text: The man on the bench had a cigarette dangling from his lips and held a phone in his hands. The smell of smoke filled the air, and a visible cloud hung over him. He was laughing at something on his phone - a video, perhaps, or a cleverly captioned photo. Something hilarious. A rat ran out from beneath the bench and climbed into the overflowing trash bin behind him. He saw nothing but whatever was on his phone, and his laughter grew louder every minute, punctuated more often than not by a cough from the depths of his blackened lungs. Above him, some crows looked down curiously, perched on street lamps that were turned on and humming despite the late afternoon sun. The man’s face was drenched in sweat, and purple veins throbbed against his forehead like little asthmatic worms.The way he gasped for air before each laugh; the way he had to really suck it in before shoving it right back out with a convulsive guffaw that shook the bench. People walked toward him on the sidewalk, but instead of smiling at what might have been contagious laughter were the circumstances slightly tilted, they stopped and crossed the road before continuing in their set direction. The heat was suffocating. The news had said today was one of the hottest days on record. The pavement simmered. The video - it was definitely a video, people could hear the music and the quickly morphing voices - continued on, and the screen of his phone was moist with perspiration from both his brow and fingers. His laugh was so loud, now, that shopkeepers were watching from their windows, the air-conditioning just barely keeping them cool, the suspicious rattle of these summertime machines keeping them fearful that the heat might get them yet. A crow cawed, and more came to join them perched atop the streetlight, which shimmered in the blinding sun. A dozen or so crows; a murder. The video played on, and the laughing grew and grew, his body vibrating with it, and the harsh miasma of cigarette smoke traveled down the nearest sidewalk, through winding alleys, into an apartment building where a couple had been fighting through sweat and violence, shouting about how they needed to get the fuck out, now, l*et’s go somewhere before we have no choice, no, it’s too late, smell the decay, we’re as good as dead.* And then, just like that, a loud pop and the man’s laughter stop.s The sound of his phone hits the pavement and breaks the short silence. From the ice cream parlor across the street, a woman licking the side of a dripping cone opens the door and looks outside, screams. Around the bench, gore litters the street and sidewalk: an ear here, an ear there. Blood like water from a tangled hose: drip, drip.The man remains on the bench, slouched now, hands to his sides. His neck, open and exposed, raw nerve and tendon. On the ground next to his phone, his eyes, both eyes, lay still and sad, trailed behind by crimson rectus. From the dumpster emerges the rat. It crawls down the metallic surface to the floor, picks up an eye and runs off. The street is silent, the sun is hot, and the crows fly off in search of cooler trees.