Heights, Pipes, n’ Lights

A messy headed boy with bronze-plated goggles and bluish black hair was sitting between four thin pipelines, at least 20 stories above the city. One pipe ran snuggly behind his knees, one along his back, and one at his butt - his utility satchel hung loosely away, held only by a single button at his belt. The final pipe was in front of him and he fiddled around with it using the wrench he had forced me to steal a few hours ago.

These pipes were paralleled between two old apartment buildings. There was no ground beneath this boy and yet a playful smirk was sprawled across his face.

I was crouching next to him on an untrustworthy grated floor, hanging on to a nearby ladder for dear life. Strangled under my right elbow was the head of my polar bear plushy and covering my entire body were pajamas unfit for daredevil theatrics such as... whatever this was.

Every clang and creaking twist of the pipeline knobs that he whacked and spun shook the entire structure, including the one I was latched to.

"Can you stop that!? Aren't you scared? What are you even doing?" I screamed over the draft wind and the pipes that screamed back.

"Chill bro, listen to the pipes, you'll see the results soon enough."

"PIPES DON'T TALK YOU PSYCHOPATH!" Steam from the pipe he was playing around with spurted hot mist into his face. It blew up his already nappy hair.

"Shhh~ He didn't mean that."

I reached boiling point. "GIVE ME MY LIFE BACK!"

All of a sudden the boy slammed his wrench against the same pipe he was working on and swung up to a one-legged stand on the same pipe he was sitting on. He grabbed a rusty line from above and it bent forward under his weight. He leaned down where I was ducking. Did I go too far? What was he going to do to me all the way up here in this unmonitored location?

"Ironic, that you would say that." The playful, problem-free tone left his voice. I missed it the moment it was gone. Replacing this was a void-like silence that rumbled between us. Wait, silence? I looked around. Where did the wind go? The screaming of barrelling steam through twisting ducts? The whistling from the constant furnace symphony emanating from every household? The angry pedestrians shouting from the city below? Their collective noise-foundry had just... vanished.

"What. In earth. Did you do!?" I questioned. A smile returned to his face.

"I cranked off the real world. A. K. A. your old life."

"You what?!"

"You heard me, Brussel-sprout." He kicked a pipeline that was close to my face. I blinked up at him, and watched a reflection of bubbling lights bloom through his goggle lenses. The pipe he kicked had turned into a luminescent psychedelia of colours. The lights spread with lightning-fast speed down every pipeline in the city. It was like watching blood pump through highlighted veins. I witnessed the city transform from something I never knew was dead to a new sight that oozed with life.

"But... how did-... h-how could-"

"Its magic, Brussel-sprout. Just magic."