Finished in May 2018
Block No. 5, Sector No. 3 of Suburb No. 9
By Zac Langridge
A single road leads from the main districts of the city to the suburbs where I live. The road exits the cluttered urban environment about 2 kilometers away and runs through an empty stretch of plains, grass coated fields with the occasional tree or stream. The road is dead straight. Power poles and streetlights line each side, and as it continues, a series of other roads branch off to either side and lead to other suburban areas, only about 500 meters away.
My shoes are tattered and scuffed as they step across the concrete. I’m walking down the road to my neighbourhood, which looms up ahead. The other off branching neighbourhoods - again, only 500 meters away - now border the road’s dead-straight perimeter. As I walk, I pass a man leaning against a pole. He’s wearing grey clothes that appear to smudge him into his surroundings, and is smoking a cigarette. I throw him a slight wave and he nods back. No words. As I continue on, leaving the old-timer to slowly eat away his life’s years by dragging on that disgusting product, there is a distant whistle of wind. The sky is heavy and grey; I think it’s about to get cold. And wet, if we’re unlucky.
No matter though. I’ve nearly reached my home.
The road expands and gradually spits up into three separate driveways. These lead to different blocks in my neighbourhood’s sector, the first road leads to blocks 1 to 4, the second leads from blocks 5 to 8. The thirds leads to blocks 9, 10, 11 and an empty stretch of wasteland that was going to have at least six more blocks built back in the 60s. Those plans never became reality, and the area that had it’s vegetation stripped and concrete foundations laid down became overgrown and forgotten.
I follow the second road.
The eleven blocks of my sector rise up, and as I make my way into the area, they appear to engulf me. Towering rectangles of concrete. A series of high-rise apartment blocks, each of them 16 stories tall. Each of them almost entirely identical,
scarily identical, as if the architects designing the complex ran out of ideas as soon as they came up with the first one. As I walk into the sector, I glance back down the road towards the direction of the city and the other neighbourhoods. There is a haze in the air, dark and dreary, foreboding, but through it all I can see in the distance…..
exactly the same thing. The distant city is a gathering of tall high-rises, each in clean-cut rows and straight lines. Same with the other neighbourhoods that branch off the main road, almost like clones of my own sector. As if the designers of the city merely cut and pasted the plans for one neighbourhood into miscellaneous positions in the vast empty fields.
The air gets colder and I huddle into my thick grey clothes, trying to keep warm and comfortable, as I look up at the grey sky, and walk on a grey road, surrounded by grey concrete structures, which are surrounded by more grey concrete structures, which are surrounded by a deserted grey plain.
The apartment blocks are like cities in the skies, each of them at least 200 meters wide, and triple that width by height. Hundreds of dark windows line the sides of each building, each of them belonging to their own condo. There are about 20 windows spanning the width of one building; times that by sixteen, you have 320 windows on one facade of the building alone! And each building has four sides….
and there are eleven buildings in the complex….. I swallow and remind myself that somewhere among those identical, tiny square windows that my apartment is in there,
somewhere. I arch my neck so I can see all the way to the top of the buildings. The roofs are all cluttered with television aerials and antennae. Power lines slope down from the top of Block 6 to a series of power poles that continue off into the distance, fading into obscurity.
As I reach Block 5, my building, my home, I cross the small pavilion that neatly frames the base of the building. It’s a small cobblestone courtyard, accompanied by a fountain, lamp posts and playground. Two sisters play on the swings, shrieking as they attempt to swing the highest. Their shouts of delight echo around the pavilion’s silence. The children’s parents sit on a bench to the side, wearing puffer jackets and beanies, looking bored. I pass them by without saying hello and enter Block 5’s base.
The lobby - if that’s what it’s called in these apartments - has a dark blue carpeted floor and plain white walls that are mostly featureless. I think they’re whitewashed. There is a cloying smell of air freshener. A receptionist sits at a desk, barely looking away from a TV that’s fixed to the wall above his desk. It’s a late 90s or early 2000s television set, one of those heavy boxes that I used to watch as a kid. I cross the lobby, nearly gagging at the stench of the air freshner, and debate whether to take the lift or stairs. I’m tempted to take the lift to save energy, but I want to keep as fit as possible so I resort to the stairs.
