There’s a bolthole down in the nastiest, darkest, dirtiest parts of the city, where a man can crawl through hallways with peeling paper and shuddering bodies that’ve seen better days, but now know life only through thick lenses made of bottles and crack pipes.
The world gets distorted, when you’re living amongst those people too long, when you’re drinking away your own demons.
No television, no news. Just the smokes and the scotch. No warm bodies next to him, even if he wanted. No one can be around while he screams himself awake, clawing at the hands of the long dead who won’t just stay long dead. Burned faces, bloated faces, half-missing faces. Enemies, lovers, friends and those who were unlucky enough to get in the way. Unlucky enough to get in his way.
What days he doesn’t wake up in blood and bruises, he wakes up in filth, if he wakes up at all.
The meeting is long since past; the department is moved, the ‘missing project’ returned, and though things aren’t ‘normal’, they’re far closer than they’ve ever been.
Now that ashes are ashes, and dust is dust, it’s time to get on with things, isn’t it?