Night, eldest of things
(Paradise Lost, Book 2, John Milton)
Leave her gaping at the body barely covered in an overcoat – the body, that is, not her. Her face indistinct in the morning light, feet bare in the cold morning on the concrete step. Hardy little thing. The body looks like that of a young man: the long bony ankles, the thin, but distinctive calf muscles. Must be lying on the hands because they aren’t visible.
Barely dawn – very few up and about, or lying about. Her face creased with disturbed sleep. Her morning discovery would make it more so over the next few days.
Everywhere so quiet as only the crack of dawn can be. Only seagulls, ravens and doves fly, silent, not into the ancient tradition of singing in the sun. Catastrophe is sublimely subversive.
Down the little street into the slowly waking city. Gaping holes where buildings once stood are full to the brim with shadows blued by the coming light, the velvety darknesses spill over onto pavements and dust, perturbed by things. Dogs, perhaps? No, not in packs now. Rats? Movement less coordinated, larger: not yet the era of giant rats. A homeless then, stateless, unnamed. The itinerant remain as unwelcome and ubiquitous as always, more now - not as many as during The End, but still a large tidal flowing back and forth, a ceaseless, directionless eddy. Sleeping in shadows as they do, they feed all manner of things and no-one knows or pays attention.
In one hollow a man stirs as something brushes his leg. It’s too dark to see, he can only touch – and smell. A thick alien stink assaults him. Though the stink of himself is none too heavenly, this is different. Alien. Cold and yet something of rot as well.
He brushes his hand down his thick dirt-encrusted jeans, the denim fraying around the baggy knees and encounters something slimy, thin, like a straying tree root.
Uttering a sound of disgust, he brushes at it, trying to dislodge it as he shuffles back against the wall of the ruin. This hollow formed of tumbled walls whose bases remained high enough was protection against both cold and mugging thieves (so many of the bastards wanting your spot and stuff). The only way in was a hole in one wall at ground level: you had to get on your front to slither in, but it was roomy enough when you were in. He wished he had a torch, wishes he’d had it when he found this spot last night, because the thing on his leg is stubborn – there! He hears it hit the ground.
He pushes himself to his feet, now realizing the stupidity of coming in here. The thing’s on the ground, blocking the only way in or out and
something snakes over his shoulder, bringing with it a waft of that foul, cold odour. Before he can make a move, utter the scream at the back of his mouth, it’s clamping around his throat and something else is slithering up his leg and there’s even something inching like a worm across his cheek. He does scream then, bubbling and choking, but it’s too late. It has him and something else or part of the same thing which has no beginning or end slides into his mouth as the screams come out
On to the central area - street sweepers clearing away the previous day’s detritus in either the most pointless or the most satisfying of occupations. Maybe no stranger than cleaning a home. A city is similar to a large house shared by many disparate types mostly harmonizing.
Shadows flee ahead so continue.
Light behind coming on in its unbreakable line, but light can be so straightforward and takes a while to pry into the less open corners by which time all the secrets are fled. Like the body in its little garden – all its secrets fled by the time morning light touched it. Pity. It would be interesting to know all those secrets, particularly those leading to the reason it lay face down, consciousness vanished into that night that all things here eventually fall into. No dawn would touch them there. No dawn will touch him. He will remain benighted.
But then light would only coat the available surface. There are places light doesn’t go so inside the eyes would forever be in darkness. Until the autopsy. No autopsies on the homeless, but that body hadn’t been homeless. There will be their investigation. Exciting to think of light invading that secret darkness of that body. What will the darkness say?
Stronger morning sizzles on the slightly damp pavements behind, inveigling its way into the cracks, waking the minute life prospering there, the tiny lichens and mosses that proliferate in these cooler months, slurping up the slight moisture that gathered from the light and the thermal concussions of day and night temperatures. This concussion is perceptible, colours the day creeping up behind as molecules expanding with warmth begin to sing other things into action: insects and microbes scurrying and flitting about their daily rounds.
Amazing.
And here? In the centre, the city centre? Right in the centre, night still holds sway and darkness covers many things. No lights, not even security lights here, because no-one lived here. Seriously asleep. Only street sweepers and cockroaches.
Soon there will be nothing of night except in those gaping hollows and other ruins. And this place: one of the few buildings that pierces the lightning sky. It bears its marks - shattered windows concealed by solar panels, blocked entrances. But against the ruins around it, skeletal, stripped and stark, this building stands tall against that sky, it soars into the emptiness beyond: no wonder infinity here is imagined in terms of stratosphere and blue.
The building is thickest dark inside, thickest welcomingest dark, its air close and cold and redolent of sea, strife and sanctuary from light, from sight.
Night will not return for fifteen hours, releasing all the fears and silence of darkness: ancient fears, but none so ancient as what walks behind the sun.
