quick story

Urban explorer rem--part 2

You'd be amazed how fast you can get used to a vile, vile stench. This was a stench with viscosity to it. While you held your breath to keep it at bay, it snuck around to the back door and got you to taste it too. So yeah, it only took until never to get used to it.

I stood completely still for 10 days, or something. A statue, except for my mouth--I called and yelled and whistled and cried. No one home. I was in a hole in the ground, above--a manhole opening to The Trenton Sewer System. I sensed my surroundings well before I was able to actually see anything--walls all around except for some sort of tunnel off to my right. OK, when I say 'sensed' I'm not being all spooky and supernatural--I felt a breeze on my legs. But as I stood there, I slowly became able to see into the viscous darkness. All around me was wall made up of slimy irregular-shaped brick. The avenue off to the right was more of the same: 2-feet of freezing water that looked like tar and walls covered in a living turf, but instead of the hopeful nickle-sized spot of an opening to the outside above my head, there were carbuncles and furuncles growing down from the ceiling and wicked-thick blackness stretching out in front. Grim.

What to do, what to do...

I pushed forward into the tunnel yo! the avenue out, with my internal chatter yakking about ick this and yuck that but it was no match for you've-left-your-children-home-alone-while-you-went-off-for-a-jog and any one of them is likely to wander out and get snatched by a goon/fall into the river/get run over flat by a car/or some fresh evil yet to be imagined.

Total blackness is such a weird state. The other senses get a bit edgy, jealous, and they act out. Also, as I carefully moved through the water, I tried very hard to NOT TOUCH ANYTHING so I was really 2 senses down. Not a problem. How far did I walk? I dunno, but it was a smelly/tasty/noisy march. Murmers dogged me the entire way--I strained my head and neck muscles trying to hear better: 
mopey scrap..
yeah a jelly sandwich..
harsh into the place..
redacting bonanza-fide...
That's from above, the street, right? but how come no one hears ME? Fucking hoarse from yelling now, I pushed forward, the way out. Amidst all the conversating and stinky taste, something just had to get my legs in the water. What was it? I have no idea, and I will never again think about it. Except to say it had weight and heft to it, and it briefly embraced whatever around my leg. Grim.

Finally--Ho! Hang on! The sound of rushing water! I moved forward as fast as I could, and without expecting it, I tumbled out of the pipe and down the river bank. Ow! A dark moonless night and tall weeds hid the outdoors at the opening of the avenue from my sight. Relieved? HOOboy. Hungry? Oh yeah. Tired? Uh huh. I picked up and dusted off. I surveyed the river in front of me. Not familiar. I might have been in Camden. So I took a seat. Tired, so very tired. I had to close my eyes for a minute....

You know how you can sense when someone is standing quietly over you, not making a sound, but you can still sense their presence? Maybe being in a pitch-black tunnel smelling/tasting only hideous monster-death-stink refusing to touch anything being deafened by unattainable murmers sharpened my edge. Could be.

My eyes snapped open. Eh? I was warm and cozy and in my bed. Sooooo-ho nice... Phew, just a nightmare. But then I heard him smile, and I looked across the bed to catch the most beautiful sight, the full-on glory of one Trenton Fire Fighter, in full action-man-uniform.

"Whas going on? How'd you get up here?"

"My ladder. I came up outside at your bedroom window. Now shooosh, relax...go back to sleep, I'll scratch your back.
   

urban explorer rem

I'm nearsighted--everything's blurry. I don't like blurry, so I'm almost always wearing my glasses--it's only sensible. News Flash--it's not so sensible to wear your glasses while jogging on a cold rainy day.

They immediately became all spotted with water drops--I'd wipe them off and 30 seconds later, the world was all pixelated and fractured again from the water drops. I kept chugging along though, and despite the 35-degree weather, my body warmed up and I began to lightly sweat. Unfortunately, my increasing body temp made my wet glasses steam up, so now I looked into a fractured pixelated fog. It was all right though--I could make out the general lines of where i needed to be--road surface here, nonroad surface over there--oh look, a tree just flew by in a blur! (hee, see what i just did there? yeah, i didn't think so. I've been hitting some clunker notes lately.)

I chugged gamely on, through Cadwallader Park and into Hiltonia, and I came to decide that looking through the wet foggy glasses at remote, jagged outlines of the world wasn't so bad, and I stopped wiping the rain and steam off my glasses every 15 paces. Bad idea.

I saw the damn flourescent orange DOT cone--it was just off my left, near the curb. I meant to pass near it as I crossed the street so I could turn left up Sanhican. I ran gingerly through the wet leaves--didn't want to slip and fall!--reached the end of the block, and took a long stride over the cone and out into the street to avoid the leaf-filled puddle, really more of a leap...and I arced myself down an open manhole cover. I was like the perfect swish shot by Pippen--nothing but net--I didn't touch a thing as I dropped down the chute and into The Trenton Sewer System.

I landed remarkably softly too, again like Pippen, in 2 feet of freezing water. Another fine what-the-fuck?! moment. 

