n-e-b-o-h- N.e.b.o.h. AKA Trystn Waller


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#stayhome #tower #cities #336 #buildings #underground #hardtimes #hardships #recession #metropolis #music #money #empire
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One Empire Elevator

Her heels project an arid echo fiercely off the walls of the surrounding valley. Her breath beats hard in the style of a beautifully alert okapi scanning across a canyon of doom. The hot alcohol still hasn't made its way into her belly; the air makes the world a movie around her but she is still aware of every prop and engineered sound. We aren't in the wilderness, though, or a movie as it might sound -- at least not in nature. She's finished some, ha, business in a nightclub over on the other block. Everything that she has ever done for money was illegal, immoral, and involved her precious body. So, why stop now?

Her saving grace is Freddy, or Frederick, but Freddy’s not here today. Like all the other bucked-up ungulates in the bush, she has attracted a pack of wild thugs. Maybe they want some money, or perhaps, her exposed legs; it’s hard to tell from their chatter. They whip out guns, light and without bullets, just to scare her. Then they knock her onto the ground. She doesn’t get much a chance to scream for help, even manages to strike one of her attackers in the groin with those formidable heels. One of the bangers pulls out a bat, and, after contact, she loses her reality for several minutes.

She awakes abruptly due to an automated reaction in her spine; the woman finds herself face-to-rail with a fire-escape column and several stories of airy space. If she were to wake up and remain calm her story might have been changed. However, her reaction being what it is, her body has spasms of shock starting from her legs then up within all of her joints. She kicks and her body carries her down -- down to the hard ground below. Some crunches and crackle noises spark into the night air. The distant song of sirens follows soon after.


“Ey-y … Ey-y, Emmanuelle, you there? Bring it home, Emmy. Bring it … Ah-hah! There them eyes is! And they sure are torn up. Look: it's your old buddy, that’s right. What happened, kid, you look like you got hit by a train! I can't even tell your pretty face with all them band-aids over it. I don’t believe the doctors, no way. They said you fell headfirst off an eight-story building. I mean, how you gonna shatter your pelvis falling head first, huh? Explain to me that part. On top ah that the nurses told me you broke your femur and whatnot. It’s crazy but it reminds me of when we was kids. You ‘member we used to break all kinds ah bones, so many we thought the doctors was pulling bone names outta their armpit sockets. I guess ain’t much changed then.

"I remember when my dad took me outta Papacho for the first time, and you cried so hard when we separated. I told everyone you was my girlfriend back then, even though we was in different boroughs. Funny how things change, like, now I wouldn’t be caught dead with a girlfriend, r’you kidding? When we started making our way back across the city I knew my dad’d evenchully bring us back to Papacho. The sucker can’t avoid his old life. It's his hometown, for Dame’s sake. You cried cus you’s so happy to see me, but I was already, let’s just say, ‘a changed man.’ {he calls out in laughter} I can see you messing with your eyes! I know you can hear me, girl. {a timid lady nurse comes to check on Emmanuelle but can see she's "occupied" so then leaves, unnoticed}

“Anyhow, I jus’ came to check up on you. Know I haven’t been around like I should. Ever since I migrated with my dad to "High Rise City," or whachucallit, and I met your skinny behind playing all those silly instruments. That’s probably what made me like you so much, huh? That you loved something I couldn’t never stand. That's on my dad, anyway, for forcing music on me. We coulda played at nightclubs, I guess, been a band or somethin' else stupid, but you know, I always needed some adrenaline in my life. Anyway … here’s one for your head.”

Freddy bends down and kisses Emmanuelle gently on her sleep-induced eyelids while whispering You look like hell; her mouth rebelliously slips open against the efforts of anesthesia.

“I have tah get back to Papacho. I owe some guys big-time, you understand. Just had to make sure you was alive, baby girl.” He stops and lets his heart experiment with remorse for five seconds. Freddy then blurts out, “I’m sorry I wasn’t always there for you,” and swings his way out of her squeaky-white, sanitized world.

While Freddy rides on the Bullet Train south toward Papacho he gets flooded throughout his body with the memories, scents, and touches of his life-long friend.

Venez ici, chérie!” he’d told her when she was a streetwalker playing psychedelic piano numbers at the city’s biggest plazas for coins, preferably the bigger ones. [Come here, babe!] “I want you to stroll with me, come on, now. We could be, like, together.”

“But why would I do that? You come back from Iti Bay talking like you ignorant, I don’t care if you do speak Bonjour. Yah look like you got no money, you haven’t called me in forever. What have you to offer me?” she’d tossed the deepest human questions at him, and his response was simply sort of looking down the snow-covered street.

“Now,” he’d told her, achingly, “let’s just say I put my arms around you. I know you, Emmanuelle. I know that you know correct Bonjour and your Hello is proper. Yet, it appears you lacking what we like to call a manteau. I can offer you some warmth, and in return you can provide me with, hmm, ta langue. How’s that sound?” [coat] [your language/tongue]

From there, they walked down the streets of town embracing tightly, both having lots more to share between one another. But that was before the drought.

“What’s so wrong with being an elevator operator?” Freddy's dad, Gable Jr., asks upon plucking him off the curb in front of Ave Maria station. Stopping here is a big No-No to the kids out there since it’s only the biggest transport station in the whole of Literville. Parking to pick someone up means suicide to your day’s plans, not to mention self-compression into a toxic inner bubble of unprecedented stress. No, it’s way better to risk getting hit while ducking traffic and then hop into a moving car than to try and park in that terrible termite hill. Gable Jr. once christened it perfectly as "a labyrinth on the inside and a death trap outside."

