by Rachel Funk

Created on: September 27, 2009

Excerpt from "Descent Into temptation", a novel.

Glancing around myself like a man waking from a dream, which I suppose is exactly what I am. I see nothing familiar in the now completely dark night. The icy drizzle continues. My coat, warm enough to make it from my building to the subway is wet; I can feel the damp cold soaking through my suit coat and shirt, chilling my skin. My hair is plastered to my head, an ice encrusted helmet. The skin on my face is numb, hands too. I brush my deadened hands through my hair, I shiver, my teeth beginning to chatter crazily together. I clamp my jaw tight to stop it as I look around myself. A shudder wracks my body as the tremor takes hold and sinks in down to my bones, my muscles ache.

Where am I?

I can see a streetlight a few blocks up, not too far to go. I will my legs to keep on walking, muscles groaning out against the effort, but they move and I shuffle forward like an old arthritic man.

How far did I walk? Once I get to that light, I can get my bearings. I look at my watch in the dim, glowing light on the street. In the gloom, I can see it's now after eight.

Two hours? I've walked for two hours? What the... Around and around my mind chases that fact. Two hours. Two hours. Two hours?

I shamble on, willing myself onward, slipping and nearly falling. The cold is settling in, sinking itself further into my body. I'm trembling violently, but keep my feet moving. I worry if I stop it's very likely I won't get moving again. Thoughts of all the stories of homeless people freezing on the street flash through my mind at once. My throbbing muscles are no match against the threat of freezing to death. I push through the weakness and continue down the slick sidewalk. Looking around desperately for a landmark, something I recognize. Anything. There is nothing, strange buildings, strange alleys, strange street.

Graffiti covers the buildings, on the brickwork, the windows, the dumpsters, the mailboxes. Names, initials, dates, pictures. The most disturbing, hate-filled scrawlings directed to and from every possible ethnic or social group. The threats and hatred layered until it became the chaos surrounding me.

Years ago, I had once seen pictures of graffiti displayed in a small museum near my apartment. I found those pictures, tastefully framed of course, stunning and beautiful. They spoke of undisciplined creativity and primitive talent and in my safe, sane, predictable world, I'd imagined graffiti as urban art. Smug. Stupid. What a joke. It's not art, it's insanity. The insanity hidden deep within us all, everything we carefully conceal with manners and social propriety was here, laid bare for the world to see. And it is ugly.

Hurrying past the narrow, crooked alleys, I glance down each one, hoping there isn't someone lurking in the shadows. I hurry along as well as I can. I glance down the next, and the next, and the next. Each one a fresh nightmare, lurking. Only a few more yards and I'll be at the intersection. The light from the street lamp amplified by the misty air, the entire corner seems so comforting.

...and the building across the street there, what is that? With squinted eyes, I try to make out what the building is, it's so far away, and behind the glare of the street light. I hear a shuffling step behind me, panic bolts through my body. Adrenalin shoots through my body like an electric shock. I try to run.

I pitch forward, the soles of my shoes skidding across the ice-slicked sidewalk. I lose my balance and in that instant know that I'm a dead man.

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