaculate in blue suit and bow tie, dejectedly humming an Elvis Presley tune. I stood and found myself in front of a door of wood and frosted glass, marked with a peeling ornate script. I entered.
A young man just getting up from the desk, dressed in a conservative brown suit, was putting on his hat.
I took a seat on the leather couch, my sweaty back sticking to the creaking, oiled leather. The rich aroma enveloped me as I sank down into the firm touch of the couch. In front of the couch was the young man's desk, and beyond that, a door.
Through the small transom above the door, breaking the glass, came a small stone paperweight of an abstract nude man, lounging, and the sounds of rage.
"Goddamn kid, I'm gonna give it to her good..."
I leaned my head against the cool, dark wood of the door. My hair fell in a dark mass against my shoulders. I reached down and opened the door, and the stairs continued down. I began to take them faster, two at a time, Sweat flowed freely as the temperature rose, my breath matched in ragged response to the pounding of my feet on the stairs. The light grew richer, more yellow. The sun beating down through the open light well took on an almost physical force, winding its way through the heat, caressing my back, my neck. I stumbled and fell, fetching up heavily against a white door, with pictures of pink clouds.
From behind the door came the sound of sobbing. It was a girl, or maybe a woman, crying, soft but continuous. It had a question behind it, a question that couldn't be answered. The pain, the hurt, so enormous and bewildering to a child...yet, there is wisdom there as well, beyond the years, beyond the ages, a hard wisdom of a cold world. As I leaned against the door I heard the voice of the man from the previous room, now exhausted but still hungry, still driven.
Opening the door, I began to run down the stairs, and the heat became like an oven. My breath became ragged, strained. My boxer shorts became glued to me, forming a second, black skin. The stairs reached the ground floor, and the atrium of the edifice was before my eyes, vast and echoing. To the right stood a statue of a naked, winged man holding a sword. I did not recognize him. I leaned my back against a door leading to the basement.
From behind the door came the sounds of heavy breathing, harsh and defiant, yet defeated. A young girl's rasping breath carried on the humid air, the sound of wool against silk, a startled moan. I heard my own voice from the other side of the door.
Yanking the door open I ran down the stairs, careening off the walls, confused and sickened. The last door stood before me, iron-bound and heavy. The light coming through the circular, barred window was peculiarly harsh, strident. Exhausted, I opened the door, and walked up three steps, and stood in the alley. At my feet was a puddle of viscous liquid, oil, mixed with gasoline and blood. I stood there, head down, disoriented.
copyright 1996 by David Micko
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