I sometimes wonder where my head has gone on nights like these.

Wednesday, April 13, 2011
The city presented itself to me in varying shades of purple and green and grey, as if Andy Warhol himself had built and decorated each building with Pop-Art precision. I came to consciousness on a deserted street corner, my gaze trained upward on the rusted street sign hanging from the nearest stop light and my shoulders aching under the weight of my monochromatic backpack. Confused, I pulled my pack from my shoulders and dropped it carefully onto the lavender sidewalk. Inside I found a large amount of tattered notebooks and a wide assortment of writing utensils that included everything from broken crayons to expensive fountain pens. Nothing made sense in that moment.

It occurred to me that I might be able to understand if I began to walk, and so I zipped up my pack, pulled it back onto my back, and crossed 15th street before heading west toward what I thought might be the mountains. Despite the dizzying color-scheme, the buildings and shops lining the street were familiar to me. I looked down Champa quickly and found Leela sitting where it always sat, with a haze of pot smoke surrounding the entire area. Broken bottles littered the concrete patio and a group of young people dressed entirely in black sat on the twisted metal chairs smoking cigarettes and joints and talking quietly with one another. A dog barked in the distance.

No cars crowded the road-ways; only a few bicyclists and pedestrians dared to try and maneuver through the potholes and mounds of broken concrete that made up the city's once great framework of streets and avenues. I continued walking and came at once to a section of the city that certainly didn't belong in Denver. The green and royal purple skyscrapers slowly faded into old lime-green brick storefronts, and the road was paved with patterns of grey and black bricks. I looked up and found that I was walking under the familiar terraces laced with flowers of all kinds - most were dead, and barely a soul inhabited the place.

The Old Market in Omaha gave off this vibe that reeked of misuse and homelessness. The buildings were abandoned; the most popular shops and restaurants were either burnt out or looted after some unknown catastrophe. Broken glass lay untouched under the windows that the shards fell from. I walked to the end of the street and through the main intersection of 14th and Harney, paying close attention to the sidewalk under my feet. A young couple, their clothes and faces dirty and streaked with blood, sat quietly on the large planters that once held the carriage horses. The young man had a face I thought I knew, and he looked up only briefly from his calloused hands as I walked by. I didn't make any effort to speak to them - it seemed like the wrong place to do it. I moved slowly and without much purpose toward the Missouri river, my eyes scanning the opening horizon for anything familiar and not abandoned. I found nothing.

The overpasses of Omaha's interstate system lay in disrepair as I continued on my walk, a few burnt-out cars sat stranded on the more intact sections of deep violet roads. My heart fluttered as I neared the river, fearing that it would not be there at all. The sound of rushing water and the tinkling of an old music box met my ears and I climbed the deadened banks to investigate. The river remained, but was permanently stained the horrible scarlet color of blood, and I fought the urge to vomit. The banks were lined with the decomposing bodies of rainbow-colored people, and in the middle there was a little girl.

Her hair was long and unkempt; it radiated a sky-blue tint and caused her dirty face to look bluer than it needed to be. She sat on top of a rock, her rainbow dress and shoes splattered with dried, rusty-colored blood. In her lap she held a music box, it's music drifting lazily out in all directions. Her small hands continually turned a crank that kept the music playing. Suddenly at peace with the chaos around me, I found a dry place to sit and pulled out a notebook and fountain pen. The pure green ink soaked into the grey pages of my notebook quickly. The girl looked up. Then she smiled, and got off her rock before walking towards me.

I stopped writing and watched her weave in and out of bodies, their rainbow flesh still vibrant in death. Without a word, she dropped the music box into my pack and smiled. "Don't worry if the music stops. Nothing bad is going to happen," she said, before moving slowly up the banks of the river and disappearing out of sight.