Alleyways

That's the thing about this city, the streets are wide and brightly lit, overflowing with people, but the alleys and side streets are lucky to have a single flickering street light. People hurry about, taking shortcuts and ducking down narrow pathways but we are all taught from a young age; alleys at night-time are not to be travelled down. If you enter an alley and you can't see where it ends, turn around and leave. Always have a fire starter and light source but never bring a knife. If something seems to beckon you down an alley let it alone.

The alleys in the city change, they stretch as you walk down them, make it hard to know how far and long you've been walking. Little lights float about and attract the attention of children, they come close before darting away, each trying to lead you into danger. Every parent's worst nightmare is the idea that one of their children will become obsessed, you see it on the news, photos of kids aged 3-8 lying comatose till they get brought to the lights, or in courts at the witness stand numbly repeating "the lights must be fed" and screaming as they get taken away.

There are people who call themselves alley-runners, they take risks and head down alleys with high disappearance rates in groups and get taken deliberately, livestreaming the entire time. A few days later most of them will stagger out the other side and immediately record what happened to them. No two testimonies are the same.

I'm an alley runner, I've made it out 20 times - the highest record ever considering that at least one person dies every trip. When you enter a bad alley you can feel it, the air is stale and you immediately feel sick to the stomach. The longer you walk the slimier the walls get, black sludge stiking to them, dripping onto the floor and clinging to your shoes. What kills people isn't some beast or skittering hoard, it's not other people and it's not hidden death traps. It's the city, home to millions of people, filled with numerous building violations and human shaped monsters, it reaches up and sucks you in, feeds upon your flesh and spirit, crunches your bones to suck out the marrow. It uses as much as it can from a single person, kills you quick but eats you slow, snatches at your mind, finds it's next target and feasts.

20 times is impressive as a survival rate and people want to know how I do it. "I am poison," I tell them, "I am poison and if it pulls me in, it will die." I lie, I am not poison, I am trash. I am trash so disgusting that even the starved monster living meal to meal will not touch me. I have hung in wheat fields, toes brushing the grass and neck broken. I have been shot where I stood, fallen to the ground even as I screamed. I have been poisoned by my wife and stabbed by my husband. Death does not want me, the people do not want me, the city is filled with husks and the husks won't touch me to drag me down. It makes me angry. I will live till the end of time and I'll be angry then too, angry enough to stay standing after the world falls apart and angry enough to pull myself out of the ashes just to strangle my creator. The city'll still be be around and so will the western jungle and the north pole and the wraiths.

The city breathes and you live in it's veins, all of you are blood cells full of nutrients and I am an invading bacteria. It knows I am here and it tries to get rid of me. I have fallen off rooftops, been killed for the $20 in my wallet, spent my last days starving in a gutter and died a million other average suburban deaths. Death does not want me. The city could collapse at any moment, my friends in parliament are relaxing the building code and standards, now more than ever people are being mugged in the streets. This city is a body and a battle ground.

Things chatter in empty apartments, skittering through human minds, eating at human flesh and when they consume enough they start to glow and float and flicker and come up to children. These lights have no conciousness but when they are those hairless, wrinkled, eating creatures they collect dark thoughts and act upon them. Millions of daily resentments, suppressed urges and violent thoughts are consumed. It makes the creatures strong and stubborn, gleeful and violent. Those creatures tug at walls and pull at fences, all while shrieking and moaning, they scare the hell out of anyone interested in buying a new apartment. Where do you think haunted houses come from?

So the city is alive and filled with dying people. I have been around for thousands of years but humanity still manages to surprise me, most of their population is depressed but they still get up in the mornings. I have to drop myself onto the floor in order to get out of bed and even then I still struggle to convince my body to move. Sometimes I think I'm still hanging in that field, rope tight around my neck, toes brushing the ground and I can't breathe. I can't breath and it hurts, it aches and stings and I'm crying because all I wanted was to be treated like a person, to be treated like a human being. Death did not come for me that day, he took my friends, took my people, but left me hanging in the wind.

I have been left behind before in my life, left by Death, betrayed by Hope but not abandoned by humanity. Humanity with their little cities and massive problems. People greet me, call me a prodigy when I perform simple tasks and tell me their problems when they feel unwell. Humanity is the only thing I have any remaining care for, I'll kill this city, push it into submission and keep these strange beings alive. I'll still kill my creator and curse Death but I'll also keep the world balanced till the humans use up all their time.