The stairwell is a drab, featureless one. The stairs are stone and the handrails are steel, the walls have that pasty whitewashed look that the lobby did. The lights are those industrial-type ones I usually see in alleyways in the city, flickering out a cold white light that barely illuminates the shaft. The air is cold; I swear I can see my breath clouding up as I pass each lamp. As I make my way to the 12th floor, I rest on each landing for at least five seconds minimum. Each time I do, different smells, sounds and sights are heard coming from each apartment door.
A baby is screaming from the one of the apartments on the first floor. The smell of fast food is wafting from a door on floor 4. On floor 6, a man and woman can be heard yelling at one another. On the ninth floor, the door has been left ajar and a young boy’s sobs can be heard. On floor 10, music is heard blaring, cheers and shouts of delight or triumph ring loud and clear. On the next floor a woman leans against the door frame outside, swearing at me as I pass.
And on the 12th floor, my apartment door is closed and locked tight. No sounds or smells or sights. Nothing.
I unlock it and enter.
The flat is dark and still. I step in and toss my keys onto a small table, closing the door behind me. The doorway is in a small alcove, which opens up into a single room in the condo. It’s a living room, dining area and kitchen all in one, all neatly compressed into this one room that can’t even have been larger than the lobby on the ground floor. The kitchen bench is to the left, with a bunch of bland white cupboards and a narrow wooden bench, not to mention an oven and stove with a fridge slotted somewhere in the space. To the left is the television cabinet lined against the wall, with several pictures lining it’s top and packed with all my DVDs - and even some old VCRs I’ve saved over the years. A table with chairs and a thin couch are squeezed into the middle. On the left is my bedroom door, on the right the bathroom door. That’s it.
I take out a glass from the kitchen cupboards and fill it with water. The water is cold and refreshing from that walk up all those stairs. Barely looking around at my surroundings, I walk in a trance-like state to the windows that border my condo. There is a door that leads to the balcony. Everyone has a balcony in their condos. Everyone in this building - hell, everyone in this neighbourhood,
this city…..has a balcony. The problem is though, the “balcony” can hardly be called a balcony: more like a ledge with a rail. It’s as wide as the door that accesses it, give or take, and you can barely fit a decent sized chair on it to sit down.
I open the door and step out, only to be greeted by a cold breeze and my own clothes flapping in my face. I forgot to bring in my washing earlier today - and by the looks of it, glancing around at the other tower blocks next door, our neighbours had forgotten to do so too. I rip my clothes off the washing line that’s been strung up across the opening that looks out to the rest of the sector, and toss them inside. I then lean on the rail, feeling the bitter wind chill my face. My glass of water feels like it’s turning into ice in my hand. I’m beginning to regret bringing it out here; I might as well just tip it out, let the water fall 12 stories to the ground below.
I stare straight ahead, taking in all the surroundings of the outside word as my cheeks go numb and my fingers turn blue. I absorb the stark blue-grey tinge of the overcast sky, the clouds thick and boiling, the haze in the distance - possibly rain - becoming thicker.
I let my eyes follow the empty distant horizon of the landscape. An almost perfect straight line of beautiful nothingness…..until
suddenly it isn’t. My eyes come into contact with an obstruction, a nasty change of scenery. It’s one of the apartments of the separate neighbourhoods. And after that, even more apartments, rising up, cutting through the graceful scenery like huge, artificial cliffs. I grimace: it’s just wrong. It interrupts the view. Too sudden, too straightforward, way, way, way too out of place. Coldly efficient, yet lacking in any quirks or charm. Grotesque even.
I again set my eyes on the thousands of windows that line the sides of the dozens of towers blocks in this series of sectors. All of them identical. All of them dark and still, tiny squares of glass set into massive facades of brick and stone. And behind those glass windows would be men and women. Adults and children. Families. All of them behind those identical windows set into the sides of identical buildings, for identical apartments, with identical layouts, and identical interiors.
I stare hard at one of the windows on the apartment block closest to mine. I try to see inside it, try to find any evidence of a person living in there. I see a person. I see a man standing on a balcony, leaning on the railing with a cup of water in his hand. I see this from
inside a window. It’s my reflection.
And my reflections shows me…..
Surrounded by windows.
Surrounded by more windows.
In an apartment block.
Surrounded by more apartment blocks.
Surrounded by other neighbourhoods also full of apartment blocks.
Surrounded by countryside dotted with neighborhoods full of more apartment blocks.
And in the distance, a city.
Full of even more apartment blocks.
THE END
