Radiate

The town was a carnival, a well-known carnival that never closed and never moved. People flocked on the steel-winged birds to the closest city miles away from the town to roost before migrating the long journey to the carnival town. Stores galore and suburban architecture in the ascendant, the carnival town in the big top of the country.

The radiant reds and yokel yellows bring a sunny shine on the surrounding stores. The brilliant blues and luminous lavender convey a cool sea cleanse to combine with the colourful collages. Gaiety greens and the optimistic oranges are also present in this vibrant variety within the rainbow settlement. Blend these colours together and that creates the town yet to sky-scrape to its ambitious ideals.

As the sun sets in the horizon, down in the midst of the alleyway shadows, a fiendish forlorn fox lingers in and around the shops in search of something to satisfy his furrowed body. He sniffs the litter hungrily, rarely finding an appetising piece of flesh. When the fox saunters by the backdoors of the butcheries, a man or woman with usual blood-stained aprons will occasionally give the fox a chunk of unused meat and bone. The fox would scamper back into the safety of the shadows and satisfy his hunger. Survival was key in a carnival town. Humans always had ways to catch pests such as the fox. Traps, bait, you name it. From generation to generation, the fox knew it all. This way of life, this remote yet untrustworthy environment was going to keep him alive.

Until the nuclear power plant flew radioactive particles in firework directions.

The carnival town, my hometown. I returned to the place I once named 'Home' for the first time in twenty-five years. The firework radiation that was discharged to prey upon the once-energetic atmosphere assassinated all life that its poisonous lips could kiss. I could only get so close before I felt dense pressure in front of my nose. Memories, like water behind the dam of the past cracked, and burst, flooding my mental streams. The thought of the radioactive domain was once a circus of colour and joy seemed hard to believe and hard to imagine. The town, once full of hope and wonder, now full of spies and assassins invisible to the naked eye.

My radiation sensor blared an alarm, fateful radioactive spies and assassins were creeping stealthily. I had to get going before they could open my wounds and inject me with a cancer that would last the rest of my lifetime. As I turned my back for the last time, I remembered seeing something lying in the middle of the road. The fiendish forlorn fox could not fight and suffer anymore. The fox laid down his sword of high-experience and pride and finally surrendered for his fate to be sealed.