Steven Hunley
03-13-2013, 05:02 PM
The Babylon Falls
by
Steven Hunley
Downstairs the party raged on. Eddie and Pamela’s heads were close because the music was so loud they couldn’t hear each other without shouting.
“Where’s Molly? She should be back by now. Did you tell her about the police?"
“Not yet. There wasn’t time.”
“Not enough time? Eddie, how long have you been here?”
“About half an hour, but it’s frantic and only saw Molly just now. She’ll be back.”
“You saw her but you didn’t say anything…” Pamela trailed off, set her lips, shook her head.
“Eddie, I follow you to the ends of the earth and this is how it turns out. You’ve got to get serious about this. You have no idea the trouble we’re in. You can’t just ignore it. It’s time for you to step up to the plate.”
Eddie couldn’t see past the present, and said nothing in return.
“Eddie, I don’t like what you’ve become.”
“Something’s up,” Eddie admitted, “Or something’s about to come down. See how everyone’s acting?”
“Forget the money, Eddie. Let’s just get out.”
“Just look at them!”
Pam scanned the room. One urban princess was dressed like a patch-work Cinderella and her date was one of Elliot’s ragged men. Everyone was moving or talking or dancing. More than just conservatively wild, they were absolutely frenzied. The dancing, at one time a social pursuit for those unattached and at large, had taken on a more limited tribal quality. It was as if certain dancers, by their attitudes and body language, were blocking the uninitiated out, or restricted them to the bars and tables. To keep the laymen on their side of the barrier, a couple of girls barked like mad dogs and snarled. A waiter crashed a plate of food on the floor nervously twittered, while a fat woman bellowed her unrequited love to a man at the bar getting drunk. A couple of girls started cackling with laughter. A drunken young blade with red hair stood up on a chair and crowed like a rooster. With all the variety of sound and movement, the crowd was more like a farmyard of nervous animals before an earthquake, rather than dancers going crazy on a wooden floor.
The skinny blond autograph signer ran off to the women’s room clutching her purse.
Pamela started to feel the flow of the energy herself. She didn’t like how it felt. The crowd was under a spell and she felt immune, but it was as if the Babylon was a microbe attacking her system, making itself noticed all the same.
“I feel uncomfortable,” she shouted, “I’m going to the little girls’ room. Grab Molly when she comes back, and whatever you do, don’t let go.”
Outside was no better than inside, in fact worse. The wind drove the rain so ferociously that grown men couldn’t cross the square without being blown away. Streetlights sparked and went out. Uprooted trees lay overturned on sidewalks and streets. Lightning that normally crashed in the heavens visited the earth, setting fire to the bushes and untended grass inside the city walls. Perched high above the rooftops, the only things recognizable were lofty church spires and the cross of Old Darko, glistening gold against the night, highest of them all.
Inside Eddie was mesmerized by patterns on the surface of his water glass. As the beat reverberated, it struck the glass, forcing concentric circles of waves to converge on the center. Then there was a snap and a crack, and the pattern increased tenfold. Eddie placed his hand flat on the table. It was shaking. The mirrored ball above his head started to sway, the spotlight that shined on it sparked, fell, and hung lose by one wire. Extreme shaking forced the needle to skip off the record, leaving the tone arm to scrape mercilessly on the vinyl and transmit the grating vibrations over the speakers until they tumbled down from their perches one by one.
The crowd grew silent and listened to the nothing. Then the violent rumbling began in earnest.
Old rotten bricks lost their grip on each other and turned to dust. The floor started to roll like a deck of a boat in a storm. A young woman screamed when the walls collapsed. Clouds of dust flew from the shaking rafters above, and dozens, then dozens of hundreds of bricks and splinters and beams fell down, smashing the dancers and patrons. Unable to catch their breath, they coughed their innards out in uncontrollable spasms. White powder covered their limbs and faces, giving them a pale and deadly look. Like Karloff’s incredible Imhotep, dancers limped slowly through the wreckage dragging threads of tattered dance clothes, appearing stunned and disoriented.
Eddie passed out under a pile of bricks the size of Manhattan in a crumpled heap, his forehead torn and bleeding. He recollected a noise like a train wreck and being struck on the head, plaster dusting his face, choking, and feeling like he’d been beat up… and this was the strangest memory…beat up by a communist gorilla.
The noise stopped.
Next there were sirens and the high-low whine of ambulances, shouting firemen and scores of police. The voices grew faint as Eddie struggled to get up on one elbow. All he could see were clouds of smoke and dust, great ancient beams hanging down from the ceiling split in two like matchsticks, and piles of rubble. Nothing was left of old Darko Drazan’s tower except a smoldering mountain of bricks. The scene resembled black and white newsreels of Berlin after allied bombings. Then it occurred to Eddie that he was seeing in black and white, and to further obscure his vision, a trickle of warm blood, like Salome’s crimson seventh veil, descended over his eyes and transformed his acute vision to an inky darkness… just before he lost.. his..... head.
