Joseph Keyes - Journal Entry #003

I found my way back home at about 5:30, just as some soft light was filtering down from atop the Eighth Pillar, one of the monolithic columns raised high from the midst of the sector to be swallowed hundreds of metres up by a thick haze set aglow by the skylight it houses. “Home” is but a placeholder. I would rather not be here. Our building is a brooding grey two-story cinderblock on a narrow street, filthy in more ways than one. A concrete stair splits the inside in two. On approach I see Levi arguing with a huddle of odd figures - ghostly pale hooded men wearing odd half-gasmasks over mouths and noses. One of them holds a small package. They notice me but Levi doesn’t. I slip past with my head down, through the front doorway. The door is permanently open, broken from when spooks or whoever kicked it in. I climb the stairs and spin the grimy combination lock, 36, 10, 59, 97, and the door clicks open, straight into the squalid living room/kitchen combo. Levi’s room is opposite to me, my room and the bathroom to the right. The girl on the floor by the couch doesn’t react when I push the door home. Her throat and face are mottled black on a green hue from smoking too much Death. I step between dented cans and bulging black plastic bags to the fridge - I’m starving. Click.
   “It’s broken.”
   Levi crosses the room, dropping a small package on the counter and pulling a beer from the dead fridge.
   “You’re up early.”
   “They aren’t fond of daytime. Fucked right off when the lights came up, but it got me a better deal on the Dust.” he grinned. “So what’s with the notebook? Haven’t seen you trying to better yourself in a while.”
   I paused in my writing.
   “Homework,” I said with a smile.
   He snatched the journal from my hands and scanned this page between sips of warm beer.
   “Rubbish,” he said. “You haven’t described me at all!”
(For the record, Levi is at least 6ft, has a dyed-red mohawk which practically glows, is covered in more piercings than I care to list, has well-defined cheekbones and tattoos crawling up both arms to emerge on the sides of his neck.)
   He tosses it back at me.
   “Why are you writing this anyway? Sleeping beauty‘s not gonna be too chuffed with how you summed her up either.”