There are a few things I don't get. For one, all this food: berries in winter and the reddish shine of fish that must come from waters far away. I would like to taste one though. And then there are the shoes, heels that look like slivers of rock, delicate silvery bands. I see them all from my window. I remember when shoes were made only of leather, we even stuffed them with moss. That was what we knew.

You can hear me? This is odd. I'm used to talking to myself. I'm not sure if you can, but I'll keep talking. Maybe you hear, God, maybe things are changing.

I've been here a very long time, but I already said that. My daddy was a gin bootlegger, one of the first in the area. I mean he started out legit. People thought he was a magician. All they'd ever had was ale, and when this new liquid appeared, smooth as water and strong as ox - they drunk like fishes whose gills burned in the sooty air.

This neighborhood was a mess, but you wouldn't know it now. People were dying everywhere of fumes, of plague, the water brown, dead rats and cats rotting in the street. Hugo's leather tannery was just round the corner, you could smell the vats and they'd empty the dyes round back, dark liquid mixing with the dirt and shit, making its way down the cobblestones. The mills were just down the road, the workers going deaf, arms caught in machinery, hundreds worked there 'til the place burned, chocked with bodies charred black.

So we set up our shop as a haven to eat and drink. We'd paint the meat with fresh blood when it got too old, anything to keep the place enticing. Our customers were all the poor sops who came down here to work. At the end of their shifts, they'd spill out, caught in the caressing hands of the women who waited for them. The clear gin would calm, help them forget, sooth aching bones and spirits. The women would lure with the promise of touching soft flesh, being inside somewhere human. I grew up here. I learned to watch the signs: first a simple sore on the lips, then a rash and ulcers, pulling clothes trying to hide the wounds, then the madness, they'd wander, naked, cry out.

I took over my daddy's business, I think that's where it all went wrong. They started to crack down. The gin act of 1751, you heard of it? They tried to make our lives illegal, blamed us for all kinds of things. Well eventually it caught up with me and they locked me up here. I was here 'til it burned down and then something happened. I don't know what exactly. It's like the place is gone, but I'm still here, in the same cell I used to be. Everything else moved on, and I'm a remnant, I don't know why.

You could help, you know that. But maybe you know too much about forgetting. I know your life is different. I just get glimpses, but I can piece together how it must be. I can smell the fresh air of spring coming off the river, I watch whole families zoom in cars, your doors and windows closed. You live lives of containment, you balance on a cobblestone street on the finest heel of a shoe. These buildings used to stink, sweat, carry the grime of disease in their mortar, but you've washed them clean. Built glass buildings, new kinds of lights. You've made your own sun.

Our vices and trials must now seem so crude. Painted over rotten meat, sewers in the street, death lurking like rowdy school children ready to pounce. Your vices are quiet. Viruses that travel softly in the air, the spills washed quickly down drainpipes to lakes unseen, the silences of each person locked in his or her house, guarded tight against the rain or sun or cold or warmth or feeling too much. You die alone, at least we died in each others arms.

You could help you know. Maybe this is a sign, now that you can hear me. Maybe I can be released. I may be kin to some of you, I had two daughters, they lived right here. I may be in your blood. We're not so different really. Hell, I watch you come in the mornings, streaming to work. Then I see you in pubs after work, falling drunk and high in the street. You die in your houses, have your own plagues, but it's the same death, just hidden away. At least we faced ours straight on.

I just want out of here. Please see me, tell me you can hear me. I am a part of you; I'm not so far away. I may speak in tongues of men and demons but I know you recognize my voice. Through a glass, darkly, but now face to face. Will you see me? Will you release these ghosts?

submitted by: Alex Burger
July 28 in literature