In Old Yellowcake

Smoke rises from an ice factory on the edge, on the edge of a city that exists in perpetual gloom. I snatch a note from the basket of a passing bicycle. It says “Go to the flour factory. There’s something waiting there for you.”

Under the window, covered by curtains, all lacy and splattered with blood, we find crutches in the corner and bullets on she shelves, which I dismiss at once as being equivalent, irrelevant, in and of themselves.

Underneath the staircase there’s a mast which flies a flag. Despite dankness beyond imagining, it floats on to a higher hole. In tunnels gouged beneath the basement room are, unmistakably, sets of bloody handprints on a crumbling wall.

Oh, won’t you be there with me for it tonight? In this hut-to-hut witch hunt down the tunnels of Old Yellowcake, where all the souls in the city go drowning by starlight, where each choice you make is a fierce firefight or a new mistake?

Inside of a room is a cage, is a cage. It’s made out of chain and glass. It’s about forty feet high and three feet wide, it was built to last. It’s against a brick wall in an old muddy corner of a basement tunnel room. There’s a man in the cage in the old muddy corner. He’s asleep but he’ll wake up soon.

Under the window, covered by curtains, all lacy and splattered with blood, we find crutches in the corner and bullets on she shelves, which I dismiss at once as being equivalent, irrelevant, in and of themselves.

Oh, won’t you be there with me for it tonight? In this hut-to-hut witch hunt down the tunnels of Old Yellowcake, where all the souls in the city go drowning by starlight, where each choice you make is a fierce firefight or a new mistake?