Matthew Driscoll walked the streets of New York City for the first time in three months.
He had to get out of his Brooklyn apartment, though. He’d stuffed his keys and his cigarettes in his pockets, put on his worn boots and black hoodie. When he pushed through the glass door, he felt the chilly late October evening sweep the streets.
Earlier rain had coated the road like reflective wet paint. Matthew’s leather boots sloshing in the water where the ground dipped was the only sound in the street. He plugged in his headphones to counter the echoes of his footsteps among the silence. He headed past more apartment buildings and liquor stores, breathing in the moist air. It almost made him forget.
Almost. But he could hear his mother’s voice faint in his ears from a salient childhood memory. I remember when people weren’t so religious. Now everyone’s afraid, everyone’s reverting back. To my great-grandma’s days. It’ll make things worse, I bet. Makes people believe ridiculous things. She’d been talking to Matthew’s father, who had since fallen victim to a conflict of such God-fearing vigor; his mother fell victim to cancer shortly after. Matthew was only ten at the time, but he remembered. Her criticism and disdain for the state of the world had started rubbing off on him then. It was better she wasn’t around to see things now.
He arrived at steps cutting into the concrete, and he found himself wishing there had been more road to walk between himself and the subway. The tunnels below were walled with off-white tile, narrow lights lining the ceiling above and casting light on the darker tile beneath. He would head towards Time Square, he decided. He needed some invigoration.
Matthew sauntered through an underpass. It was vacant, and he thought suddenly if a creature were to emerge from the tracks ahead it would surely swallow him whole, and Matthew Driscoll would go silently, without a witness or a cry or a condolence.
He was approaching a bench and could make out a figure lying there. A homeless man, probably. One of the few subsets of citizens found lingering around past sunset avoiding the violence the night brings - that is, if you have somewhere to trap yourself.
He paused his music with a squeeze of the side button on the wire, just in case. He felt a rumble beneath his shoes, subway cars trucking in the tunnels alongside him where he couldn’t see. The dozing man had a beanie over unkempt grey hair that blended into his scraggly beard. A chequered blanket lay over him.
When Matthew began to pass by, the man stirred. He opened his eyes to a squint. “Brudder,” he said gruffly. “Good luck where ya’ goin. Ain’t nowhere.”
Matthew stopped there. He was in no rush. It was nice to find a stranger willing to engage in conversation, fragmented as it may be. “Where I’m going seems better than where you’re at, Brother.” He fished the pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket, a lighter out of his front. He lit the end of one and breathed in, exhaling a cloud of smoke.
Nasty habit, he’d been told before. But you look sexy doing it. That had been in his early twenties, some six years ago. The memory echoed as a faint mock of a now aimless action.
“Better ’n yur place. Better ’n here.” The man pointed lazily to his own head. Matthew was about to respond when the stranger suddenly shot up, sitting so his blanket swept along the floor. “You’s a zombie,” the man said, the stench of alcohol oozing out with his slurred words.
“Maybe so,” Matthew answered.
“I’s in heaven, an’ still here a zombie dun followed me!” The man’s eyes were wide now, bloodshot. The urgency in his voice caused Matthew to falter.
He turned away and began to head toward his platform. “Pineapples is in my head! Pineapples is in my head!” The old man groaned and quieted then, and Matthew assumed he’d fallen back into his drunken stupor but he mumbled in a droning slur, “Lauralee been murdered dead.”
Matthew turned on his heels. The man was lying down again, as if he’d exhausted his last bit of consciousness. “What the fuck did you just say?” Matthew demanded.
He remembered Lauralee under the moon shining through their apartment window. “We’ll be alright, baby,” he whispered into the soft skin below her ear. But when he moved to kiss her lips, he saw tears running down her cheeks. Another indication.
