overgrown wildflowers licking rundown buildings & cracked sidewalks like a morbid painting
neon lit cityscapes where shop windows glow an enticing pulse, intricate bridges & self-driving cars hurtling past electric highways that stretch over seas & every home appliance is automated
shady underground dwellings where people on the border of society, people who can’t afford life in the limelight, are left to collect dust, turning to knives & arson for any reminder of being alive
houses with shambled rooftops & mold infestations in every corner, dead flowers and ash lining the streets, gaunt faces peering out of fogged up windows. they say at night, you can hear the screams reverberate over the routine sounds of traffic & holographic advertisements that remind you to pay your taxes
abandoned grocery stores with conked out fluorescents that flicker on & off like a glitch, expired cartons of milk toppled over in the dairy section, concentrating in sticky pools, roaches skittering past the aisles. every few days, people barge in skirting for resources, leaving every shelf in the canned foods section empty. somebody spray paints a plea for help in morse code over the old, faded WE’RE OPEN sign
you hear your neighbor wants to get her cybernetic implants removed, three days later & you have a new neighbor. you never figure out what happened to her, you’re not sure you want to
roadside diners with cyborg kitchen staff and robot waiters
elvis presley and michael jackson songs reverberating from the insides of bomb shelters where people make pleas for their past lives, get drunk & dance to 80′s synthpop as everything burns above them
tattoo artists charging $120, offering illegal, drug-laced tattoos in various night club bathroom stalls around tokyo, apparently the ones that glitter or glow in the dark produce the best trips
THEY’RE WATCHING YOU, reads a flickering neon poster along a dark alleyway, you want to run back to your motel, but you can feel them behind you, their breaths a hiss of bared teeth through gas masks
strangers in flamboyant costumes & terrifying makeup approaching you as you make your routine commute back home, you avoid paying them any heed, escaped video game characters are not to be trifled with & a bunch of pixels can’t hurt you, at least that’s what the news says
waking up to the blaring of alarms & your best friend shaking you awake, another rebel encampment’s about to go down & you have to take an express submarine to make your escape
black rain heaving viciously down from the heavens every six months, corroding skin & car windows
