From a birds eye view Brooklyn is just like any other busy city. People get from A to B, seasons change, people earn a living—but from ground view, people aren’t making a living like everywhere else. Here is a rotting core of an apple constantly expanding in a global world. 2025 is a year where gang violence is exploding to unprecedented levels and the streets are constantly further dulled with an ominous darkness. Trees have been cut down, and trash cans burn on every corner to provide warmth for the hundreds of homeless. Since the wars erupted everything crumbled. The head of the gangs held the city in one hand and slowly squeezed the life out of it, the livelihood of the Brooklyn culture disintegrating into a million grains of sand.A father is squatting with his son in a makeshift home. The walls are nailed together in rough shards and the light shines through the holes in a million different directions, often shining directly into the eyes of the huddled illegal tenants at the crack of dawn. Their stomachs were so empty the hunger scratched at their stomach lining all through the night. It disrupted their sleep more than the pervasive sirens constant and repetitive. A gun shot in the distance broke the silence of the morning, as the father and son raise their bodies and open up from a contorted position where all limbs are concealed beneath the torso for maximum warmth.
The father limply gets up and kicks the hessian sack to the corner of the empty room. ‘I’m getting you a job today’, he says to the son. ‘I am no longer fit enough to run the Brooklyn race, but you my son are young and ready to take them on’. With this the son rubs his eyes and stretches out his feet, a taint of nerves swilling around his stomach. The father pulls the nailed up door aside and slinks off into the dirty sunrise, a messy smudge of blood pink and the grey smog and waste of the city.
At the one block still perfectly standing, only tattered by the bright graffiti tags and broken windows, the father stops still. He looks up at the centre of his Brooklyn. It seems to be the last pillar of optimism for him and his son. He enters through the side door and begins his ascent to the room on the top floor, far right corner. As he makes his way to room 431 he glances through the open doors that conceal much secrecy.
Once inside he is greeted by a large surly man named Ray. His eyes are almost as dark as his skin, and are sunken so deep into the sockets it is hard to concentrate when speaking to him. The father tells Ray, the master thief of Brooklyn his worries. Ray tells him to bring his son to him. Ray would help him; help him rise out of their shell of poverty that is keeping them prisoner in their own town.
When the father brings the son back to Ray he says he will train the son to be a pick-pocketer—the most nifty of all trades. The father agreed to leave the son in Ray’s care, working for him in organised crime for at least one year. Here the son would work in a sweat shop of thieves. Inside 431 they would sit together, listening to Ray as he paced the derelict warehouse style room, telling them every single step in mugging, breaking and entering, stealing. Assaults for cash were their speciality. It was the only way to survive now. The recession never seemed to end. Everybody was beyond desperate. After this they would trawl the streets with an approach hungry to make Ray proud. Bring him back enough money to make his crooked teeth into a malicious smile, even if they also had blood on their hands.
After only five months the father could barely lift him self up in the morning. Day after day he would stay in the same position for hours on end, staining into the dirty wooden floors an outline of his sprawled body just like police spray the surrounds of a figure when found dead at a crime scene. He looked out the gap in the vent in the wall and saw men, women, children chanting, screaming, brawling. They were headed down to green point. He pulled himself together, flattened down his thinning grey hair and began to follow the riot that was very quickly gaining momentum.
Once the crowd got to a stand still, the father lingered at the back of the crowd in fear of getting hurt. He only began to take in what was going on when he felt a cold hard blade at the front of his throat, prefaced by a strong arm wrapped around his torso that pulled him aside until they were both concealed by the concrete underbelly of the nearby bridge. ‘Take everything you want, I don’t have a thing!’ He exclaimed.
At that moment the father glanced down at the hand of his attacker. A small wilted rose was inked onto the flesh between the thumb and forefinger. It was his son. ‘Son, it is me’. The son gradually loosened his grip, dropped the knife and turned the father around to wrap his arms around him. They embraced one another as large blasts and screaming began to surface from the riot. Immediately the noise they heard was drowned out as their ears rested on one another’s.
The father knew that his son now belonged to Ray. Ray had taught his son a trade and therefore he was required to work for him for at least one year to pay him back. Without a word they ran to the subway on Franklin Avenue, past all the empty armours of buildings, some with their sign writing still perfectly intact. Brooklyn was still there physically, but as a whole town had now become redundant. On the subway they hid at the back, the son pulling a black hood over his head while the father’s heart palpitated at the same rhythm as the carriage pulling away from the station. Just then they slipped beneath the broken town and were sucked towards New York City.
Ray was waiting for them at the next station. He was always one step ahead. As the son spotted him amongst the bustle of people he didn’t even attempt to run the other way. What would he do to his frail father that could not run as fast? Instead he approached Ray with a strong stride, looking down at his black torn shirt and forcing himself not to begin to shake. In his head he replayed every single thing Ray had taught him. The words all swirled together as blood began to rush to his head. Ray closed his fist and the son felt warmth across his face as he opened his eyes and was now on the cement ground. Nobody flinched, they all continued along their business, happy just to be breathing. The son reached into his back pocket as Ray watched with close intent and pulled out a small revolver. He raised it to the shadow lurking above him and pulled his finger towards him. Just like that he was free again. This time he was one ahead.
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