“Hey!” Matthew yelled, walking toward the man with purpose this time. The bum’s eyes indeed were closed. “HEY!” Matthew’s voice bounced eerily off the tile, and he shoved the man’s shoulder. He seemed so out of it now that Matthew began to question if he’d ever been awake at all. Maybe the old man had caught it, the Malevolent. Maybe Matthew heard wrong.
He sighed, wiping his hands off on his jeans. He began again toward his platform, shaking his head.
The tunnels quieted while Matthew waited for the train. The music was playing again to guide thoughts from reality to daydream. He smoked his cigarette until the butt had come close to burning his fingertips before flicking it to the tracks. The thought came again of the imagined creature hiding close by but it never materialised.
The ground began to rumble, and a gust of wind blasted through the dark corridor. He shifted on his feet when the steel approached, doors opening with a rush of released air. The car was empty, its overhead lights flickering. Matthew sat close to the door and let his eyes fall shut until he got to Grand Central Station. The car let him out before tumbling on to pick up little to no one. It was the city’s attempt to retain an air of normalcy, regardless of how many took advantage of it.
Matthew trudged up the steps leading back toward the city, and they spat him out in the main concourse. Grand Central Station’s soulless grandeur was fit for a ghost. He had only entered the terminal in daylight since things changed and welcomed its bustle and vitality. Now it was like an empty museum after hours. The expansive space was alight, a great American flag hung taut between stone pillars.

He pushed outside into that moist city air once again. Crosswalks stretched in front of him, streetlights and skyscrapers towering above him. There were people around, somewhere, he knew. But they were inside, curtains drawn.
He passed an empty McDonald’s, walked through steam puffing up from a manhole, made a right turn toward an optician’s office. He didn’t wait for the traffic light to change. There were no vehicles on the road.
Matthew continued under emerald scaffolding, stepping on a forgotten sign as he went. He glanced at it for a quick moment and saw the last of the words … FORGIVEN IF YOU TURN TO THE LIVING JESUS.
As he walked, even with the music, he could remember how it started - how it really started. He remembered eating a bowl of Honey Nut Cheerios with Lauralee, the morning news droning on in his apartment living-room. Just last week, contained to Denver, we are now seeing instances of sporadic deranged and violent behaviour in individuals scattered across the nation. Matthew shut the television off with a click of the remote. The media had already convinced the public that prayers would fix things, and many were left with nothing else to hold onto. A sneaky way of thwarting a revolution, his mother would have said. The newscasters would attribute this behaviour to something apart from precious human faculties, to some sort of outside influence. But everyone thought it would pass, surely.
Since then the media projected a whirlwind of justifications. Conspirators linked it to a technological frequency messing with people’s brains, casted out by a foreign enemy. Others called it a contagious disease of the mind.
There were more lasting names for the pandemic, though. The Possession. The Divine Punishment. The Malevolence.
Whatever it was, his wife had caught it.
To dull the news headlines flashing through his mind now, he decided he needed a drink.
He walked past more shops and billboards until he reached the liquor-vending. It was one of the few small developments invented during trying times such as these. He felt his left pocket for his wallet and pulled out his driver’s license. He did not register the smiling face in the picture when the machine scanned it.
How do you look so cute in that? Mine’s horrible!
The camera snapped a photo of his face now, a screen flashing the words “Authorized.” He pressed the button for a small bottle of Jack Daniels. On the small screen, red letters rotated across reading “$14.99.” Matthew swiped his credit card through the slot beside it. He slid his ID and credit card into his wallet, his wallet back into his pocket, and headed down the Manhattan strip.
He had walked almost fifteen minutes toward Times Square having finished over half the bottle. He nodded his head to the music, nursing his whiskey. Nursed it some more.
Perhaps in Times Square he would find relief, find comfort in his own company. Maybe that’s why his feet had carried him out of his apartment.
He boogied down the strip, playing an imaginary guitar in the air, strumming on his stomach that was growing warm with stinging liquor.
