TALES FROM THE SPHERINDER
Embedded Files
SOMETHING TO HOLD ONTO
The world, in fragments, shivers through our hands,
Its face a cracked and calloused mask of time;
Yet we, like moths, against the flame of night,
Still seek the glow—though knowing it will burn;
Is joy, then, some soft balm for fleeting hearts,
Or is it but a dance upon the edge
of death, where we, through trembling steps, declare
our struggle not as loss, but as a claim?
The void calls out, not loud, but with a hum,
A silent song beneath the noise of life—
And those who heed it do not seek the end,
But find in every mark of time a spark
that lights the dark, despite its steady pull;
For we are not our bodies, nor our pain,
But thoughts that burn through air and seek release—
Not answers found, but questions asked aloud,
In quiet moments where the world stands still;
If joy, then, is a thing to grasp at all,
It is not born of light but shadow's black—
It’s in the bitter taste of what we lack,
The yearning for the world we can’t hold back;
We rise because to rise is all we have,
And stand because to stand is to resist;
The tide that calls us back to silent dirt,
A grave that holds no meaning, but demands;
And so we laugh, though laughter’s frail and cracked;
We love because we cannot leave this stage,
And through the ruin of what cannot be fixed,
We stretch our hands to touch the fleeting air;
What, then, is joy but a defiant plea,
A thing that rises up despite the sky?
We cling to moments not for their reward,
But for the fierce conviction in the fight—
To hold and break and rise again, though all
around us crumbles, and the earth gives way.
And when we reach the end, with breaths now few,
It will not be the end that we shall mourn,
But all the times we let the light slip past,
Too busy to perceive the shadow’s gift;
We fade, yet in our fading, we are found—
A flicker in the dark, a voice still heard.
For death, too, is a kind of joy, a grace,
A pause within the music we create.
And music, we create.
A sky was sealed in a sheet of unbroken cloud, a dull ceiling through which no light could pass, and the cold air pressed down steadily from above, unmoving, settled. Nothing fell from it. March simply held its place, indifferent. A man walked south along Dundas, his movements loose and irregular, each footfall sounding out of sync with the last. The pavement was cracked in long seams, water gathered in the splits, rising with each step to soak further into his shoes. He breathed in short, uneven bursts, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his coat, as though they'd always been there and always would be.
Near a bus shelter, a woman crouched with her hand cupped over her mouth, her eyes unmoving.
A boy leaned beside her, speaking in a low voice that didn’t carry. No one else stood near them. A small cart sat at their side, cluttered with cans, rope, and twisted wire. One wheel turned slowly in the breeze, a quiet motion in an otherwise fixed scene.
The man passed without looking. A loose thread from his coat caught on the brittle end of a branch and snapped free, trailing behind him for a moment before dropping but he kept walking. His shoulders stayed low, his head down, his hair pressed flat against the back of his neck. He wiped at it with his sleeve, then exhaled through the stale presence of liquor still lingering on his breath.
On Sumach, near a rusted chain-link fence, a man lied curled in a position that seemed neither restful nor recent. His legs were bent tightly, arms pulled in close to his chest. A pair of boots stood neatly beside him, upright, as though waiting for use. A pair of gloves hung from his belt. He made no sound and gave no sign of waking.
The bridge ahead held on to its patches of ice, unmelting. Beneath it, the Don River moved in silence, its current blocked by a cluster of debris lodged near a pylon—plastic bags, rusted cans, the frame of a chair, and near the top, a doll without a head, leaning forward as if straining to hear something lost long ago. Beyond the bridge’s far side, the old jail stood behind a lot scattered with trash. Its gate hung from one hinge, chain coiled loosely, the speaker at the entrance silent, the cameras lifeless. The man crossed the lot and stepped onto Jack Layton, where the mud held tightly to fragments of plastic, tangles of wire, bits of glass. Grass hadn’t grown there for years. The steps tilted slightly to one side, but he climbed them without slowing. Inside, nothing changed. The light was still, the air dense and without motion. A puddle stretched out from the base of the elevator shaft to the stairwell door, and his feet dragged through it with soft slaps. One stair gave a sharp crack beneath him, but again he didn’t stop. On the third floor, a strip light flickered faintly overhead, its low buzz the only sound. He passed a door blocked by a desk, then another one sealed shut by a wall of stacked chairs. The hallway narrowed as he moved, its walls stained with scrawls and burns, layers of marks too old to read. A thick, sour smell hung in the corridor, unmoved by time or air. At the far end waited his cell, its gate swung open, waiting. He stepped inside and pulled it shut behind him. The chain slipped into place with the practiced ease of repetition. He sat on the cot, bent forward, and pulled off one shoe, the fabric peeling away wetly; the other resisted. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees, eyes fixed to a spot on the wall ahead. Nothing moved; nothing followed. The shape of the room stayed unchanged. A calendar marked 2100 had faded to the point of meaninglessness—the days erased, the month unreadable. A buzz came from the hallway, or perhaps the TV, which flickered in the corner, its screen locked on looping images of distant wars and gathering storms. The anchor's mouth moved, but no words could be heard. The picture trembled slightly with the hum, which filled the silence that followed him everywhere. He sat there, legs stretched forward, back against the wall, unmoving. The light from the corner lamp reached across the floor in a thin bar. He ran a hand across his face to wipe away the sweat. His hair clung to his forehead in dark strands. He leaned forward again, settling into the same position as before, elbows resting on knees, as though this posture was all that remained to him.
Then came a knock at the gate: "Yo, you in there?" The voice came, rasping, with a kind of drawl that cut through the quiet. "You awake, or what?"
He didn’t answer. His fingers tapped his knees. He didn’t move. His eyes stared at the ground. A bit of dust swirled in the light, then settled.
"Hey," the voice again, louder. "You still breathing, or you just dead already?" The last word hit a little harder. The woman on the other side laughed, but it was broken—too sharp, too strained.
