A Threat
POP! Goes the threat. It crackles through the grey slop, which blots out the night sky. No celestial fissures breathe light into the darkness; you see only as far as the street lamps permit. But you can hear it, can’t you?
These sidewalks once heaved moonlight to the stars, now soot eats what little street light it’s fed. Between the two sets of footprints you follow, two bloodied lines have scraped through the dust. Maybe their friend had too much to drink and had to be dragged, it’s a holiday after all, or maybe it was his fault the streets don’t shimmer like they used to.
POP! POP! Blinding flashes are consumed and excreted as subtle shifts in the cloud’s gamma, but the noise that follows suit is getting closer. Is it looking for you?
Unlikely, threats belong to strangers, and they’re not your concern. They can’t be seen, so they won’t be known; it’s too late to search and too early to mourn. Besides, you’re a few blocks from your apartment, no need to spoil apathy with fiction.
As you reach a fork in the path, your dog’s eyes are locked on the muddy offshoot that winds through your local park. Is he looking at the bushes, or are they looking at him? The paved path offers the glow of manufactured security, but every day they flicker a little more, every day you see a little less, maybe it’d be easier not to see at all.
POP! POP! POP! The gaseous sea looming overhead blends so seamlessly with smoke. Do you see it coming, or is it already here? The clouds blind the night, they blind you too.
No, the street lamps emanate truth, you see what you must, a path forward, that’s all there’s ever been. Unfortunately, nostalgia lacks inoculation; you might as well wonder. Didn’t the chatter of frogs used to keep you company this time of year? Now you’re left wading through silence. Weren’t strangers friends in waiting? Now they’re threats loitering in the street light ahead. Didn’t this holiday celebrate a better future? Now it gags on a fictional past. Keep your eyes on the path that could have been; it’s better than what’s ahead.
Between the sky’s sporadic roars and the wind’s wails, it’s hard to make out what the silhouettes are saying as they idle near the veterans memorial. They could be children honoring our forefathers. They could be crusaders for an imagined history. They could be both. Is it your fault the streets don’t shimmer like they used to?
Not yet, it can’t be your time already. Yet dilutes now, you’ve never known the difference, it’s not worth the risk. Cut through the park instead. No one will see you there.
POP! POP! POP! POP! Gunpowder’s stench snuffs out clean air. It wafts through streets and demands entry. It will be known. It will be felt. It will be feared.
The nylon leash burrows into your fingers as you drag your dog into the darkness. Dull, colorless, flickers seep through the clouds, casting shadows of phantasms. What you see can’t already be upon you, but your pet’s piercing whine makes it clear: you are not alone.
The grumbling of shrubbery could just be the vagrants unable to sleep from the noise. But that seems unlikely; the silhouettes have assured you the destitute have no lives to lose. If the streets must be cleansed, their blood would be a popular sterilizer. So why would they be left to whisper in the night?
Your dog leaves muddy skid marks as you attempt to move faster. His objections drown out the chatter of cicadas, the howling wind, the rumbling sky, yet it fails to mask a single hushed murmur: “Is he one of them?” It’s too late to search for you, too early to mourn, time to run.
Your dog’s terrified whimper mimics the shriek of fireworks, his panicked bark, their pop. You can’t discern if the footsteps you hear are your own or something right behind you. You break from the forest’s obstruction only to be met with a lonelier darkness. The street lights are out. The sidewalks carry distant screams with such ease. You can’t make out their disposition, you can’t make out anything anymore. Keep running.
POP! POP! POP! POP! POP! Two hundred and forty-nine years of freedom is deafening you. Its ashes asphyxiating the sky. Its colors leached of meaning by an uncaring mass. The light is not your savior, it’s not your executioner, it’s simply all you see.
The porch light’s motion sensor fails to trip as you crash through your apartment door. Your desperate gasps compete with your dog’s panting for oxygen. You both sit on the floor, momentarily pacified by your home’s serene darkness.
Abruptly, a faint glow bleeds through a slit in your curtains. It seals the room in shadows and judges you in the light. Through shallow breaths, your dog lets out a meek growl as you reach towards the inevitable. You pull back the curtain, and your home is laid bare before the threat. Gazing into its eyes, you see only the clouds. They must have been looking for someone else. So why worry?
