compendium

alone

alone
nobody, but nobody, / can make it out here alone

The other day, I watched from my perch on the top of the skyscraper when these two kids got into a fight in the waste strewn street below. Food rotted faster, and it was scarce. Animals evolved, too, you know. Whatever you do to one side must be done to the other. Predators and victims alike.

Have a guess at which we have been, which we are, and which we will become.

Anyway, they got into a fight over some canned soup, and then the smaller kid ended up garroting the bigger kid with a piano wire, which I thought was totally cool until I threw up.

Piano wires ended up being a helpful weapon. I needed means to protect myself if I was going to live until I died from my illness.

How strange. We fight so hard to live until we die.

I went to the nearest music store and cut out a bunch of piano wires, and I kept them in my back pocket. It wasn't soon enough. The next day, a significant amount of people came to the city to search for more viable food.

They were stupid. They came from the streets.

I came from above.

I made it to the food first - in the cubby space at the back of a convenience store - and had loaded my bag up with cans and nuts before the first people got there.

In nature, the bigger creature uses claws, and the smaller creature runs like hell.

I hauled ass out of there, but I didn't make it far. This unimaginably tall man - it might have just been my perspective, but that still made it real - grabbed my OxiCase and snatched the mask right off my face.

I had never felt terror until I felt the pathogenic air pass by my lips.

I didn't hesitated to sling the piano wires around his throat, and even when my fingers were slippery with blood I didn't stop until he stopped. Stopped fighting, that is. Went limp. Was gone in my hands, by my hands.

I left bloody fingerprints on the oxygen mask when I put it back over my mouth. The blood outlined the lines of my prints, marking me, pointing me out, like it wanted to lead the trail back to me.

But nobody cared about killings anymore. Nobody bothered with the man with a bloody ligature mark across his neck like the wrong type of Glasgow smile, nobody looked twice at the crimson girl shoving piano wires into her pocket.

Nobody ever bothered with me anymore, and that's why I was safe on my rooftop, with my clackety letters and my stars.

Honestly, though, this was becoming more of a burden to write.

Typewriters are loud.