ONE
NEON CITY
It’s a warm night on Wonderland Beach. A breeze rolls in, picking up the sand, which winds into a beautiful miniature tornado before dropping back onto the dirty shore.
You sit on a wooden pier, beers close by.
She’s beautiful. Young, maybe nineteen. Even though you’re only five years older, that part of your past feels so far away and you have no real memories of it.
Her hair is jet black, straight, she looks down a lot, and you can tell that if she had a few more drinks she could loosen up.
“How did you hear about this place?” She asks you, opening a beer.
“I read about it in an article.” You tell her, opening your own. “Are you from here?”
She chuckles “No one’s from here.”
“That’s not entirely true.” You tell her smiling. “How long you been here?”
“A few weeks.” She sips her beer. “what about you?”
“I can’t really remember.” you smirk. “What month is it?”
She laughs, “Gosh, I don’t even know.”
“You kinda’ forget after a few weeks.” You look at her tanned legs. “Have you noticed they don’t have clocks here?”
“No.” She giggles. “but now that you mention it.”
“Yea. In fact, take a look at your phone.” She pulls out her phone, the screen lighting up. “See, look.” You can see the home screen and make out that there is a time displayed on it, but ultimately, it’s unreadable. The numbers constantly changing. “Means you’ve been here for more than a couple of weeks. You stop being able to tell time after a while.”
There’s only two times in this city: night and day. But it doesn’t really matter because nothing here ever closes. Everything and anything is accessible anytime of the night or day.
She looks down and dangles her feet above the water. “So, it just happens every night?”
“I guess,” You tell her, “I’ve never been here before.” You lie.
Wonderland Beach they call it, it’s about a mile from the main strip, it’s not a tourist attraction, or even on the map, it’s not really even a beach, it’s more of a body of water, but everyone who knows anything about Neon City knows about Wonderland Beach.
It’s the place people come to after they’ve burned out, when the money is gone, they’ve borrowed their last penny, they’re in debt, been evicted, the city has no use for them anymore, they don’t really have anywhere else to go. “You know this city has the highest suicide rate in the world?”
“Really?” she asks with a kind of school girl innocence.
You cock your head, spotting a figure. “Here’s one.”
Together you watch a man stagger into the water. He’s wearing an un-buttoned plaid shirt over a baseball top, blue jeans and a red and white mesh trucker hat. You watch him, stumbling a little as he takes out a glass flask and drinks his last swig before taking out a shiny revolver and, putting the barrel to his temple, pulls the trigger, his hat flies off his head. They all fall the same way, they tense up quickly and for a split second, a look of shock, or realization suddenly falls over their face, you can never tell what that realization is, but it always seems to you that it’s regret. The look leaves as quickly as it comes, they go limp and fall like a stack of bricks after that.
The man floats in the water with his arms out in-front of him, the water rippling under his body.
“Oh my god,” she says. “That was intense.”
“Yea,” You tell her. “Must be a slow night, I read it’s usually quite busy, like every ten minutes or something.”
“What do they do with all the bodies?”
“They check it every night.” you say, before realizing you may be demonstrating too much knowledge about the place. “In the article, it says they come every night to pick up the bodies.”
“Crazy.”
“So how come you came here?” you ask, watching a man in a bucket hat head toward the water, walking with purpose. You stray him from your mind for the moment. “Where ya’ from?”
“I guess I’m here because home was boring,” she looks up for once. “Not a lot of opportunity, I guess.”
“Yea,” You don’t get a lot from her answer, you don’t get a lot from any of them really. “Here’s another.” You smirk.
The man with the bucket hat, dressed in all khaki attire, stops at the water front, he seems to have a brief change of heart, but he doesn’t turn around. He stands there, knee deep in the rustling water, not wanting to do what he’s about to do. Looking out onto the bright lights, powering the strip, which is still quite visible from the beach. Given how far away it is, you can still see it perfectly. It doesn’t really matter though because the strip definitely can’t see you. In fact, anything happening outside the strip may as well not be happening at all. To the strip and the people in it, anything away from that long block of lights, that place that never stops running, doesn’t exist.
The man comes to terms with it all, and begins to walk slowly, yet still with purpose, deeper into the water. He stops at a dark brown log sticking out from the bed and leans on it. He squeezes his eyes shut and pulls out a handgun that glistens in the moonlight and breaths very heavily before resting the barrel under his chin and ending it. He drops quickly, just like all the others.
