Sullied City

Chapter 1

It's not something I've ever been able to prove, but the world seems at its darkest when it's one o'clock at night.

Our ancestors called it "the witching hour." When apparitions and otherworldly beings are their most active. As midnight fades into morning, the ghosts walk, and the monsters find their courage to emerge from the shadows while still concealed in clouded moonlight. The streets of Detroit are at their quietest and most deafening, depending on who you are--or perhaps what you've sacrificed to whom.

I don't prefer to be wandering alleyways, a silhouette in flickering neon, when this hour strikes. But I often find myself, like tonight, on the fire escape, leaned against the rusting guardrail. One hand lifting a cigarette to my lips, the other fidgeting with a worn twenty-sided die. Eyes on the asphalt three stories below.

My district of the city isn't populated by many creatures of interest; I prefer it that way. What's the saying--"don't mix business with pleasure"? That's a strong philosophy of mine. The rat-scattered, peeling wallpapered, moldering brick apartments above a basement bar on 6th Street were home. My neighbors were of the everyday naive variety, whose worst problems were election season and metro prices. My landlord was an elderly Greek woman with a penchant for day drinking and a gift for patching her own pipes.

When I walk in the entryway and climb the stairs, sidestepping abandoned newspapers and half-empty beer bottles, the perpetual weight on my shoulders lifts, even a little. The overpowering scents of cat urine and burning joints fall over my constant paranoia like a comfortable blanket. Maybe it's the protective wards carved into the drywall at the door, or the sigils painted in long-oxidized blood underneath the front steps. Perhaps it's the panels filled with salt lining my apartment windows and doors, or the gallons of water infused with rust-covered iron nails that are stored beneath my platform bed in the corner. But I feel safe here.

I'm not a fool; there's no procedure I could concoct that would permanently keep out a being who wanted entrance. The crude spells borrowed from obscure websites and the mumbled advice of drunken strangers are placebo effects at best. Even so, I maintain them, I add more, and I look over my shoulder on the sidewalk outside. Once I step in, however . . . there's peace. Like walking into a church.

A woman's voice echoed in the backdrop of my conscious. "An oasis, in a desert of strange, strange things."

I took a long, slow drag from the cigarette. The embered tip's sizzle was a welcome contrast to the howling of sirens in the distance, and the dull rustle of an animal in the dumpster across the alley.

The smoke that filled my lungs at the inhalation burned, a familiar sensation. I should really quit. It was a thought that crossed my mind with every pack. An empty, idle, gently-spoken thought, leftover from different days. "Smoking's gonna be the death of you, Brannon."

I licked my lips to brush away the tight grin threatening to appear.

A slow, tedious haul to death's door by lung cancer wouldn't have been such a bad way to go.

At least in comparison to the way I'd really died.

Frigid breezes whistled through the alleyway, seeping through my windbreaker. I fought off an involuntary shiver, sucked in one more puff, and put the cigarette out on the rail, slipping the die inside my jacket.

The iron-barred sliding door protested when I forced it open and stepped back into my apartment. The radiator on the exposed brick wall was silent, clarification for the chill in the room. I gave it a gentle kick while securing the four locks on the door; after a moment, it rattled to hissing life. Rubbing my hands together, I sat on the threadbare sofa in the corner and drew my cell phone from the windbreaker pocket.