6

................some placeless impossible amalgamation..... a tissue of quotations, firing off against the walls of the inside of his own... some mid-20th..... no.... he surveyed the scene, trying to place it, trying to grasp.... desperate to pass to judgment, to attain any kind of.... ..... certainty.. ... ... ... ... . .

It came into focus. The dark starless sky above. The streetlights. The stump-like six-floor 'skyscrapers', little dwellings along the side walk, bright lights strung across all buildings, billboards affixed at every flat orifice. The road running between streets was clogged with six lanes of slow-rolling traffic, three lanes flowing in each direction. The cars were a fairly even match of sharp-angle yellow NY taxi cabs and stately black Ford Model Ts. The streets were thick with glamour - blonde haired ladies with feathers and features as pretty as a Maryelle, but all different, different coloured dresses, different dresses, different facial features.... and men.... white men in top hats, suits, monocles, cigars, waistcoats...... .... some in army uniform, flat khaki uniform, World War style..... .... and black women in plastic clothing fitted tight to the curves of their bodies..... black men with gold and diamonds swinging from their necks, hooded sweatshirts, jeans flowing loose and baggy from well beneath the waist..... and more - Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian, Iranian...... he tried to place himself: where was this? ....... he wandered the streets and looked, and decided that he must currently be walking through a city located somewhere between the mid 19th and early 21st centuries of the Piscean period.. .

... he without thought entered through a plush gold-lined velvet opening, along a corridor that stretched far from the street, growing narrower towards its end.... the end was breached.... he pushed on..... he moved deeper....... he exited the red and entered into darkness...................

.. he looked up at grainy projection of a cinema screen..... in greyscale, a white man with neat slicked black hair and a thin black moustache talked, and then a pretty white girl with big eyes and curls looked at him from a different angle, the image flickering back and forth between the two of them, words and reaction, words and reaction....... he could hear no sound.......

. he turned around and looked behind him at the expanding darkness.. he felt sudden fear... he didn't know.... could be..... anything in that darkness......... he turned back to the screen..... what screen.... he turned around and around..... he fumbled through the darkness.......... his foot. the first to slip through..... chink of lightness in the floor........ then through bright light he was falling, down from sky, the rooftops of Esplinade floating on the surface of the ocean tens of thousands of feet below...... he hurtled towards oblivion with detached relief..