Zagreb - A Short Story by Jan

Seven months. It keeps pouring. My skin feels like it's melting, a wave of water washing me, cleaning me. The city protects me when I let it, but I stand in the middle of the road, soaking, cold, purified. I yell again and again. I scream the name which has become a mantra. My body is heavy, fatigue mixing with the rain.
These streets are my home. Sprinting through them, searching, I stumble upon people I know, I have known, I don't, won't. The old trams of my childhood are replaced by a new breed, technological wonders flying past me. The blues of this city are present, in color and in feeling, yet my only goal remains distant. I run again and embrace the moisture.
They call me a great magician, a wizard, for I can create wonders and call forth illusions. I easily fill great halls and football fields with fans, yet nobody notices my passage. Nobody looks back at the soaked and ragged man wandering the streets. Children stop beside me. When I ask them where I need to go, they only smile, innocent, curved lips form a picture and I go on. No one knows where it is, nobody pauses to think.
I listen to the heartbeat of the street, the pavement, the concrete on either side of me. I fumble through grey gardens.
Children walk along the street, holding their parents' hands. Kids are interested in what you have to show them as long as you don't put a name on it. Kids are a drag.
I look left and right. "Where are you?" My voice is weak. I can't mimic the loudness of my performances, the charisma which entangled imaginations. I can't flip a card, I can't pull a coin from behind someone's ear.
"You need to make a left turn at the next intersection, and you need to follow the trail which will form." The voice is barely audible, yet it's all around me. I turn to see who spoke the words. Black, yellow, green, red umbrellas, reflecting the drops. No one looks at me, no one speaks to me. The words repeat themselves. "...next intersection... form in front of..."
Standing. Petrified. A ghost among the living. I make for that intersection, the one in front of me. I hope that's the one, not the one behind. A woman, beautiful, walks by, dragging a small dog behind her. The dog is wearing a rain coat and a sad look. Animals like the rain. Right?
I walk on. At the corner, I turn left, treading slowly, looking for the trail. My eyes are keen and I begin to see a pattern in the spaces between the cars, I follow it, quick, quick! Run-
"Ugh," a lovely woman with a dog lies on her ass, covered in city rain, mud, her dog barking. She's just sitting on the street, for no reason. She turns her gaze towards me.

"Watch where you're goddamn going!"
I stare at her in disbelief. I turn my gaze towards the pattern, and it's slowly disappearing, I can't discern it any longer.
Did I hit her?
Follow the trail.
She's sitting right there, she can't get up.
It's now or never.
"I'm so sorry," the words erupt from my mouth. I reach for her hand, trying to help her up. She waves me off. I crouch and lift her umbrella. She's on her feet. Boots, a black skirt reaching her knees, a thin leather jacket, long hair, brunette, glasses slightly cocked. I hold her umbrella for her while she collects her belongings. The dog stopped making noises and is now looking at me. I stare at him. I try to read the dog's mind.
"Just watch where you're going." I can't manage it. "Hey." I shake my head, focusing my eyes on her's. "Can I have my umbrella back?"
"You want your umbrella back?" I'm genuinely amazed, as her irises are the color of a van that just drove behind her.
"Are you serious?" Her tone becomes such.
"Oh, I'm sorry, just not used to talking, not in the last few days." My face turns to the pavement. Her boots are dark blue, polished. The puddle she just sat in reflects the blue and the black of her skirt. And
"Please, can I have my umbrella?" her legs are laced with mud, she can't walk like this, she needs to dry off, to clean herself. "Come on, man!"
"Do you want to go grab a cup of coffee?" I look into her eyes again, and forget what for.
"Uh, sorry?" her face becomes a puzzle, I try to complete it, to arrange the pieces. "Just give me my umbrella back."
"You need to dry up, clean the mud. I'll cover the coffee. I just don't want you to remember me as a bad person." I have money? Do I?
She stares at me for a couple of seconds. Eyes pierce. She shrugs and reaches for the umbrella. I let it go. She really is lovely, hope she doesn't think I'm crazy. Looking at her watch, she asks "Just a quick cup. Where?"
"I have no idea, don't really know the bars in this part of town." I hope she doesn't leave. She doesn't.
"Well, there's a nice place two blocks from here, if you want." She doesn't comment my hampered clothes or my soaked features. I nod and walk beside her. She lets me hold the dog's leash while she rummages through her bag. When she was sure she lost nothing, she quickened her pace.
"What's your name?" I ask the air in front of me, but she takes the hint.
"Hana." We walk on, in silence. When we reach the café, the doors are shut and the lights are off. Now it's my turn to take the hint. She turns towards me and, genuine regret, says "Oh-they-must-have-closed-in-the-meantime-what-a-shame-don't-know-any-other-places-and-my-oh-my-look-at-the-time-I-should-be-going-sorry."
She turns and I know I'll be left to the search once more. Before she leaves, I call her name.
"Hana, a goodbye present."
