All Roads Lead To Rome

August 6
Stuck on this shihole slum beat again. Just when I'd forgotten the smell of piss and unwashed migrant, they put me right back in. And right in time for monsoon season too. Just fucking great.

Apparently , these weird posters are appearing around the place, of these fucked up green monsters. They're even too chickenshit to run a picture of 'em, sayin' it's obscene. I think it's a load of  "black helicopter" horseshit myself. I've seen worse online. But admittedly, not by much.

Residents are pretty mum about it. They either don't care or change the subject real quickly, like they're scared of the po-po comin' for em. Nothing out of the ordinary.

The street people were chatty about it, as per usual, going on and on about "elections" and "the mayor is coming to this city". It's not even an election year. But, then again, it's probably not a "meds" day for these creeps.

Boss says I should use this piece as a moment for social commentary. Well, I got all the commentary I can muster in two words: It stinks! Gehhhhhh.

I'll just stay here,  gawkin, write up some bullshit at the last minute. I mean, it's the big crummy ass end of the city, not like it's gonna go nowhere in the meantime.

August 8, 20xx
There's more of them now, those fucking posters I mean. Obviously some sort of performance art crap. They even got some outta towners to stand around in front with clipboards.

I'll tell ya one thing, even as much as I hate this city, they don't make motherfuckers this ugly around here. They got big dumb lips, big glassy eyes, like a fish. Smell like a fish too.

Not that they're much worse than the illegals, trashy; sweaty motherfuckers in the goodwill clothes. I didn't graduate from Ivy League, to write charity case stories, god I hate them so much.

But they at least know to stay away from 'em. The street people huddle around them like they're the second coming of saint mary fuckin haleighlujah, like a chorus with them about "elections" and "mayor of the final" and I don't give a damn.

These pollsters, they ask the weirdest questions. Like, here's a few I wrote down:

"Is eyes are you seen his eyes?"

"Has the sea weather been fair today?"

"Are you for conglomeration or conglaberation in your politics leviathan?"

“A dead star a dead ocean do you want which?”

Everyone's afraid of them. They always walk to a different side of the street when the things are around. I saw one of the migrants cursing one, some kid who looked about twenty-something, before another woman (Think it was his wife) pulled him away. Nobody'll get near 'em.

When I asked them about that "election" they say "coming soon", and somethin about "primaries". God damn will I be glad when these idiots leave. I'm a local reporter, not some goddamn performance art critic!

Hopefully they'll be gone when the monsoon's over. They're always out when the rains are down, standing beside those posters while nobody else's there. God I hope they leave soon.

August 12th
A new building popped up today. In the middle of the slums, used to be some condemned ruin there. The thing that's there now is a big green fucker, no windows, no bricks, just one big united slab of rock with a door.

It hurts to look at it. It twitches around in my sight, something about the proportions, parts of it look like they disappear. Sad thing is, this is on par with the shit I've seen for the last few days.

The rains haven't let up for a single day. People've been hiding in their houses, though those damn clipboarders. I tried interviewing them. They don't like me very much. Can't blame 'em.

When they do talk they're yammering about missing family members, talking about a missing wife here, some kids not coming back from school, phone calls and warnings, tears and sob stories all around.

You stop giving a crap after a while on this beat, but damned if they didn't wear me down. A few of 'em looked out their windows and screamed at the “pollsters”. One of the yellers was the guy I saw before. His wife wasn't in the house, he said she'd been “taken”.

Probably has something to do with those sacks they're carryin', wriggling around. They don't seem to pay the expletives any mind. They just look up, nod, and write down something on those clipboards. I have no idea how they didn't collapse into a pile of mush in the rain

No, I didn't stop them. You wouldn't blame me if you saw them. Fuckers're are big, basketball player big; if not bigger. I don't think some twiggy reporter could do anything about 'em even if I wanted. Everyone else seems to be doin' the same.

And before you talk about calling the cops, cops don't come here. Never came down here since I was a kid, so they ain't gonna come here now.

There're even more posters around here too. Seems like the less folks there are on the streets; the more posters there are. There's been some people tearing down the posters. Trying to anyway. They're lying on the ground, heads opened, green n red stains on the wall. Like a Christmas tree.

Nobody bothers to move em, or get near 'em. Posters are still there, though, maybe with a rip or a piece off or a red handprint on 'e,. All of them have the same note attached: “THE MAYOR WILL CONTINUE AS SCHEDULED”.

Maybe it's the rain, maybe it's the nightmares I've been having each night, I have no idea what the fuck is going on anymore. I'm leaving tomorrow.

August 15
I can't find my way around here anymore. I thought I knew these streets like the back of my hand, but they just keep moving around, I can't leave, I can't even think straight. There's more of those buildings, those great green buildings; now where some of the apartments were. Some of 'em have half taken over, like tumors, eating the apartments alive.

Nobody's opening their doors, they've got the windows and doors boarded up. A few of them had the boards pried off by someone. Nobody's in those anymore. I can see a few of them in the streets; hiding from something. They didn't want to talk, but I followed their lead.

The pollsters 're out here in full force. The normal buildings that're left are covered in the posters. I saw them building these rickety wooden platforms, size of buildings with speakers the size of people, shouting gibberish. I can hear the word “Mayor” in there a couple of times.

