Before you read these lines, do yourself a favor and look up the track "Chorazin" by Lustmord from the album The Word As Power. Thank me later!
I was afraid you would ask.
Where Coliseum Street crosses 39th, at what is said to be the exact center of Old Retrocity, is the Black Heart.
If you search for it, you will find it. Lost in the middle of the abandoned neighborhood. The serpenting streets are all leading to it. Not a soul around. Even the rats ran away from it. If you stop a moment to let the echo of your steps dissipate between the buildings walls, you will feel it. More and more as you get closer. The slow pulse. The heartbeat.
If you search for it, you will find it. Some say they followed the whispers. Others speak of the subtle melody that got them there. I just followed the pulse.
But here it stands.
A massive cube of black stone. At least twenty stories tall. I don’t know if it’s some kind of polished concrete or actual marble, but its surface has a shine that reflects the neon light from the buildings around. It has no doors, no windows, no apparent openings. The cube is warm and a mist surrounds it when it rains, slowly rising to the sky in odd designs and shapes.
For all your questions the answer is the same: I don’t know.
Nobody knows.
Nobody knows when it was built, or if it was built.
Nobody remembers what was there before it was.
Nobody knows if it has a purpose.
Citizens avoid the place at all cost. They refuse to mention it in conversations. In fact, the denial is so strong that most people do not even know it is there.
And yet, for some it became an obsession. Some people have seen the Heart in their dreams and can describe it with great accuracy even if they swear that they have never been there.
And among those who have seen it, many have given correlating testimonies about windows appearing on the dark facades, and silhouettes staring at them through the warm glow of light before vanishing as they appeared.
I just don’t know.
Don’t go there.
I never went back there. And if I ever do, it will be to try to get back this part of myself that remained there, trapped forever in the black stone and the mist.
