This Thing On?

Via my personal blog, a dark story about a city. Oh, not just any city! This is the city of my mind!

The city of Casey is one of emotionless horror. Even the detritus that blows in from outside the city from distant lands acquire an immediate air of apathetic ennui once it enters the inner walls and floats silently to the ground as if sighing, mourning the lost memory of feeling. The men do not laugh, the women do not sing, the children do not dance. Old people sit on too-small chairs and stare up into the sun. People who sit in droll bars and cafes do not look at each other for fear of catching the glances of the men and women around them that might provoke an emotional response. Patrons order their sad gray meals with eyes cast downward and eat in slow measured gulps, careful to not present the unlikely impression of perhaps enjoying what they eat. Animals lay in the middle of the dirt roads with their mouths and eyes open, not dead, but not quite alive either.

Travelers who enter the city never leave, not because they want to stay for the rest of their lives, but because they lose all desire for anything at all except to exist. They exist solely to exist until their bodies fail them and then nothing. The city of Casey is a popular destination site for widowers, hat-makers, young runaways, drunks who can't drink enough to forget, rejected monks, men and women who have been shunned by their lovers and are too shitless to kill themselves, wanting to live and, they think that entering the city would be a cruel form of revenge, or therapy.

Parents who love their children very much tell them the story of Casey, and advise them that in their future travels should they see a sign heading towards that particular city, that they are to immediately turn around and continue their travels in another direction. Parents who hate their children tell them the exact opposite.