He poured himself a drink, and sat down by one of the screens that provided a glimpse of the outside world. An ever-shifting, arbitrary arrangement of stars and planets, drifting around like bums in a park; going nowhere in particular, but somehow eventually ending up in the same place as the day before. They were much prettier than the bums in the park though. At least at a distance. When viewed up close, however, most of them were just as gritty, smelly and unwelcoming as the bums, with the exception of a handful of happy ones.
The cognac was a fairly cheap brand that Swenson had bought because the label looked sophisticated. It made him f
"There's somethin' weird goin' on down in Port Arthur" Pamir noted absently, poking at his food with a chopstick. (Yesterday's chinese, and still completely edible, but Pamir wasn't hungry.) He tried to seem as disinterested as possible, but the look Sev shot him over his own food told him he wasn't doing a good enough job.
"Read that in the paper, did you?" he asked sarcastically, popping a piece of chicken in his mouth with a fork.
"Heard it," Pamir countered, pretending he hadn't noticed that the discussion was over and done with before it had even properly begun. "From Angela, down at Joe's. Said she saw some weird shit. A house comin'
The alarm went off at seven in the morning, the merciless beeping of the mobile penetrating darkness and sleep. Instinctively Tonio sat up and hit snooze, and remained sitting while he slowly cleared his head. Sev stirred as well, not because of the alarm but because of the cold air that Tonio had let in under the blankets.
"Mmmnshit's cold" Sev muttered, pulling the blankets away from Tonio and closer to himself. He moved around, turned to lie on his stomach, took a deep breath and was fast asleep again within seconds. For a moment Tonio felt like calling in sick and crawl back to bed, but when he reached for the phone again he was already
It was dark outside, or as dark as it ever was in the city, where the street lights and the neon signs made sure that the night never really reached all the way down to the people below. The black, starry sky Tonio could faintly recall from his childhood was nowhere to be seen - it didn't exist in this country, in this city, and neither did the moon. The sky was a dirty shade of pink as Tonio glanced up at it. What a horrendous colour, like laundry washed with the wrong colours.
He gave the silly metaphor half a smile and then looked down at the street again. It was late and the street was empty, save for those miserable creatures that never