And the City Streets Would Sing

Arthur had not been home all day. Maybe his wife would have cared, it is possible his daughter would have worried, but he had outlived them both. The only family he had left, that he knew of, were two grandsons, but they sat on the far side of the great Atlantic Ocean. He wondered how old they were, or if they had children of their own.

Arthur was a relatively short 5 foot 7 inches, and shrinking still. His hair was a light, fading grey and pulled away from the front of his head like a petulant child trying desperately to escape its mother’s grasp. Shimmering glasses hid lifeless eyes. His hands, now rough and wrinkled, were stuffed firmly in his hip pockets. Freshly polished, bright black shoes stood out underneath moss green trousers two inches too short. His face was scoured. A vinyl record with marks and lines all moulding into one continuous groove that framed his key features. His nose was a cloudy amethyst chiselled in a hurry. His lips a weather-beaten cliff ready to crack and crumble.

To his right lay a dark passageway which was home to two garbage dumpsters, two parallel doorways, a wired fence, and a poor unfortunate young man concealed by a faded red hooded sweatshirt. A large bottle of cheap bourbon lay half empty close to his left hand.

Taking pity on this sad individual, Arthur took several steps into the alley and placed the sum of $3.30 beside the bottle of bourbon, still pouring out onto the cold ground. He walked away, intent on making it home for the ten ‘o’clock news. ‘And the rest of it, if you don’t mind.’ The swift, harsh tone shocked him and brought him to a standstill as abruptly as if he had collided with a solid brick wall.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, turning to face the offender. ‘Are you talking to...?’

‘You heard what I said, grandpa.’ Again the voice lacerated the air and cut straight to the core of the old man. A steel blade dangling in mid-air, hovering patiently, radiated the light and heat of the restless and familiar city. ‘Hand over your cash.’

‘That’s all I got,’ fumbled the old man as he threw a quarter, two nickels, and a penny at the poor unfortunate attacker. Both men doing what they believed was necessary to preserve an equilibrium.

 ‘Now what, in the name of God, is that going to buy me? Huh?’ said the attacker, waving his blade menacingly in front of the old man’s chest, his eyes on fire with the hurt of a million childhood traumas. ‘I just want to get home to see my family, man. Ok? I mean, you know what it’s like. Shit. Just a little taxi fare. To get home to see my kid.’ He started shaking. ‘Yeah, I got this kid, you see? Small boy, ‘bout three. He takes after me, man. You know what that’s like? A little version of you? You gotta let me get home, man. Just hand over the money. Ok? I ain’t killed anybody in a long time, man. Give me money, man. Help me change, man. Please!’ The attacker was now giggling uncontrollably. Hysterical, the tears poured from his eyes like acid rain. The knife still held firm, pointed with pinpoint precision at the old man’s sternum, ready to split the brittle bone and shatter it in an instant. The old man threw up his hands and waited for death.

As the knife entered no blood pored, but the pain of a hundred years thundered from his heart in buckets. The blade plunged in and the fist of the poor unfortunate met the old man’s chest with a thud, sending Arthur back onto the gum-covered pavement where he had been safe just moments ago. In his final moment, Arthur thought of this poor lost soul. Probably never witnessed a church service in his life. Never heard the voice of God echoed through the mouths and souls of a congregation. Resonating off the walls and reaching the highest ceilings. He wondered if this man really had a kid. If the pain and misery of a diminished life really had tainted another young soul, and damned him from the start. He considered the blade. The blade that was still protruding from his chest and shining in the glow of a nearby streetlight. The blade that was just a tool, an implement of death and destruction if placed in the wrong hands. As he finished this last thought his head cracked open like an egg on the kerb and a stream of dark red memories was running into the gutter.

