Manhattan

There's an almost imperceptible sepia haze to your vision, but you can't bring yourself to care. The suit in front of you raises palsied knuckles to his face and a short strip of greasy paper resolves into a lit cigarette. Smoke contorts around his hair, a beautiful ash halo in the dust-mote beams. One rugose digit taps in frenzied fashion at a small black box on the desk and it coughs and squeals as a tape begins to play.

"So they told me to tell you everything, and at this rate I ain't need persuadin', this is a tale to tell, oh SHIT this is a story I need to share, y'know?"

Hoarse barks of laughter spit through the recorder down a gap of thirty years

"So anyhow it was through Mike that I met Rick, Rick who knows stuff. A numbers guy, y'know? And Rick cracks the numbers on a few deals for me and I land a gorgeous little bit of employment with Uncle Sam himself. Shipped down to some fuckin' desert concrete hole to, get this, MOP FLOORS. In the DESERT. MOPPING floors. It cracked me up then and even now it's funny as hell"

Another firecracker salvo of chuckles.

"Anyhow one day they wheels in a bomb. That was maybe when I realized I was somewhere interestin'. It was like the shells they use, y'know? But it was fat as hell and covered in rivets. They called it the Manhattan project but like hell did this thing ever come from Manhattan, it looked like scrap."

There is a pause that yawns into a minute or more and the suit begins to nervously chatter his nails against the desk before the voice resumes.

"It was open. They left it open. Huge plate of metal like an eggshell on the floor. Fuckin' sloppy. So I takes a stroll round and has a look inside. But it ain't a machine."

A further pause. The suit is now shimmering, perspiration dotting his skin like sour pinprick pearls.

"It's like, a pig or somethin'? But there's a face and shit and it was bleeding and I got such a fuckin' headache when I looked too closely"

The tape abruptly concludes in a static yelp.

The suit picks up the box and casually crumples it in one fist, debris pattering down on the desk.

Credited to Witness the Absurd