Sunsetting

I dream of America before the madness. Ice cream and air conditioning. Now her freeways sit empty, coyotes roaming her abandon streets.

The water sickened into sand, petroleum became a slurry of rock and tar.

The lights went out.
The East coast went first, population centers imploding, the cities turned deadly and desperate.  The rain fell like glittering knives.

Morality the luxury of a full belly. We learned about the human animal.

We fared better out West; a militia held the Colorado against the refugees, bodies stacked against the riverbanks.

It fell.  We were left to whatever bonds we chose, nomadic. We moved, others hunted.

Magic returned. First at the campfires, invocations of protection sprung forth from a fingerpicked guitar; marauders held at bay. Spirits swallowing up an ambush. Musicians, artists, all woke slowly or suddenly to powers. Strange creatures returned, some bound to man, some malevolent.
A brief sense of safety in the new shared songs, not long before others wove deadly tales. The dying returned.

But each artist found themselves marked, a demon set loose to hunt each one; one demon for each artist; a reckoning none could predict or control.  But warnings, intimations; sudden shadow in the predawn gloom; water in a cookpot frozen solid in the middle of summer; the bones from last night’s rabbits picked clean and arranged to spell your name.  

Postrik travels this land; through the wasteland sands and shattered office buildings, traveling alone, waiting.

Sunsetting

POSTRIK