There were no stars visible, only smoke and dust. A darkening September sky filled with dying embers and lost wishes. It hung heavily over the world, drowsy with all the subtle burnings of the season, the glowing fires of autumn.

And somewhere underneath the sky, was the city, dusted with flickering neon. You could see the pink fluorescent signs everywhere, strips-clubs and porn-shops. And everywhere, vacant people with empty eyes, walking the streets with slow, dragging steps, lost and forgotten. Further away in the darkness, you could see the homeless kids huddling in murky alleys, creeping out of boxes, jostling for position by the trash fire. Their eyes were always pale and empty, dried-out. They sat in the rain-drenched gutter, watching some rotting leaves blow past, and underneath the many layers of dirty shawls and blankets, their genders were impossible to tell, staring androgynous kids, rustling like leaves in the wind.

Burnt-out cars lined the streets, smashed windshields and battered side doors. Inside of them, fires might be lit and some decaying prostitute girl might take her confused costumer into the back seat and let him take all her cloths off and use her catatonic body like a rag doll, sucking and nibbling at everything. And then, when everything is over, and the smell of blood and semen fills the car, they might lie together on the roof, watching the soft murmurs of the autumn sky, knowing that it was going to be October soon, trying to hold on the moments as they passed.

Amy turned away from the window.

The hospital lay whispering in silence. There was still a scent of iodine and formaldehyde in the air, and an even stronger smell urine and vomit on top of that. The wallpaper was starting to come off the walls, like dead skin peeled off the face of a terribly old man. There were strange puddles on the floor—odd, slow fluids that you never wanted to know where they came from.

The walls were all yellow, and there were cables and oxygen masks spread all over the floor. The hospital had been closed down years ago, sealed off and then boarded up. It stood lost and forgotten under the glowing autumn sky, watching as wind rattled the empty trees.

Amy’s feet echoed against the floor. The sound woke some drowsy insects and made them scuttle across the floor, wiggling their antennas. She watched them go off with a sudden interest. Insects had always captured her attention, probably having something to do with her childhood, when she had fed and raised roaches and spiders in her room.

She recalled cooking them in the microwave oven, until only a gummy husk of an insect remained. Like a shell wrapped around nothingness.

Amy looked a bit like a rag doll, dull-eyed and slack, limp and lazily sewn together. Her ragged t-shirt smelled of iodine still and her jeans were ripped and torn and her hair was a tangy mess. She didn’t even want to look herself in the mirror anymore.

She stopped in the corridor to look at an old woman connected to a breathing machine, her dried-out chest pumping up and down. There were various tubes and hoses randomly stuck into her dehydrated body, barely keeping her alive. Ages of dust and cobwebs covered her spindly body, and some shimmering roaches scurried over her shrunken feet.

The corridors were lit only by moonlight and the flooding light from a coke-machine. Every word uttered in the darkness echoes through the empty rooms and the corridors like a whisking memory. But no one said anything.

Suddenly, Amy noticed a little Japanese girl huddled in a corner, wrapped in some dirty blankets. You could see October within her eyes, stars gleaming and embers dying, charcoal leaves blowing in the wind. She smelled of sesame oil and gun powder, and sad little tears of autumn trickled down her cheeks.

“Miss, could you please help me find my mother?” she begged.

Amy glanced at her, a tiny little geisha doll, wrapped up in dirt-stained clothing. Somehow, she knew that the little girl had been homeless before she had been hospitalised. It was in her eyes, along with the dark tears.

“Your mother?”

“Yes,” said the little girl. “She just wandered off and left me here all alone. I don’t even know if she’ll ever come back.”

The fluorescent, dead light from the bulbs above them flickered over the girl’s sad little face. Her tears were a golden fire, burning like the season outside the windows. “I’ll let her know if I see her.”

“Thank you, miss.”

The girl disappeared somewhere under the folds of the blankets, murmuring and snuggling, sucking her thumb. Amy walked away down the corridor and the insects began to scuttle over the little girl.

* * *

She found the girl’s mother down on one of the lower floors, in a dim, murky ward – a ragged old Japanese woman with rotting toadstools in her eyes. She sat against the wall, and the room smelled of opium and of pleasant thoughts.

The woman was busy performing a delicate surgery upon her own arm. She slashed through veins and flesh with a gleaming scalpel, examining the miniature landscaped that unfolded underneath her golden skin. Warm blood trickled down onto the floor as she cut her way through the tender nerves, peeling off the dead skin as she went. Her golden eyes were dim and dull, but still utterly focused, as if she was a skilled surgeon. Amy just wanted to sit down and watch as she dissected her own wrist, but was finally forced to speak.

“Excuse me, but your daughter is looking for you,” she said.

The Japanese woman looked up, but her eyes were empty. Within her mind, there were only the pleasures of opium and mushrooms, the wonders of rainbow-coloured dreams, of far-past days spent watching the stars.

“I can’t feel my fingers anymore,” she explained, lazily.

And then she looked at her mutilated arm, tender veins wide open. You could see the bone underneath all the slashed flesh. Bone and skin covered the floor.

Behind her, there were cardio monitors and oxygen masks, cables and wires, and unmade hospital beds, all empty with semen-stained pillows.

Amy left her there, alone with her strange thoughts. She went out into the corridor again, dull-eyed under the flickering light bulbs.

All the windows were boarded up down there on the lower floors. No one was allowed to look out, to see what the world really looked like. Restraint jackets lay thrown away on the floor, along with some empty glass jars.

A dead TV lay humming electrically in a corner. The screen was broken and smashed but the blue, fluorescent light spilled over the dirty floor. Once in a while, the TV would come into focus and there would be some old movie on, some blond woman smiling with cracked lips and a mouth full of roaches and bullets.

Then, the TV would wink out again and there would be only a silent sparkling.

Amy had spent ten years at the hospital, recovering—her insides rearranging, and she had long since forgotten what the outside smelled like. Soon, it would be time for her to leave the hospital, soon... The Japanese woman moaned silently down the hall, dying, slitting her wrist…

* * *

Amy left the hospital that day. She stepped out into the darkness, and saw the sky dusted with flickering starlight, a thousand fireflies glowing in the night. Some charcoal leaves blew around her legs, already rotting, murmuring in funeral pyres, smelling of dust and other forgotten things.

She pulled her coat tightly around herself and strolled off down the street.

The hospital stood forgotten under the blazing September sky, mourning the smell of mushrooms and opium, of bygone dreams.

A gentle breeze rattled the empty trees. It would be October soon...