A Future Tale (Part Two)

Part One of this Future Tale began with a woman wandering around her small city, observing and describing the places and people she saw. Here's how that chapter ended.

The old iron gate at the head of the alley looked as if it hadn't been opened in years. Weeds, garbage, broken glass, and more encased the bottom. It was heavy with generations of handprints, rust and dust, soot and exhaust, bird droppings, coffee and alcohol, and who knows what other human or animal excretions. Layered upon layer upon layer, a challenge to the forensic experts, the anthropologists, the historians who might one day try and make sense of it all. 

I stopped by the gate, which stood chest-high and strong. It, too, offered a dare, like the building nearby. "Try me - go ahead, give me a push."  

I looked left and right; nobody was paying any attention. I gave the gate a shove; it didn't move. 

I pushed, harder, then as hard as I could, struggling against time, and weeds, and trash, and crud, and slowly, creakily, it opened. 

I snuck into the alley.

And now, we rejoin our storyteller for Part Two.

I tugged the gate closed behind me; I don't know why, really, but it seemed the right thing to do. Given the difficulty I had getting it open, I was surprised by how easy it was to push it closed. I saw my handprints and fingerprints, which formed the newest layer in the gate's long history; my footsteps would soon be added to those that had already smoothed the grimy cobblestones that made up the alley floor.

Narrow, and long - confusingly long, to be honest - the alley had a curtain of vines hanging over it several feet away from the gate, reminiscent of the beaded ‘curtains’ we used to hang back when I was in college. Or, more in keeping with the mood of the day, reminiscent of the giant spiderwebs we used to accidentally run into playing in the woods as kids; we'd struggle, half screaming half giggling, trying to get the spider's handiwork out of our hair and off our faces. Taking a deep breath, I walked toward, then under the vines.

I slowly picked my way forward, letting my eyes adjust to the uncharacteristic mid-day darkness, trying not to slide on the slippery cobbles under my feet. I walked for what felt like several minutes, dodging the spindly sumacs and scrub maples that popped up randomly, as if testing my mettle. “Does she have what it takes? Can she handle the truth?” I felt the questions, and I resolved to stick it out.

Eventually, I could see faint spots of light up ahead, not way high on the buildings, but at a more human level. I stopped, and after my eyes adjusted, I recognized that I was seeing deeply shaded lights above doorways or recesses in the alley, and I understood that I was nearing what I had been called here, by someone, somehow, to see. 

Tentatively, I walked up to the first light. In the recess, there was a chair, with a dingy hand-lettered sign resting on it: safe abortions performed inside. I paused, startled by the seeming contradiction between the sign's messiness and its promise, and by recollections of the horrible history of back-alley abortions. I was confused; where was I? Had the alley taken me into the past, or was it giving me a glimpse of the future? Was that sign old, or new? I had no idea.

I turned slowly away from the source of my confusion, and looked down the alley. A few feet away, on the other side, was a dim light, bugs flying around it. I was tempted to turn and head back towards that darn iron gate, the thing that drew me here in the first place, but I felt compelled to keep going. 

As I moved across the alley, I saw another sign, this one professionally painted but still dirty, hanging from a nail on the door: Books you can’t read anywhere else. There were several names original to the sign: Angelou, Orwell, Vonnegut, Morrison, Lee, and more, names I recognized. There were others, too, that I had never heard of: Evison, Thomas, Alexie, Spiegelman, Craft, scrawled on the sign with different colored markers. A mix of old and new, another yesterday-today-tomorrow quandary. 

Every recess in the wall, every dirty lightbulb, every door I encountered, brought more of the same.

Our real history

Medical care - no patients refused

Judgment-free zone 

All words welcomed here

Free hot meals

A bed for a night

There were a few more doors, offering only more confusion, until there was only a giant screen hanging in front of me, above my head, filled with images, wonderful and horrible, a cacophony of voices and music and noise, piercing the quiet that had surrounded me in the alley. It was my history, my lifetime, and histories and lifetimes before mine, all jumbled together. Good and evil, love and war, despots and dictators, politicians and orators, their words almost physically assaulting me, surrounding me, deafening me. 

I wanted to get away, to escape, to avoid what was playing out in front of me, but the cobblestones were damp and slimy as I tried to run, the trees were hitting me in the face and arms, and the din moved with me with me as I slipped and slid down the alley, tears and grime streaming down my face.