"Yeah," he said, flat.
A pause, then the voice tried again, softer this time. "Look, I brought your stuff. The requisition. You still need it? I got it all here." The rustle of paper sounded, like something crumpling in her hands. "I even got the extra, just like last time. The cheap stuff. Ain’t much, but it’s yours if you want it."
He didn’t answer. His eyes flicked to the door. He didn’t want to think about the rations. He didn’t want to think about how they'd been the same the last ten times, how nothing changed. He let the silence fill the space between them.
"You sure you good?" she asked, voice crackling with something that could’ve been real concern. "I mean, I’m just tryna help, you know? If you get any thinner you’ll disappear entirely.” She stepped closer to the gate into better light. “An’ you don’t gotta stay in here all the time. It ain’t gonna change nothing, you feel me?"
The man stayed quiet. The sound of her sighing made him look up. Her voice softened, almost pleading and her eyes hurt, “Come on now. Don’t be like that. Don’t make me feel all stupid.”
The silence hung, thick and heavy.
"I mean," she went on, voice turning to a rough hum, “if you ain’t gonna talk, you could at least tell me you still alive. Last time you—” She stopped herself. Her voice trailed off, like it always did when she was about to cross some line she couldn’t take back.
He looked at the door again, feeling the weight of her waiting.
"Look," she said, sounding worn, "I ain’t got all day, alright? I got my own problems. But I’m here, you know? I bring the stuff, and you—" She let out a bitter laugh. "You just sit there like some statue, or whatever."
Her hand slapped the bars, the noise louder than her voice. "You gonna take it or not?"
He still didn't move. He was used to her. She always came, always gave the same spiel, tried to make him feel something. He didn't. She was too much, too loud, too much smoke in her voice. Sometimes it was a joke to him, the way she tried so hard, and failed so consistently.
Her hand bones hit the metal again. A pause, then, “Alright, I see how it is. Don't get all moody on me. Ain’t like I’m asking for your soul." She sniffed, the smell of smoke drifting through the bars, thick and cloying. "Just trying to be decent."
The man looked down at the cot. His fingers drummed again against his knees. He didn’t care if she lingered or went. She’d always come back. They all came back, for some reason.
"I’ll check," she muttered from the other side, her voice quieter now, defeated. She sounded as if she'd given up, but it was the kind of giving up that always came with a promise to return. Her footsteps grew distant, then stopped. A moment of stillness before she said, just loud enough, “Don’t die on me, Gershon.”
He stared at the wall, this Gershon. Silence hung, but this time it wasn’t just the space around him. It was something between them now, something that couldn’t be filled by empty words.
The light from the window stretched across the floor, thinner now, fading. He sat for a long time, watching the shadows move. The door clicked once. The chain rattled. A minute passed. HE stayed where he was, hands on his knees. He didn’t think about death. He didn’t think about the smoke. Just the walls, the bars, the cot. All of it held. And that was enough. Dust settled in the room, coating the walls, the cot, and his clothes. Gershon eventually shifted his gaze from the floor to the sliver of light that cut through the window. The glass framed the view of the skyline.
Towers rose, sharp and unyielding, their forms sculpted in cold metal, sleek glass, and reinforced concrete. Their architecture was a study in futurism, each building a vertical expression of dominance. They stretched into the sky like jagged spires, each one different yet the same—imposing, angular, their surfaces smooth and reflective. The façades were composed of layered carbon composites, shimmering in the weak light, catching the sky in sharp, fractured reflections. The shapes bent and twisted, their geometries impossible to replicate by the hands of human craftsmen. Curves and edges flowed together in an elegant defiance of gravity, their sleek profiles a testament to the power of engineering and design.
Gershon could only ever loop up in disgust. Each tower was a microcosm, a contained world where the wealthy lived in sealed comfort and control, and where every surface, every corner, was crafted for efficiency. Transparent panels lined the walls, offering sweeping views of the city below, while advanced shading systems automatically adjusted to the sun’s position, blocking the light when needed. The roofs held immense gardens, filled with plants that grew under controlled conditions, a stark contrast to the barren world below. Solar collectors were embedded within the surfaces of the buildings, gathering energy from the sun. Some towers were equipped with external moving facades—automated sunshields that shifted in perfect sync with the time of day, adjusting the interior temperature and light levels with precision.
Hovercrafts and automated transport systems zipped through the air between the structures, moving perfectly, gliding along invisible paths. Transport tubes wound their way from the lower levels, shooting at high speeds beneath the ground to destinations that were too numerous to count. The noise was a constant hum of machinery, faint but ever-present.
The people within these towers were the managers, the decision-makers, the overseers of a system that ran without them truly directing it. The buildings themselves were living entities, responding to the needs of the people inside through autonomous systems and AI networks. There was little manual work; machines did most of it. Within these tall buildings, humans sat at sleek, clean terminals, their eyes moving over data streams that flowed uninterrupted, decisions made by the algorithms before they even understood the problem. CtrlCorp, Holomind, Synth, and Neo—the tech giants had their systems run in parallel with human intent, their managers following the flow of information rather than actively creating it. Truthfully, not many of them knew what any of it was. The wealth in these storeys was a product of the algorithms, not the work of their occupants. The AI did everything—predicting trends, running logistics, planning for production, even making decisions in real-time about resource allocation. Humans were there only as a final filter, responding to alerts, reviewing reports, but they weren’t needed for the work. The algorithms that governed the world served the needs of the elites, ensuring that everything ran smoothly for them. The needs of the lower districts, like Gershon’s, were irrelevant to these systems. They simply existed to ensure that the wealth of the few remained untouched, safe, and growing.
Outside, the city itself was a reflection of that divide. Below the towers, the streets were a mix of deteriorating buildings, flooded neighborhoods, and ruins that told of a past now lost. The rise of Lake Ontario had wettened parts of the city, swallowing Queen Street and pushing pollused wash further into the heart of Toronto.
