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Such is that a section of a city may live, breathe, change and glitter while another section withers in glacial decay. Let this week’s challenge image inspire your muse to confront the dichotomy. 100 words is all you need.
I’ll start with a story …
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Too many years, and a hundred lives ago she declared she would be anything, do anything, to escape.
And she did.
The wrap she wore was worn and patched, hung to her ankles, covering fine linen. Next, gossamer silk slid over the smooth skin of an uptown scion hiding a lowtown origin. She barked a laugh realizing she was a walking archeological dig.
She climbed stairs, familiar by long practice, arriving at a door she could identify by the scrapes and gouges unchanged since her childhood. Shame stayed a knocking hand. Apology was a diamond bracelet left on the doorknob.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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featured image, cropped and enhanced: Photo by Brayden Law from Pexels
Yeah, sure, it’s a mountain, but it’s not endless. There’s an edge somewhere. At some point, you’re off the mountain and into…well, who knows what you’re into, but it’s not this. Maybe you can be the Sir Edmund Hillary of the slums? Will it matter in a hundred years? Either way, you’ll be gone, so maybe it doesn’t. But, will it matter in five years? Ten? Next week? There’s fresh air up there, but you gotta claw through the layers of filth to reach it. Reality transforms into memory. It’s up to me what feeds those memories. I’m off.
Brian Brandt says: His parents had told him that if he just worked hard enough and smart enough he could rise out of the dead end in which they had toiled their entire lives. He could work his way up, floor by floor, until he could see the exit and make it to the good side of the city.
And now he was here. After years of backstabbing, cheating, clawing his way over his fellows, he stood at the top and turned the key in the door to his new unit. He entered and walked to the window. The one that looked outward, not down into the center court of despair. He smiled as he through open the curtains to view his destiny – and then groaned and slumped to the floor.
This was the good side of the city.
Cameron says: I shed myself of my possessions, grabbed a plane heading across the ocean, and went deep into a foreign country. My work visa was approved, I learned the language and found a home in what looked like a motley collection of stacked colorful boxes.
As I stared out at the vista of packed humanity, a sound caught my ear. The mail being delivered under the door as usual but the envelope on top caught my eye. The cheerful graphic announcing that I could already be a winner. I knew now that no place would be far enough to hide me.
guinspen 
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