© KSW 31/3/99
I felt sick once again. My stomach was now hurting badly. Pain travelled through my intestines. My body felt as though it was on fire, but my head seemed to me as though it floated two metres above my body.
This side of the street was as bad as the other. In a window was a cup of the black syrup and below it was one containing the red liquid. I seemed to see them together although no one touched the clear drink but chose the black liquid all the time. It seemed everyone was hooked on it. Through the window people were sitting around drinking and watching a show. The show was crude, where the human body was flaunted in various ways. I wanted a drink but did not want to go in. As I stood there, I was jostled by many as they passed by, some wandering openly why I was not moving. I made a quick decision, grasped a dead animal out of the gutter and flung its body through the window so I could grab the two cups and walk off without having to go in and ask anyone about them. I drank them both greedily, the strawberry after the syrup. Suddenly I was awake. I felt no pain anywhere. I could see clearly. This made me stop in my tracks and observe the street more closely. The people were bizarre and deformed and they wore rags as well as being covered in the syrup and dust. The animals looked vicious. Even the small ones seemed menacing. The vehicles were an endless streak of noise and images as they sped by. The sky was becoming darker.
I reached a doorway and pushed in off the street away from the noise and the images. In the room where I found myself, there were a few tables and chairs but all were unoccupied. Set on the tables were more cups of the syrup. I licked my lips, took two and drank again. Some of the liquid slipped down my chin and onto my clothes. The pain was severe this time and the cramps were almost unbearable. My head became lightheaded again. A group of men came in from another room. They beckoned to me to join them and offered me more to drink. I noticed through the increasing bleariness a solitary clear cup high on a shelf, but I chose the syrup and drank with my new found companions. I could not feel, I could not think, I could not see much, but I drank and drank. The liquid covered my hands and face, my body and arms and was totally sticky which was I found made it difficult to move. The floor was sticky. In fact everything was sticky. Pain shot through my body into legs, arms, head and neck.
Eventually I managed to leave the room and hobbled back into the street, but was dragged into another doorway. Here, people were naked and wrapped around each other, covered in the syrup. I was astounded but was harried into joining in. Through my weakness I offered little resistance and started enjoying myself.
When the party was over, I found myself dragged back out into the street. I was hallucinating now. My mind a whirr of bizarre images. Squinting my eyes I saw in front of me a normal human girl with no deformities and whose clothes were clean that meant they had none of the sticky syrup or the dust of the street on them. She was holding a bag and walked into a building. Another stepped out of a vehicle, stopped at the curbside. She looked at me and smiled but walked into the building as well. The building was large and very old. I followed them through the door and saw there were a group of these people emptying the contents of their bags into clear cups. They offered me some, but I declined. The taste of the strawberry drink made me sick. I saw a cup of the syrup on the floor and took that instead. Those in the room started to tell me something. I think they were trying to stop me from drinking it, but I was too quick. The syrup touched my lips and I immediately hit the floor, my head spinning. That was strong almost pure.
One of the girls walked out into the street, to fetch another bag from the vehicle, but as she turned back to the door, she was grabbed by some men and was dragged down an alley. I jumped up and followed them. One held a cup of syrup and forced her to drink it. They poured the bag of clear liquid onto the ground. The girl immediately wanted more of the syrup and started laughing. Soon she was covered in the sticky syrup and the men were laughing around her. They walked back into the street, past me, and to the stopped vehicle, where they started to vandalise it and destroy its contents and its ability to move again.
I looked at my feet. The spilt clear liquid ran into the gutter from the alley. The alley floor seemed clean. Perhaps my eyes were behaving peculiar. A man walking by stood on the liquid trail and slipped as though on ice. A body in the gutter around which the liquid pooled began to move. The man revived, got up and walked away. I could not comprehend it. How could this be? The liquid flowed further out into the road and the traffic began at first to quiver and then as the vehicles ran over the liquid there was a sideways slip with one of them and they began to career over the roadway, crashing into each other, crumpling up, and some careened over the pavement into people and into buildings. I dodged back into the alley. A vehicle crashed straight into the mouth of the alley and burst into flames. This caused a chain reaction with those on the road behind it. The flames became intense like a furnace. I could hear people screaming as they disappeared into the flames and I soon realised why. The sticky residues of the syrup along the walls of the buildings and the alley flared into an intense flame. In my daze, I knew I had to escape, but I sat on the ground doubled up in pain. I saw that the spilt liquid was still there under the flames, neither evaporating nor burning. My legs would not move, so I dragged myself up the alley using my hands which were sticky like glue. I found a doorway and slipped into it just before the flames passed over my head. The heat was now intense and I was very thirsty. To my relief there were more cups of syrup stacked in a corner. There were people in the room but they were looking out of the window at the front and laughing at the carnage in the street. I lay on the floor too weak to move, too numb to care any longer. I had a drink and I was happy. I heard laughter again and realised it was me.
The flames were now in the room. I know. I could hear them but I could not move. A shelf on the wall above split and fell down. There were three bags on the shelf which burst as they hit the floor. I was covered in a liquid. I opened my eyes to see the flames and saw that I was soaked.
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