BY THE TIME WINTER WAS OVER, the town had returned to its natural state of prickly brushes and fair-weather skies, the soles of Koyomi Haruto's converse high-tops were nearly worn through, and everything was fine and dandy apart from the fact that it was not.
The methane skies were ablaze with haze and fire. Opaline shadows veiled the graffitied high-rises, smoke curling from exhaust pipes to be carried away by springy zephyrs and nightly breezes.
Alverton was, in all respects, the ideal place to live, apart from the fact that it was not. The thing about the weather in Alverton was that it was always inexplicably humid — especially in the evenings, when it transformed into a throat-clutching, chest-closing monster borne from the stagnant midwestern wasteland.
It was cursed. The whole place, down to the cracks in the pavements and the saplings that dared to sprout from within them. Rotten to the core, the townspeople liked to say, with half a smile and half a grimace — and they were mostly right, if the dust-laden roads and the flea-ridden souvenir shops were any testament. Alverton was a kind of lost cause, like an crop of cattle stranded in swampland: an irrevocable misfortune. In the end of the day, the sad truth left was that nobody was young enough to care or old enough to have completely lost hope, and life carried on the way a fallen kite dragged through a field of thistle.
And beyond the miserable little town, the midlands stretched over the rocky hills and fever-dreamscape. Dust and shadow collided. Haze sprawled over the ruddy terrain, retreating into daylight rains and feeble moonlight. Days were identical down to the seconds, flowing seamlessly into one another like sand between fingers, until nothing was distinguishable and all was desert. Each night, the sun seared into the skyline, a brand of fire scorching an open palm.
Perhaps the townspeople had known all along, as they watched the sunset flare out above the horizon and spat the straw from their teeth.
Perhaps the way was lost. Perhaps the light was gone.
Perhaps there was really nothing left.
word count: 351
a/n: i still hate thisss
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mercury
Teen Fictionin which the death of an overmedicated, latch-key daughter with a head full of insulin and dirty jokes is ruled a suicide - but aren't the police almost always wrong? ©ma-cherie. all rights reserved, 2019
