Flying with Vermin

A dead man was walking the streets, but no one noticed.

His glazed eyes were mistaken for just another bored commuter’s, his shredded hearts blood matched the red of his tie and the rotting smell of his slowly decaying body was miniscule in comparison to the stench of the city and its pollution.

Slowly he made his way around, aimlessly stumbling over kerbs, bits of him falling off as he went; his briefcase there, his moth-eaten blazer there and his blood red (soaked?) tie in the river, where he spent several moments considering his reflection and what he had become.

Suddenly he lurched around and dragged his unresponsive limbs to the front of the hotel behind him.

The door man held it open, courteous, (with a soul-searching glance (doormen see everything)).

Alone in the elevator, (he did not think his body would last the numerous flights of stairs), the droning music, (killer of small talk (accompaniment of the damned)) pierced his peeling ears and entered his brain where a solitary neuron sparked off in his mind and made him think,

‘ill kill that bloody Mozart’.

Then the situation, along with what he had just said, sunk in and he wept a hysterical depression that left the dirt on his face riveted with streaks of tears.

At least those still worked.

Top floor, penthouse suit, there was a time once when he had practically lived here.
Out of the door, no one home, good; although having someone shout out
‘STOP’,
might have been a comforting reminder that he had not completely left this world, yet.

But hey-ho.

Life goes on.

Or not.

...

The window broke far too easily, maybe death gave you hidden powers, and suddenly he was free, soaring alongside the pigeons, those ‘vermin’ that are the only ones to see the true glory of the city; the sparkling as its river dances through its core, reflected in a beautiful mergence of man and nature off the towering scrapers reaching out for their god and missing him, narrowly and at the same time with an ignorance it took a millennia to build.

Still no one noticed.

He looked in at people’s windows and saw the beautiful smiles of a newborns parents and the ugliness in the rich basted slapping the old whore across the bedroom, a cacophony of existence.

Still no one noticed.

The buildings crowded him now, pressing him down from the lofty height, forcing him back into his mind of depression;
this is life, down amongst the weevils, the dirt, the smoke, the noise, the uncaring soulless beings driven by hunger, and a need to survive above all costs, above all others.

No-one cares.

No-one is truly alive.

The doorman, tipping his hat to a rich tipping couple, pondered before he stepped back to his post, worrying about the man he had seen earlier. He clearly wasn’t well. Perhaps he should call somebody. After all, he had had that deranged look about him, and a certain longing, almost as if…

The black shadow came from nowhere and jumped the doorman, who’s pondering had kept him in the crosshairs, knocking his head viciously against the doors edge and then the pavement; at the same time causing just enough difference to the path of the dead man that instead of the pavement he hit the flowerbed, at a much slower speed than that which he had intended, although this did not the sharp crack as his spine split.

Deathly silence.

The doorman lay face angled down, a look of surprise and… (betrayal?) on his crooked face. This wasn’t how he was supposed to go, he was supposed to be surrounded by his family with a child on each hand and the other two holding his wife, not pressed upon against stale gum, ringed in a halo of his own blood.

The dead mans twisted body opened a solitary eye from the flower bed, and stared in the only direction it could, directly at the doorman.

A confused look fleeted across, a look of surprise and… (betrayal?), moments before it closed once more.

Though not permanently.

In many years time the living man would look back on this moment and, although not fully comprehending, puzzle that it took the death of this man, (the only one who cared), to bring life to his dead and buried soul.

To allow him to appreciate life at its highest potential.

To let him fly with the vermin.

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