Pied had the Brooklyn Bridge in a small glass box. The box, four feet long by eight inches high by eight inches wide, stood on an ancient metal pedestal in the center of the southeast quadrant of the room. It wasn’t a “model” of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was the entire structure, and a portion of the edges of Manhattan on one end and Brooklyn Heights on the other, and some of the water and air and ice that hovered in and around it. It contained the entire history of the bridge, from the time John Roebling began surveying the East River in 1870 until the destruction of the bridge during the Great!!!AesthetixWarzNow in 2360, when, in the battle of Eh, What For If Not For Nothing?, New York version 3.4 was largely decimated by something resembling the color purple. During this battle, a giant metallic replica of a certain twentieth century cartoon cat effortlessly and un-ironically squashed it with its giant, metallic unpainted robot paw.

Pied had acquired the bridge many centuries later through a certain antiquities collector. Pied was also an “antiquities collector”, although unlike the aforementioned collector, Pied didn’t particularly subscribe to such ego-labels, especially those specific enough to represent such ancient concepts as “businesses” or “careers” or “vocations”. But the aforementioned collector had a penchant, not only for the antiquities themselves, but the antiquated lifestyle and moods and brain patterns that he assumed were typical of a person from this era. Therefore the collector would sit inside his shop, perform monetary transactions for the customers he had animated to walk in, browse, and occasionally buy something, then would close the shop when the hypothetical sun went down, tidy up the store, and then simulate locking up and walking home to a one-room fifth floor walkup downtown.

There was little else in Pied’s room, a dimly lit room with Japanese-style paper walls and an oak-colored parquet floor with a pattern that shifted back and forth slowly to slightly faster, depending on its mood.

Pied stared wistfully at the bridge, a tear forming in the corner of his bottom right eye. Time stopped, and slowly started up again. Pied looked to his left. A small teakwood table materialized out of the floor and lifted up to his waist level. Pied opened the front drawer of the table and pulled out an oddly shaped twin barreled blue pistol, the muzzles of which were precisely fit to both of his mouths. He whimpered, sniffled, and unceremoniously pulled the weapon’s triggers. A thunderous bang, quite showy even for a weapon of this size, rang out, and what was previously Pied’s head, (or heads depending on who you asked) splattered all over the far wall and floor in a delightful and intricate pattern which contained many variations of blue and red.

Moments later the maid walked in, grumbling something about the “big, fat, fucking baby” and began to scrub the floor, having to repeat this process now for the eighth time this week. The Brooklyn Bridge continued it’s endless cycle of creation, existence, and destruction inside the glass box at the other end of the room.

* * *

Suicides never seem to help anymore, thought Pied, as he re-materialized eight hours later in the next room, a room which didn’t have any furniture, or any dimensions per se. The room did have something resembling giant flowers, one of which he laid on as his arms and legs formed. He had decided, already, to have a rubbery skin and a yellow-orange complexion. Death had lost its childhood romance for him. He grew a pair of phalli which then twisted around each other symmetrically like the serpents on Hermes’ caduceus.

copyright (c) 2007 by Atom Piken