The rich, of course, were unaffected. The towers had been raised above the floodline, their reinforced foundations stretching deep below the surface of the ground, beyond the reach of rising tides. The people inside were untouched, their world sealed and isolated. It was a space where the old city had been buried beneath the waters, and the new, isolated from reality, continued to thrive.
But the streets were a horror. They were filled with poverty, decay, and dust. The roads were pocked and uneven, the sidewalks cracked and eroded. The air was thick with smog, the remnants of old factories and industries that once powered the city lingered, abandoned and forgotten. The lower districts were governed by necessity, a place where survival was a daily struggle. No technology here to ease the burden, no machines to work for the people. Only the remnants of a world long passed, left to decay under the weight of the technocracy that ruled from above.
Gershon’s gaze shifted back to the window. The towers rose above him, distant yet ever-present. He could feel the line that separated him from them, the space between his world and theirs. It was a divide that couldn’t be crossed, a boundary that was enforced by the very systems that kept the rich safe from the consequences of their decisions. Gershon wasn’t allowed in those areas. If he tried to cross, the drones would find him, and the consequence would be swift and certain. The system was set up to keep people like him out, to keep the city divided into two parts—towers where the wealth was protected, and streets, where people like Gershon lived out their days. These streets were just shadows of a society that had long since forgotten the likes of him.
A faint hum of the city outside was a constant reminder of the divide, the power, and the control that pulsated from the towers. The towers. He looked at the waterline in the distance, where the flood had reached its peak. He pondered what the city had been like when it was a place of life, of movement, not this symbol of what had been lost. The towers. The wealth and power they represented, were the future. The rest of the city, the streets, the people like Gershon, were the past. He turned from the window, returning his attention to the stillness of his cell. It was secure, at least.
Gershon stayed by the bars. The corridor behind him sprawled still. Pipes released air in short bursts. Wind moved through a break in the stone. Dust followed, rose for a moment, then fell.
Around midday, a voice drifted upward from the street. The voice said: “Kind release. Free from pain. Free from fear. Free from hunger.” An ad for a suicide clinic. The line repeated. Each word placed in the same rhythm, without shift or weight then vanished over the bridge.
S-clinics stood where roads crossed. Doors opened with nothing visible in windows above. Curtains hung behind the glass. Neon signs marked each threshold. Glyphs buzzing before steel, meant to speak without words. Bodies went in. None came back. Inside, forms were always stacked on a table. The workers asked for currency, then proof. A scan lit up. A finger left a trace. No one spoke of the price. The amount changed without warning, anyway. Most waited. Some bargained. Others sold what remained. Whatever they could do. Those who paid passed through another door. A surface stretched along the wall. Limbs were bound with straps. The screen took in the face. The voice returned. Calm. Steady. The first vial slowed the chest. The second brought the end. The body moved behind the next wall. Tubes drained the fluids. A strip marked the foot. Compartments took the rest. Throughout the day, trucks pulled in. Workers lifted the forms into containers. Doors opened without touch. Machines received the weight. Parts were sorted. Bones broke under blades. Flesh turned in tanks. Flames worked over the mass. Blocks came out on belts. Each block sealed. The trucks moved the blocks through the streets. Doors opened. Crates left behind. No name marked the package. Only one word: “ration.”
Gershon watched again the next day as his raspy neighbour woman returned. Her hands hung loose. One hand held a sack. She walked without noise. She reached his bars and looked once through the gap. Dropped the bag. It hit the ground and slid.
She inhaled, about to taunt the man but then stopped. Not today. She just left.
He watched the bag. Four blocks pressed inside. Each the same.
He thought of the clinic. The clean surface. The strap across the wrist. The drip. The sleep. The sleep! He knew the cost. He had none of it. No card. No credit. No name in the registry. The voice spoke of peace. The sign promised rest. But no hand would open that door for him. Those left behind stared at the signs. They watched others go in. Faces stayed fixed. Bodies leaned against walls. The absence of pain became a dream. One never reached.
Gershon did not rise for the s-advertising. The ration bag sat between his feet. He had known since the first broadcast that the service was not for him. The voice spoke of peace. The clinic spoke of ease. But the process required proof, and proof had a price. Gershon had no registry, no tokens, no exchangeable units. The clinics accepted no credit.
Those who stood outside the doors knew what waited inside. They knew the steps. They knew the sound of the straps and the rhythm of the message. They knew the pressure behind the eye just before the line went flat. They knew the warmth that followed, not because they had felt it, but because they had dreamed it. Still, they stood with their backs to the wall, watching others go in. They waited for a name to be called, knowing it would not come. Some walked away. Some sat and did not stand again.
Gershon sat on the floor. The dust settled. The bag stayed where it had landed. And there it remained, on the floor. Gershon sat with his back against the bars. The light through the small window had shifted. Wind passed now and then through the cracks in the wall. The dust moved, then came to rest again.
Work had become a kind of fiction, something spoken of only when needed to quiet a child or explain a body. No one expected to find it. On rare days, a name would be called. A drone would appear, its body still in the air, the lens focused on a door. The voice came through a speaker, never more than once. If the name did not answer, the drone turned and left. If the name came, it followed. The towers did not request, they selected.
Once, a woman who lived on the top level of the block—two units down from the edge where the roof sagged—was taken. Her voice used to pass through the walls at night. She read aloud from a tablet whose screen barely held charge, mouthing lines from technical scripts passed hand to hand in the silence between cycles. Her food was shared, never asked for, always returned in kind. She spoke little, but always listened. She had no family, no name anyone remembered beyond the door. When the drone came, she stepped into the corridor without delay. Her feet were wrapped in rags. Her coat hung unevenly. She nodded once to no one, then walked past the bars. Gershon had watched her go. He hadn’t asked where. No one did. Word came weeks later that she had been assigned to the towers. Her job was to wipe the walls along the corridors between lifts and chambers. She worked beside a machine that moved in straight lines. Her task was to follow behind it, clear the residue, return the tools to the slot, and repeat. She ate during the walk between shifts. She slept when the lights flickered. Each day lasted the same length, though no one knew how long that was. The money came on a digital counter. It could be used only through one vendor, located in a secure plaza far from her block. It was enough to buy rations, but not to rest. Not to repair. Not to return. Each morning, her pulse was scanned. Each evening, her face passed beneath a sensor. If a reading failed, the gate did not open. If the gate did not open, the shift was lost. If the shift was lost, the name vanished from the system. She lasted longer than most. Her name was spoken three times across the blocks. That was a kind of record.
