In the stinging summer heat your car feels like a coffin, mosquitoes keep weaseling their way inside somehow. Their buzzing drone sounds strangely familiar, like a song that used to play constantly on the radio in 2007, one which you never learnt the name of; but everyone else seemed to know all the lyrics to. Like a distant childhood memory, barely graspable.
The air conditioner is busted, didn’t you install a new one just yesterday? Seems like this one is busted, too. You’ll purchase another one tomorrow. The old one functioned but it always leaked a strange green-brown liquid. One that you couldn’t help but wonder if was edible. Now you’re craving guacamole. You ask SIRI to find you the nearest Chipotle. SIRI responds in a dead language it shouldn’t know. Who even programs these things?
At the drive-thru, all you hear are faint screams, and then dead air. When you drive up, a boy in a rumpled t-shirt hands you your order. Telepathic franchises are certainly efficient, but it’s a bit difficult to sensor all your thoughts. Think about nothing but your order. Do you want a drink with that? Would you like the two-for-the-price-of-one-meal? Don’t forget to tell them you don’t want anchovies. If you waste a thought on anything else, they’ll know.
You have a feeling that the raccoons are starting a revolt, gathering all the small animals that live behind the tails of neighboring streets to take a stand before they’re road kill. Sometimes at night, when you’re driving back from work, you can almost swear that you’re seeing apparitions of shambling deer and scurrying squirrels crossing the road. Their bright, translucent bodies remind you of stars. You frown, you can’t quite remember the last time you’ve seen the stars.
The billboards are glitzy mediums of subliminal messages. Planting uncanny thoughts in order to brainwash the masses. GOT MILK? they ask. ARE YOU HUNGRY? ARE YOU HUNGRY? ARE YOU HUNGRY? ISOLATION, one reads. FEED US, says another. LIVE YOUR BEST LIFE! it urges. You want to look away, but for some reason, you can’t. They say that if you stare at a billboard long enough, it’ll burn out your eyes. One of your neighbors tried it, then spent three weeks at the hospital.
At a local cafe, there is a man sitting opposite to you who looks like he might be a time traveller. His greasy black hair is slicked back, like a detective from a 60′s noir, he wears a trench coat so long it hides the tips of his shoes. He is licking french fry salt off his fingers. He carries no phone and reads a newspaper that announces the beginning of what could possibly be a Great Depression. Whenever the waitress speaks to him, it is only in a hushed voice.
Your Facebook feed is crowded with warnings of another cyberspace war. When you look up from your phone at the people that wait alongside you at the pedestrian light, their eyes all glow an ambulance blue. You look away. The green light goes off. When you look up again, everyone around you has disappeared, but their phones remain, convulsing on the ground as if having a stroke. As you slip your own phone into your pocket and keep walking, you wonder if Google ate them all.
Along certain stretches of highway, no vehicle runs below the speed of 80mph. Along certain stretches of highway, cars vanish into tunnels & never resurface. Along certain stretches of highway, dead hitchhikers clamber atop of your hood and beg for a ride.
You’re convinced you’re seeing the same strangers everywhere. Why does every face strike you as one you’ve seen before? The little blue-eyed boy at the ice cream shop by the pier, causing a tantrum for an extra scoop, the man with the longest beard you’ve ever seen that sleeps on the bench outside your building complex and talks to the stray cats, the woman behind the pharmacy desk who wears too much lipstick and always asks you the same question. “Will that be all?” and when you say yes, she abandons her smile.
The elevator’s broken again, so you take the stairwell up to your apartment. The stairwell seems to go on forever. You have three bags of groceries in your arms. You feel like you’ve been climbing forever. Where did your apartment go?
You’d quite like to escape, to disappear into the countryside. Find a field or a lake or a grassy mountain. Your mailman warns you against it. Says even the people who manage to find the edge of the city, only fall off it.
