Front Cover

Title Page

Micro God

How long has it been?

Richard Clarke aimlessly wandered the streets of downtown Detroit. Derelict buildings towered above him on all sides. He looked at home in the dismal setting with his wrinkled trench coat and days old beard. He hadn’t showered in almost a week and his short disheveled hair showed it. However, despite his poor hygiene, any passerby would have sworn he smelled like a freshly cut lawn. Clarke chose the smell since it was one of the few things left that made him feel anything.

Has it been another year already? Or two? I didn’t skip last year, did I?

Time was a concept he understood far better than the average person, yet had little need for. Every year on August 2nd, he would buy a bottle of wine, drink several mouthfuls, then pour the rest down a gutter in the street. It was the only anniversary he bothered to keep. Even his own birthday was little more than a day of the year.

Clarke pulled out an old calendar from one of his pockets. Half the days of June were marked out with big black X’s. He began scratching out the days of another week, paused, then crumpled the whole month and dropped it on the ground. With a grunt, he shoved the calendar back into his pocket, unsure if he even had the right year anymore.

The further into town Clarke walked, the worse the city looked. Soon, he came to the abandoned sections, where there was plywood in every window that wasn’t a shattered ruin, and the only inhabitants were junkies. Trash piled up by the buildings, some of it in bags, most of it spilling out onto the streets. Even with ten years of cleansing, the grime and muck would likely remain.

The destitute remains of the city were an ugly sight, but Clarke knew he was getting close to his goal. The target had to be somewhere nearby. As a personal rule, Clarke always tried to do good deeds every month. He had a quota that he liked to reach, though whether or not he reached it didn’t matter much to him. He didn’t expect the quota to do much good for him. It never did.

One more turn lead him down a dark alley. Trash lined the corners, coating the brick walls with stinking garbage. Shadows covered everything up to the roofs. Clarke couldn’t see anything at first, but one shadow moved against another and caught his attention. He walked in, interrupting a drug deal. Three gangsters looked up, standing tall over a small, thin man.

“Hey, who the hell are you?” a gangster wearing a bandana asked. He was the tallest of the three and had a muscular physique. Clarke assumed that when the man wasn’t selling drugs or intimidating people for fun, he spent time working out.