She died beside a panel.
A maintenance worker found her hand pressed to the wall, her breath already gone. The machine continued without her. The footage was reviewed. No protocol was broken. The body was moved. The system reassigned the role before the hour passed.
Back in the cell blocks, no ceremony followed. The space she left stayed empty for a cycle. Then it was given to someone else.
The average age in the city was listed at thirty-eight. Records showed this figure to be stable, year to year. But the rich, whose pulses were monitored by machines that repaired rather than recorded, often passed one hundred, then another. Their faces were scanned, but no change was logged. Their blood was replaced at intervals. Their bones regrown, their nerves kept in line by signal. They lived through generations of policy, untouched by the tide below. For every one of them, there were ten thousand who waited in silence.
Gershon stayed seated. The light shifted again. The dust moved. The bag stayed closed.
Into the late night, the bag stayed sealed. Gershon stared past it. The floor gave off no warmth. In the hall beyond his bars, the footsteps that sometimes passed had stopped for the day. Voices fell to murmurs. The smell from the vent had changed. It carried smoke, oil, something burnt but not food. Farther down the corridor, the woman with the broken voice was cooking. The unit next to hers had caught fire last season. The wall still carried the mark. The pipe through which steam sometimes passed now gave nothing.
In the city’s alleys, the refuse bins were never closed. The lids stayed open, propped with sticks or snapped at the hinge. People lined up before them, waiting. Some moved through alleys with bags, sorting by hand, teeth bared against the cold. A scrap of meat, a lump of fat, a peel—none of it went to waste. In the courtyards, cats were hunted with traps made of old wiring. Dogs had grown scarce. Birds, when caught, were eaten whole.
Near the canal, where the clinics lined the streets, others waited for the doors to open. Not all came for peace. Some waited for what came after. The bodies were moved through service hatches, sealed in plastic, logged and weighed. The transport didn’t always arrive on time. Some never made it to the facility.
One morning, a boy appeared dragging something wrapped in tarp. The line shifted. No one spoke. He left with a ration pouch, enough for a few meals. Later that day, two others followed.
None of the old buildings offered much shelter. Most stood open to the air. Walls were held up with boards. Fires burned in barrels where stoves had once been. On the rooflines, plastic sheeting shifted with the wind. Below, water seeped through floors. Steps gave way. Elevators were jammed with broken carts. Mold spread across ceilings in shapes no one tried to name.
Where no structure stood, tents lined the edges of roads. Piles of old clothes held them down. The ground beneath was soaked with runoff from the upper tiers. Children slept beside the canvas. Their eyes opened at sound, then closed again.
Now at night, pipes moved from hand to hand and it was best to stay inside. The powder came in foil, the crystals in paper. No exchange was needed—sometimes just a name, a favour, a nod. People passed into haze, into silence. Laughter came in waves, then faded. Screams echoed, but no one turned.
In the yard, Gershon could see the glow of flame through a window. The unit two floors above his gave off noise each evening. The voice that called through the wall had once asked him to join. He had said nothing. Now they no longer asked.
The police did not come. Their cars passed through only when called by the towers. Even then, they stayed in the vehicles. Surveillance did the rest. The drones recorded faces. The system catalogued each move, each object. No arrests followed. No warnings were given.
Children lit their pipes without shame. Their limbs moved with practiced rhythm. Their eyes shifted without focus. They spoke in bursts. They knew the steps. They passed the flame, leaned back, and disappeared.
Gershon watched from his cell. His hands stayed in his lap. He did not light. He did not pass. He listened. He counted the seconds between coughs, then looked again at the bag. It had not moved. The dust ring around it had grown.
Morning passed without shape. Gershon wasn’t sure whether he had slept. He exited and walked through a narrow grid of alleys and broken paths, where water moved in puddles along concrete seams and wires sagged over doorways. His steps made no sound. He carried no purpose. The cold pressed through his soles, but he did not change his pace.
From beyond a crumbling wall, sound rose—first a note, sharp and sustained, then laughter that did not break but carried, passed between voices without pause. He followed, not out of curiosity, but because the sound called forth something older than movement. His body turned before his mind did. He stepped through a gap in the fence which he had never happened upon before. He climbed over a heap of soaked cardboard, and entered a space between buildings where light barely reached and smoke hung still in the air.
In that narrow place, five figures moved around a burn barrel. One tapped metal with wood, keeping a slow rhythm. Another clapped once for every two strikes. A third sang without melody, words lost to distance and echo.
The source of the first note stood slightly apart, trumpet in hand, chin lifted, eyes watching everything at once. She wore no coat. Her hair stood in spikes, dyed in a purple color that once meant something. Rings clung to her brow, her lip, her ear, and lines of ink crawled over her neck and arms like old language, half-forgotten. She played again—three short notes, each broken slightly, each whole in its own way. She turned toward him. Her mouth opened, not with question, but certainty: “You’ve got a walk like your spine gave up.”
He stopped but didn’t speak.
She stepped closer, trumpet swinging from a length of wire tied to her belt. “You listen?”
He nodded.
“Good. You need ears for this. And some bones that still want to move.”
She handed him a rod and pointed to an oil drum.
“Hit it like time’s passing, not like it’s chasing you.”
He struck once. The sound rang and bounced between the walls. She nodded.
“Now again.”
