Vodka puddled in the cracks of the man’s lips, burned. When he awoke, he didn’t know what was when. The surroundings were unfamiliar—a bitter, broken building. Wooden support beams stretched to the sky where a roof used to be, slivers like hairs along their sides, like magnified bug legs. A cloud hung over his head, not some dark foreboding thought, but a real cloud, copper and gray. Rubble all around, the cement was cold through his shirt.
My God, he sat up. The city must’ve been bombed. I . . . I gotta get out’ah here!
He stood, swayed, reached for his temple and fell through a wall. Dust bloomed into his nostrils and wrapped his tongue. He gagged, vomited.
From a few blocks away a girl’s scream faintly permeated, shrilly—deadly.
It must be . . . terrorists. They’ve gotten into the city . . . with those . . . dirty bombs . . .
He heard footsteps, a hard-soled clacking that echoed around and inside the skeletal building. He struggled to rise by grabbing the broken edges of a wall, but it crumbled in his hands, sent him caterwauling hard on his tailbone. He couldn’t breathe.
A figure came around the corner, heard him heaving for air, and stopped. The figure turned; pebbles ground beneath the pivot.
The man’s vision blurred with dust and vodka and hysteria, gave the figure a sandy appearance: a tall black shape stepping high over the debris, something dangling from a black hand.
No, please, he stammered. I’m not an American . . . I just live here!
The figure came closer, deliberately slow like savored malice.
Wide eyed in the shadows, the man began to moan, until he saw that it was just a mere businessman, silhouetted by a sheer day, dressed in a black suit, black briefcase in one hand, other hand outstretched.
He took the hand, was lifted up. Silence.
Okay buddy? Did you get jumped or something?
Leave me the fuck alone, the man tried to spit, but the mucous just dangled from his contorted mouth. Go away.
The businessman scoffed, walked away. The man lingered until the clacking shoes distanced, then shook out of the abandoned building, his hair disheveled, clothes wrinkled and clinging.
A bar sign lamely glittered across the street: Barrel Inn. The man started jerking toward the sun that peeked over a coal, full bellied cloud, but stopped, turned, and stumbled across the street instead, barely dodging the yellow streak of a honking taxi. It was happy hour, and in his mind the bombs had already dropped.
Mathias Nelson has publications forthcoming in Gutter Eloquence and The New York Quarterly.
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