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PODCAST

The City Between Us

Michael Arturo’s absurdist and noir-inflected tales of a city split not by geography but by memory—where every street is a version of the truth, and the real conflict isn"t between characters but between the stories they choose to believe about themselves. New episodes weekly. Stories, Reviews, Analysis. michaelarturo.substack.com

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All Episodes

14:07

After Everything I’ve Done For You (Part Three)

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/30

A lavender cloud of incense drifted diagonally across the exposed brick like something summoned during a séance for unresolved trauma.Juan twirled in a slow circle, palms out, barefoot on the hardwood. “It’s amazing what a room does without negative energy clogging up the chakra ducts.”Tristan was sitting cross-legged on the floor beside Darcy and Cole, who were still zip-tied and gagged like failed escape artists. “I miss him,” Tristan murmured, staring wistfully at the sealed fireplace.“Who?

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10:38

Skyline: Blind Insight

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/25

The central premise of Michael Arturo’s story “Skyline” revolves around the transformative power of an unexpected relationship. Elliot Van Alen, a privileged architect from a renowned architectural family, is a "has been" whose latest design has been rejected as "derivative." He encounters Solomon, a blind man who experiences and understands the city in a profound, non-visual way. This encounter challenges Elliot's perspective on architecture, success, and his own life, ultimately leading to a new

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10:08

After Everything I’ve Done For You (Part Two)

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/22

The apartment was tiny, but to Darcy and Cole, it was a kingdom.Darcy had already picked out the corner by the sealed fireplace for her yoga routines. There, the light pooled golden for thirty minutes before slinking into shadows. She pictured a bamboo mat, maybe a fiddle-leaf fig, maybe an Instagram post tagged #GratitudeFromTheWestVillage.She would expand her coaching brand, Positive Lifestyle Architect, from this very corner. Manhattan was her launchpad. All she needed was space to breathe.Cole

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13:00

Down Man 2084 (review)

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/18

Subject: Review of Michael Arturo's short story "Down Man, 2084"Summary:Michael Arturo paints a bleak, dystopian future in New York City in the year 2084, specifically focusing on the district of Lower Manhattan, which has been renamed "Down Man" after repeated tragedies and societal decay. The narrative, which the author attributes influences of Orwell, Bradbury, and Phillip K. Dick, explores themes of technological control, the nature of identity, the power of narratives (both true and

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9:19

After Everything I’ve Done For You

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/16

"We just landed our dream apartment," Darcy announced, practically vibrating with joy, to Tristan and Juan—two strangers she and Cole had befriended ten minutes into their first wide-eyed stroll through Abingdon Square.“One-bedroom. On Bank Street, no less.”Cole, her Connecticut-bred husband, nodded, his face molded into a stiff rictus.“Get out!” Juan, leashed to his Pekingese, cried. “A one-bedroom on a tree-lined street? That's like finding a unicorn that already knows how to use a litter

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14:04

The Pataphysics of ‘Flatiron'

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/11

Michael Arturo's "Flatiron" is a challenging yet rewarding work that utilizes a specific architectural landmark to explore universal themes of human perception and memory. By blending historical events with personal myth and employing a distinctly postmodern style, the narrative creates a disorienting but ultimately moving portrait of how individuals construct their reality and grapple with the ghosts of the past. The influence of major literary figures in the absurdist and postmodern traditions is

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9:38

Flatiron: The Play

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/07

FLATIRON: THE PLAYCAST:* SEÑOR BORGES — Concierge of the building, quasi-omniscient, theatrical. Speaks with a rich Buenos Aires accent and the calm joy of someone who knows everything is a little silly.* JERRY GREENBERG — A painter possessed by the Flatiron. Mostly responds in mutters, existential pronouncements, or from within his canvases.[AT RISE]The loft is dim. A warm amber light glows from behind the translucent canvases. The Flatiron Building looms beyond the window, surreal and faintly

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7:43

Hell’s Kitchen (review)

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/04

In Hell’s Kitchen, Michael Arturo delivers a haunting, elegiac story about memory, guilt, and the corrosive myth of objective truth. Set in a claustrophobic New York apartment stacked with microfilm reels and the detritus of a life once dedicated to facts, the story follows Leonard Greaves, a retired newspaper archivist whose immaculate record-keeping begins to unravel under the weight of one headline that shouldn’t exist.Arturo’s prose is clean and tightly coiled, like the spring inside a trap

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24:25

Late of Ludlow Street

The City Between Us ·

2025/05/02

His old place was on Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side. Things had changed quite a bit since he’d left, but there were familiar signs that things hadn’t changed much at all. He didn't know why he had returned—not really. Just that something in the marrow of his bones told him he had to. Then, just as he arrived at the entrance of the old tenement, it dawned on him why: he had forgotten to forward his mail from his former address and figured it was probably time he came back to pick it up.His name

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1:13

Late of Ludlow Street (Preview)

The City Between Us ·

2025/04/29

"You're about to meet one Isaac Schwartz—age indeterminate, occupation unknown, forwarding address undeliverable. His story takes place in the not-too-distant past in a tenement apartment building on the Lower East Side in New York City. Once a tenant, Isaac is now a question mark. A man whose identity has been misplaced somewhere between memory and mail. This is not a story of high drama or grand ambition. It's a story of a man trying to retrieve his mail. That's all. A simple task--unless, of

