I guess you could call it ironic. Just two or three or hell if I know, maybe four days ago, my phone battery was dead and the electricity was out, so I couldn't tell the day or the time of the day for the life of me; however many days ago, it seemed like we had mother earth by the balls. Total domination, back then she was the victim to our noxious and hazardous biproduct and fumes. She fell victim of our excavations and penetrations. But now... just a couple days ago, completely out of the blue; skies in China turned blue, people and priests of all denominations preached a miracle. The air was clean! Well, that was until the yellow river decided to mysteriously and unexpectedly flood that very night, a night that was as dry as a desert bone; a generous estimate of the death toll was around 2,800. Casualties and displaced easily towered in the 5,000's.
But that's the first and last incident of flooding, so far at least. Things seemed fine after that, at least here in Liverpool. That is till the next morning, beautiful it was. The sun comfortably beaming down on the green lawn and set ideally against a sky as blue as my balls were waiting for the spring's tulips to finally bloom; damn things couldn't bloom sooner. So to summarize, the sky was in fact; very blue.
So I strut out in my pink bathrobe paired greatly with my pink bunny slippers and with a china coffee cup filled with hot and delectable coffee that read "world's #1 gardener" across the front of it, like I was on a Victoria's secret catwalk along with whatever attractive young lady would walk with me, of which, unfortunately; there wasn't one, never was.
I walked around to the side of my house and looked at the garden box, flabergasted; the tulip buds seemed to have gotten smaller or more buried in the dirt than the day before. Even weirder was the weird uneven feel of the ground underneath my bunny clad feet. It was Sunday, everyone was pulling out of their driveways for church. I sipped my coffee as I watched the neighborhood turn to a ghost town.
I wasn't a church goer, the stuff just never made sense to me, I'm a fan of a logistics. So I walked back in the house and plopped down lazily on my sofa and switched channels to the morning news in Los Angeles, California. "Ethan's meat and beans", read the headline underneath a skinny, young; blonde haired reporter.
It was innocent enough at first, blokes sunbathing and children swimming and splashing, "Sammie Kammeyer here at long beach in sunny california, I'm at Ethan's meat and beans." Squeaked the reporter on screen.
I couldn't help but chuckle a bit at the name of the barbeque stand and Ms. Kammeyer's enthusiasm for "Ethan's meat and beans". I had purchased the american news channel and other American programs just for the kicks, those yanks though! They know how to create quality programming while making complete fools of themselves at the same time! Splendid!
Ms. Kammeyer held a microphone up to the mouth of the owner of the phallically named establishment, Ethan, or Ethan Peterson as the header below them prompted. He said some gibberish about the costs and ins and outs of operating his food truck. Then joking on how the name of his food truck stemmed form a childhood joke, before looking Ms. Kammeyer straight in the eyses, past her thick rimmed glasses and declared that it wasn't a joke. They both laughed, one laugh, of course, sounded more forced and uncomfortable than the other.
Ms. Kammeyer let out an awkaward chuckle and flipped her hair and looked back at the camera, about to direct the spotlight back at the anchors before Ethan walked back into the shot with an african american man who had to be at least a head shorter than tall and lanky Ethan. The man was dressed in shorts and a sweaty and stained white tanktop tinted with green from god knows what.
"Tell the good folks at home about my food, Milton." Ethan told the short black man on his arm who looked lifeless and bored out of his bloody mind.
But suddenly, Milton's eyes bulged open and he said, "I love Ethan's meat and beans!", his voice was akin to that of Kevin Hart's. I burst into laughter on the sofa until my side hurt, like I said, those bloody Yankee's sure do know comedy! Ms. Kammeyer let out another nervous chuckle, obviously wanting to get off camera and away from the two nimrods next to her as soon as humanly possible. Spontaneously, Ethan offered Sammie a sloppy looking chili dog, she reluctantly took it in her hand; looking quite annoyed.
