@manifcst-o | CLOSED STARTER.
Paper was scarce. Once the world ended news travelled differently, and travelled differently still now that it had slowly begun to end a second time. On the wind, or through clenched teeth, or in code, around the legs of bright-eyed birds. Too often news was caught in rumour’s quick jaws, and then its neck was broken and in its stead was the lie or the different perspective, sauntering into town with its black talons and bloodied teeth.
Where the wind blew, it was worse: there truth and rumour could hardly be distinguished, and became in and of themselves creatures of irradiated, decaying perseverance. A dead thing, refusing to stay dead, and from its bloated rotting body, the rest of the world tumbling to ashes too, alongside it.
And so. Paper was scarce if not impossible to find. But on occasion, the town had a signboard or even, with great luck and enough funding, its own local newspaper. Not enough copies to fully distribute it, of course, and the paper old and recycled and recycled, worn thin and grey and flabby.
That was where he’d found the story, and he knew then, reading of the strangeness that had transpired, that it had not been unintentional, that the trail that over the last few weeks had gone cold had been seeded again. That the siguls found carved in the walls had not been placed there without reason.
And that the Man in Black was calling to him, again, and that he could do nothing but follow.
The storms rolling in from the mountains were an overcasting half-coagulated, a grey-blood thing hanging too high in the sky, hulking above the white spring clouds, much in the same way that the End -- whatever End the world had in store for the West and its slow, roiling breathing -- stood vigilant and careful, at the other end of every road or trail into the desert. The leaden entrails of the greater storm, announced so heavily, and the white wisps in front of them: the edges, fraying, of a gaping wound. The skin parting to reveal the muscle, the skin now open, its secret, stinking shame for all to see, muscle and entrail, blood and fat: a god’s inner workings.
He takes his time and rolls himself a cigarette. A cart splashes him on its way by, the beginning of the rain that hits the rim of his hat. He’d learned from the barman that the paper had no proper office, but shared an old two-storey building with the only telephone in town, the post office, and the city dance hall, all owned and run by the same man.
A good place to start as any, since the door is open, and the signage in the entryway tells him the printing press is up the flight of stairs.
