His feet slowly trudged down the pavement.

News screens flashed promises of the world on the screens of every third street corner he passed, telling him to watch, listen, read or Experience the news when he got home. War, piece, drugs, poverty, a new golden age just around the corner.

"Neon, man, You want neon!"

John smiles at a the man.

"Blue neon, red, indigo..."

"No thanks."

Voice trailing after him. "Super clean, john, super conductive."

John smiled at the name that fit above his. "I don't like to think too clearly," He said to no one in particular, because he knew that no one really heard him.

His apartment was around the corner, and as he grew closer his feet picked up more life, enough to propel him up the outside stairs, past the house prostitute lounging on the grungy off white couch, and also doubling as a doorman.

"John!" she said after him as if only happy that she knew the mans name.  John smiled back at her, a smile that she probably didn't see.

The elevator silently carried him up, he smiled at this because it hadn't worked a month before and when it did he smelt the word, falling... down to the depths of the basement where all the old and unused heating equipment was slowly rusting away.  He imagined bones, a brothel of souls and an old forgotten handyman climbing a flight of soot covered stairs to a fire scarred bricked over doorway.

The elevator door slid aside to his floor. The rug was clean here, stretching down the hallway, to where someone had recently installed an expansive stain glass window, which the late day sun shone colors of the crucifixion against his eyes.  His was something of a communal floor; the doors were usually open, the people loved one another and were busy shaping the tenth floor into a slice of utopia.  John was a regular tenant that they had hoped to convert, but now get rid of.  He refused even to have his door stripped of it's many cotes of dull white paint to match all of the other nice polished hardwood doors and molding and strips of floor on each side of the new expensive runner.

"I'm home," he said to the door and the door gave a click, becoming slightly ajar. He pushed his way in.  The apartment was gray and many times painted over and in need of a new coat.  The single couch on the naked brown painted wood floor had probably stood here much longer than he had lived or at least had lived here.  There were some newspapers piled in front of the couch as if serving as a kind of coffee table, with a few cartons of Chinese food and empty beer bottles atop and fallen to the side of the contrivance.

He stopped, seeming slightly disappointed at this and gaped at the room before him.  His shoulders slumped slightly and he walked over to the food stained kitchen space and took a beer from the fridge, popped the top and set it down of the counter, watching the foam ooze over the sides.  Moving to the refrigerator, roaches scurried from underfoot, and opened the door.  The refrigerator light seemed reluctant to come on and he seemed to understand why.  He reached in and took out a piece of tupperware that's side read only five days, Not bad yet,,, and put it in the heating box.

"Messages," he said

"You have one hundred and thirty-six messages."

He had always forgotten about the mounting messages and thought he should possibly just take only today's, but what about yesterday and the day before. They were probably just as important or had the same lack of import. He really thought to listen them in order on his next day off. but he knew he'd forget again.

"OK, give me today's messages."

"You have no messages for today-"

"Yesterday."

"No messages-"

"Forget it!"

The machine stood silent.

The room was getting darker as it began to settle to night.

"Lights he said

His lamp came on there and in the bedroom.

He thought he'd eat and that possibly clean after dinner, but he moved to the bedroom and his hand hovered over the switch.  He liked it in the switch, it gave it the illusion of the tangible and for that reason he had left this switch here when he had all the other autotom wired in.

He switched it and the apartment became new and vivid before his eyes.  The clothes on his floor faded away to polished mahogany and Indian rugs, his bed was made and large, the windows looked out on a sunset over the horizon coming through the tips of the trees. New England Autumn.  He thought as he heard the shower running in the bathroom. Breathing a sigh he kicked his shoes off in the direction of the dresser and they disappeared before his eyes, with a thud he might have heard.  Undressing, he tossed his clothes in a similar way and put on his silks and went to the closet for his robe.

The shower stopped as he fitted into his robe and he heard Lisa's wet footsteps coming down to the hall and into the room.

"I didn't know you were home," she said with a deep smile in a Lauren Bacall voice. "I've been taking a long shower.

"I know it seems that you've been there since I left."

"Oh.. I have," She smiled and launched herself toward him into a kissing embrace.

Shari lied on the cold hard pavement as the sky began to grow darker, and her hips bobbed like a ten cent ride that may have once been sitting in front of a drug store.  She felt her clothes were ripped, her shirt was open and she saw the legs of people passing in some vertical daylight that only shone past the mouth of this alley.  A knife was to her throat as the man thrust away, it's blade carelessly drawing a line of blood on her neck.  He had propositioned her, showed her the color of his money on a small ultraled strip and when they got here, raped her just the same.  The mans spice laced, heavy breath began to break, growing uneven.  He broke his rhythm and began to climax.  He was about to slow, but her hands went to his hips and kept him going as if putting the brain-dead on life-support, his wavering piece grew harder and he began again to thrust harder and harder as the knife slid across her neck and clearly clanked against the pavement.  He was growing quickly excited at her unanticipated participation.