"Go on," coerced Ethan, "c'mon you're gonna looooove it." Ms. Kammeyer, by the look on her face looked very uncomfortable and very clearly repulsed but I burst into another tangent of laughter before taking another gulp of hot coffee that almost evacuated back out through my nostrils. Sammie reluctantly took a bite and seemed to clench her teeth and tense up as she chewed the chili dog, with her face deformed and twisted as she gulped down the remnants of the first bite.
"Say it, c'mon, please..." whispered Ethan without breaking his freakish smile, instead speaking through his clenched teeth
Ms. Kammeyer groaned and said, "I love Ethan's meat and beans..." her voice was shallow and unconvincing, but it was enough to make me sit up and scream at the television set, "Right you do, bruv!" and as a result I spilled the coffee on my chest, I could've sworn that it singed a couple of my chest hairs. I let out an excruciating scream, it literally felt like hell on my chest. I groaned as the searing pain subsided and annoyance took it's place as I got up and made my way to the kitchen adjacent to my den. I soaked up the coffee with a towel soaked in ice water. It felt so freakin good.
I looked out of the window above my sink and just sorta admired the green rolling hills situated outside my backyard. Tall and olden trees crowned the hills, evenly and idealy spaced out like a beautiful landscape portrait. It was stunning and breathtaking, a slice of ye old country paradise just outside my white pick-it fence, surely the yanks didn't have anything quite like this. It's a shame I never bothered to go outside onto my front porch with a palette, brush, canvas, and easel to just put that scene in paint to forever commerate it's beauty and my mark upon the world. I regret that now, sitting in my earthly tomb; never to have that opportunity again.
I kinda zoned out on the hills, so green and round. A scream from my television set broke me out of the zone and I hurried over, coffee mug still in hand; only to stand over my sofa and stood in horror. Just plain utter horror. The television was letting out a hissing noise, a constant and never ending one that still haunts me here as I sit out my last moments. The sandy ground began to rise with the calm tide of the ocean, and screams began to fill the air. Mass hysteria. The screaming sounded more frantic than horrified. A fair share of expletives also filled the air, accompanied by the frantic screaming and the hissing noise akin to that of an agitated rattlesnake.
I stood in horror and blankness, I dropped the mug, it shattered on the linoleum floor. It barely phased me, I just kept staring. As if my eyes were painfully pried open by rusty callipers. My eyes watered from sheer stinging and sadness, as the cameraman swung the camera swiftly towards the foodtruck. It was halfway in the ground, the sand appeared to be alive and writhing around the truck, breathing and compressing around it; even climbing the walls of the truck gradually like a vine. All the while Ethan hung out of the service window scared and angry, screaming expletives at a rate that must've been a dozen a minute as the sand began to flow in through the window, tap, tap, tap.
The cameraman at this point, was dead. The camera feed cut from the cameraman to a sweeping aerial view from a helicopter around the beach creating a sort of ungodly panorama. The helicopter was at a low hover, sweeping around the beach elevated at around 15 feet above the now elevated ground.
Oh, the horror, dead bodies were washed up on the shore from the drastically elevated landscape. The bodies were drowned and sand washed, among them, were heads halfed buried in the sand. Their upper jaws propped open filling their mouths full of sand, effectively suffocating them. Every trace of human existence was wiped off the beach, even the boardwalk and all the souvenir stands; and Ethan's meat and beans.
The only thing that remained, that showcased there was ever humans on this beach were the bodies, the damn bodies; among them, children. Children drowned and beached like bloody whales, their young and clear skin dotted with sand; like glitter on a third grader's art project. Horrendous and saddening above all. All those lives wasted, lives that'll never be realized, lineages cut; opportunities to change the world completley buried in the sand or washed away in the salty ocean. Forever gone and wasted.
I couldn't watch any longer, it was sick, and straight out demented. Little did I know at the time, that this was no isolated incident, this was the beginning of the end.
I stood there with my eyes shut tightly when spurts of dirt began to to pop through my linoleum floor with a soft hissing noise. It gathered and grabbed at my feet like a trap trying to immobolize me and put me in a casket of dirt, I lept out of my pink slippers and ran barefoot out onto my street.
