By James Callan

It was prime real estate, coveted ground. The stairwell was a perfect place to go up or down, with doors at every landing, no dead ends. It was a good place to crash, to lie in a corner and allow the foot traffic to pass by and offer up whatever it may: a broken umbrella, one shoe, something dead and covered in fur, canned fruit (probably) — no label, so who knows. Sometimes you’d get a song, a sermon, a blowjob. But it wasn’t all sunshine. It wasn’t uncommon to receive a threat, and if you lipped off, maybe a beating. It was a fine place to stake a claim. Everyone wanted their own little slice of turf on the stairwell.

It was a room with a view, a little rectangle of anaemic light that moved in an arc across the littered steps, the food-splattered, blood-stained walls. There was a window that a full-grown man might just be able to squeeze through if it hadn’t been for its bent, broken bars that angled inward like the sinister maw of some ugly deep sea fish. There was this one time, I’ll never forget: I saw a man pull himself up, aching for sunshine, for sky, for air that didn’t make him choke, a view of a broken world where humanity once thrived. But what do I know? Maybe he just wanted to get out, to fall free to the courtyard below, ribs poking out at impossible angles, elbows and knees twisted backwards, wading on his belly among the detritus of man, broken televisions and gutted teddy bears, poison ivy and weeds as tall as Abe Lincoln, stovepipe hat and all. It’s all conjecture, anyhow. His motives. He never made it through. Those bent, broken bars took a bite out of his guts and he lay there, half in the window, half out, moaning for hours while the foot traffic went up and down with its wares, its offers, its goods and bads and uglies.

The stairwell is a designated fire escape, but there is no escape from this brick and concrete husk that rises 30-odd storeys up, each one its own nuanced, broken community, each one equally tainted, each one with its own broken culture and warped sense of how to cope with what little is left. The stairwell is a designated fire escape, or so the sign says that is only just legible among the bullet holes and divots from shattered glass. And in a sense, is really is a fire escape, or an escape to the fire, the rhythmic, orange glow in the nights that keeps you warm, cooks your rat or pigeon, boils the water that cleanses your clothes and brews strange drinks that make you sick but also make you numb, make you smile even though you are sick, cheerful even while numb, because you are no longer wired or scared or bored. Those fires are beacons, where stories are shared, where strange, mysterious meat is passed from hand to hand among its searing rim. Among the fires on every landing there is an opportunity: a brand to the thigh or forehead that will designate you a certified clan member. Floor 13, 32, pick a number, any number. It’s all the same, really. In exchange for your service during endless, mindless turf wars, in combat, in recon missions out into the world where you will risk your life for canned peaches or a box of matches, playing cards, cigarettes; in exchange for hard labour, for sexual favours, for pledges or fealty, you may be honoured with a brand. You are now one of them. You belong.

A crack in the wall affords a view when you press your eye close. The current of cold air is refreshing and terrifying. This is my hovel and this is my makeshift window. I watch the fuzzy hologram flickering a sleazy, sexy lady in the rain where old, burned carcasses of trucks lay large and inert like dinosaur fossils or the remains of mythical monsters. This isn’t a zombie apocalypse. I remember those on TV. The survivors were beautiful, well-spoken, well-fed, and always banded together. They fought, too. But there were good guys among the bad. Pure fiction.

This is not a zombie apocalypse. This is 30-odd floors, 30-odd small worlds, 30-odd blights radiating like cancer around a long fall to a courtyard of bones and filth. This is a hollow tombstone where despot leaders vie for dominion. But this, this right here, this is a stairwell that bores among the myriad of clans, a neutral zone where violence is indiscriminate, where commerce and horror thrives.

This is prime real estate, coveted ground. This is where I live.

And outside, beyond: that is where you go when living gets old, becomes too much to bear. Out there, it’s wild. Not lions and tigers wild, but man wild. The worst kind of wild. War torn and bare, each scrap worth fighting for, killing for, dying for. I haven't seen a child in years and I never hope to again. It’s not the place for them. In here or out there.

But I am one of the lucky ones. I remind myself of this as I drift off to sleep to a peppering of gunfire under moon-laced fog, the muted light seeping through a broken window draped with the skeleton of a man who had lived longer than he cared to, its dull shine bathing me in soft glow, the sheen of its silver light on the black fur of something dead that keeps me warm and alive. A black cloud eclipses the moon and I am left in a dark stairwell. I smile, unseen. I am one of the lucky ones.

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