Somebody cleaned my town up for me.
I am in hell.
The air here used to be as thick as the people. Bloated. Swollen. Filled with energy. Now it is thin and filtered. It goes down quiet and easy and I hate that. My room is clean. My house is clean. The street doesn’t have any cigarette butts or crushed rum cans. The animals are gone. The magpies don’t swoop anymore. The crows have picked this place clean and have moved on to somewhere with fresh flesh. I haven’t seen a cane toad yet. There are no cracks in the ground for them to crawl out of. Someone filled all the holes with concrete.
Nobody demands cigarettes anymore. They offer money. They don’t beg or get angry or spit or yell or throw things out of cars. Their music is quieter and has less swearing in it. Their cars don’t roar or make gunshot noises. Their houses are closed and no pungent pot smell wafts from their barely hidden back verandahs. Walkers hurry by with their heads down instead of strutting with freezing, fear spawning, rage laser eyes.
Bell street has turned from Mos Eisley to a lego ghost town. The aliens are gone. The wizards and the daemons and the rogues and the warriors all vacated, sweeping up their tracks after them. They rounded of the sharp murder corners and put up cameras and coffee shops that serve brown milk piss and breakfast.
I dream about high school now. And not the secret high school with impossible hills and secret teleporting doors and field trips to steep mountain cliffs. I dream about student teachers and uni assignments and missing buses and nobody gets fucking hurt. No poltergeists, no pus lakes, no juggernaut dick worms with teeth. I can remember the last dream I had where I felt more than alive. Where I felt deeper than flesh. Where I felt electric, solid. You know you’re in hell when you can’t see hell on the horizon anymore.
Other than that things have been going pretty good. I might get a job.
Skydekkerix 