Click to enter!
Somebody’s made an online map of the City, to mark the ten-year anniversary of its demolition. The map is bright-coloured and interactive; all the different pieces move around, making it look sloppy, like it might come apart. Lana is also coming apart a little. There’s an arrow pointing to the entrance, but she doesn’t remember any entrances. Most people slipped into the City the way they might put on their shoes, without even looking.
Click to watch the construction of a high-rise!
The City was infamous for its skyscrapers, built so high that they began to lean, upper floors sliding off lower ones. At the very top they seemed to interweave like vines, and almost to breathe. Lana remembers that: the feeling that the City was alive, that it was growing on its own. One day she couldn’t look up anymore, because there was no up at all; the canopy cover was complete. The streets were pitched into darkness; the alleyways became trenches.
Click to see a cross-section of a typical apartment!
Lana notices that this map likes to slice things down the middle, to cut away the things that don’t fit. In the typical kitchen, it shows the deep apron sinks; it does not show her mother crying hard enough to fill them. In the typical bedroom, it shows the double-tiered bunks shared by whole families; it does not show how few families were whole. In the typical latrine it shows the toilet. It does not show the shit.
Click here to learn about the residents!
Let’s open up the City to the world! somebody must have said, in the same tone that the map uses. But they’ve overexposed it, like a photograph; they have blanched it out. Lana doesn’t remember the pastry chef; the ex-soldier living off pension; the schoolteacher. She remembers the drug addicts, the gangs, the housewife cowering from a husband’s blows, the policeman looking the other way. She does not remember residents! She remembers prisoners.
Click here to discover why the City was called the City!
Lana rubs her eyes because the laptop screen is too bright. She’s always had difficulty with brightness. She should return to bed before her husband and children awaken. Besides, sometimes, when she clicks away on her keyboard at this hour, it reminds her of the furious noise that the rats once made, scratching the blood off the floors on the day her mother finally stopped crying. Why give a name to a place most people did not believe in? Lana understands fully. She goes back as far as she can go, but she can’t seem to leave the City, so she closes the map, and then she erases her History.
Kristen Loesch is an Asian-American writer and aspiring novelist. Her work has been listed for the Caledonia Novel Award and the Bath Novel Award, and she placed runner-up in the 2019 Mslexia Short Story Competition. She lives in the Pacific Northwest of the USA with her husband and children. Find Kristen at @KShaoling.
What a wonderfully gothic tale!
Lovely, thank you Kristen. I’m looking forward to reading more about the city and its intricacies.