I do my card trick. I wave my hands in front of my chest, and reach towards her dog, slowly. He looks at me. I reach beneath him and feel for the card. I'll snap my fingers and bring up the card, it will be the queen of hearts, how romantic, then maybe I'll get a second shot. I snap my fingers and pull
Far to the north, in the direction of the mountain at the base of which our city is nestled, a loud sound, thunder, explosion, earthquake. I rise, the card falls from my hand into my pocket and my look shoots in the direction of the noise. Nothing. Hana's face turns white as a light tremor shakes us. Her dog yelps and lies down. She looks at me, blank. I face her, empty.
"What was that?" As she asks this, another quake and a grotesque sound greet us. She picks up her dog and looks left, looks right. I stand, staring at her, unable to speak. All around us, people frozen in their places, looking, watching, searching for something, a sign of meaning. A green fork of lightning tears the sky. Once, twice. On the third time I can see it's not coming from the sky. Then, the ground truly rumbles and moves. A building nearby collapses in on itself and people at last regain the use of their legs. Panic spreads. Panic. Panic.
"MOVE!" I yell and turn to run, south, south, sou- Hana frozen, dog in arms, eyes glued to the sky. I don't know you, I don't care about you, I'll go on without you, you wouldn't even have coffee with me!
It took me twenty seconds to make her move, ten seconds to pull us into a running start and five minutes of stampedo sprinting to get to a place where the buildings wouldn't crush us. Dead men and women. Dead children. Wrecked homes, toppling one onto another. We ran south. Don't trust the safe zone, never trust the safe zone, run run run.
We were joined by, we joined a marathon of people heading our way, the safe way, the safe, don't trust the safe, we ran and walked. We reached the river, Sava, in a matter of minutes. The bridge closest to us was ruined, people were swimming across, we made for the shore, we were close to it. Fissures cracked the earth beneath us and a green light emanated through them, a welcoming light, warm and cozy, yet people died when they fell into it and people screamed when they were near it.
"Watch OUT, BENEATH YO-" Hana screeched at me, I jumped, jumped onto her, toppling her and the pooch onto the ground, the earth. The earth I stood on a second ago was gone, replaced by the greens of a colored floodlight. It was at this moment that I realized the rain had stopped. What would have been merriment at another time was now drowned in the screams and growls of thousands of people, some dying, some swimming, drowning, and running.
Unto this suffering came the final blow. Before our eyes, the city moved. Its buildings were demolished, yes, but this movement was in the form of a wave, a motion.
I pulled myself up, raising Hana. She was now screaming after her dog, lost out of sight, repeating his name, but I couldn't hear it, I can't remember it. Only one name stuck inside my mind, the mantra of days past. As the beast rose from the ground, its hide asphalt, its claws skyscrapers, its eyes lakes, watering, pouring out, weeping over the carnage, I recalled its name.
"Hana." I made a step back, trying to pull her after me. She shook me off. "Listen to me! We have to move, we have to-"
"That's not even my real name..." She was crying, I could see. No more screams, no more, only tears for a city of people, some of which she knew, someone whom she loved. "We don..."
"It's rising, and it's moving towards us, we have to move, get out of its way." As I say this, I move back some more and pull her as much as I can, but she's unwilling. She would neither go nor stay. Flabby, yet perfectly balanced. She doesn't look at me. I let go, as I turn to the river, prepared to swim. One last glance shows her as motionless. I am not.
Hand after hand plow the surface of the river, easy, no problem, I can do this, a host of swimmers on either side, we cross it, get out and stand on the shore, helping others out, watching the spectacle, seeing the being from beneath the city move and rise more and more, higher, greater, taller than anything I've ever seen, a dragon, a giant, a legend from some forgotten time, eyes glued to its perfect motion, ears imprisoned by the screams of anguish as lives stop.
I try to locate the woman I call Hana, but I can't, I don't see her, people swarm like ants. My eyes drawn like magnets to the creature, liquid eyes glowing with an inner green light, water pouring, human figures inside the falls. It carries the whole Old Town on its back, wearing it like a suit of armor. It turns towards the mountain, and it is as large as the mountain, it is a mountain, earthlike, carved, damaged, and gargantuan.
People around me run, walk, sit, cry, circle. My eyes are transfixed, and I can't shake off the memory of my afternoon destination. A blue line is in front of me, translucent. It was there two days ago and after I lost it, it's here again. Again! It leads across the river.
It leads the way I came here.
It leads onto the Back of the City.
I grew up in that place. Danced with the seasons, collected autumn leaves from the parks. The trees were so big, beautiful. All the playgrounds I visited as a kid, my kindergarten, grade school, any school, anything that meant something. Everything was on the back of that huge Creature, it took it all away from me, from everyone here. The trail leads back.
I go back.

The transition from Earth to Creature was seamless in my eyes. The blue line which led me here now trailed upward, onto It. I hesitated and stood for some time. It moved. Here, the movements were not as drastic as further up, in the Old City center. My mind grasped these pictures and my thoughts tried to make sense of it. I've gone mad, along with everyone else. I don't know if anyone else hears or sees what I do, but we're mad, all of us. We're mad and as I think this my right foot places itself onto the monster's skin. Asphalt.
