You keep wandering. Resting on the ledge of a trashcan you see a cracked BIC lighter. The inner canister is unbroken and still has some fluid left, so you pocket it. The prospect of surviving in this place brings a coldness to your chest and an adrenaline spike to your blood.
Cold, desolate, dirty. No surprise your life has brought you to a place like this. In some ways you've known all along. Right from the first moment, something in you knew it would take you here. But still, something made you do it anyways. Something called to you. The possibility of more, maybe. The possibility of a thrill. Something worth living for. But of course, here you are, no different than any of the other schmucks. Perhaps you'll perish in the same way as well. Just the same as the rest of them.
What are your moves for today, Friday July 7th, 2023
One thing's certain: there's trash everywhere. It's the sort of place that makes you feel like you need a shower just to get the stench off.
A nearby wall is graffitied with the words,
Bools r fuk
Which itself is mostly covered up by a fresher graffiti of,
🌈bers
Perhaps this place doesn't deserve such curiosity. Perhaps it's simply an abandoned site of degeneracy that ate itself with its own vileness. Bile breaching the inner lining of the stomach to consume healthy cells around it. Contained, it is a necessary function of a healthy body. Self-regulating. Always churning. Tucked away out of sight to the outside world for it's odeousness, yet without it the body fails.
In fact, you are certain now that this place was not a matter of self-affliction. Rather, it's importance was undervalued and it's vital role to the greater body misunderstood. This organ did not fail. It was failed by the body it resided in. And as a result, bile and acid is now spewed all around these abandoned streets. Nothing left to consume. No nutrients extracted.
What are your moves for today, Thursday July 6th, 2023?
Looking around, you quickly realize that there are many similar scribbled notes lying all around. In fact, every piece of trash in the vicinity, it seems, has the same question scribbled on it, each with a different day in recent history.
What kind of society could this have been? One obsessed with a daily ritual of movements? All around is scattered only questions, never any answers. What were these people searching for with each day's question of moves? Why was this question so important? Or was it important at all? Perhaps it was just a way to pass the time.
What are your moves for today, Wednesday July 5, 2023?
You walk through the desolate streets of New York, dust and building rubble all around you. Evidence of a bygone community that once existed here.
Turning a corner, you are blinded for a moment by something reflective above your eyes. It's a street sign, battered and leaning against the stone building, but still standing. It reads:
WALL ST
Down at your feet you see a wendies wrapper pressed against your ankle by the wind. There's some writing scribbled on it in thick permanent marker. You bend down to grab it. Processed cheese sticks between your pant leg and the wrapper as you lift it up. Fuck. The handwriting is terrible, as if written by someone who has hardly a grasp on the written language, but somehow it this fact only adds more importance to the words you read. You peer closely to make it out:
What Are Your Moves Tomorrow, Monday July 03, 2023?
@hth
@lemmy.world