The night air was stagnant and humid, and stuck to my skin like the rancid breath of a drunken god peeking disinterestedly into a long-forgotten terrarium. Hot, acrid raindrops the size and color of blood-shot eyeballs pummeled the ground with such force that I could almost hear the pavement screaming in agony as I drifted through an otherwise silent darkness. I don't know why I was surprised at a sudden realization of my discomfort. There hadn't been peace here for any living thing in many thousands of years - but now, even the inanimate elements themselves seemed to exude a kind of passive, intangible discontent. I felt it watching me, somehow; I imagined it licking its lips.
I heard rather than saw a wave of mud oozing surely down the nearby wall of a collapsed building, and felt a malign presence at work. I wondered if the ground itself might be trying to act upon some ancient survival instinct, driving it to slowly swallow everything whole, press the reset button on even the faintest memories of human life. I guess I couldn't blame it.
As I passed closer to the crumbling ruins of what looked to have once been a bank, I cracked a caustic grin at the now-foreign images that exploded into my head: an immigrant pushing a mower across a thick bed of green grass; automatic sprinkler systems spinning in the hot summer nights to keep the stuff from dying in the absence of poor Johnny Boy's underpaid—and likely completely unappreciated—diligence; posturing, prosperity, pretension practically dripping from every gleaming blade. So much wasted time and energy on such a simple thing as fuckin' grass; it's no wonder our species didn't survive.
At that thought, I couldn't hold back a chuckle. My hollow laughter echoed blandly into the great expanse of the blasted lands I was crossing and soon died, alone, in a distant corner of an endless desert.
I heard rather than saw a wave of mud oozing surely down the nearby wall of a collapsed building, and felt a malign presence at work. I wondered if the ground itself might be trying to act upon some ancient survival instinct, driving it to slowly swallow everything whole, press the reset button on even the faintest memories of human life. I guess I couldn't blame it.
As I passed closer to the crumbling ruins of what looked to have once been a bank, I cracked a caustic grin at the now-foreign images that exploded into my head: an immigrant pushing a mower across a thick bed of green grass; automatic sprinkler systems spinning in the hot summer nights to keep the stuff from dying in the absence of poor Johnny Boy's underpaid—and likely completely unappreciated—diligence; posturing, prosperity, pretension practically dripping from every gleaming blade. So much wasted time and energy on such a simple thing as fuckin' grass; it's no wonder our species didn't survive.
At that thought, I couldn't hold back a chuckle. My hollow laughter echoed blandly into the great expanse of the blasted lands I was crossing and soon died, alone, in a distant corner of an endless desert.
No comments:
Post a Comment