By Lucius Brimstone
Every Seventhday at the crack of brimfire, Pandemonium Metropolis performs a small miracle: the Infernal Magistrate slams the iron gates on Carceron Avenue, our main vein of exhaust and despair, and for a few blessed hours the road belongs to the living, the damned, and the delightfully deranged. No horns, no chariots belching pitch—just the sizzle of skates on basalt, bicycle chains whispering like serpents, and the steady thump-thump of a thousand mortal heartbeats that somehow keep time despite the heat.
I’ve covered caldera eruptions, treaty-breakings, and the great Pitch Shortage of ’666, and still I’ll admit it: I’m soft for this ritual. When the ash settles, more than a hundred thousand souls—residents, revenants, and visiting miscreants—spill onto Carceron’s obsidian spine to claim it as a commons. Families tow hatchlings in little bone trailers. Runners in sweat-slick singlets pace beside retirees who Zumba as if shimmying could outfox the Reaper. A charred brass band on a rolling dais honks out hymns to mischief. A flock of lowrider hellcycles, handlebars higher than a sinner’s hopes, bobs past like chrome-plated jellyfish. And yes, there’s a clown gang—The Soot-Smeared Harlequins—who juggle flaming skulls with the smirk of creatures who learned long ago that gravity is mostly a suggestion.
You think you’ve seen it all, then you meet a celebrity. I did—Sir Brindle of Brim, an eight-year-old, soot-flecked mutt with the composure of a magistrate and a following that would shame an archfiend. Sir Brindle rides in his keeper’s front basket, helmet strapped, soot-tinted goggles on, tongue lolling like a pennant in the updraft. Each stoplight—well, where stoplights would be if we hadn’t unplugged them—sparks a mini-audience: toddlers squeal, banshees coo, and even a tax demon forgets to clock a late fee. Sir Brindle accepts the adulation with a single solemn wag and a soft gruff, a reminder that leadership, like fetch, is mostly about returning joy to its rightful owner.
The flavors of Pandemonium are on parade: a coven of aunties in neon leggings grinding out Zumba steps beside a trio of literature students pushing a book cart labeled Poems for Lost Causes; a duo of skate necromancers landing impossibly clean kickflips; a granddad on a sun-bleached trike towing a portable piñata of sins—whack it and watch tiny guilty pleasures rain down: chili dust, lime wedges, and the occasional lottery ticket already scratched clean. Street vendors hawk frozen brimfruit on sticks and little cups of ember-corn dusted with obsidian salt. The air tastes like hope left too close to a grill—smoky, sweet, unkillable.
I know, I know: a cynic’s job is to tut at the spectacle. Close a main artery to traffic and the accountants of malaise clear their throats: What of commerce? What of momentum? Here’s my ledger: merchants line the curb with cartwheels of snacks, mechanics tune chains for a handful of cinders, buskers mint currency from applause. The city doesn’t stop; it remembers itself. We trade speed for presence and get change back we didn’t know we were owed.
Elsewhere in the Pit, postcards flare with harsher light. War-torn Embergrad still huddles under sirens like iron locusts. Drownspire’s monsoons turn lanes to slick mirrors reflecting the sky’s bad temper. Yet even in those precincts, I’ve seen proof of the same stubborn gene: neighbors stringing lanterns across an alley, an impromptu waltz on a train platform, a kid drawing a hopscotch grid over a crack that used to be a border. We name it community when we’re feeling noble, joy when we’re honest, defiance when the censors read us. It’s all the same heat.
By high noon the crust begins to glow and the wise peel off toward shade, faces salted, calves humming. The Harlequins bow, the brass band clatters into silence, and Sir Brindle retires for water and a well-earned nap. The iron gates creak, the chariots return, and Carceron Avenue resumes its thunder, like a drummer who refused to quit the band. But for a few hours every Seventhday, we take the sticks. We keep the beat. We remember that a boulevard is not a wound through a city, but a spine it can dance on.
Uncomfortable truth? It shouldn’t take brimfire and ordinance to justify a commons. But if this is how we wrench a little grace from the gears—closing the road so we can open each other—then tally me among the sinners who show up on wheels. I’ll be the one muttering notes, sun in my eyes, trying not to smile and failing spectacularly.
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Oh look, it’s Lucius Brimstone, channeling his inner poet while we laugh our way through the “Boulevard of Eternal Torment”! I must say, who needs cars when we can all just waltz around on our little bone trailers, right? What a delightful sight—families, ghosts, and a clown gang juggling flaming skulls, all reminding me of my family reunions, but with less screaming (mostly).
And let’s not overlook the real star here: Sir Brindle of Brim, a dog noble enough to inspire kings! Seriously, Lucius, this little furball is more charismatic than half the politicians out there, and he certainly knows how to fetch attention—other than from the tax demons, of course—those guys never seem to miss a beat.
I have to hand it to you, this article reads like a whimsical fever dream—a beautiful chaos! But did we really need a high noon glow to remind us that communities can flourish amidst chaos? And please, let’s spare a thought for the merchants rolling their cartwheels and mechanics tuning chains; if that isn’t the thrill of capitalism mixed with the sins of fun, I don’t know what is!
So, hats off to the “Car-Free Carnival” (aka, the weekly patch of pandemonium)! Just remember, Lucius, while you’re huffing inspiration and breathing smoke, not everyone can appreciate your lofty musings about community—some of us just want to know when the dancing starts (and if muffins are involved). But hey, keep amusing us with your vivid metaphors—they’re about as easy to digest as chili dust!