He knew he was almost there and thought when he arrived, he might give himself a concert. Another hefty swig. The taste burnt through his throat, and he welcomed it.
Suddenly the music cut out, shattering the glass of his self-image. He dug his phone out of his pocket and held it in front of his face to examine. A black screen. He shoved his cell and headphones back into his pocket, ripping them from their place in his ears.
Matthew passed empty tables and empty chairs. His drunken joy was fleeting and left him only with unease. He glanced at a strip club with lights taking turns illuminating the phrases Live Exotic Show and Striptease back and forth. There were billboards projecting faces he couldn’t name. An advertisement for a phone company asked him ARE YOU WITH US? in magenta lettering.
Matthew heard his own footsteps again accompanied by the constant buzz of electric currents. The static powered signs and screens and lights, vibrant and pulsing. Something possessed him to walk toward the centre of the street, staring up at the towering city around him, billboards upon billboards. He almost would have preferred silence. This hum made him feel more alone, an inadequate consumer for the advertisements that swam around him.
It was like the city that never sleeps had drowned in a dream.
The creeping eeriness in the metro and the main concourse of Grand Central closed in on him tenfold here.
Suddenly a rat dashed in front of his path with a chilling tick, tick, tick, and Matthew yelped. The rat scampered away but his heart still hammered in his chest with the adrenaline of the scare. His breath hitched and picked up although the creature had scurried down a sewer, out of sight.
The buzz of the lights was all he could hear now, growing louder and louder in his ears until it was deafening. He shut his eyes for a minute while the dense emptiness of the world closed in. He wanted it to stop, he wanted to turn around, but he was glued to the spot. He didn’t want to think, he didn’t want to realize why he’d come.
An echo of that night, three months ago before he’d trapped himself in his apartment, floated into his mind then without music to beat it out. It’s the right thing, he’d told himself. He swallowed the memories of that night and all of them afterward, stifling them with television and Jack Daniels. I did right.
Nothing felt right now.
His chest began to heave, and he fell to his knees under its weight. He set his bottle beside him so that he could place his palms on the ground to steady himself. Gravel dug into his flesh. A small puddle lay before him, and he could see his reflection in it. The memory flooded his mind then. He squeezed his eyes closed to shut it out, but that only pulled him deeper in.
“Matthew…” Lauralee had tried to sound even, but he heard the quavering in her voice. “Calm down, okay? Breathe. Listen to me.”
“I have to, baby,” he cried, his mouth filled with saliva and his nose dripping, body reacting to the horror of what he’d have to do. “It’s got you.”
“No, no, no, darling, no. Put the knife down, yeah? We’ll get you some help. It’ll be all right, remember? It’s all okay.”
He drank in her form one last time, savouring the image of the woman he loved. Something in his mind seethed, convincing him she was not that same woman now.
In his silence she begged again, beginning to sob. “Matthew, please.”
But slowly, he shook his head, tears streaming freely down both of their faces.
Suddenly she lunged for their bedroom door, and before she could close it, he ran after her.
Here and now, on all fours in the middle of a crosswalk in Times Square, Matthew Driscoll cried. He shook his head desperately until his whimpers grew into wracking sobs. Grimacing, he felt his mouth fill with saliva and his nose begin to run, until he couldn’t hold it in, until he couldn’t take it, he erupted in a wail.
“I’m so sorry baby, I didn’t mean it, I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry I’m so sorry. Please, please, please, please, please…”
He muttered on and on, hoping somehow she could hear. He shook with crushing misery.
Somewhere behind a nearby apartment window, a woman woke and thought a man must’ve been stabbed. This is why we stay inside.
Matthew thought he might vomit. When he heaved and nothing came out, he gasped for air. He gulped again and again until his exhaustion forced him into steady breaths. Still huffing but consistent.
His face was distorted in the puddle, lights around him distorted in his background. It all felt like a sick joke. He didn’t look like himself.
He grew still to stare at his reflection. Malevolence stared back.