16 March 2005
Collapse
An insistent rapping on the door of his 22nd floor apartment on 14th street failed to induce the longhaired Thai boy to roll over in his sleep. “Mmm” - and then silence. The white Venetian blinds heated up as the vigilant sun marched across the sky outside.
At four p.m., the young artist’s alarm clock sounds, a honking like a traffic jam. It doesn’t cause a stir in his languorous sleep. He stretches for a moment and wraps himself around his blanket, a bead of sweat forming on his forehead.
With the late afternoon sun seeping through the blinds, colouring the room in red, and with the alarm honking consistently, the studio apartment resembles an earthquake or war scene from a videogame. Paintings of anime characters and prim paintbrushes are propped haphazardly against the walls and large computer table. Smiling, angry, serious, fierce, scared and other faces of characters he has designed lay on pieces of white paper like bodies strewn across the carpet. They are motionless, waiting to be rescued and used in a new design for a game or cartoon series. The cord of an iron, extra long, runs across scattered official looking papers on the floor. A toppling pile of brochures props up a small Ikea ironing board, two legs missing.
At five p.m., the rapping on his door starts up again. The artist slowly opens his eyes.
“Wake up, man, the World Trade Centre is gone!”
He ignores this intrusion and glances at his alarm and only then realises it has been going off for the past hour. 5:02 p.m., Tuesday, September 11, 2001 – the time and date flash as he silences the honking of the alarm.
“Shit,” he mutters, and quickly springs out of bed and pulls on his wrinkled clothes from yesterday, and ties up his hair with a red rubber band that was around his wrist. He reaches for glasses, next to his mattress on the floor, placing them on his head. He scans the room until he encounters a clear artwork folder, “Character Design Assignment” scribbled on it in bold red. He shakes boxes of cigarettes littering his apartment until he encounters one that yields a cigarette. He lights it with a quick flick of his wrist and pockets the Zippo, rubbing one eye under his eyeglasses with the back of his middle finger as the cigarette dangles loosely from his mouth. A loud sucking sound fills the room as he draws his first breath.
He stands over his mattress to pull the blinds up, allowing a sickly yellow light to fill his studio.
The window transfixes him. “Fuck,” he says, and slowly places the large folder on the ground, and reaches for his mobile, quickly pressing a few keys, then, after repeatedly raising the phone to his ears, and repeating the process of pressing buttons, tosses the phone aside, too.
He stands, staring out at the window, ash falling to the ground from his cigarette. He takes another puff, and finds the overflowing ashtray from underneath a character like a warrior. Meticulously, he puts out his cigarette, then, slumps cross-legged onto his mattress.
**writer's note**
This story is roughly true. It's how I imagine the scene to have occurred when my brother found out the towers collapsed. But this is fiction. What happened is that after he said "Shit", he let his friend in, and he was told the building collapsed before he got a chance to look out his window.
Then, they went to play pool, since there wasn't any uni on that evening and they had nothing better to do.
Around three people from their circle of friends should have been in that building at 9 a.m. Fortunately, they were all artsy types and were, as usual, late for work.
fon @ 8:23 pm link to post * *