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THE VAMPIRE STATE

(First published in the December 1991 issue of OMNI Magazine)

Like flies to wanton boys, are we to the gods.

They kill us for their sport.

William Shakespeare -- King Lear

A rank, sulfurous halo hangs low over Manhattan. Driven by icy gusts, tentacle-like fingers of swirling amber gases swoop toward the slime-slick pavement, probing deep into yawning doorways, arcades and atria, seeking out the specters that lurk within their drafty expanse.

It’s Christmas Eve in the Big Apple. Chiming in the distance in pious unison, ethereal and uninvolved, church bells summon the faithful. Chiming? No, tolling -- a lugubrious knell for a swarming, moribund metropolis, for the one thousand and one night creatures that stalk its streets, for the living dead I get paid to hunt down and kill.

It all came together half a century ago or more when politicians, anxious to save face and give voters the impression that justice was being served, let the long simmering rancor, the restive hatred burst like an ugly abscess. Violence, sporadic and extemporaneous at first, grew bolder and deadlier with each secret municipal emergency meeting.

No one complained. Not a single cry of horror was ever heard. It was too late. Justice -- like truth -- the stronger of two conflicting arguments, justice, the paradox suspended on the tip of a sword, put on its most fearsome face. The Lady took off the blindfold and winked lasciviously at the oligarchs. And the carnage began.

‘Tis the season of all folly, falalalala … and the blood of the young, thinner than water, cheaper than hogwash, coalesces with the putrid rivulets of swill and excrement that hug the curb and cascade into the storm drains.

Torn by crime, soaring unemployment, triple-digit inflation, homelessness, merciless slashes in social services, suffocated by Orwellian federal statutes, America’s big cities are putrefying and crumbling like the toes of a leper. For every child who wakes up poor and hungry, another dies of neglect or abuse. One-parent families are now the norm, each producing its quota of junkies and juvenile offenders. America has the world’s largest and fastest growing prison population. More than four million minors are in custody on charges ranging from truancy and drug use to petty theft and prostitution. Two million more serve hard time for capital crimes: murder, rape, aggravated assault, armed robbery and home invasion. Most are incarcerated with hardened adult criminals -- ten to a cell. There is no more room.