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The Dominion
The Dominion stands in the midst of the Brooklyn cacophony, surrounded by housing projects, laundromats, brownstones, pizza shops; assorted flotsam and jetsam of five boro's life. And while all that life travels around her, The Dominion stands, a sentinel to solidity and shadow.
It has been many things in the past century - sweat-shop, arms factory, speak-easy, through to its latest incarnation as apartments for the modern migrant-worker; commuting is easy from this close to the city. It has known many people, this building. It has housed them, watched them sweat and toil, watched them sing and dance, fornicate and rut. Silent, The Dominion has watched humanity in extremis and at rest.
Five stories high, squat yet tall, its dark grey walls reflect little light. It is smoke scarred, smudged here and there with particularly bad discolouration; mottled like shadows moving beneath a tree, like the camouflage worn by a chameleon soldier. But The Dominion doesn't blend in; it glowers.
There are no windows on the ground floor, just those smudged concrete walls. Close up, it's possible to see tiny glittering stones embedded there, quartz or the like, as if the builders had used dust from a diamond mine to bolster the concrete mix. From a distance though, they are more than cancelled out by the grey.
The Dominion's doorway is austere, one step up off the sidewalk; a rectangle carved into the concrete. The windows sport little adornment, again plain rectangles; no flourish of an architect's pen here.
There are no flags over the doorway, no marble panels etched with typography of ownership. No doorman greets the visitor. The Dominion surveys Brooklyn with cold eyes.
Standing on the sidewalk, looking up at The Dominion, Chris felt perspective play a weird trick. The facade loomed, like it was about to fall forward. He felt vertigo rush through him as if gravity were reversing its effect, like he was about to plummet upwards into the front elevation of The Dominion.
In his pocket, his fingers tightened around the cube.
He closed his eyes. Counted to five. Opened them again. The vertigo was gone. The building still loomed but, for now at least, Newton could rest easy in his grave.
Chris grabbed the scrap of paper from his pants' pocket, checked the address. This was it. This was The Dominion.
This was where Angela had lived.
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This Pod rates: 4 |
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