In a far off place, she too felt herself becoming wetter and more excited.  One hand left his side, for he was thrusting again under his own steam, temporarily forgetting it all, and found the knife sitting in a cold puddle next to her hips, it clutched around the knife and she felt a clean and perfect wave pass through her with several silent shutters.  The man was sick to release again, but she was done and jammed the knife down in his back almost possibly where his hart was.  She heard a far off scream and rolled the man off of her.  As he convulsed and bled to death she dug in his inner pocket and found his wallet, imprinted his thumb on his credit chip, while his blood pressure was still high enough to pass in his hand for life and transferred it to her own.

Blood spread beneath her feet, her heal almost slipped on it, but her hand steadied herself on the dull brick of the building.

As she began walking toward the light at the end of the alley a black uniformed cop stood there.

"I was raped," she said matter of factly.

"You seem very calm."

"Neon blue." she said "Arrest me." She pointed to a camera at the end of the alley that she knew didn't work. "It's all up there."

The cop didn't seem in the mood to argue with a blue neon genius and tapped his badge to call it in.

She walked past him in slight agitation as his partner stood around the corner with her 'raygun' drawn. With fresh credit, she was going to score more neon, but the lady cop lowered the gun and stunned her leg. She tumbled to the ground.

"No more neon for you tonight honey," said the lady cop.

He and Lisa lie pleasantly exhausted as he felt a cool breeze blowing white curtains across his face.  Lisa had just opened the window and seemed to bask in the fresh autumn breeze. John walked over to the kitchen and removed their dinner from the oven.  It was perfect as if a personal chef had prepared it but his lights dimmed momentarily and his elegant kitchen wall faded to a roach crawling down the pealing wallpaper above the sink, as if a temporary hallucination but ceased again.  This made John slightly nervous but he closed his eyes a second as if giving reality time enough to catch up to him, opened them again and the perfect kitchen came back to him.

Shari's eyes blinked open, her neck hurt as it seemed to careen in some odd direction that she had never considered before. The sky was dark and the voices of hustlers beyond the alley made her surprised that she hadn't been hotwired and mindlessly fucking a different Abdul an hour like many another Friday night.  The side of her face felt wet and as she lifted it from the ground the dark puddle lead to a pale translucent mass.  Her face moved upward to the moon peeking through the gap between the teeth of the two buildings. Clouds moved past and she imagined fog over the moors and a werewolf out looking for another girl to kill.

Her eyes hurt. She turned to see people passing the alley, she turned back to the man on the ground and then suddenly her hand went to her pouch/ Her credit chip was gone and she couldn't think and she was growing cold. What season was it anyway?

She shivered and bent down to wrestle the translucent dead mans suit jacket away from his body. Having trouble, she pulled the knife from his back and finished the job. It was surprisingly dry and bloodless and she wondered where all the blood had gone/ She put it on, thrust her hands into the pocket, finding a twenty in paper and sat down next to the man to take off her boots for her own emergency twenty.  The neon was all gone now and her mind was a murky mess.  Good enough for a few drinks. A few drinks, some sleep and a fresh start tomorrow. She knew that she probably wouldn't last the night, but being the eternal optimist she convinced herself that dullening alcohol was the perfect balancing agent to a week long Zen neon trip/ Like fasting/ She smiled, began laughing with a hint of confused horror as she put her boots on.

John was backing into the bedroom with two plates in his hand as the lights blinked, one dish disappeared and reappeared in his hand and this momentary discrepancy made him dizzy and he dropped the other dish to the floor.  The lights blinked again, he felt the dish again disappear and a "Honey are you OK" was nipped in the bud as Lisa also disappeared.

He lied on the floor in the doorway in the dark for a few seconds and the lights came on again, but this time to the mess of his bed and stained sheets, his chipped and painted floors, his forgotten shoes and clothes on the floor and a room that Lisa wouldn't be caught dead in.

There was a knock at the door.

"Hello." he said still lying on the floor.'

"John," His neighbor said his name in whichever middle eastern accent that belonged to him in a way that either showed distaste or unfamiliarity with the use of his first name.

"Yes."

"Were having reactor troubles and are on only stored power.  The higher functions of our floor will be out until tomorrow."

"Thanks you fucking bastard," said John, now pretty sure that this man had just switched Lisa and the apartment off.

The man walked away.  The smells of autumn went away and the apartment began to smell like the behind of a Libyan restaurant.