A Novel in Progress
Rashi runs errands for people who don't explain themselves.
Glass eyes. Laser guns shaped like antiques.
Paintings retrieved from museums nobody visits anymore.
It's a living. Barely.
The Drowning City has always been this way — acid rain, neon bleeding into floodwater, a motel that plays the same song until the song becomes structural. Rashi knows the city the way you know a bad relationship. Intimately. Grudgingly. Without any clear memory of when leaving stopped feeling like an option.
Then the Industrial Sector starts pulling him back. The songs start migrating. And something called Bellona — city, memory, woman, system — begins rearranging the emotional gravity of everything he thought he understood about his own life.
Rain on Colt Street is a fractal noir about pattern recognition and whether the patterns were always yours. About what cities extract from the people who survive them. About the difference between being haunted and being tuned.
Kafka went to the Castle and couldn't get inside.
Rashi already lives there.
He just hasn't checked the lease.
I waited. In silence. The building hummed around me—that old, insistent sound of something still pretending to be alive. Still pretending it mattered. Time was fleeting. An illusion. Unstable. Reliable, yes, but it belonged to nobody. That was the thing nobody understood. Time belonged to no one in particular, which meant it could betray anyone equally. --- The next day arrived like static. The drowning city outside swayed like boats with no buoyancy. Traffic lights. Skyscrapers. Neon signs moving out of habit instead of purpose.
The rest of the night was static. I often wonder if the game board exists and we're just the pieces. Pawns. Bishops. Queens. What happens when one piece suddenly learns how to move through different angles?
There are forms somewhere. I think. Maybe. The moth doesn't generate them. Moths don't do paperwork. But something does. The flame, maybe. Or the light itself.
Woke up from another panic attack tonight. Jittery. Guilty. Like I'd broken some invisible law while asleep. The motel kept playing the same old song by The Angels. Constantly. Like the speakers had forgotten how to die.
I was the stupid moth returning to the flame again. Felt disappointed in myself. The museum felt wrong the second I stepped inside. Not dangerous wrong. That would've been easier.
The escalator didn't stop. It stuttered. Just slightly. Like something inside it had forgotten the rhythm for half a second before remembering again.
The city kept guiding me back toward it. That was the realization I couldn't surgically remove from my head anymore. Not coincidence. Not curiosity. Guidance.
At club SANBALLAT, everybody came to forget Bellona for several hours at a time. Or at least pretend they could. The bass shook the underground dome with violent mechanical precision while a mutilated techno rendition of My Baby's Back screamed through the architecture like industrial hypnosis. The rich danced beside the chemically ruined. Nobody judged the synchronization anymore. The plague dance had already become tradition.
SANBALLAT looked less like a nightclub and more like a refurbished catacomb trying to cosplay as high society. Roman arches. Velvet darkness. Victorian lanterns hanging overhead like funeral chandeliers. And somewhere beyond the smoke and impossible lighting: Lady Strange waited silently inside her private chamber beneath the dome.
In that moment Rashi wished to wake up. Wished the entire city would finally release him from itself. But if Lady Strange was there, then none of this could possibly be a dream anymore. He was already too lucid. Already too deep inside Bellona's machinery. And that had always been the problem.
Rashi wakes up already sitting. He doesn't remember sitting up. Only that he is. The room is wrong in a way he can't name. There is a sound—soft, persistent, like something trying not to be heard. It takes him a moment to understand it isn't in the room. It's behind the wall. No—inside it. No— The radio. He doesn't remember turning it on. "My baby's back…" The voice is distant. Warped. As if the song is being played from another room, or another night entirely. The melody bends at the edges, slipping in and out of tune. Rashi presses his hand against his chest. Too fast. Too tight. Something is wrong. He tries to swallow and can't. The air feels thick, like it has weight. Like breathing requires permission he hasn't been granted yet. "My baby's back…" The words drag. Stretch. Snap back into place. He looks toward the door. There's someone standing there. No—there isn't. The shape is wrong. Too low. Too still. Rashi blinks. The landlord. Or something that remembers being the landlord. He's standing in the doorway, but the proportions are off. The shoulders don't line up. The arms—if they are arms—hang too close to the ground, bent in a way that suggests joints where there shouldn't be any. Rashi doesn't move. The thing doesn't either. "My baby's back…" The voice cracks. For a moment, the sound sharpens—clear, almost normal—before sinking again, like it's being pulled under something. Rashi exhales too quickly. His vision narrows. The walls seem closer. Closer. The landlord shifts. No. Not shifts. Folds. That's when Rashi sees it. The tail. Curled. Raised. Waiting. A scorpion. Too large. Too wrong. But maybe not. Maybe it's small. Maybe it's always been small. Maybe it's on the floor. Maybe it's— Rashi jerks his feet up onto the bed. Too late. Something moves. A quick, dry sound—like paper dragged across wood. His eyes dart downward. Nothing. Nothing there. He looks back at the doorway. The landlord is gone. Or never was. The door is closed. He's sure it wasn't closed before. "My baby's back…" The song loops. Or maybe it never stopped. Rashi presses his palms against his eyes. Hard. Too hard. When he pulls them away, the room feels thinner. Like it might tear if he looks at it the wrong way. There. On the wall. Just above the dresser. Something small. Black. Perfectly still. A scorpion. This time it is the right size. Or at least a size that makes sense. Rashi doesn't breathe. The scorpion doesn't move. "My baby's back…" The voice softens. Warms. Almost comforting now. Rashi watches it. It watches nothing. Seconds pass. Or longer. Or not at all. Then— It isn't there. No movement. No sound. Just absence. Rashi leans forward slowly. Too slowly. The wall is empty. He laughs. Once. Short. Dry. It doesn't sound like him. "My baby's back…" The song ends. Or fades. Or sinks into the walls again. Rashi lies back down, but doesn't remember deciding to. His eyes stay open. The room stays wrong. And somewhere, very quietly— something scratches.