Blood Alley by Tom Coffey

Years ago I became an eccentric. Almost a recluse. My hair is longer than it should be. Stubble crowds my face. I have the distracted manner a man obtains when he limits his human contacts to the minimum he needs to survive.

I live in the desert. I moved here because I liked the landscape: brown and arid, stretching forever, shimmering so much in the summer heat I no longer knew what was real.

It is now the first decade of a century I never expected to see. I have been tired of life for a long time, but I am afraid of facing what comes next. I brought one thing with me from my previous existence: a photograph taken on the only night I ever moved past the feeling that I was destined to stare at all the best places in the world with my face pressed against the window. For a few hours I had a taste of what it was like to dance and laugh and be carefree, and to believe that nights like those would go on forever.

The picture shows a man and a woman who seem impossibly young. They’re sitting together in a club. The man wears a tuxedo in which he appears ill at ease. His eyes gaze directly into the camera. He is trying to smile. The woman is in a sleeveless dress. Her head is turned slightly. Perhaps someone just out of camera range has caught her attention. Even in black-and-white I can tell that her makeup has been applied perfectly; her eyebrows have been plucked and arched, her nails filed and manicured. Although she is seated, she conveys passion and energy and most of all the gleeful air of a girl who knows that nothing bad will happen to her, no matter how much trouble she brings to those she knows.

Several years back, when I thought I detected hints of green at the horizon, I told myself my mind had taken to conjuring things. It was the price I paid for solitude. But the green became deeper and more pronounced, sprouting incongruously against the dead tones that nature intended. As the weeks and months went on, I detected the sun glimmering off the skeletons of multistory buildings. At night, the artificial glow of electricity began to keep me awake. At times I hear the drone of traffic, the angry whir of lawnmowers, the shrieking and splashing of children in swimming pools.

A few days ago a dark-skinned man came to my door. I heard the knock and looked through the cracks in my blinds, which I usually keep closed in the middle of the day. It is a habit I acquired when I moved here, so long ago, when there was so much to hide from.

He wore a navy blue suit, striped red tie and suspenders. Daylight gleamed off his white shirt. Anyone who looked at him too long would go blind.

At first I imagined he was Death. I’ve often heard He can have a pleasing appearance.

I opened the door.