‘Before the end came groans’

(Excerpt from working draft novelette)

Luz woke to birdsong, backed by the nascent hum of the city that seemed a stone’s throw from the open doors of her bedroom balcony. It was warm for August. The jasmine already flowering, and the crazies were out. Twitching in the streets, arguing with unseen tormentors on their way to local charities, having spent their entire welfare payments on drugs and alcohol. It wasn’t quite spring, yet she prepared herself for another putrid Summer, when the stench of garbage mapped the cycle to another Xmas packed with useless plastic shit, made in China for the poor, the blind and the indifferent, and destined for landfill, or we’ll catch a glimpse of it bobbing in the sea.

It was no longer cold enough to keep her neighbours indoors. She heard the loud and familiar meaningless chatter, automated scripts spilling from mouths. The mundanity of it, the repetition of identical self-created journeys into mental, physical and spiritual decrepitude. Year after year, season after season. She watched her neighbours come and go, some straight from prison halfway shelters, some homeless from mental health issues, and some raising kids on their own, similar children, who didn’t know the fun times were nearly over.

The mosquitos hatched. They rose as ravenous wisps from the sewers at dusk.  

Another end came and it felt sudden. She ignored the slow but obvious signs of decay, as familiar, as inevitable as sunset. An unnameable tune circled her mind. Was it Portishead or a remix of? Nothing’s new anymore. Creativity is redefined as presenting what’s old and forgotten in new and interesting ways; literally the reinterpretation and rebranding of preexistent ideas in personal brands that might strike a chord somewhere.

A year and seven months seemed like a lifetime, except there wasn’t much grief. Overshadowed by a social media storm of another war looming in the middle east. Israel carefully cast, everything in its place, while twenty seven other conflicts were ignored, they were old news, and because this one had the most political relevance to us as a western ally. This one seemed most dangerous, the war most likely to ignite us all. The war that would lead to the dreaded but oddly desired world war that some said needed to happen, before anything fucking changed.

The world was sick and she knew it. The minds of men are like shallow graves, and as predictable as death.