THE SWANS OF REVOLUTION

I remember sitting next to this girl at a bus stop, young and pretty. She asked me if I had a cigarette I could give her, I told her, “Sorry, I don't smoke.” A few moments later, brushing some stubborn lint off her sweater, she asked me if I could answer a silly question for her. I said sure, and she asked,

“Is life worth living if you're destined to be alone forever?”

Sitting in a nodding silence, I handed her some change I had in my pocket and told her she had more important things to worry about. She laughed, and counting the quarters in her hand, she said, 

“You'd hope so.”

Vicious static to the eye, lemon-doted fireflies blend and spiral beneath the soft ivory of a shining streetlamp.

* * *

Over stringing gutters, the overly crowded wagon would drop me off in front of my building, the smell of steel and spoiled sandwiches lingered on my tastebuds. Driving away, I was still able to hear the old Korean couple arguing in the backseat, their strained and gurgled shouting loitering in the distance. The lucky foot smothering roughly against the curb, holding onto a street sign with one hand, I attempted to protest some chewed-up bubblegum off the bottom of my shoe. With the christened moonlit skies leaning yearnful over Frostman City, origami jungle veering dreamless overhead, I began the grueling hustle up the stairs to my apartment, navigating around the carnage of discarded memories along the way. After walking up several stories, I would happen to come across my neighbor Joe sitting cozy at the top of the steps, looking at his phone and chewing a plastic straw on the right side of his mouth.

“How's it going, Joe?” I muttered, swiftly blowing by, hoping to go unnoticed.

“Going good, brother,” Joe responded, not once delegating his eyes off his phone. “Another day surviving through America's dystopian agenda, you know how it is.”

Joe was in his mid-forties, a scrawny devil with long muddy brown hair that freely hung above his shoulders, black untrimmed nails. “Hawaiian Shirt Joe,” that's what I referred to him as in my own unspoken monologue, on account of the unyielding supply of Hawaiian shirts he showcased every day. Joe also wore glasses.

“Hey, hold up,” Joe called out in an elevated voice, putting his phone down and picking himself up off the ground. “Did you see anybody outside?”

“What a stupid question,” I vividly thought to myself.

Stopping halfway up the stairs, I turned around, wincing, and rubbing my eye with the root of my palm, I said, “You're going to have to be more specific, Joe.”

Joe elaborated, “In front of the building, did you happen to see a woman, kind of tall, too much makeup, and may or may not be slathered like a drag queen?” Joe took the straw out of his mouth and twirled it between his fingers. “Because, you know, me and this sewer gator got some business to tend to, if you know what I'm saying.”

Joe was a small-time drug dealer in the building, party-hoppers, nothing major, although the cops did conspire and raid his apartment one time. They weren't able to find anything substantial, but they did manage to shatter his grandmother's vase. “My grandmother gave me that vase for Christmas!” Joe angrily shouted, as the cops were flipping his mattress over.

“I didn't see anyone,” I told him, beginning to slowly walk backwards up the stairs.

“Damn,” Joe said, putting the straw back in his mouth and awkwardly shuffling through his pockets. “Hey, did you hear about those protesters in downtown that broke into the museum and hurled urine at some painted works of art?”

An empty wine bottle whistling down the center of the stairwell traveled past us and would shatter on the bottom floor.

“What the fuck are you talking about, Joe?” I asked, mildly irritated, pausing my careful escape up the stairs.

“I'm serious,” Joe said, taking the straw out of his mouth again. “Apparently some activist group broke into the museum and threw water bottles full of urine at some priceless paintings. I guess it was meant to be some sort of anti-capitalist statement. Crazy shit, huh?”

I envision the caper in my head before daring to interrogate.

“Well, Joe, to be honest, I've always had a difficult time forming a refined opinion on capitalism.” Clenching my jaw, I let out a deflating breath before continuing. “On one hand, you got a giant pile of useless crap, and on the other hand, you got parcels of stricken people going hungry in the streets, pouring vials of toxic venom into their veins, into their guts, withering. So, I suppose…” I lift my hands up in front of me in a shrugging manner. “It's simply a matter of perspective.”

