Balthazar

There’s something strange about the light down here.

Like a dying flame gasping for air to breathe in the pouring rain, it paints silhouettes of shadows on scarred brick walls as if it has something it wants to say.

It lights up the jailhouse tattoos and the prints of bleeding knuckles, colored by the paint of a hundred barred doors.

You see it behind the faces of the street dogs, as they drift the coin slot alleys with charcoal painted eyes.

You see it as the pauper gets caught with a stolen bear claw in his coat pocket.

And in the eyes of every drunk in every bar as the girl behind the counter pours them another ten minutes away from it all.

Every godforsaken soul wandering these streets has a story worth telling, maybe even worth listening to if you've got the stomach for it.

And like kerosene through a funnel they pour their broken dreams into the hook lights and lamp posts, heating up the whole goddamned town with their mistakes.

Even the candles take a bow.

The clockwork has stopped dead, and while holding its breath, awaiting the thunder of a pawnshop pistol, there is nothing left in their eyes but a shadow hiding, like the smile from the tear.

The sun scares the moon off of a burgundy canvas.

And just like that, like a choking torch, the streetlights burn out.

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Welcome to the world of Balthazar.