He struck it, again, then again, falling into the rhythm that another had already started, without needing to know where it began.
“I’m Colette.”
He said nothing.
“No name? Or just saving it?”
He hesitated. “Gershon.”
“That’s a name that stays in the throat.”
She turned away, played a run of notes, stopped, then laughed. “Found this thing a few months ago. Sinkhole behind the storage yard. Was wrapped in cable. Took it home, scrubbed it, put it back together. Took days before it made a sound, but when it did, it told me to keep going.” She tapped the trumpet’s side. “This thing gets it, y’know? Doesn’t try to be perfect. Doesn’t try to be anything.” The music resumed.
The others fell back into rhythm. A girl shook a can full of screws. A man tapped the ground with a stick.
Gershon struck the drum, finding a place between the notes.
Colette played long, wandering phrases, like wind through a grate. Then silence. She dropped to a crate and looked at him. “You from here?”
He nodded.
“Me too. Born during a blackout. Mom used to say the first thing I saw was a candle on a saucer. She was gone before I hit ten. Dad too, but later.”
Gershon sat on the ground beside the drum.
She passed him a piece of hard bread.
“Don’t think too much. Just chew.”
He took it. Ate in silence.
“No one expects anything down here,” she said. “That’s the gift. You get to surprise the world just by waking up.”
They sat without speaking.
The others drifted away one by one, pulled by hunger or sleep or nothing.
Colette leaned back against the wall, trumpet resting in her lap.
Gershon put a hand on his head. “Aren’t you worried about attracting attention?”
Colette smiled defiantly and shook her head no and she blasted a short riff as loud as the trumpet would sound.
After a moment: “You ever want more?” Gershon asked.
“I want less,” she said. “Less noise in the head, less weight in the chest. But I don’t need anything. This is enough.” She reached into a crate and pulled out a piece of metal, handed it to him. “Tomorrow, we play something else. You’ll learn. It won’t matter if you don’t. Still, you’ll be here.” She smiled without moving her mouth. “You’ll come back?”
Gershon looked at her, then at the place where smoke still curled above the barrel. “Yes.”
She nodded, leaned her head back, closed her eyes. “You don’t owe anything to the world, Gershon. Just your noise. That’s the only price left.”
🤖 AI Assisted
This is a work of fiction. Unless otherwise indicated, all the names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents in this book are either the product of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
2025 Christopher Lacroix
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The next morning’s light was no more than a thin, gray line between the buildings. The cold pressed through the gaps in Gershon’s worn clothes, but the air was quieter today, less broken by the usual cries and shuffling footsteps. He met Colette in the alley, where she stood by the barrel, adjusting the strap on the trumpet she had found months ago.
Her movements were sure, as though the world was not something to be figured out, only engaged with. “Good morning,” she said, smiling as she always did, like a question that no one had bothered to answer.
He nodded, the corner of his mouth twitching. He still wasn’t sure how to respond to her. Sometimes, he couldn’t tell whether she was genuinely happy or just pretending, a trick to survive, but something in the way she moved, the way she lived in each moment, seemed too true to be false.
They walked together toward the broken path near the burned-out stores. She kept the rhythm with a beat on the side of a crate, a slow tap-tap-tap that filled the silence without trying to. Gershon struck the oil drum, again and again, until the sound matched the low pulse of the world around them. They passed the dead gardens, the rusted cars, the small, open spaces where children danced without music, and others like him shuffled by, half-empty eyes staring into nothing. But Colette moved through it all like she had somewhere to be, like she knew something the rest of them didn’t.
“Your arms don’t look tired,” she said, her voice cutting through his concentration.
“They are,” he muttered, but he didn’t stop.
“Don’t stop,” she said, her voice more certain now. “You’ve got it, you just don’t know it yet.” She walked ahead, twirling her hair in a loop, humming the rhythm to herself, her feet skipping just enough to make it look effortless. Gershon watched her, wondering how she kept that lightness in her step when everything around them was made of stone and dust.
As the hours passed, they went to an old abandoned store.
Colette found some cans of food, stale bread, and a single bottle of water, which they split between them. She ate with an ease that made him feel like he was doing it wrong—like everything he did was weighed down by something he hadn’t figured out yet.
“Why do you still do this?” Gershon asked, his voice low, but it was more of a question about her than it was about the food or the hour or the day.
Colette didn’t look up. “Because I can. I don’t need much. But this—” She tapped the side of the can with her finger, “this reminds me that I’m not dead yet. So I’m not gonna pretend to be.”
Gershon couldn’t understand it, but he liked the way she said it. Like it wasn’t a choice. Like it just was.
In the evening, a friend of Colette’s, a lanky man with a scruffy beard and a bright red guitar minus one string, joined them. He played in the street corner next to a broken lamp. His name was Jonah, and he had a laugh that made you think of things before they’d happened. The three of them stood there for hours, the guitar playing in time with Gershon’s strikes on the oil drum. They laughed together, and for the first time, Gershon could almost feel it—just a little—that he wasn’t just moving through space. He was there, for a moment.
Then, the air shifted.
A dark figure approached from the street, moving too quickly for anyone to notice at first. The first shot was quiet, muffled by the distance and the quiet.
Jonah didn’t even have time to scream. His guitar fell and broke apart on the ground.
Colette froze, her hand held out for a note that didn’t come.
The second shot rang out, louder.
Jonah’s body hit the ground with no sound at all.
The thief took the guitar and left, as if nothing had happened.
Gershon’s eyes stayed on the body, but he couldn’t bring himself to move.
Colette’s breath quickened. Her hands shook slightly as she pulled him away from the street corner. “You should go,” she said, her voice harder than it had been before.
“I don’t know where to go,” Gershon muttered, but he stayed with her as she led him away, moving slowly toward the alley.
