Why the City Is Afraid to Sleep
by Lisa M. Bradley
Previously appeared in Champagne Shivers, August 2003
|
Mors and Morpheus, bruised brothers-in-arms, shuffle along the cusp of darkness. Orange sodium-arc dregs from the nearby city feel after them, but the frayed edges of the brothers' black cloaks snarl the particles, leave photons gasping on the ground. The specters pause before passing through the plastic-thin horizon. They reach for their limp pouches, slither inside with twisted fingers, search the spellbound seams for forgotten portents, neglected plagues. |
Finding nothing but errant fluff, they turn amorphous moon faces to one another and shrug, flick the fleecy residue into the night. |
Then, like an old man stolen between labored breaths, like a Technicolor dream dissolving in blinks of daylight, the twins are gone. Behind them, the nebulous discards drift into the dreaming city. They weave through the restless sleep of threadbare souls, twist silent over skid-row streets, and finally sink slow into fetid gutters......where they multiply and brew. |
About the Author:
Lisa Bradley writes dark fantasy and horror in a Midwestern town that is neither fantastic nor horrific, which is the way she likes it. Her work has recently appeared in Brutarian Quarterly, The Magazine of Speculative Poetry, Scifaikuest, Byzarium, and Lost in the Dark. She also edits the kids' speculative fiction ezine, KidVisions.