It is hard to walk uphill. Especially hiking an irregular breathing mountain made out of concrete. I manage. It takes me more than ten minutes to stop staring at the pavement in front of my boots and to sum up the courage to look around, see the City I know so well, the thing I was looking for. It is in this moment that I see them, clad in their grays and blacks and blues and ochres. They walk around, following a pattern of movement, flowing in a semi paralyzed dance. They've moved out of their buildings, out of their flats. Old people everywhere around me, silent, dead silent.
I ask the nearest grandpa what's going on and he ignores me. Whomever I approach ignores me. Everyone acts as if I don't exist, and it's even harder to bear now once I want to be seen so badly, now that I want answers.
Buildings rise and drop and a distant, but distinct rhythmic beat thumps the ground under my feet. A gyroscopic mechanism wakes inside of me and in time I adjust to the flow. I moved with the city, along with the monster which gave it life.
The path was obvious to me, leading through crowds of senior citizens, old ladies with their crazy little dogs, old men with their funny hats. A tram car passes at one moment, and I see a smiling grandma driving it. The blue line bounces from corner to corner, forming the journey. Sometimes I would return to certain points more than once. In time I lost the need to justify this path or that. I walked and followed, step by step, one foot in front of the other until my past was a mist of shoes. My future, however, remained impossible to decode, so I followed the blue line.
The Little River Sava, I called it.
Images started forming in my mind, walking, construction and destruction, walking, governments formed and toppled, walking, kings crowned and murdered, walking.
Walking.
I see myself in front of the largest audience I have ever seen and I perform no magic trick but they clap, they clap furiously. I bow and the image is gone.
It is replaced by a blue orb, connected to the trail I followed. Levitating two feet in the air, inside an empty fountain. I stand in front of it and take in the view.
My primary school, fifty paces to my left. Second and third floor demolished, desks and chairs hanging from the wreckage, littering the front entrance. It's funny. I was there yesterday. Sort of.
In front of me a crossroads, empty. The street is long, I can see it twist and bend a bit as the creature moves. A group of retired folks stand close to one another, moving in the same way. A flow. Slow and deliberate.
I turn my focus to the orb and I move towards it.
Blank.
A green room, green lights, warm, homey, cozy. I'm sitting on a green sofa, soft, warm, dry. Across me is an old person, whose sex I can't deduce. Its lips are spread into a smile and its eyes are almost closed, the lines on its face too many to even start counting. Long white hair tied in a knot on top its head. Of course it was wearing a green robe.
It moves a cup of tea in my direction, sliding it across a table that wasn't here a second ago. I take a sip. Rose hip. Burn my upper lip, would leave a tip, but I'm not in a bar. I look at the Old.
"A question, maybe?" Its mouth opens and speaks with a voice deep, too deep to be human. It warms the room as its sound swims through the air. I open my mouth and cough, then I open it again.
"Will you tell me what all this is?" I put the almost empty cup on the table.
"This is me and you are now with me, so I have taken care of you. You heard me and now I hear you." As it speaks, it mellows me and I drop deeper into the sofa. I only wish to listen.
After a minute, my mouth moves, "Can I stay here?"
"Maybe."
I stare into its eyes. This is how we remain for some time.
"What's happening with the city?" Dry mouth.
"Change. I am changing, and this is reflected on the outside," it scratches its head, "I suppose you could say it was about time." A smile.
"A lot of people died today," I take another sip,"... and what's with the old people outside? You aren't hosting bingo, are you?" It looks at me, angling its head. "Nevermind."
"People died but tomorrow they will be replaced by new men and women, growing out of the city under their feet," it pauses for a moment, closing its eyes for the first time. "The senior members of the human race remind me of something, as I remind them of something." It opens its eyes and now it is rising from its seat, and a figure, far taller than I had anticipated, stands before me. "Do you wish to stay or do you wish to leave?"
Shock. Wh-
"I will need your answer very soon." It turns its back to me.
"If I stay, can I leave later?" I know the answer.
"No." I knew the answer.
"Why do you want me to stay?" I stand up.
"You... You, because you listened and you came. No one else did. I want you to stay because we all stayed once."
I don't know what to say. I turn around the room. A giant circle, a wheel moving through time, independent of time.
"Will you stay?"
I'm too scared to look as I mouth the word 'yes'. Silence. My voice rings.
"No, I can't." It starts to turn towar-
I am in the mud, beneath. The Creature, the City, has stopped moving, petrified, connecting the old area to the mountains, forming a new mountain range. The buildings are gone, the surface unspoiled by city life. Between the Beast's rocky figure and the Earth beneath it lies a cavern, created by their interaction. A wonder.
People gather in many places, mostly in places which still stand, places under which it didn't take root, didn't grow, where it-
It. As I recall the face and the room, I find it, remember. The name of it.
A dog pisses on my right leg, one of those small battery powered K9 jacket wearing growling crazy dogs. I protest but it starts barking, that high pitch, damn.
"Sorry, sorry!” a high pitched voice rings. “Can you catch the bitch, she's been runnin-"
Blue boots en route. And I still don’t know her name.