I went into one. It was on Griffin Alley. Used to be the place I was born, place where I got sick, place where mom died. And, god forbid, I walked in. It looked like a doctor's waiting room made by some Aztec psychopath, stairs leading nowhere, floors elevating and falling down. Bags, hundreds of 'em, squirming, hauled by the “pollsters”.

They were opening them, vomiting this horrible green slime inside. And god dammit, I saw people in those bags. I could see the limbs pushing out, people trying to  crawl their way out, but another pollster shoved them back in with some pitchfork thing. It cut some of 'em right open.

But they weren't bleeding. Their skins were mashing and rolling together . The thing with the pitchfork was screaming “DO THE CIVICS DUTY FOR THE MAYORAL! BE THE PATRIOT OF THAT CITY!”. Some of the people were bleeding out. . I got right the hell out of dodge there. I haven't gone into any others. I couldn't stand the screaming.

The rain stinks of brine now. There's a fish flopping in the street, fell right out of the sky. Right now I feel the same way as that fish. Thank god I can still find my hotel. Thank god it's still normal. For now.

August 22
This city is gone. Those green buildings are eating up every single fucking block of this place, big fucking patches of posters plastered all over this shithole. I keep seeing seaweed and fish dropping from the sky in this endless salty rain. One time I saw a ship fall from the sky, old wooden thing from god knows when, shattered on the ground. I'd say I'd been going screamingly insane if it weren't all so fucking real.

Things that used to be people are now on those platforms, those slippery pollster things standing next to 'em screaming and screaming god knows what. Sometimes they stop, to write down something on their shitty little clipboards, then they go back to screaming.

I think those things are the people from those bags, I can see faces there, stretching out of those grey-green things. They all look different, like those animals you'd see at the bottom of the ocean, but stretched and squished and things put in places they shouldn't go, that nothing should go. They plead, they beg, to me, but that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is the ones that talk like the pollsters.

There are no more humans left here but me, no more real humans anyway. The other man, the one with that wife, he was the last to go. I saw him swingin' at one of the platforms with a metal baseball bat, screaming “MURDERERS! BUTCHERS! YOU TOOK HER! YOU TOOK HER FROM ME!”, or something like that. One of the faces on the thing up there in the mass looked like his wife. It was the biggest of all the faces; size of a refridgerator. The pollsters did nothing.

He managed to kick a few of the legs down, but it didn't fall down. It just hung there, I nthe air. He started to climb it, screaming and sobbing. The pollsters still did nothing. He started beatiing at the thing, beating around all the other yelling sobbing heads, but never touching his wife's. At least, until it opened up and swallowed him while.

The pollsters wrote something down, whooped, hollered, cheered, and then went back to their notebooks.

It makes me remember the nightmares, when we used to live here, when I was a kid. Ma was barely scraping away at an income, I was a burden to her more than a son.

I remember was always sick. I remember the nightmares. The giant green city swallowed by water, monstrous fishy things wandering in an endless rain, and that thing; the mayor of the helltown. I always saw that thing only in bits and pieces. Even when I was left on the side of the road, vomiting in a sick fucking haze while mom boozed and whored it up. Even when we had to live in the alley at one point, and I was coughing up blood and snot.

That's why I hate this place. It's a sick place, a place where he only way to go is downhill. That's why I've always hated this place. That's why I left this place.

I saw something in the alleyways today. It looked like a human shadow, made three-dimensional and squeezed into the shape of a cat, smoldering like a hot coal in the rain. The thing was shivering in the rain, shaking it self off while looking around for someplace dry. It looked like it was just as terrified as I was.

We looked each other in the eyes before it walked off. Despite the fact it's probably something just as weird as this shit, I felt a little empathy for the thing, and I think it might've felt the same. Could be just me.

Oh god. It's that platform again, with her face. And I know I didn't pass it last time I went down here. They're moving. They're getting closer together. For what I do not know.
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August ??
Oh god, I see it now. The platforms are converging, the rickety things, into one spot, a temple, and those fused fleshy things coming together; they're merging with that horrible grey-green flesh. They aren't being turned into something new, but they are becoming part of something older, a piece of him within this city.

The pollsters scream “ELECTION WIN! MAYOR IS HAPPY DAYS! ARE HERE AGAIN FOR AN EVER TERM” as it unites, as it joins into that mass, and I see a thing from my nightmares once again, a thing that is only part of some greater whole.

To think that this thing; blotting out those green skyscrapers, carving through the clouds and the rain, is but a hand; for the full force to drag itself up from the depths, the force I have only seen other partial glimpses of in my childhood fever dreams.

This bastard, it is the mother of all things in the cities, it's the fucking mayor of every fucking town, and I can see it as it rises. There was that old saying that comes to mind, all roads lead to Rome. And this is it, the place where all cities lead. I don't know whether it's subconscious modeling or if it's part of a plan, but somehow, I can see it now, as this horrible; beautiful thing shadows over me, this is the core of all cities, the place beneath all the skyscrapers and subways and corpses it all rolls down to this metaphysical cesspool!

All roads lead to Rome. And all cities lead to here.