A brittle look of concern would channel across the sunken aisles of Joe's face, as if he could sense the spiral of genuine hurt beneath my sarcasm.

“Supply and demand, brother,” Joe remarked, his rapture growing somber. “It's the way of the world. Some people call it capitalism, some call it Saturday night. You can't fight these things.”

We both just stood there and stared at each other, blinking, like moths in our own personal temple of silence, a budding shrine to our respective arrogance.

Joe would put the straw back in his mouth one last time and settle back down on the steps, his eyes reverting back onto his screen. “Well, brother, if anybody's digging around for me, you know where I'll be.”

Feeling the Universe pressing a gun against my genitals, I turned around and would continue my haggard scuttle up the stairs, ever the culprit, and ever more unenlightened for my troubles.

* * *

I close the door behind me upon entering the apartment, lock it, unlock it, then lock it again. Placing my keys on top of the refrigerator, I'd walk over to the television and turn it on.

“Museum officials have yet to deliver a statement, as such, there is no word on how much the paintings might have been devalued as a result of the incident…” The female reporter smiles at the camera, her glowing skin, dark and beautiful, porcelain features, while trying her best to shroud the remnants of a slight Indian accent. “When pressed on the issue, the mayor assured us that they would heighten security in the downtown area. Although, as he acknowledged, these types of events are becoming more prevalent all around the city…” The reporter signs off.

Staring at myself in the mirror, checking for moles and analyzing the growing bags under my eyes, my stomach growls, and looking down I would struggle to think of the last time I chewed on something. Looking up and leaning forward, with both hands pressing down on the bathroom sink, I leered into the mirror and slowly smiled as wide as I could, raising my eyebrows, purposely projecting as crazed of an image as possible. Holding, and then I stopped, letting my face drop back down to its usual disinterested allure. Then, looking into my eyes, I envisioned a statue of George Carlin burning in a glorious hue of red and purple flames, and in this raw despondent voice, I whimpered, “The way of the world.” Fatigued, I turned the light off, stumbled back into the living room, and would collapse face down on the couch.

Later that night, with the infected moon lighting the air through the swells of an open curtain, I awoke to the clutch of an incessant thirst gripping my marrow. Resident phantom brooding, I would pick myself up off the couch and, in a scattered sputtering, scramble lavishly into the kitchen. Swinging open the door to the cabinet, I grab one of a dozen smudgy glasses from inside. First, I tried the cold water, …nothing, then I tried the hot, …nothing. “Did those bastards turn my water off again?” I punctuated out loud. Just then, in the prism of this tainted night, my ears picked up a low and rendered humming coming from within the hall.

* * *

And there I was, standing in the hallway of an old decaying apartment building, staring at my reflection in the glass of a mysterious vending machine. “I don't remember this vending machine being here,” I commented in my head. To make the odd encounter even odder, the entire thing was filled with sharp and sequenced rows of plastic water bottles, from top to bottom, unmarked, unlabeled, semi-refrigerated water bottles. Looking down the hallway in both directions, seeing no one around, smacking my lips, I figured, “What the hell,” and reached into my pocket with aim of digging up a couple of shiny quarters.

“…Fuck,” I said out loud, upon my sad realization. My thirst and sheer disappointment in the world intensified.

“You really shouldn't give money to strangers…”

Shocked, I staggered a couple of footsteps to the side, away from the vending machine, severely startled by the presence of the man speaking and standing directly beside me.

“The world is going to end soon, you know,” the man continued. “You're going to wish you held on to every penny.”

“What in the fuck! What's the matter with you?!” I yelled at the man, sternly questioning his choice of introduction.

“Money won't be worth anything, of course, but at least it'll give you something to throw at people as they funnel in through your window, attempting to steal a second slice of cheesecake.”

At, at least, six foot five, the careless stranger would seem a pale and slender man, with thin colorless lips, which flattened like paper, and with a scoff of imbued discretion sheltered heavily on his grin. His eyes hardly visible beneath the weaving frame of his fedora, held together in a long brown trench coat with a grayish fitted suit underneath. All in all, something smoked right out of an old black and white.