Fighting his seat belt, Freddy answers Gable Jr., “Nah, Sir, it’s nothing wrong. I just have my own living I gotta make--” Immediately, he regrets his words knowing what lecture is to come.

“Auw, but Frederick! Your ancestors have been elevator operators for a good chunk of history. Your grandfather Gable, your great-grandfather, even your great-great--”

“Yes, Sir, I know all about grampa Richard and-- Watch that big rig, pop! Dame--” [Lady/Dame]

“Oh, don’t talk smack about your grandpa Richard! He was involved in the reformation after those stupid wars the Nationalists were flaming up. His cousin, Renard, designed the most beautiful tower this city has ever seen, and your great-great-grandfather was the operator in the whole building! He single-handedly guaranteed a perpetual right to work for all his descendants.
It’s something to be proud of, son.”

“Yeah, Sir, j’ai compris, but I need to live my own life. Haven’t we had enough elevator operators in the family so far?” [I understand already] Freddy peers over at his dad steering the car wildly across the highway, buildings and other cars zipping past the window on the other side. Gable Jr. used to drive much better than this.

“Look, son, you see this up here?” He points to the side of his head.

“What? That dent? I told you to get it checked. It ain’t normal to have a dent in yo--”

“Funny! Nah, I’m speaking of the hair. The grey, I mean, you know I’m getting ‘up there.’ Libido’s down, and I can’t recall the last time we hit stick together. I know operatin' might be a little boring, but a stable, safe life isn’t so bad. Longevity's a plus. I mean, it’s not because of that phobia you have, is it?” [a local bat-and-ball sport]

“Well, yeah, that’s a big part of it, isn’t it? Someone who’s scared to death of heights shouldn’t work in a big-ass tower, don’t you think?” Suddenly, Gable Jr. steers hastily to the shoulder of the lofty freeway nearly hitting the very barrier intended to separate wild drivers from driving off of high-arching bridges.

Shivering from fright, Freddy twists his head until he can see his dad, wanting to scream Are you nuts! at the top of his lungs.

Gable Jr. interrupts him with, “How’s Emma?”

“Oh, Emmy! Half her body was broke and she was good as in a coma. You know, better off than we’ll be if I let you keep on driving! Come on, gimme the wheel--”

“Sa-- Stop it, son. Look; I brought you to see this new tower they’re makin’. Say it’s gonna be the tallest in the world, set to finish in another three years. It always reminded me of the constructions you see from great civilizations of one of those ancient colossal monuments.” The two men look out the windshield to spot a massive construction growing over the sea of smaller high-rises. The buzzing of ferries and ships below them intoxicates the salty air about the bridge. It even starts to feel like they’re in the heart of the busiest mega-city on Earth … not that they'd know it, though. “She’ll be fine at the end of the day. Emmy's always been a toughie.”

“She had to be, growing up practically on the streets. She never had a good, moral gig in her life.”

“Speaking of, that was some stunt you pulled up in Iti with all those ladies, son.”

Freddy tells him, “It’s called hustling, dad. I had to do it. My sanity depended on it,” and he laughs the truth of it into a light comedic remark. Pulling out a cigarette and snapping his lighter accentuates his point further.

“Whatever you do just promise me you’ll always get money. Don’t make a family and drag them down a hole you dug. And worse yet, don’t leave them behind. You know what I'd want you to do, but these damn kids seldom listen.”

“I’m a man, pop--”

“I think I know that. Your grandmother lost her senses in her paradise of riches. It’s easy to get devoured by excitement and money and all that. There’s better out there, man. Just have to do it the right way.” He then coughs, catching some second-hand smoke. “We’re falling into a drought now. The city’ll be fine, but our economy’s gonna get tanked. People’ll need to get ‘real jobs,’ son, people including you.”

Freddy sighs at this comment and waves it off with his hand.

“You wanna be a hustler or whatever, then be the best-damn-whatever-ever, and make your little change. Just remember …” and Gable Jr. taps the windshield in the direction of the new tower in its skeletal phase. Freddy gets the idea. He is starting to notice how people are rushing to get any kind of steady old job they can wrap a finger on. Finances are getting tighter and tighter in the city, and soon everyone will be at each other’s necks to find a speck of income.

For days on after he can hear the voice of his dad breaking through furry lips, You need to get a real job. I’m proud of that jolie chose you’re with, but she ain’t making you real money. [pretty thing]

One day Gable Jr. takes his son out to eat at a fancy restaurant.across the street from the massive new tower. The feeling is a sort of "Farewell" to a good decade of plenty and abundance behind them. Oh, the easy years.

“It’s about that time, huh? Matter fact, I ain’t seen Emmy since she was let out the hospital, ” says Freddy across a booth table to his dad.

“Yessir, Frederick. It is about that time. Say you should be able to see the whole world from the top ah that thing.”

Freddy looks out a near window and up the monstrous building until the clouds block further vision. He can make out the bottoms of gigantic, fire-sculpted letters that seem to make out the words EMPIRE, INC.

“Well, let me get my parachute then.”

31. März 2020 19:53:16 0 Bericht Einbetten Follow einer Story
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