[ OT ] Sunday Free Write : Leave A Story , Leave A Comment - Half Dozen Edition

An older response for a literal interpretation of the phrase `` it's always sunny in Philadelphia''. It may be silly, but it was fun to imagine that this awful place might be gone someday. 
 
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 I climbed the steep western side of the canyon, as a dusty dry wind billowed down the divide. The weathered gray towers of Society Hill rose off to my left, and the blue steel pillars of the suspension bridge to my right stood firm against the breeze. I set my course between them for a concrete archway that marked a forgotten ship ’ s landing on the fabled river that had once flowed down the rut I found myself scrambling across. 
 
 There beneath the arch, from the side of a high wall, dropped a rusting ladder that led up from the dried riverbed into the city. I leaped up for it, wildly grasping for the bottom rung. I slipped on my first try, landing hard on the flat of my feet, but I managed to keep hold of the ladder on my second swipe upward. Flakes of red corrosion stuck to my palms and fingers as I made my way to the platform above. 
 
 The city greeted me with a morbid omen - the browned, leathery corpses of a dozen men and women hanging in line beneath the arch. Another half-dozen or so lay strewn and scavenged on the plaza below. They were thieves and outlaws all, probably guilty of some water crime. The city could n't afford to keep those who wasted and would n't tolerate those who drank more than was theirs. I tried not to wonder if I'd known any of them. 
 
 The heat of the rising sun beat down on my back and pushed me forward. I sprinted across a crumbling footbridge, while sands shifted and swirled along the wide, abandoned highway below. The storefront ahead of me gaped open. Years ago some day-walkers must have blown through the brick facade. The innards of the building had been gutted and the walls between units breached, so that travelers might find pathways from building to building, block to block away from the scorch of sunlight. 
 
 I darted through the remains of an abandoned restaurant, over the splinters of a long wooden table, out into a shadowed alley and then into the backroom of high-ceilinged bar. I proceeded through the front, ducking under the dangling railing of a collapsed balcony overhead. Empty bottles and wobbly stools and high tables still cluttered the main floor. Outside, shards of glass from the shattered windows littered the pavement and threw the light of the morning back up at me. The bar ’ s sign had long fallen and lay beneath a blanket of the glittering glass, which illuminated its depiction of stars and plough alike. 
 
 The sun was rising higher still. The shadows that afforded me cooler passage would disappear with the end of the low-day. I picked up my pace down another darkened alley and across an empty lot. The tall shadow of the old customs house provided me safe passage along a stretch of burnt roadway. A spray-painted message on the side of a bank advertised the subway path, where for a fee one could walk the tunnels underground. I never had money for the toll, though, and even less often had any appetite for dealing with the concourse guard. 
 
 Instead, I stepped through the absence of a window pane, into a ruddy stone building on 4th Street. The first sounds of life in the city greeted me as voices echoed down the long hallway. I sprinted toward the source of the noise and found the wide, open chamber where the people of the old city gathered when the glare of high-day became inhospitable. Filtered sun streamed in through glass ceilings three stories above, but the ground floor was cool and the light was pleasant. 
 
 “ Tom! ” Yulia called from the growing crowd occupying the hall. She approached me with a wide smile and greeted me with a hearty embrace. “ Find any water out there this time? ” 
 
 “ Of course, ” I answered, removing the heavy sack strapped to my back. I passed it over to her, but she kept it zipped shut. “ I always get a little, at least. ” 
 
 She smiled, nodded, and led me down the stairs to a smaller subterranean room, crowded with the elderly and sick who most need the coolness of the lower levels. To our right a line had formed that snaked back and forth, wall to wall across the floor. At the front of the line a red and white sign bearing the name “ Rita ” promised ice and water, from the only legal vendor in the city. 
 
 Yulia took me through a side door, into a room where the same signs hung from every wall. A number of uniformed men and women scurried in with empty jars and buckets, which they filled from a massive barrel at the room ’ s center, before hurrying to offer the water to an eager customer in the line. Yulia passed my pack to a toothless old man seated by the barrel. His wide, wild eyes examined the contents. 
 
 “ Where this come from? ” he asked with his eyes crossed on me. Yulia turned to smile at me reassuringly. 
 
 “ New Jersey, ” I answered. 
 
 “ Eck! ” he cried, as he dropped the sack to the floor and kicked it over to one the uniformed jar runners. “ Well, we take what we get, but for Jersey, you get half the posted price. ” 
 
 “ Come on, Earl, ” Yulia said, “ Don ’ t be stupid. Water is water. ” His eyes searched Yulia, then me, and he hacked a strange laugh. 
 
 “ Fine, ” he said, “ Three-fourths, but just run along west next time. They still got water somewhere up the Schuylkill. ” He watched as the runner dumped the contents of my water pack into a barrel. She handed my sack back to me and set back to her tasks without a word. “ New Jersey, ” Earl mumbled, “ Ridiculous. ”
