Kaossilator

Droning voices from a Zenith panel TV in a pawnshop window played in the background..

       'The memories of the sleeping are siphoned from their skulls and sucked through open windows, where they become lost in the wind, and make their own journey. Sometimes they are discarded, and end up on rusted sewer-grates, lost forever. Or, they may flourish in a blooming bed of orchids, waiting to be cultivated by the sender. Locked dreams, both wretched and pure, are bolted into black boxes of subconscious thought. These chained dreams can be broken free with the precision of a thief or unleashed with the will of a saint, or they can be ignored and left to rot. Your conscious mind will decide whe....'

Some alley. Eyes felt like sandbags. The night wasn't over.
     An oversized prostitute in a hello-kitty tracksuit tried to sell Trace a purple wig in a back alley for either $12 or 4 cigarettes. Wrong place, wrong time.
   'Come and buy my wigs, only three left!' she said. Her face was a ruddy bulge caked with expired beauty products.
   'I don't want any wigs,' said Trace, 'no need.'
   'You idiot! I'LL TRAMPLE YOU!' Her hot temper gave out like a second-hand box-spring. She hurled an entire bag of garbage at him. Luckily, he had been swift enough to dodge the bag, and it exploded on contact with the wall behind him. Egg cartons, empty milk jugs, used coffee filters and assorted debris ricocheted off the wall with a clamour that riled up the surrounding hobos, and they were not pleased about this one bit.
Pack mentality set in.
Grinning with mouths half-filled with toothless gaps and black rot, the bums became enraged. Negotiation was out of the question. These were wild men; free of conviction, self-worth, and sanity. Reflex and aggression were the only solution. Trace taunted them with a flash of his chrome stopwatch, and, like cats on fish, they instantly lunged to attack. In the back of his mind, Trace might have been a matador. The first bum was intoxicated enough that his staggered advance was easily avoided. Without stopping, the man careened right into the prostitute, and the pair of them somersaulted to the ground in an uneven heap of moldy clothing and ripped fishnets.

‘Alright boy, I’ve got you cornered!’ the other said, a crazed look in his eyes. Wildfire. This man could have been a descendant of vikings, or pirates. For that reason, Trace wished no harm on him.
Grab a handfull of cigarettes. Toss to the right, as hard as you can. Like a guarddog tricked with baconbits. Diversion tactics. Feed anger with impulse, buys you enough time to escape.

       And then he woke up feeling like the dry chipped plaster on the inside of a worn-out ashtray. Buildings of twisted columns and oversized windows closed in all around him, where the aural familiarity of wind was cut off. Dead resonance in an urban flatline. How long had he been here?

Stagger to your feet. Palms cut and sweaty. Hair is all over the place. Breathing is heavy, deliberate, as if each rip of oxygen is one step towards clarity, but clarity never comes. The streets were still in disarray.
Being followed.     
 A blurry mirror of rainwater pools. Black outlines of a leather trench sloshing through the rain. His face was masked by a sharp black cowboy hat ringed with machine-gun bullets. Trace knew well enough to avoid direct eye contact with the stranger. Deranged people could be triggered by eyesight alone, and in some cases it took even less than that to set them off. He slunk away behind a Child-sized drawbridge made of carved stone and wood shingles. The bridge was flanked by little wooden watchtowers with windows containing small gnome-like figurines that surveyed the area with a vacant stare. The man walked past, his heavy combat boots cludding loudly against the inset of the sidewalk. Time to get help.

 
‘Where have you been all night?’ asked Koak. He stood beneath an umbrella-like awning attached to his crowded vendor booth. The stand was packed with whirling lights and chirping gizmos. Tools of distraction, useless things, a blow-up Godzilla doll that doubled as a popcorn maker. All you needed were kernals and power source, the popcorn was ejected from the doll’s retractable chest.

   ‘I need a weapon,’ Trace said, completely ignoring the question.
   ‘What you need a weapon for? You got heat on your ass?’ The mechanized Godzilla had found its way across the table onto a cheap silk pillow treated with custom Persian stitching. Animal designs, fierce ones, with jutting fangs and burning silk eyes. Godzilla unleashed a barrage of popcorn at the pillow with a mechanical roar.
   ‘No. I just need some protection. You know how the streets get. I just woke up in an alley, and I think someone’s following me.’ Trace glanced over his shoulder. Shadows, ghosts, but not a soul in sight. Across the street and beside a cramped stairwell, Trace could see a neon dragon outside of Gen Ming’s diner. Steam flows and midnight wind made green halos and dissonant hums. 

There she was, wearing a sleek motorcycle helmet. Her jacked was spare, tight, as was the rest of her clothing. She looked anonymous, streamlined with the shadows, might have been a raven perched on a watchtower. Slender, sharp, and utterly spiteful. Who was she?
   ‘Twenty gold,’ Koak chirped in, oblivious to the watcher. ‘Belong to my granddad in the war, only used a couple times. Fresh charges!’ Trace averted his gaze to examine the weapon. A cruel thing, built cheap and designed to kill. When he looked back, the woman was gone.

       The haze before the dawn rasps its urban chorus: traffic lights, blinking above dead intersections; the persistent hum of power grids, eager to spark the life of a new morning; and restless hobos, sleeping alongside racoons - together they'd pillaged trashbins in search of lost treasure.