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The city breathes.
Shambling down the stairs of the brownstone that held their abandoned office, Sam looked out at the sky, marred yellow with pollution and threatening to blot out the sun with its myriad of skyscrapers.
Don’t say myriad, Sam.
Why? Swear you said it once, somewhere…
Somewhere, a rat scurries underneath a car, scrounging for stale crumbs of leftover chips. A cockroach is stepped upon, a week of life squashed underneath the boot of the people, unknowing, uncaring.
Sam shivered instinctively, and put his hands in his pockets as he was wont to do, still gazing out at the sky as he walked onwards. He doesn’t take one glance at the DeSoto– left alone since the fantastic journey, the belly of the beast. Marks of giant rampaging lagomorph remained in the streets, dotting the brick and iron landscape of New York, rats and cockroaches and humans and six-foot-tall dogs all mingling into one entity through the eyes of eldritch madness.
Why am I there? He thought, daring to bring the noirish persona back. Or, he closes his eyes and considers the superego.
Of course…does he have one? Did it look as dashingly handsome as the one Max had? No. Did he have an id?
Elsewhere, a child cries because he’s scraped his knee on the sidewalk.
Sam shook his head, and shut his eyes. Trying to imagine, trying to find…
I know you’re in there.
Make me!
He popped open his eyes– the week or more of fatigue evident in them, the bags underneath dragging his wrinkling skin away until it meets his jowls.
“Sam?”
Not Max’s voice. The dog sighed, and continued walking on. The city warped before his eyes, twisting, churning slowly, concrete beneath his feet shifting. He was nowhere. He was everywhere.
The city breathes.