She didn’t look at him. Her hands clenched at her sides. Her lips moved, but no sound came. She paused under a broken sign, her eyes scanning the empty street. The lights above flickered. The cold crawled up her neck. “I should have known,” she said finally, her voice a whisper. “I should have seen it coming.”
Gershon didn’t answer. He couldn’t. It wasn’t something to answer. It just was.
Colette leaned back against the wall. Her hands pressed against her eyes, though they didn’t hide the tears. The sound of Jonah’s guitar still echoed in her head. “I tried,” she whispered. “I tried to make it all just—” She stopped herself. “I thought it would matter.”
Gershon looked at her, unsure. He hadn’t expected this, hadn’t known how to respond to it. He stood there for a moment before stepping closer. “You don’t owe anyone that,” he said, his voice quiet.
She didn’t move. Then, after a moment, she nodded. “Maybe not. But I’m not sure what else there is.”
He wasn’t sure either, but he didn’t need to say it out loud. The night stretched out between them, empty and cold, but it wasn’t the same as before. “Tomorrow,” he said, after a long silence. “We’ll play again. You and me. No matter what.”
She looked at him then, and for the first time, there was something else in her eyes. Something not quite sadness, not quite hope—just an understanding. She took a slow breath and stood. “Alright,” she said softly. “Tomorrow.”
In the stillness of that ruined place, Gershon felt a weight lift, just for a moment, just enough to let him breathe. The noise that had filled the streets seemed a little further away.
▰ ▰ ▰
The funeral was held in a cracked chapel that had long since ceased to serve its original purpose. It was a place that had survived, like everything else, by neglect. The walls sagged, the glass was cracked, and the pews had been stripped of their coverings. Dust lingered in the corners, thick in the air, clinging to everything. Yet, in the center of the room, an old piano stood, its keys chipped and yellowed, but still playing. The music was haunting. Someone, a woman, played it with careful fingers, hitting the notes gently, as though afraid the piano might fall apart beneath her touch.
Gershon couldn’t quite place the melody. It wasn’t something he had heard before, but it felt familiar, as though it had been heard a thousand times in places like this, in moments like this.
Colette stood next to him, her hands folded in front of her, her head tilted as she listened to the music. She didn’t speak at first, just letting the sound wash over them, the notes trailing into the air, wrapping the space in a sadness that felt impossible to escape. When the music stopped, Colette turned to Gershon. “This is how they’ve done it,” she said softly. “For as long as anyone can remember. It’s a way to say goodbye.”
Gershon nodded, but the confusion was still there. He didn’t understand. The body of their friend was already gone. There was no one to hear this music, to feel this farewell. It seemed strange, pointless, like something that didn’t make sense. “But the friend’s dead,” Gershon said, his voice unsure, “how can they hear this?”
Colette’s smile was thin, almost absent. “It’s not for them,” she said. “It’s for us. The living. The ones left behind.”
Gershon blinked. He looked at the people around him—faces lined with grief, some still too numb to understand it fully, some who had been here before. He looked back at Colette, unsure of how to feel. “It doesn’t make sense,” he muttered.
Colette’s eyes softened, and she reached out, brushing her hand against his arm. “It’s not about making sense,” she said. “It’s about what we need. We need something to hold onto. Something to mark it. We need a way to live with it.”
He looked at her then, really looked at her—at her wild purple hair, the way she carried herself with that confidence he couldn’t understand. At the way she stood in the midst of everything, as if she knew how to live in this world, even if it was broken. Even if it was hopeless. The thought was strange to him, but it came anyway. “You’re beautiful,” he said, surprising even himself with the words.
She raised an eyebrow. “Am I?”
“Yes.” Gershon’s voice dropped lower, and he found himself speaking with a certainty that had been absent until now. “You’re beautiful, inside. Not just what you look like, but how you carry all of this. How you make it through. You don’t let it crush you. You’re alive. Even when the world isn’t. You’ve got a way about you.”
Colette didn’t smile, but something in her eyes shifted. She looked at him as if she hadn’t quite heard it before, as if she hadn’t really thought anyone could see her that way. “You’re beautiful too, Gershon,” she said quietly. “I’m not sure you know it, but you are.”
The words hung between them. Gershon couldn’t speak at first. It wasn’t what he expected. It wasn’t what he thought he would hear. But it felt like something he could hold onto, even if just for a moment. He took a breath and looked at her more closely. The sadness in her face, the weight she carried—it made everything else in her seem more vibrant, more real. He wanted to say more, to ask her how she could be so full of life in a world that seemed to demand so much from her, but he couldn’t find the words. Instead, he found a question that seemed to make sense.
“Colette,” he said, stepping a little closer to both her and the empty vessel before them, his voice trembling just a bit, “will you marry me?”
She blinked, as though the question had caught her off guard. But then, after a long pause, she nodded slowly, her face still holding the grief of their lost friend. “I guess I will,” she said, her voice quiet, but not without its own sadness. “I’m not sure what it means anymore, but I’ll do it. With you.”
For the first time since they had met, Gershon smiled.
It was a small thing, barely a shift of his lips, but it was there. And for a moment, just a moment, the world outside the chapel didn’t seem as dark.
▰ ▰ ▰
Gershon lied on the floor of his cell, his arms folded behind his head as he stared up at the cracked ceiling.
Colette sat on the cot, her legs pulled to her chest, a slow smile creeping across her face as she looked at him. The air in the cell was heavy, the dust thick, and the walls seemed to press in closer than they had before.
There was no escaping the reality of the place, but for the first time in what felt like forever, Gershon didn’t mind. The wedding, Colette had told him, would take place later that afternoon. The same chapel where they had buried their friend, now a place of a different kind of reverence. A place to begin, instead of end. It seemed strange to him, a ritual he had never thought much about, but now it felt important—necessary, even.
Colette shifted on the cot, her hands absently running over her knees. She looked at him, a certain quiet tension in her expression, but she said nothing at first.
“What’s wrong?” Gershon asked, his voice low.
