attack of the Muscovites (a novel)

The begining

Joseph Ortega was a seventh-floor tenant, located in one of the least-traveled streets of the city. I guess you know, those fire stairs hanging from the ceiling, shared homes and narrow, dimly lit corridors where there is a strange pestilence to rats constantly lurking. But Joseph thought he could bear it. When he arrived at the house and saw that, he thought that he had been in similar places, or even worse. He remembered the time they offered to live in a kind of tomb. The closest thing there could be to a living tomb fitted for a human being, was that. But Joseph would always need a window, something to look out and see the outside, to tempt the people who went to the night clubs. He could not live without the people, he did not know how to explain it, but Joseph depended on the social chaos, the genocidal avalanche of cosmopolitan consumers. He had grown up with it.

The landlord's monthly allowance was not much money, Joseph could afford it with his job as a kitchen assistant. He did not have much to do, sometimes he helped the chef but regularly sent him to fry potatoes or wash dishes. It was a shit job, one of those jobs to get out of the way, pay the rent and, if lucky, some street prostitute. At first glance, Joseph's life was far from being a life plagued with emotions. He simply did not extract the juice to life. The world was falling apart and Joseph, however much he wanted, could not reverse the events that placed him between the sword and the wall, as the many street fights he always had, sometimes during the night or between the crazy mass of the city, in broad daylight.

To be continue.......