Cars were being swallowed up and grass and dirt broke through asphalt and cement forming a new topographical landscape. Now, my tulip buds were completly buried. The rolling hills outside my backyard, curiously, hadn't changed a bit. So I ran out in full sprint onto the rolling field.
This wasn't saife either, the grass whipped wildly around my ankles, forming knots around my toes and constricting them; like they were trying to crush them. The hold was too strong, I tried to jump but failed miserably, falling face first onto the ground. It gripped and weaved around my fallen body; gripping and tearing away at my bathrobe.
I was sick of it and I couldn't bear being constrained by this earth any longer, a sudden burst of adrenaline shot through my veins and I somehow, managed to break free of the green restaints and made a mad dash towards my backyard.
It felt like an uphill run as the grass just kept rising like dough in an oven, creating a new loaf of bread; perhaps made to replace the bread that we have so selfishly spoiled already. I lept over my fence from a newly formed hill and climbed another steep hill to get to my second story window of my bedorom. The enrire first floor was buried in new topsoil. Then the hissing came to a complete and sudden halt.
But it wasn't over, I wrapped the sleeve of my bathrobe around my hand, balled it up into a fist and shattered the window. The sleeve absorbed some of the pain but a couple shards of broken glass still embedded themselves into my hand. I rolled onto my bedroom floor and looked up as the lights went out and my ceiling fan gradually came to a stop.
The electricity was shut off. I looked over and saw the entrance to my attic and remembered my liquor cabinet was upstairs in the attic. That's what I needed, I thought, at least; a good drink.
Drinking was always one of my vices. I, by no means was an unhealthy person; I worked out, jogged, and my mum be proud in her grave, I made damn sure I ate my greens. But liquor was an escape of sorts, I have no family; mum died of the flu and pops died in his recliner, shot too much down the chute too fast.
I climbed up into my attic and keyed open my liquor cabinet, a dark mahogany cabinet standing at three metres tall and hiding it's goods behind beautiful and colorful stained glass that gave the local chapel a run for it's money. I loved it like the wife I never had and was proud of it like the son I never had, the alcohol inside the stained glass and mahogany framed doors gave the warm emulation of love I never got from papa and it helped drown the hate of my neighbors who constantly labeled me as a heathen. Those bullies, the nerve of them; as much anger as I had against them, pain always overcame it. The name calling always did hurt, ever since childhood; when my papa told me I was worthless. Bullies, bullies, just as many of them as idiots in the world, the world's full of them. Bullies and idiots, the lot of them, I like to say.
I keyed open the cabinet and grabbed a big bottle of rum. I popped open the cork and the aroma soothed my nostrils. Ah, smells like my daddy dearest, as much as a piece of human filth he was, he was still my daddy, and I do miss him so.
I slumped against the wall and slid down to the floor and tipped the bottle up and downt the throat it went, It burned as it hit my stomach. One chug down the throat turned into two, three, four, and then sooner than I could've ever comprehended the bottle was completley empty and the liquid fire quenched my throat whilst quenching my insatiable thirst. I began to feel sleepy and slightly queasy.
That's when I must've slipped away, I drifted into a deep sleep.
I must've been out for hours, I lit a couple candles and began writing this, I guess as sort of a farewell letter; a memoir for the new world's museum, I suppose. I awoke with a glimmer of the high noon, or late morning sunshine glint through the attic window before the dirt rose up and ate it up.
I panicked, I could hear helicopters outside, the thumping of their blades cutting through the air, thump, thump, thump, thump. Assaulting my senses, taunting me, there's no way they could find me now. I may as well be dead in my homely coffin already.
I hurriedly and frantically scratched at the roof, scratch, scratch, scratch. My fingertips got bloody as I went to the hatch that lead downstairs was barricaded, I lost any sense of hope, so I'm writing this.
No one could hear me, lit by candles. I knew I wasn't heard, even if I screamed. There was no escape, and no real way to kill myself, if there was; trust me I would've done so I while ago. But I'll suffocate soon, the air in this musty old attic will run out soon. May as well die with warm drink in my belly, bad habits die hard, I suppose.
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ns 15.158.61.54da2