Colette hesitated, her eyes drifting down to her hands. Finally, she spoke, her words soft but filled with weight. “I’m pregnant.”
Gershon froze. His mind scrambled, the words not quite fitting together. His first thought was disbelief, then confusion. He wasn’t sure how to react. His chest tightened, a knot of concern forming in his gut. “Pregnant?” His voice came out flat, not sure what he was trying to say. He sat up, looking at her more intently now, his gaze flickering over her face as if searching for something—anything—that would explain what she had just told him.
Colette nodded, her hands still resting on her knees. “Yeah. I didn’t know at first, but I’m sure of it now.”
The silence stretched, and Gershon could feel his heart start to beat faster. His thoughts spun out in all directions. He opened his mouth to say something, but the words didn’t come. What could he say? What was there to say? After a moment, he found his voice again, though it was thick with the concern he didn’t know how to hide. “What… what will we do?” he asked, almost to himself.
Colette tilted her head, her eyes searching his face. “What do you mean?” she asked. “We’ll raise it. We’ll make it work.”
Gershon shook his head. “How? How can we bring a child into this? Into this world?” He gestured vaguely, as if the air itself carried the weight of everything that was wrong. The dirt. The decay. The hopelessness. How could anyone bring life into something like this?
Colette was quiet for a moment, her eyes tracing the cracks in the cell wall. Finally, she spoke again, her voice soft. “I don’t know. But I want to. I want to try.”
Gershon’s chest tightened. He felt a swell of sadness, a deep sorrow for the child who would grow up in this place. In this world. How could he protect it? How could anyone? But as he looked at Colette, something else stirred inside him, something he hadn’t felt in years. Hope. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe there was still something worth fighting for. Maybe it could be different.
He looked at her then, really looked at her, and for the first time since they had met, he felt a warmth, a fire he couldn’t ignore. He wanted to make it work. He wanted to give this child something—anything—that would be different from the despair that filled their world.
“I don’t know how we’ll do it,” Gershon said, his voice firmer now. “But we will.”
Colette smiled, the sadness still in her eyes but now tinged with something else—something like relief.
“Yeah,” she said quietly. “We will.” Outside the cell, the sounds of the neighborhood continued. The muffled laughter of the children playing in the alleys, the sound of glass breaking somewhere, the dull hum of engines from far off. But it was all distant now. In here, in this small, dark cell, it felt like a moment suspended. A brief respite from everything outside. Yet, even here, even in this quiet moment, the weight of the world crept in. It was the heavy weight of the community around them, the people who had lost everything, the ones who scavenged in the trash for their meals, the ones who had given up entirely. Gershon could hear the whispers through the walls, the murmurs of hopelessness, the sharp intake of breath when someone found out they couldn’t afford the next fix. He could hear the voices of the broken.
Across the hall, the old man who had been a constant presence in the building had collapsed again. No one had helped him. The women in the hall had their children, their hands full of ragged clothes and empty bellies. The families who couldn’t pay the tribute for the clinics were left to rot, their eyes hollow from the slow decay of living without a way out.
“Congratulations, you two ol’ dogs” whispered Gershon’s neighbour friend with a smile, dropping another bag at his cell bars. She fluttered her fingers and continued on.
But in this moment, with Colette sitting across from him, Gershon felt something he hadn’t felt in years. A flicker of life. A chance. Even as the world outside spiraled downward, he could hold on to this. Hold on to her. And somehow, in the chaos, that was enough. The child would be born into this world, into this wreck of a place. But for now, in this small, crumbling cell, they had something. Something to hold on to. Something worth fighting for.
▰ ▰ ▰
The chapel sat at the corner of an intersection, its old stone façade crumbling in places, its once-grand windows now boarded up. The dim light that filtered through the gaps in the wood painted the pews in long shadows, and the air inside smelled faintly of mildew and decay. It was a place where rituals had once taken place—before the world had turned on itself—but today, it felt like a relic. A thing held together by threads. Colette stood near the altar, her hands clasped in front of her, her eyes cast down to the floor. The soft hum of a few voices filled the room, the faint shuffle of feet, the dull clinking of makeshift aluminum jewelry, the low murmur of conversation among the few who had shown up for the ceremony. Some came for the music, others for the experience, but Colette didn’t care. She only cared about the man who wasn’t there.
She waited.
Her mind swirling with thoughts she couldn’t quite grasp. It had been hours. She had worn the dress she had stolen from a shop in the market—cheap, faded, but it had fit, and it was all she had. She had braided her hair into a loose crown, tried to look presentable for the moment that had felt, only days ago, like a promise.
But Gershon didn’t come.
The priest who had agreed to marry them stood off to the side, waiting, looking unsure. He was a struggling man as much as Gershon, with a thin, weathered face, his robes tattered at the edges. He had been paid in whatever scraps the congregation had to offer, and there was no real ceremony in his gaze, no hope in his voice when he murmured that they would begin soon.
Colette felt it all, the weight of the silence, the empty space where Gershon was supposed to be. She glanced at the door again, her chest tight with each passing minute. She had told herself it didn’t matter. The ceremony was just a formality. But it did matter. It mattered to her. It wasn’t that she didn’t understand. He had been through so much. He had seen too much. The world was falling apart around them. She had seen it, too, but she had chosen to keep going, to keep moving, to keep laughing. She had never thought that things could be any different, but she had always thought that they could find something—somewhere—to hold on to. Together. Now, in the silence of the chapel, she wondered if that was all just fantasy. If there was any truth in it at all. The minutes passed, dragging with them the weight of every second, every unanswered question.
The priest sighed, the small, tired sound echoing through the hollow room.
