The evening was overcast and I was on a barge heading into the Port of New York and New Jersey. I had decided to come in the break between semesters on the advice of my professor that it would allow me to see the applications of my economics major. My professor was brought up in America but had fled to England in 2027 with his family after the Great Riots of that year. Though I was his best undergraduate, I perhaps paranoidly imagined that he had some concealed dislike for me, and this idea had bugged me on the way over. Why was he so enthusiastic about sending me to a place that he had absconded from himself? When I had asked him about this detail he had only said that there were better job opportunities for an old white guy in the Kingdom. I had anyway conducted research into the issues currently plaguing this land in which I was soon to arrive, but I had discovered nothing more than what local news channels chose to broadcast to the British public.
There were something close to twenty of us on the observation deck at the bow. Looking around I saw a couple of old babushkas and their ancient husbands, a few European students like myself who appeared to be speaking French, a fat Scotsman with his fatter wife and two ugly children, and a flock of Japanese girls all giggling excitedly with each other. I tried hard to suppress my boner inspired by the girls’ short skirts but ended up having to press it against the heavy steel bow whose temperature chilled my little guy into flaccidity.
The water was grey and submissive to our barge’s penetrating slices into it. I momentarily glimpsed my pale reflection amongst the foam and saw inquisitiveness, optimism of a young nineteen-year-old. Evidently one of the Japanese girls saw it too, for she stumbled over the rocking platform to my position leaning over the crashing bow.
“Where do you want to go to when we arrive?” she said over the crashing.
“New York to see the stock exchange,” I answered with a slight smile.
“Oh… great! My friends and I are going to see Trump Tower.”
My smile disappeared. “You stupid whore! Why would you ever want to go there!?”
She recoiled and fell backwards over a protruding nut in the platform so I could see her pink underwear. I turned away to freeze myself against the bow again and when I glanced back she was describing her encounter to the other short skirts. They took turns casting odd looks in my direction. I winked at them and smiled, drawing back the skin by the corners of my eyes and mimicking their expressions. Trump Tower? What a fucking joke. There was a hand on my shoulder. I glanced to my right and nodded politely at a babushka who was trying to ask me something about the weather. I couldn’t hear what she was saying over the Jap girls’ gasping so I simply grinned and said ‘yeah’ a lot like you do when speaking to a retarded trolley boy. But there certainly was an irregular aspect to the cloud – it was oddly blue and slicked as though I was looking at a puddle tainted with motor oil.
We were now nearing the port and I could already see with my naked eye a welcoming committee gathered on the docks. A ray of sunlight broke through the cloud blanket and forced me to squint which momentarily improved my vision enough to see that this was not a welcoming committee. Rather, it was a scrummage. Hundreds of bodies flowed like liquid shit along what I could see now was an esplanade stretching two or three hundred metres across the port. One of the Japs produced a muffled scream beneath her jacketed hands. I saw that she was holding a pair of field glasses to her eyes. Against her animated protests I snatched the thing before involuntarily dropping it into the froth below.
When I woke my fellow passengers save the Japs were huddled around me. I mustn’t have been out for long because a medical professional whose services I declined was only just now arriving on scene. The engines had stopped and the barge was knocking against something hard. I guessed we had reached the port. The port! My heart began to race and a terrible expression spread across my face. The other passengers appeared interested at my state but dispersed when I hauled myself up with the skill of a drunk. My knees were shaking uncontrollably and I barely kept to the disembarking ramp, almost tipping a babushka into the water.
The terminal was empty and I found the Japs quickly. I entered their party which had conglomerated around the screaming girl. Peeling off what I didn’t need for my motel to compensate for the lost field glasses, I took her by the shoulders and began a determined study of her eyes. They were exquisite eyes and seemed to shine despite being almost black. But there was an indescribable terror etched into them – a horror unbleachable from the retina that I was certain was the same I had seen through those magnified lenses. Her friends were understandably exasperated at the nasty cracking sound the girl’s head made on the terminal floor when I let go of her shoulders and hurried away. But I didn’t have time to wait around. I needed to get to my motel.
A voice on the line told me that a taxi would be ten minutes. I moved to a different area of the terminal to avoid another potentially awkward encounter with the Japs. It was lighter there and I couldn’t work out why until I spotted stairs leading up through the evening gloom. They were cold and concrete under a layer of slippery gunk. I managed to get halfway up before placing a tired foot in the darkness too near and falling forwards onto my outstretched hands. In hindsight though I was glad that it was dark, for what would have been my reaction to the terminal’s posters and advertisements whose mere outlines were then only visible to me? I suspect that I may have died there on the spot at the horrors they depicted.
The esplanade where I had spied that terrifying sight only an hour earlier was now barren. Regardless I began to shake again and the walk over to the waiting taxi was not easy. What were those wretched creatures? From afar they appeared humanish but black the colour of soot and seeming to have suffered injury to the spine, for their movements were in wild gallops. What I saw through the field glasses I refuse to describe here. It is a horror as few individuals as it is possible should be exposed to.
 Pt.2
My motel was roadside and its signs were a hateful illuminative red. Signing in took longer than expected as the owner had a hard time discerning my shaken state from a drunken stupor, and I was certain that he had simply written ‘John Smith’ in place of my good name.
I took a shower and changed into my other set of clothes – smart corduroys with a white jersey. Composed, I ventured back to the reception to seek answers from the owner. He was a greasy and fat American who reminded me of Harry Potter’s stepdad. I was barely down the steps when he started speaking.
“Cleaning lady’s coming tonight.”
