Mean Streets

Few people walked the gloomy, desolate streets, and they all walked alone, despite the many dangers, because no one else would walk with them. Or perhaps because the very nature of their needs and temptations had made them solitary. And though most of the figures we passed looked like people, not all of them walked or moved in a human way. One figure in a filthy suit turned suddenly to look at the car as it drifted past, and under the pulled-down hat I briefly glimpsed a face that seemed to be nothing but mouth, full of shark's teeth stained with fresh blood and gristle. It's all about hunger, in the badlands.

Glowing eyes followed the progress of the futuristic car from shadowy alley mouths, rising and falling like bright burning fire-flies. They didn't normally expect to see such a high-class, high-tech car in their neighbourhood. They could get a lot of money, and other things, for a car like ours. And its contents. In the quiet of the street, a baby began to cry; a lost, hopeless, despairing sound. Liza leaned forward.

"Stop. Do you hear that? Stop the car. We have to do something!"

"No, we don't," said Dead Boy.

"We keep going," I said, and turned to Liza as she opened her mouth to protest. "That isn't a baby. It's just something that's learned to sound like a baby, to lure in the unsuspecting. There's nothing out there that you'd want to meet."

Liza looked like she wanted to argue, but something in my voice and in my face must have convinced her. She slumped back in her seat, arms folded tightly across her chest, staring straight ahead. I felt sorry for her, even as I admired her courage and her stubbornness. She was having to take an awful lot on board, most of which would have broken a weaker mind, but she kept going. All for her dearest love, Frank. Husband Frank. What kind of man was he, to inspire such love and devotion… and still end up here, in Rotten Row? I would see this through to the end, because I had said I would; but there was no way this was going to end well.

Interesting, that Dead Boy hadn't even slowed the car. Perhaps — his dead ears heard something in the baby's cry that was hidden from the living.

"This is it, people," he said abruptly, as the car turned a tight corner into a narrow, garbage-cluttered cul-de-sac. "We have now arrived at Rotten Row. Just breathe in that ambience."

"Are you sure?" Liza said doubtfully, peering through the car window with her face almost pressed to the glass. "I can't see… anything. No shops, no businesses, no people. I don't even see a street sign."

"Someone probably stole it," Dead Boy said wisely. "Around here, anything not actually nailed down and guarded by hellhounds is automatically considered up for grabs. But my car says this is the place, and my sweetie is never wrong."

Someone in the tattered remains of what had once been a very expensive suit lurched out of a side alley to throw something at the futuristic car. It bounced back from the car's windscreen, and exploded. The car didn't even rock. There was a brief scream from the thrower as the blast threw him backwards, his clothes on fire. He'd barely hit the ground before a dozen dark shapes came swarming out of all the other alleys to roll his still twitching body back and forth as they robbed him of what little he had that was worth the taking. They were already stripping the smouldering clothes from his dead body as they dragged it off into the merciful darkness of the alley shadows. Liza looked at me angrily, more disgusted than disturbed.

"What kind of a place have you brought me to, John? My Frank wouldn't be seen dead in an area like this!" "The photo says he's here," I said. "Look."

I held up the two jaggedly torn pieces, pressed carefully together, and concentrated my gift on them. The image of Frank jumped right out of the wedding photo, to become a flickering ghost in the street outside. He was walking hurriedly down Rotten Row, a memory of a man repeating his last journey, imprinted on Time Past. His palely translucent form stalked past the car, his face expectant and troubled at the same time. As though he was forcing himself on, towards some long-desired, long-denied consummation that both excited and terrified him. His pace quickened until he was almost running, his arms flailing at his sides, until at last he came to one particular door, and stopped there, breathing hard. The badly hand-painted sign above the door said simply Silicon Heaven.

Frank smiled for the first time at the sight of it, and it was not a very nice smile. It was the smile of a man who wanted something. men are not supposed to want, not supposed to be able to want. This was more than need, or lust, or desire. This was obsession. He raised a trembling hand to knock, and the door silently opened itself before him.

The doors of Hell are never bolted or barred, to those who belong there.