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Every court is a horror movie setting at its core, where property matters more than human lives and justice gets measured in billable hours.
She’s just lost too many friends to places like this to view it with a neutral gaze—children sent back to abusive parents, addicts jailed when they needed treatment, innocent people imprisoned for years by lying prosecutors or cops.
But she is both the woman and the child who became the woman, just as she is both a human being and a city, and just as any Black woman must both be hypercompetent and keep it real. Some of that isn’t fair. No one should have to be so many things. But since Brooklyn is…
oh, God, rats and pigeons and cockroaches, and pigeons carrying rats holding cockroaches! She’s never seen anything so nasty, and she’s a Lovecraftian horror.
They’re just shredding the Ur-matter, and pissing all over it, and poisoning the Ding Hos with diseases too exotic even for her alien immune system to manage. Too late, R’lyeh senses Neek’s influence upon even the lowest life of this terrible city. The rats chitter with his attitude: We caused the Black Plague, bitch, who the fuck you think you are?
Proposal accepted,’” the Ur says, finally. “‘Your deaths are now optional. Our current influence upon and observations of city instantiation will be minimized where possible and negated entirely going forward.’” There is a pause, during which all of the New Yorks stare at each other and R’lyeh in confusion and dawning understanding. Then the Ur adds, reluctantly, “‘Sorry about all the murders. But we still don’t like you, so please leave.’”
