mere anarchy, baby

griffon lurked in the shadowy part of the room, straddling a wrong-way-round chair. his fingers ratcheted out bloodless noises- tap. tap. tap.- on the grunge and grey of the brickwork like metal. i lay defiantly in the pale watery light coming in through the window bars. turning and turning. the best lack all conviction, and we were the worst, filled with passionate intense mechanics and lassaiz-faire and many months had gone by.

from forty or fifty stories down, you could hear the gunshot and sirens, the shuddering of collapsing buildings and the dull roar of fires, but there was a strange calm in our cell, for nothing human reached us. no screaming horrific murdered, no shouting gunmen, no bereft or destroyed plaintive voices. it made the destruction seem peaceable, tolerant- we didn't care anymore. it was like griffon said one time, as we stood pale-skin-to-pale-skin at the window watching flames play over the city. "it's just anarchy, baby," he muttered against my face. it was the last little flame of hope dying in my heart and the final takeover of my inhuman side when i pulled away from him a little and studied his grey eyes, the fire in the city, the dilapidated cell, and the endless endless hard blue sky. it hurt for a second, what he said. then i shrugged. "mere anarchy," i said back. i talked almost against his mouth, but it wasn't like there was anything there anymore. certainly not desire. certainly not passion. certainly not vivacity or breathing or liquid motion. the whole world had walls and our bodies were blank and pitiless machines, and only the sky was real, turning and turning and fading and arched, but-- too far away to hear.