Colette’s fingers trembled as she pulled the edges of her dress closer, as though she could make herself disappear into the fabric, as though she could shield herself from the reality that was crashing in. She turned back toward the door again, her heart aching. The longer she waited, the further away Gershon seemed. And in that distance, she felt the weight of the world pressing in on her once more. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. The room fell quiet when she finally realized he wasn’t coming. The eyes of the few remaining guests, the ones who had cared enough to show up, shifted from her to the priest, to the door. No one spoke, but they didn’t have to. The silence was heavy with the same unspoken understanding. The same weight they all carried, in their own ways. Colette’s head ached, her breath shallow, as she stood there, frozen. She didn’t know how long she stood there, the world outside moving on without her, without any of them. But in that moment, it felt like time had stopped. And she realized then, with a quiet pang in her chest, that it was over. The hope she had been holding onto, the one beat that had kept her moving forward, had snapped. The joy she had tried so hard to give him, to share with him, it had never been enough.
Gershon sprawled on the floor of his cell, the knife still gripped in his hand, his body sprawled out like a broken puppet. The blood pooled around him, dark and thick, seeping into the cracks of the concrete. His breath had long since stopped, his eyes staring blankly into the ceiling, his chest still. There was no fight left, no more struggle. His life had burned through its final match. He had reached his zenith, the point where there was nothing more to chase, nothing more to hope for. His body was frail, his mind worn thin by the years of decay around him, but at this moment, in the final release of pain, he felt an odd peace. There was nothing left. Nothing left to lose. He had made his choice. And now, it was done. In the end, it wasn’t having nothing that did him in, but having it all. Outside, the muffled hum of the broken world continued on. But inside the cell, everything had gone still.
Colette arrived at the door to the cell, her face pale and twisted in confusion. She had been searching for him, had called out his name through the halls, but it was too late now. The dread had crept up on her, rising slowly in her chest, and now, standing here, she could feel it constricting tighter around her throat. She stepped inside, her shoes scraping against the dusty floor. She didn’t speak at first. She couldn’t. Her eyes landed on his body, the blood, the knife, and all the quiet finality of it. It was as if the air had been sucked from the room. A jagged, hurt sob broke free from her chest, the sound raw and painful, echoing off the walls. It felt like it came from somewhere deep inside her, a place she hadn’t known was still there. She had never wanted this. She had never wanted any of this. She stumbled toward him, her legs shaking as though they had lost their strength. Her hands trembled as she reached out, not knowing what to do. There was no room for this. Not here. Not now. But it was too late for that. She knelt beside him, her fingers brushing against his cold skin. Her breath caught in her throat as she took in the image of him—so still, so empty. His body, once full of life, now held nothing but the weight of despair. She understood then. She understood everything. She had seen it in his eyes, felt it in his silence. Her heart broke with a weight she couldn’t carry, but she forced herself to lean in, her lips brushing against his forehead. She kissed him softly, a final act of tenderness that had once been full of hope. Now, it felt like nothing more than a ghost of what had been. Tears pooled in her eyes, but she didn’t let them fall—not yet. Instead, she pulled back slightly, forcing her lips into a weak, tremulous smile. A smile meant for him, meant to tell him that she had tried, that she had given all she could. She placed her hand on his chest, her fingers lingering for just a moment longer than necessary, feeling the faint rise and fall of air that had long since stopped. She closed her eyes, the sorrow heavy in her chest, but in the end, she knew there was no other way. He had chosen this. He had chosen peace. And for the first time in what felt like a lifetime, she understood. Her smile faltered as she pressed one last, gentle kiss against his forehead, before she stood and turned away, leaving him behind in the quiet stillness of the cell.
▰ ▰ ▰
Colette sat in a worn armchair, her daughter curled in her lap, her tiny hand wrapped around Colette’s finger. The small living space was dim, the sunlight outside flickering through the dusty glass, but there was warmth here, if a little dust. A warmth that wasn’t tied to the outside world, to the broken streets or the crumbling city. No, it came from somewhere deeper. It was a quiet, steady kind of warmth. She looked down at her daughter’s face, so small, so full of promise. A face she would protect, a face she would teach to laugh, to live, to hold on. She could feel Gershon’s presence in the room, not in the way one expects the living to linger, but in the way someone who had truly been loved never fully leaves. It wasn’t that his absence didn’t hurt—it did. But it didn’t need to be anything more than a shadow now. His smile, the one he had worn as he lay bloodied on the floor of his cell, was an image that had stayed with her. She remembered it clearer than anything—the peace that had taken over him in the final moments, a peace that had evaded him for so long. That was the image that she held onto now, not the violence, not the blood, but the calmness that had settled over him when he had finally been freed from all the pain. She knew it was the right choice. She had never doubted it, even as the world around them seemed to crumble. Gershon had found a kind of peace, and she could almost believe, in some quiet corner of her heart, that it had been because of her, because of the love they had shared. It wasn’t a fairy tale. But it was real. And it was enough.
Her daughter squirmed in her lap, drawing Colette out of her thoughts.
She smiled softly, brushing a lock of hair from the child’s forehead and wondered if the little baby knew. Colette was tired, yes. And things were harder now, in ways she couldn’t explain. But there was something else, something unshakable in her. The world might be crumbling, people might be vanishing into the streets, but she had this, she had life, and she would savor it, every moment of it. The world might not give you joy, but she had learned how to find it, in the smallest things. The mother rose, the child nestled comfortably against her, and walked over to a cracked window. Sky outside was streaked with grey, but in the distance, beyond the ruins, she could almost see the faintest hint of light. She had not given up. She would not give up. She thought of Gershon again, and the memory of his smile. A smile that had been so full of life in its final moment. He had chosen to let go of the weight of the world, and now, perhaps, he was free. Colette stepped outside, the cold air biting at her skin. She didn’t mind. She could take it. Life was a challenge, yes, but it was hers, and every moment of it was a gift. As the wind blew through her hair, she looked down at her daughter, her fingers curling gently around the child’s hand. The smile that curled across her lips was the same one Gershon had worn in his final hours. It was not a smile of surrender. It was a smile of defiance. Colette felt at peace.
"There’s nothing left to fear," she whispered, as the wind carried her words away. S
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