Well I don't know about you, but being in a black hole in 2 feet of water was not even close to acceptable. I looked up--the circle of light that was the manhole opening was the size of a nickle--how the fuck did I fall so far? Where the fuck was I?! I looked left and right, staring into the pitch black with all my might...nothing. Impenetrable. I didn't want to think about what might be in that water with me, or about what might be on the walls of this hole near me, I really really didn't. But the panic rose and began to engulf me. Hell yes I started screaming my head off! What would you do?? I thought so.  But no one yelled back in answer.      

So I stood like a statue, afraid to move, afraid to touch anything, afraid to ripple the water lest I draw a slithering creepy crawly creature that would slip silently toward me and slide up my leg to attack my face as quick as a hiccup. And I stood. And I stood some more, until I decided hell, I need to find my own damn way out.               

Speed kills

I flipped my cigarette into the river from the top of the bank. Damn, I can’t believe I’ve started smoking again. Walking back toward the road, I heard the car before I saw it. Then it was there--a 1975 Olds 88, rusty white, no muffler coming along like a house on fire in the general direction of the pond at the end of the street. It’s weird how things sometimes move in slow motion. I looked left and right, saw the kids running this way and that way up and down the block, and I stepped into the path of the car, to slow it down. It didn't work--the driver gunned his super-charged 350 and hit me. Knocked me sprawling 20 feet across the grassy riverbank. Thank goodness for that oak tree or I would have ended up in the river. Well, I didn’t like that. One little bit. But guess what, he’s on my home court, and it’s a dead end street.

I picked myself up and dusted off. Then I hitched up my pants and cracked all 12 knuckles. Wow, my hands are looking downright hairy. And knuckly. I took a step forward but my legs didn't hold--broken bones. I smoothed that out and walked toward the end of street, laughing, spitting out broken teeth, and laughing some more--now he has to come right back past Daddy. Daddy?!

The dead end by the pond is just one of the many local open-air drug markets. Olds-man turned his car around and pointed the now-stove-in nose of it at me, keeping it idling while the dude pretending to fish ambled over to hook him up through the car window. I walked on. Birds twittered. 15 yards. I patted my pockets. 10 yards. Deep breath. 5 yards. I flexed every cord of every muscle in my chest, back, and shoulders. Damn my shoulders are like boulders.

And then I did it. I broke the half-way-down driver’s window of his ratty car with a foot-long catfish. He only had time to sputter “WHAT THE FUCK YOU DO…” and then I banged on his head with that catfish till his head was all lumpy and soft at the same time and what looked like cooked spaghetti spilled out of the ear facing me. Now that I had his attention, I shot him in the ear--rem’s “and-another-thing-don’t-speed-down-my-street-motherfucker” lecture.

Done, I walked back up the street and around back of the house where the ivy grows thick on the brick and wood. I reached into the tangles of ivy and yanked at the old door until it scraped open, tearing lose hunks of ivy and raking away the dirt and leaves and rocks and crap that had collected on the ground in front of this unused door. And I went in.

I'm having trouble sleeping...

Sheets of rain drummed a steady rhythm across the roof. I needed it to stop.

Get out of bed and check for intruders, like maybe the lousy wretch who stole my house key. A floor board creaked at the top of the stairs as I moved. Be quiet. I slowly crept down the steps. Check behind you. Three steps down, I poked my head around the corner, wedging it between the banister and the dining room ceiling. I peered intently into the black toward the back of the house, trying to glimpse fleeing shadows. Nothing. I continued to the landing at the bottom of the steps and stood silently. Listen. It was a steady noise, something you might subconsciously dismiss, go deaf to, like a constant background track. Musak.

I walked down the hallway to the kitchen. Whoa that’s loud. Rain gushed from the kitchen ceiling onto the floor in a great splattering grid. I could only blunder in circles, gaping at the sagging ceiling, so I fled. As I ran back up the steps, now unconcerned about being quiet, I noticed the rug on the staircase was sodden, and my feet splashed water up my legs and across the walls as I tore up the steps. Call someone! Who?! I nearly fell into my bedroom and stared dumbly at the empty bed. Where are the kids? I can’t remember if everyone is home tonight. Then, a sight that was almost pretty--the silvery light from the moon merged with the yellow of the street light and came through the windows, and the rain gushing from my bedroom ceiling was dancing crazily in these shafts of light--in a strange way, lovely. But the water poured onto my bed forming great puddles, which flowed over the side of the bed to the floor in a rolling waterfall. 

Everywhere I looked the ceilings bulged dangerously. Water slid down every wall, giving the impression that they were moving. This house is going to cave in. Get out, get out now. Get the kids and get out.  But I can’t fucking find them. Inexplicably, I forget how to get up to the third floor, the kids’ bedrooms. I dashed like a lunatic this way and that way. Where did all these rooms come from? Room after large expansive room stretched out in front of me. How could I not know that these were here? Then it was staircases--short and wide and long and narrow, these took me away from my children, of this I was certain.

rem’s house has structural problems.