Drawnness (The Foreword)

The designer of the city is The Human-God named The Animator.

His wish was to create darkness, the fine breeding ground of prospering crime preying on lives of the innocent. 

So he did.

At-large criminals ran loose, tenebrous alleys teemed with all kinds of muggers and thieves, owning the unlit grounds and points of no return. They emerged from the shadows like fiends, showing no mercy. To no one. Not even to vulnerability of a juvenile who had seen his parents gunned down, who mourned them, forlornly, like any child would. 

The Animator made his next move on the sky-high city as well as pavements, the ocean and the sky on which, around which and under which it rested. His Almightiness expressed His will by coloring the town light charcoal, the ground steel, the sky garnet and the spindrift clouds jet-black. 

Street lights were non-existent yet The Creator took care of that, too. No light, total night, everything was still as visible as movie directors make it be. 

Each element had its own dwellers, both animate and inanimate.

Divided precisely in two groups, the former based on criminals and civilians, essentially semi-shadows. Embodied, palpable but no distinguishing features. No in-crowd person is individual. 

Seemingly unmanned vehicles such as big-gun spotlighting birds, gray-and-blue Fords Deluxes and cutting-through-water boats branded as “Tiburon” were the inanimate population. 

Still, even in these atrocious parts was the restraining force in the flesh of one persona, caging all animals like old Nickolas Cage never had done. 

With that very persona, I had been dying to meet.

There was I making an entrance by parachuting down.

A thousand feet above the ground, I got the cords chopped by a helicopter, freefell like an anchor and knifed through the water. By grabbing onto a patrolling boat, I took a stowaway ride. By the shore, the watercraft veered to catapult me onto the embankment.

Staggering to my feet, I felt safe and sound. But was there safety in this town?

The last thing worth mentioning for now was my ending up on the rooftop of a twenty-floor house.

The spot of upcoming events. Even through my shoes could I feel the coldness of the floor.

From down to up high, everything present in the city merged to rocket past me and a statue of a gargoyle I was standing by.

The gargoyle that soared skyward to transform into a plane flying against the now starred sky.

We shall wind the clock back to the period when I was amidst the passengers.