A Masquerade of Angels, pt. I

If there’s one thing I really hate, it’s got to be inner-city tenement blocks. They’re so damned depressing. Made up of equal measures of poverty, desperation, ugliness and hatred, they seem to actively warp the souls of their unfortunate residents. When you walk around estates like that, it seems as if every person is some sort of monster in disguise, a souless demon wearing a waxy mask of human appearance. The residents stare after you with that unsettling mixture of apathy and malice, as if they resent having to look at you, or as if perhaps, could they be bothered, they’d actually like to beat you into twitching pulp with motor-cycle chains, but it’s all just too much effort. The nearest sound to laughter you’ll hear is the mocking cackles of the teenage gangs. Hopeless, they mill around together in packs, dealing drugs and stabbing each other just to pass the time until they die. The walking, talking, sneering dead. Even the very youngest seem infected, tiny faces twisted with anger and resentment.

It’s ironic, really; those blocks were supposed to liberate the disadvantaged, not destroy them. Back in the early 50s, God was rational, a scientist. We’d dropped the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and proven for once and for all that we could easily destroy all life on the planet if we wanted to, apart from the cockroaches of course. Seems nothing can get rid of those ugly bastards. We held the fate of the Earth in our greasy little hands, or, at least, in the form of the mythical “Big Red Button” that dear Mr. President had on his desk. One false move from those damn Commies and BOOM!, Game Over. They took that madness for granted. So I suppose it’s no less insane to imagine that a hulking great slab of grey muck pierced with claustrophobic boxes could prove to be an efficient, sensible living space.

Now, half a century later, almost everyone recognises them for what they are – insidious damnation cast in reinforced concrete. Not that anyone does anything other than tut over them; someone else’s problem for the lucky ones who don’t live there, and a crushing weight for the poor sods who do. Besides, with society crumbling away on a tide of violence and anarchy that’s getting so bad it’s even getting through to the middle classes, what does it matter? No-one stops to wonder where the poison is coming from. We’re rotting from the inside, and we’re too busy fighting our way through the crowds in the supermarket to realise. “Fuck the end of the world, I want that joint of beef on special offer before that bitch in red gets her withered claws on it.” Still, no-one could accuse things of being dull right at the moment.

If you are careful though, and shield yourself well, tenements can be invaluable. I loathe them and everything they do to their hapless occupants, but only a fool discards a handy tool just because it’s offensive. All that rage, pain, despair and hate has to go somewhere, you see. Left alone, it infects the people who live in and around the place, and they then track the muck around the rest of the city, like dogshit on a pair of boots. It’s a very active force, though. Hate is energetic. If you provide a channel, it will enthusiastically flow into it, through it, do whatever you want just to get the chance to strike at something, at anything. Bad luck, disease, random violence, madness, death; it doesn’t matter. I’ve made unobtrusive sluice-gates to several of the worst estates over the years, conduits down which I can drag that bitterness, shape it, and direct it according to my needs. It isn’t nice. Frankly, it makes demonic attacks and Voodoo curses look like a playful prank. Still, it’s saved my life three times so far. It’s a dirty business, but you get that nowadays. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.