There is a town somewhere, entwined around, laced across and running through a hill. The town is narrow, all the buildings taller than they are wide, all sardined together, walls white and slanted slate and steel rooves grey. The streets are like veins, thin and grey, almost blue, the tiny lines that carry life everywheere. They twist and turn and spin and loop and bend and veer and split and lead inescapably back, outlining the compressed buildings.
The town is so pressed it looks and feels like it could once have been a bigger town, sprawling like a puddle for uncharted, roaming miles, with gaping streets and discernible outlines, but some gigantic grey hand swept this metropolis up and rolled and pushed it untl it was this thin.
Like rolling up a newspaper, normally a vast sea of detail, spread out, every letter available, telling its own story. Space, air, freedom to roam, see the bigger picture. But when its rolled up, these tiny letters are thrown together, pressed up, gagging for air, barely enough space to be seen let alone tell their stories or discern themselves in the newspaer's entirety. It's clear when you see this rolled up paper that its full of life, characters, places, pictures, corners, little beauties. But they can't, for their sheer confusion and proximity, be seen.
And in the town it is always raining. Always raining.
And beautiful echoing siren voices chim throuogh the city veins, constantly there, but the citizens tune them out.
Vistitors suddenly become aware of them, rising from a drain or dropping from a pipe. One of those things you realise then wonder how you could tune it out when it's so present.
And all the time, underscored by the sounds of rain.
Rhys Laverty
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