Red Eyes: Portrait of a City

So many of the businesses in Lickton were gated, barred, or just downright broken. The damage wasn't contained to businesses either. Boarded up windows and doors hid fearfully behind waist high fences burdened with condemned signs, neither of which kept anyone out. Kids, junkies, and homeless came and went as they pleased in houses that no longer pleased anyone. Graffiti crawled up along side of buildings like colorful mold, messages meant for a handful of people and warnings to everyone else. Trash overflowed into the gutter from vacant lots and you couldn't walk one block without encountering shards of broken bottles or empty wrappers from chips and candy. In the summer you could taste the rot.

Lamar winced as he failed to avoid a pot hole. His Volvo was heavy enough that dropping into one of the craters that pitted most of the major streets in Lickton but especially the blocks that spanned from East Lickton, Martin Luther King Jr., to San Antonio, could wreck his alignment but all he could do was drive.