I find myself on a tour of a city somewhere in Eastern Europe. It is a dank, darkly industrial place — all smokestacks and ornate spires, brick walls stained with soot. Tagging along with a friend from junior high — he has made this trip many times before — I wander through the streets and shops, taking pictures as I go…
…the market, full of cheap knockoffs of western products and strange gummy candies, bright as chemicals…
…a flock of pigeons, black with soot, taking flight into a smoke filled sky…
…the rushed tour through a defunct governmental building, paper-strewn floors and broken skylights, a crudely mimeographed guide handed out — rough paper decorated with crayon scrawls and stupid jokes about American super heroes. We join an Australian tour group, twenty or more strong, demanding their money back . . . but the scam artists operating the tour lock us out…
…tagging along with the Australians, safety in numbers, despite the growing signs that they hide dark secrets — hints that they’ve been on this same trip for decades, damned and doomed to wander in a forgotten corner of the world…
…gathering together in a crumbling courtyard for the night, an old movie shown on a sheet hung up on one wall . . . I am horrified to see a young girl, her wits damaged in some way, mutely servicing one of the Australian men with her hands while the movie plays, casting a sickening constellation against the jacket of the oblivious woman in front of them…
…edging out of a brick archway, strewn with vines — no interest in seeing how the movie turns out, wanting to escape their company before the evening reveals even more distasteful secrets…
…standing in a darkened alley, taking a picture of clothes lines fluttering overhead. Two men pass along a narrow opening. They pass by and, after some hushed t ones, they return — demanding my phone and whatever money I have. One of them is dark and menacing, the other blonde and aloof. Despite the danger, I refuse and, somehow, make my escape…
…spending the night in an old flat, the women there gray with age and disappointment…
…the men burst in, having tracked me to my little haven. Somehow I get the upper hand…
…the dark man is kneeling, hands bound behind him. I slap his face roughly once, then again. His eyes raise to me, full of hate, and I pull back my balled fist…
…and then I wake in the cold light, bare branches outside my window and my daughter murmuring across the hall.