“What? Oh, that’s fine. Actually I wanted to know if everyone is ok around here? On my way in I-“
“Oh wonderful a poncy bong come to poke fun at this great city. Fine, I admit that some of the buildings around do need some work. You visitors probably think there’s been a nuclear attack ha ha!”
“So that’s it then? There was an explosion?” Yes, that would explain the sooty colouring and the blue haze in the clouds and the poor creatures can’t walk properly because they’re deformed! I sighed, relieved, and then the owner replied.
“No! Don’t you have sarcasm in Germany? They’re just old buildings nobody cares about anymore.”
“Oh… anything else? I’m sure I saw some pretty sick people just before…”
“Oh, yeah we had a disease coming ‘round recently and a few bums bit it out on the esplanade. You want anything else you’re going to have to pay for it. I’ve got other things to do.”
“What time’s the cleaning lady coming?” I said.
“She comes whenever. She should have been here an hour ago but it’ll be before midnight.”
I thanked him and hauled myself up the oily bannister to my top floor room. A disease that turns the skin black and causes its victims to walk like that? I supposed it was plausible. But what possible explanation was there for that I spied through the field glasses? I decided to occupy myself with something and dug up a copy of Finnegans Wake from my travel bag. “bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbronntonnerronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoohoordenenthurnuk,” said Joyce. I remembered why I had stopped reading this garbage last time and set it down on the bedside table. Just then there came a rapid, practiced knock on my door. It had to be the cleaning lady. “Just a minute.” I straightened my handsome jersey and strode toward the door. It opened into my face and blunted my beak. “Gah!” I shouted and clasped my profusely bleeding nose in both palms. A tirade of apologetic Spanish filled my left ear and I began speaking too in my crouched position. “No, really, it’s fine. You didn’t hear me. It’s fine.” The skin of my palms were invisible behind their gloves of blood. I seized a tissue from beside Finnegans Wake to clot my nose with. The Spanish had stopped and a frightening silence was spreading about the room. I succeeded in halting the flow of blood with a rolled ball of tissue and raised myself to full height again. My vision was still teared and bleary from my nose’s bludgeoning as though in grief. It’s interesting how everything in your face is connected like that. I did not see the cleaning lady until the lights came on. There it was behind the bed. A dark outline I mistook for that of a woman’s. An apron fitted over an impossibly huge gut. Two stick-like arms jutted out each side. Its gleaming eyes radiated at me and seemed to illuminate half of the room in spite of their shit-brown colouring. Its grin – oh its terrifying grin – a carnivorous arrangement of canines jutting out at every angle but vertical and innumerable scars around the lips of which those razors were the obvious culprit. Black and straggled hair of a stray leaked warm oil over its dog poo face and moistened it sickeningly.
I was out on the street again, running as best I could on my quaking legs. The dark streets were deserted and I was able to put good distance between myself and the monster. The people of New York had a great deal of sense not to be out when that thing was. What was the motel owner doing hiring it? Can he not see that that creature is clearly not human? I stopped to pick glass fragments out of my jersey and hair. I had not yet noticed that my ankle had been totally and brutally broken in the fall from my room. Another rush of adrenaline surged through my body and I hobbled onwards. What was that in the distance? I paused for a second like a timid deer aware of twigs snapping nearby. Two glowing beads were bobbing in erratic motions towards me through the night. My legs again began to shake and it was when I glanced down to assess their readiness that I saw my broken ankle. I brought my gaze up to the closing marbles and felt my adrenaline supply run dry. It was time to go animal. I crumpled myself to get down quickly and assumed the shape of a pencil. With my arms outstretched and my broken ankle locked around my other, I rolled out onto the empty road. The monster could not catch me with the most enthusiastic of its wild gallops and I was soon nearing Times Square.
A sudden burst of light caught me in the middle of an intersection. I sat up and rested my inner forearms on my bent knees like a wrestler concealing an erection. The breakage had forced a bone out from the skin and a pool of blood was puddling on the concrete. This did not draw my attention, however. I blinked twice to make sure they were really there. Encircling me was a continuous horde of sooty shapes of all sizes like clumpy streak marks in a toilet bowl. I was preparing to roll again when the lights turned green and the shapes closed on my position. I began to howl like a dog caught in a bear trap. They were still closing. I could see their gleaming canines ready to tear into my juicy English flesh. “You won’t like me!” I screamed. “I’m leathery and course! I smoked a cigarette once! Nooo!” I pulled my jersey up over my head and waited for death. It didn’t come. Through the knitted wool I watched monster after monster pass by without stopping to inspect me until one did. “Hi, yes there’s a homeless guy here who’s hurt his leg. Can you send an ambulance please?”
Then another voice: “Oh no he’s not a homeless person. He’s part of our group.”
I pulled my head back through the neck hole. The Japanese girls were standing around me with some of the French students from the barge.
“Oh John what have you done to your poor nose? You know we’ve been looking for you all over. Why didn’t you come to the hotel with us?”
The Japanese girl whose field glasses I lost in the sea squatted next to me and smiled. I smiled reciprocally and she tucked the money I had given her back into my trouser pocket. She had a bandage over her head.
“Everything will be ok,” she said. “We just have to wait for an ambulance for your leg and Shinzo will be back with your medication in a moment. You really hurt me before, John. Did my screaming frighten you? Sorry, I just spotted a Chanel and got too excited.”
Her phone rang.
“Yes, it’s the one for autism. No, it’s in the larger bottle. Bring him his rubix cube too so he can play with it in hospital.”