Concrete Canvas and Neon Ghosts

They say concrete doesn't breathe. Liars. It sighs, right here in the guts of the city, exhaling stale air and the ghosts of yesterday's paint fumes. I stand here, a punctuation mark against the scrawled, overwritten chaos on the wall. My name is Robb, or maybe that’s just the designation the static assigned me today. Does it matter? The floor bites cold through the soles of my platforms. Turquoise defiance, anchoring me to this grimy stage. Above, the fishnets map constellations on my skin that only I can read. The tutu, a ridiculous scream of canary yellow against the decay, feels like static cling made manifest. A joke? A shield? Maybe both. It rustles when I shift my weight, a sound too organic for this place. My jacket – synth-leather, cracked like old code – hugs tight. Beneath it, the skull on my chest isn't just print. Its eyes flicker, low-light emitters synced to... something. My pulse? The ambient data streams? Sometimes I think it sees *for* me, filtering the world through its hollow gaze, showing me the glitches in the grey. My own eyes feel overloaded tonight. The purple spike of my hair catches the non-light, a defiant weed pushing through cracked pavement. This tunnel... it's a pause between data streams, a buffer zone where the city's main protocols thin out. The graffiti behind me isn't just paint. It’s layers of forgotten tags, digital screams, encrypted warnings, love letters to defunct AIs. Look close enough, you can almost see the data-ghosts shimmering in the overlaps, whispering forgotten dialects. Or maybe that's just the low-grade neuro-toxins venting from the levels above. Why am I here? Waiting. Always waiting. For a connection, a drop, a signal flare in the overwhelming noise. Or maybe just waiting for the echo of my own footsteps to sound like someone else is approaching. The silence isn't silent. It’s a low thrum, the city's metallic heartbeat vibrating up through the soles of ridiculous, beautiful boots. It’s the drip-drip-drip of corrosive fluids from a leaking pipe somewhere in the darkness ahead. It’s the whisper of my own breath fogging slightly in the chill. This skin – the leather, the tulle, the studs, the glowing skull – it’s a frequency. Broadcasting defiance? Desperation? A simple "I am here" into the void? Sometimes I forget which. Sometimes, standing perfectly still, I feel less like a person and more like a strange, colourful statue someone forgot to upload. A glitch in the city's grey code. The darkness at either end of the tunnel presses in. It feels thick, hungry. Waiting with me. Yeah. Concrete breathes. And tonight, it smells like ozone, decay, and the faintest hint of cheap, synthetic vanilla from the nutrient paste I had cycles ago. Just standing here. Me and the ghosts on the wall.