Saint Reilly (shutterbugged) wrote in rooms, @ 2014-08-03 19:52:00 |
|
|||
Entry tags: | !marvel comics, *narrative, saint reilly |
Marvel: narrative, Saint R
Who: Saint R
What: Going through photographs.
When: After the news-reports on the fire.
Where: Marvel.
The bathroom was small. It had lost chunks and parts of itself to expanding other parts of the apartment in remodels over the years and had lost a fairly sizeable portion in one remodel of the building that meant one could brush one's teeth whilst availing oneself of the toilet whilst simultaneously operating the shower over the bath. This functionality had been pointed out to Saint (rather hopefully, by a young man in a tie too tightly knotted around a purpling neck) as a timesaver. That he didn't intend to use the bathroom much for bathing wasn't a detail Saint thought pertinent to share. The trays of developer fluid could be fitted easily on the toilet temporarily, and the shower rail made for convenience in hanging photographs. The bathroom was predominantly dark-room rather than bathroom. Showers required a great deal of dismantling so Saint bathed not due to any particular preference but to avoid disturbing the dripping realm of places and times that hung in gray and white and black overhead. Overhead now, as he sat in a low line of rapidly cooling water with a copy of the newspaper folded over in one hand and a cigarette tapped out into an ash-tray nestled alongside the taps, hung a row of pictures of buildings. He'd had the idea of a mood-story, of understanding how architecture adapted, changed, grew with hardy determination around alteration and change and remained stubbornly itself. And then he'd taken a picture of the whole building illuminated, flames licking, the torturous insides exposed like ribs to the sky, as the building so determined to continue, to exist beyond its age had stuttered a smoke-choked breath to the sky and given up in ashy exhaustion. It had been the end of the roll, a picture taken with his back turned but it hung overhead with the others, and he tipped his head back now and compared the picture above with the grainy cut of one in the photograph alongside sparse text. Arson. Fire that had been stoked to consume, fire that had been laid like a trap set. His forehead twitched in concentration, the newspaper dropped. He had turned down help that came in the form of new-made antiques to pay the bills but that did not mean the bills did not require paying. Arson and it had nothing to do with superheroes or insidious villainy but the photo that spiraled overhead, the last shot of a roll he had taken without looking. The bathwater sloshed upward against the sides, Saint struggled into a shirt that stuck damply to his upper body and began looking for a pad and pen. |