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17:40

Miracle in Midtown (conclusion)

The City Between Us ·

2025/04/24

To understand how Paulie Macaluso became a symbol—of what exactly, no one can quite agree—you must first imagine him: a sixty-three-year-old window washer with a nicotine-scratched voice and the expression of a man permanently five minutes late to something meaningful. You must then imagine him briefly dangling from the 88th floor of that very skyscraper—a feat he survived with the dubious assistance of two security guards and what he later claimed was "a divine wedgie."This was not how prophets

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21:30

Miracle in Midtown (Part 3)

The City Between Us ·

2025/04/20

The boardroom on the 88th floor of The Helix was decorated in what interior designers call "power minimalism"—all sleek surfaces, uncomfortable chairs, and a view that reminded everyone present just how far they could fall, which, given the current trajectory of their investment, seemed increasingly likely."Gentlemen, ladies," began Walter Kensington III, majority shareholder and chairman of the Helix Investment Group. "We are facing what the youngsters in PR call a 'challenging optics

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10:48

Miracle in Midtown (Part 2)

The City Between Us ·

2025/04/18

The story was buried on page eleven of the New York Post, but it spread faster than a Queens fire on a windy day. By noon, it had jumped from social media to the local news, and by three o'clock, the headline "WINDOW WASHER SEES VIRGIN MARY IN MANHATTAN SKYSCRAPER" was flashing across the bottom of CNN.Paulie Macaluso, who had spent his entire professional life trying to be invisible while dangling eighty stories above Manhattan, was suddenly the most visible man in New York."This man ain't no

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10:53

Miracle in Midtown

The City Between Us ·

2025/04/16

The Helix stood like a wounded animal in the Manhattan skyline—88 floors of architectural hubris wrapped in glass that caught the sun at angles that blinded pilots and scorched nearby buildings. Six months after its grand opening, the tower remained sixty percent vacant, its corridors echoing with the footsteps of maintenance staff and the occasional lost delivery person. The developers had hoped for a modern landmark. Instead, they'd created the most expensive failure in New York real estate

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23:09

Down Man, 2084 (Conclusion)

The City Between Us ·

2025/04/11

The InterrogationSilence. A deep, suffocating silence.Then—a high-pitched frequency, humming just beyond human perception. It dug into Irides’ skull, vibrating through his teeth and setting his nerves on fire.Then—agony.A sharp, electric burst ripped through his head—not through his body, not the kind of pain that scorched the flesh. No, this was different. This was inside.The restraints held him as he convulsed, his muscles locking, his vision flashing white, then black, then white again.His mind

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14:01

Down Man, 2084

The City Between Us ·

2025/04/04

Down ManNew York has always been a city haunted by its ghosts, and its skyline is a living memory of tragedies that shaped the nation.On September 11, 2001, the world watched in horror as the Twin Towers collapsed. But for New Yorkers, one image became seared into their collective consciousness: the Falling Man—a lone figure plummeting through the sky, an unspeakable choice captured in a single, haunting photograph.Fifty years later, on September 11, 2051, history repeated itself. Another attack,

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21:23

Hell’s Kitchen

The City Between Us ·

2025/03/28

Leonard Greaves had always believed in the sanctity of records. For over four decades, he meticulously archived the city's history within the labyrinthine halls of the New York Chronicle. Now, at 72, retired and ailing, he found himself surrounded by the very artifacts he once curated—newspapers, microfilms, and clippings that chronicled the relentless march of time.His apartment in Hell's Kitchen mirrored his mind: cluttered, organized chaos, where every item had its place and purpose. The

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21:21

Flatiron

The City Between Us ·

2025/03/21

Not long ago, I found myself in a forgotten friend’s loft, unsure of how I had arrived. The place felt more like the ruins of an obsession than someone’s home. Paintings were scattered with reckless abandon—against walls, windows, furniture, and across the floor as if the space had surrendered itself to them. Each canvas pulsed with color, fractured yet deliberate, a chaotic hymn to one of New York’s most iconic landmarks: the Flatiron Building—which loomed like a ghost outside the loft’s

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14:24

Skyline (conclusion)

The City Between Us ·

2025/03/13

In the days following the walk with Solomon, Elliot moved through his Park Avenue apartment like a man caught in a riptide—adrift yet restless, tugged by currents he couldn’t name. The walk had left a residue, a hum that wouldn’t quiet. He’d gone to bed that night with his notebook open on the dining table, pages scrawled with jagged lines and half-formed shapes. By morning, the euphoria had curdled into something heavier, a mood that flickered between exhilaration and unease.Solomon’s words had

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15:46

Skyline (Part 3)

The City Between Us ·

2025/03/07

The streets were still damp from the night before, glistening in the early morning light. Down here, in the oldest part of Manhattan, the air carried the weight of history—stone, and steel pressed tight, the ghosts of a thousand deals made and broken.Elliot rolled his shoulders, adjusting to the feel of the running shoes he’d thrown on that morning. He was already regretting them.Solomon, walking beside him, grinned. “A proper city man turned athlete.”Elliot sighed. “You said my dress shoes wouldn’t

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