so I wrote this thing during night 2 of touhou mafia. decided I'd post it here because it's less about the specific game and more about 'being town.' also other stuff.
warning: may or may not make complete sense
{unresolved}
Just because it got resolved doesn't mean it wasn't a good incident. They all get resolved. - HGR
Those who cause incidents are the culprits. I'm sure of it.
My suitcase makes a loud scraping sound as I drag it through the snow. My fingers are turning to ice beneath my gloves. It is a seasonably cold night for Chicago in February, but we've been having an unseasonably warm winter and I've grown soft.
Soft and soft-minded, apparently.
Who is behind this incident? I continue gnawing on that question as I walk onward.
The train station is southwest, across the river. The walk there from my office is usually quite straightforward. But tonight, there is construction along South Wacker Drive, blocking the path westward. I'm forced farther and farther south as I try to find a way around.
Eventually I realize that I haven't been this far south since three and a half years ago, at a time when I was preoccupied with another incident.
* * *
Normally, if I'm visiting my parents over the weekend, then on Friday after work, I leave the office and walk to the Amtrak station to catch the evening train. But on that day three and a half years ago, the Friday evening train was sold out. Instead, I got a ticket for the Saturday morning train. I left my apartment early on Saturday morning, took the Metra downtown, and then began the walk to the Amtrak station.
All of this is setup for the fact that I was taking a different route than normal -- in particular, a route that was several blocks to the south of my normal route.
On that day, just like today, I was town. And I was hunted all day, and I escaped the lynch by the barest of margins, and the one who was lynched in my stead was also town. And that mislynch brought us to do or die.
The city was coated in the golden light of early morning. I walked through that golden light, through the surreal quiet of a slumbering downtown, and I racked my brain for a way out of our predicament. For a solution. For the truth.
And gradually I realized that I wasn't quite sure where I was any more.
It took me a while to catch on, because I was preoccupied with catching scum, and anyway, everything looked different in that deceptive morning light. But it grew clear that it was not just a trick of the light. The buildings and the streets were unfamiliar.
I was hoping beyond hope for a cop to claim and set everything straight. We had stumbled into town lynch after town lynch. We couldn't figure this one out on our own. We needed power roles to tell us what to do.
But I was on my own, and it was too late for me to retreat. Instead I kept moving west, telling myself that if I just kept moving forward, I would eventually come to something familiar, something that would show me the way.
As I crossed the river, there was a huge spider hanging from a web woven across the guardrails of the bridge. Golden sunlight danced across the strands of the web. I was mesmerized by the sight. It reminded me of the spider who had made its home right outside my living room window before the start of that game.
I later named that spider Koromaru, in memory of that incident.
* * *
--
another place and time, without a great divide, and we could be flying deadly high