Striking a match and lighting the cigarette in his mouth, the man was incited, and in a dark and caverned voice, he said,

“You see, Pico, the funny thing is…”

“How do you know my name?” I interject, but the slim-faced man simply kept on speaking.

“Poor people only exist because rich people exist, and rich people only exist because poor people exist. You see, if just one half were to mysteriously vanish, the other half, by default, would vanish as well, for there would no longer be any distinction. Whatever was left over would simply become what we've always been, shadows on a moving train.”

“Are you going to rob me?” I asked, coiled apprehension in my voice. 

The stranger would laugh, a kind of saddened restraint in his cackle. “No…” he said, flicking the ash of his cigarette onto the floor. “I have no interest in taking anything from anyone, by force or otherwise.”

“Do you know me from somewhere?” I asked.

With the cigarette between his teeth, all the while facing my direction, he would turn his head and gently place the palm of his hand onto the vending machine. From my angle, though obscure, I couldn't help but notice his total lack of reflection upon the glass.

“Why do you own a gun?”

“What?”

“Under your bed, in an old beat-up shoebox, what are you planning to do with it?”

“Look…” I said, confused, and growing weary of our prying conversation. “I don't know what's going on, but if you need money, I can just go into my apartment and get you some money.”

The man would smile. Tossing the bamboo of his cigarette onto the floor, and reaching into the pocket of his coat, he said, “Tell you what, I'll do you one better.”

In a single motion, the man would pull a revolver out from his pocket, aim it at the vending machine and pull the trigger. The sound of the blast echoed horribly throughout the hallway, the glass completely shattering. I, lifting my hands up in front of me, flinching, shielded myself from the outward spray of nasty shrapnel.

“Are you out of your fucking mind?!” I shouted, believing now to be in the presence of a complete lunatic. 

Having put the gun back in his pocket, the man would reach his hand into the vending machine and scavenge a bottle from out the center row. Walking over to me, the glass in his uprooted shadow snapping and crushing beneath his heel, I would feel the various muscles around my jawline tensing.

“Here,” he said, handing me the bottle, and I, not daring to offend the man, unsure of what his reaction would be to such an overt rejection, would indulgently accept.

As he ventured past me, I was able to dawn a better look onto his face, in particular his eyes, or lack thereof, for upon further injection, it became perfectly apparent that he hadn't any, only darkness, only cold swirling wells of corrupting dissonance. A frosty shiver landed over me.

Turning around, I kept my ample sight on the man as he made his jury down the hall, the lights flickering and shying dim as he floated by. “Who are you?” I asked, knowing I wouldn't get a lasting answer. Stopping at the top of the stairs, looking down at a leafy grove of dusty steps, he turned his head toward me, and adjusting the fit of his hat, he said,

“Don't worry about the glass, somebody will clean it up, somebody of admirable character.”

With his motions blurred, he descended out of view, the tidy sounds of his footsteps growing soft and distant, like hungry crows marching through furrows of mourning tender.

And there I was, standing in the hallway, squeezing a plastic water bottle in my hand. None of my neighbors exiting their apartments to investigate a gunshot in the building didn't surprise me. In a city this derailed with the half-sought lives of ghosts and banished women, you learn to sleep through worse.

Although…

Twisting the cap back onto the bottle, wiping my lips with the back of my hand, I was weighed down by a peculiar condition. I felt something I hadn't felt since I was a child, sitting in a classroom surrounded by whittled bones. I felt alone.

I entered my apartment and locked the door. The world, a fading sense of hope and fulfillment, all of it, an endless rhyme away.

Is life worth living?

I wouldn't know.

Ask me again, once the swans of revolutions descend.

by Angel Gallomonte

Angel Gallomonte is an obscure fiction writer from California. Having privately written poetry for a number of years, he was spurred on to writing his first short story on the blaring recommendation of a dead fish. Through firm revisions, finding the nuances of storytelling engaging, he has been searching for that decisive wording ever since.