©Steven Hunley 2013
by
Steven Hunley
Downstairs the party raged on. Eddie and Pamela’s heads were close because the music was so loud they couldn’t hear each other without shouting.
“Where’s Molly? She should be back by now. Did you tell her about the police?"
“Not yet. There wasn’t time.”
“Not enough time? Eddie, how long have you been here?”
“About half an hour, but it’s frantic and only saw Molly just now. She’ll be back.”
“You saw her but you didn’t say anything…” Pamela trailed off, set her lips, shook her head.
“Eddie, I follow you to the ends of the earth and this is how it turns out. You’ve got to get serious about this. You have no idea the trouble we’re in. You can’t just ignore it. It’s time for you to step up to the plate.”
Eddie couldn’t see past the present, and said nothing in return.
“Eddie, I don’t like what you’ve become.”
“Something’s up,” Eddie admitted, “Or something’s about to come down. See how everyone’s acting?”
“Forget the money, Eddie. Let’s just get out.”
“Just look at them!”
Pam scanned the room. One urban princess was dressed like a patch-work Cinderella and her date was one of Elliot’s ragged men. Everyone was moving or talking or dancing. More than just conservatively wild, they were absolutely frenzied. The dancing, at one time a social pursuit for those unattached and at large, had taken on a more limited tribal quality. It was as if certain dancers, by their attitudes and body language, were blocking the uninitiated out, or restricted them to the bars and tables. To keep the laymen on their side of the barrier, a couple of girls barked like mad dogs and snarled. A waiter crashed a plate of food on the floor nervously twittered, while a fat woman bellowed her unrequited love to a man at the bar getting drunk. A couple of girls started cackling with laughter. A drunken young blade with red hair stood up on a chair and crowed like a rooster. With all the variety of sound and movement, the crowd was more like a farmyard of nervous animals before an earthquake, rather than dancers going crazy on a wooden floor.
The skinny blond autograph signer ran off to the women’s room clutching her purse.
Pamela started to feel the flow of the energy herself. She didn’t like how it felt. The crowd was under a spell and she felt immune, but it was as if the Babylon was a microbe attacking her system, making itself noticed all the same.
“I feel uncomfortable,” she shouted, “I’m going to the little girls’ room. Grab Molly when she comes back, and whatever you do, don’t let go.”
Outside was no better than inside, in fact worse. The wind drove the rain so ferociously that grown men couldn’t cross the square without being blown away. Streetlights sparked and went out. Uprooted trees lay overturned on sidewalks and streets. Lightning that normally crashed in the heavens visited the earth, setting fire to the bushes and untended grass inside the city walls. Perched high above the rooftops, the only things recognizable were lofty church spires and the cross of Old Darko, glistening gold against the night, highest of them all.
Inside Eddie was mesmerized by patterns on the surface of his water glass. As the beat reverberated, it struck the glass, forcing concentric circles of waves to converge on the center. Then there was a snap and a crack, and the pattern increased tenfold. Eddie placed his hand flat on the table. It was shaking. The mirrored ball above his head started to sway, the spotlight that shined on it sparked, fell, and hung lose by one wire. Extreme shaking forced the needle to skip off the record, leaving the tone arm to scrape mercilessly on the vinyl and transmit the grating vibrations over the speakers until they tumbled down from their perches one by one.
The crowd grew silent and listened to the nothing. Then the violent rumbling began in earnest.
Old rotten bricks lost their grip on each other and turned to dust. The floor started to roll like a deck of a boat in a storm. A young woman screamed when the walls collapsed. Clouds of dust flew from the shaking rafters above, and dozens, then dozens of hundreds of bricks and splinters and beams fell down, smashing the dancers and patrons. Unable to catch their breath, they coughed their innards out in uncontrollable spasms. White powder covered their limbs and faces, giving them a pale and deadly look. Like Karloff’s incredible Imhotep, dancers limped slowly through the wreckage dragging threads of tattered dance clothes, appearing stunned and disoriented.
Eddie passed out under a pile of bricks the size of Manhattan in a crumpled heap, his forehead torn and bleeding. He recollected a noise like a train wreck and being struck on the head, plaster dusting his face, choking, and feeling like he’d been beat up… and this was the strangest memory…beat up by a communist gorilla.
The noise stopped.
Next there were sirens and the high-low whine of ambulances, shouting firemen and scores of police. The voices grew faint as Eddie struggled to get up on one elbow. All he could see were clouds of smoke and dust, great ancient beams hanging down from the ceiling split in two like matchsticks, and piles of rubble. Nothing was left of old Darko Drazan’s tower except a smoldering mountain of bricks. The scene resembled black and white newsreels of Berlin after allied bombings. Then it occurred to Eddie that he was seeing in black and white, and to further obscure his vision, a trickle of warm blood, like Salome’s crimson seventh veil, descended over his eyes and transformed his acute vision to an inky darkness… just before he lost.. his..... head.
©Steven Hunley 2013