Further down the pavement Simon and Amy had escaped the clutches of their parents moments before Arthur had come stumbling out of the alley. The children laughed and played even after he fell, but the laughter stopped and the playing ceased when they saw a crimson pool form beside his head and a steaming stream flow endlessly into the clogged and clotted city street drainage. Tears formed in Amy’s eyes. Her face contorted like a stress ball absorbing the ill feeling of an over-worked businessman. Lines began to cut deep into her young face and tears lost their fight with gravity and her brother would have noticed if his eyes weren’t forever fixed on the lifeless stranger. Simon’s jaw hung loose. The blackness he revealed with his mouth wide open matched the darkness that crept out of the alleyway. Simon could just about see a chalk-white face peering out of the dark. Looking at the wound in the old man’s chest, and seeing the light of the city bound off the cold metal blade, Simon knew what this man had done. A wet patch formed on his jeans and he too began to cry.

By the time their parents had pulled level with them, the children were lost to a world with no mercy. The father could not believe his eyes. Moments ago he had been talking to his wife about their wonderful children and a wonderful night out. The food had been great. The movie, even though it was for children, had a few adult jokes that had made it manageable. But now the night was ruined. His wonderful children were broken and bemused. A mixture of urine and tears stained their good clothes. The taste he had acquired from the venison he had enjoyed and the popcorn he had forced down was gone and replaced by the sour taste of anguish and confusion. ‘Holy shit’, he muttered before wrapping one arm around each child, forgetting to cover their eyes. The children sunk their heavy heads into his shoulders and nuzzled him like little lost kittens looking for food and reassurance. ‘Why, daddy? Why?’

While this was going on, the mother had let out a shrill siren’s song that alerted everyone in the city to the ongoing tragedy. A police siren sharply followed.

A large crowd began to gather. Flashes like bolts of lightning cut through the scene and preserved the misery. The people that congregated could barely keep their eyes on the gruesome scene and yet they still raised themselves onto their tip-toes and craned their necks like giraffes. They scrunched up their faces from time to time and turned their heads away from the alleyway and the pavement and the man and the blood, but they could only keep up this act for a few seconds before turning to look again and craning their necks even further.

The police did arrive and an ambulance followed. The killer crumbled and fell to his knees. The ambulance could do nothing to help. His face looked puzzled and begged for help from his mind that had made him do the deed. Why did the old man need to die? He asked the ground and the crowd and the police with his enslaved eyes. The handcuffs went on and cut deep into the dull red scars he had left there before. No-one in the crowd dared to touch the man as he was led stumbling towards the police van. He was a leper, a gangrenous limb that needed to be amputated. Nobody would miss him.

But he would get his picture in the paper. The children, too, would be famous for a day. Arthur would remain as a faceless name. His distant letters would stay forever surrounded by an abyss of stark whiteness, blankness. The toils of his life would be for nothing. 100 years of happy and hopeless memories wiped out in a moment. His apartment on the other side of town would be raided and ransacked for its plunder; television, antiques, money. But the things that mattered most to him wouldn’t mean a thing to anyone else. Maybe his books would go to a charity and be adored by someone younger who would understand them more. The photos, however, and the paintings he himself had created would most likely be black-bagged and left on the kerb with the rest of the rubbish.

Even so, everyone in the crowd would remember Arthur, lying there cold and dead as the pavement below him. Out beyond the crowd the restless city would continue to buzz unhindered. The bar he had left less than half an hour before his death would celebrate regardless. Men and women would laugh and frolic and drown their sorrows without knowing or caring about a man they had seen in passing and whom some had talked to briefly. Clubs would open and hum vitality. The youth of the city would come to life and fill the streets as convenience stores would continue selling and takeaways would make their best business of the day.

After all, people had died all over the world in that same minute, and others were born, that the people who surrounded Arthur had not heard or cared about. Families would mourn and celebrate for many reasons that night as rain began to fall on the scene. But above the dark grey clouds where God should have sat lay a diamond studded blanket that did little to keep Man warm. The stars, the sun, and the universe changed little that night as a crescent moon beamed, never once breaking its smile.