Lighted Corners
The Rift Tynan Gallagher It is 1928. World War II ended ten years ago, but it is not how you remember it. Russia and a communist union of African countries teamed up and went after the United States and its growing democracy. America had no powerful friends at the time. Just scientists. All I know is that just before Africa and Russia took the capitol, their nations disappeared. They fell silent on June 4, 1918. After American troops crushed whatever troops were left, they went to investigate the two powerhouses. All that remained was rifts. That’s what we call them. Rifts. Shortly after the war, America began to celebrate. America strongarmed other countries into giving us their resources; otherwise we would make what happened to the other nations happen to them. Nations agreed to the terms without hesitation, and the U.S. began to prosper. That is, until the rifts began to form back at home in 1924. They began to pop up as small as golf balls. But then they began to grow. Now some city blocks are just...gone. At least I can tell you what a rift looks like...space. That’s where I come in, though. My name is Abraham, and I’m a cop in New York City. About five years ago, it was the easiest gig in the world. I would catch a few fellas having a bit too much fun, but that was about it. Nowadays, I’m in charge of the most fucked shit
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you’ve ever seen. I was tossed into the “Broadway Street Showcase” task force, named so lovingly by my partner, Herald, who was the first one to arrive on the scene of a rift victim. A man was hung up by his own organs, right in the middle of the street, over a rift. His blood was dripping into the rift when we arrived, and we could see the heart sagging out of his torn-open chest. Today, I’m on Houston Street. Same deal. We just got the body down. “24-year-old woman, stomach cut open. Eyes gouged out just like the last one,” Herald told me. I looked over the corpse. Disgusting, I’ll tell you. You never want to see inside someone. It’s a child-like fantasy, wondering what makes you up inside. But when it’s in front of you, splattered across the pavement, you can’t help but think about what a monster you were back then. “Any new details, Herald?” I asked. Herald looked over the body, then ran his fingers along the incision line of the stomach. “It’s a bit rougher,” he noted. I tilted my head and looked at him. “Ya wanna explain?” I asked. “Oh, yeah, yeah,” he said, “so what I’m gettin’ at is this. Look at where the stomach was cut open. It’s more jagged, more crooked than last time. Last time it was like a doctor,” he explained. I bent down, slapped on a pair of gloves, and ran my finger along the cut. He was right. It’s almost as if the knife itself, or the hand using it, had gone down in quality. “I see your point.” We handed the body off to Joe Fort. He was our local doc, an expert in autopsies and all that. I wouldn’t
