The light from the box on my arm didn't shine as brightly out here because it was battling the sun for supremacy, and the sun was winning, but not by a longshot. The box was trying, and I could see it breathing harder than before. I stared at a flock of pigeons that was flying high above the skyline and wondered if they were part of the same clan that had possibly been helping me. Their silhouettes, when banded together, almost formed animated words that I attempted to make out among the smog and the sunlight, though I failed to see anything other than some gibberish that looked like "seyeruoynepo" or something else that someone just blindly pounded on the keyboard. My attention was drawn away from the sky when I heard the inevitable: the stairwell door flung open and the mob had reached the top. But they were human again, people I recognized. People from the building. Mr. Roth, Sandy, The Minter twins, Tommy, Tab. They were all there, mixed amongst the nameless faces of other people who have survived some of the years of abuse that Cardboard City can pour on its forgiving habitants. And they were advancing toward me.
I made my best attempt at forming complete sentences. I was more confused than a scorpion being snatched out of the desert and being thrown in a toilet, and the only person I could really direct my sentences to was one of my only friends, Sandy, the prostitute with palsy.
"Tell…How do.." I sniffed my tears back up through my nose and eyes and forced them down my throat. "What's…happening, Sandy? What do you want?"
Because my question was directed at Sandy, she became the unsung leader, stepping forward in front of the Minter twins.
"We don't want to hurt you, Chadam." She said, in an uncanny motherly manner.
"Wh..what?" I was backing up a few steps at a time, and the mob of people was pouring in out of the doorway, inching closer towards me.
"We've been trying to he – "
I cut her off, "Stay the FUCK back!"
"Chadam…please, listen. We've been trying to help you…"
"You can help me from there, stay back."
"There's nowhere to go from here, Chadam. That's why we brought you up here."
"You didn't bring…FUCK, I ran…and…" I couldn't even begin to figure it out. These are the words I remember saying, for the sake of getting my point across, but I'm sure they came out garbled when I spoke them. I was choking on the confusion and the pain.
"Everything that happened led you up here, Chadam, so you can breathe. Take in the air, it'll help." She was continuing to sound protecting.
Breathe? I thought. I couldn't even see straight.
"Like I said, we have all been trying to help you – "
I cut her off again.
"FUCKING help me WHAT!? You're killing me! Look at me!"
"Help you…to see."
They were all advancing closer, and before I knew it I was almost at the edge. I glanced over my shoulder and sure enough, I was at the edge. I could see the cluttered, traffic filled streets below me, maybe a couple hundred feet down. But I would never jump. I COULDN'T, even if I wanted to. My fear of heights won't physically even let me 5 feet from the edge of a one-story roof, let alone a 5 or 6 or , fuck, it looks like TEN story building. I actually feel safe around high buildings because my fear is so intense there might as well be a wall up around the edges, because I know my body WILL NOT let me fall.
Before I could respond to Sandy's latest words, the box lit up, and aimed its spotlight at Sandy. In the light, which only shone on her torso and arms, Sandy was…horrifying…but…simultaneously beautiful. Her torso was bloated, but looked alluring. Her fingers were long and orange. They moved like snakes and were full of blisters. She held up her hand and, from the top of her palm to midway down her forearm, a mouth opened, and the ink-like black tendons shot out from inside the mouth and completely entangled my new left arm…