Searching for Slushies Amid Dark Days of Summer
June 2022 —
It started with glorious lightning.
I awoke in the witching hour to pitch-white flashes, repeatedly striking across the sky. But it was dead quiet. No crashes. No thunder. Nothing. Notwithstanding, the bright bolts burst with blinding brilliance like white-out against the night sky.
It was a dry heat. The arid air had conjured a heat-storm and the pale fury of dry lightning with it. Then came the twisters. Reports of scattered tornado warnings took affect across the state. It continued like this into the wee hours of the dawn, finally giving way to the sun.
The sun would soon prove to be the next plague.
The next morning’s local news: “WIDESPREAD POWER OUTAGES SWEEPING THE CITY TODAY!” Now over to Tom with the weather, who is cautioning our viewers that we are in for a real scorcher today.
At the peak of the day, the cruel sun beamed down at 99 degrees Fahrenheit, and the temperature was rising still. Dreadful afternoon heat spiked to 115 degrees. The atmosphere grew dense with humidity following the storm, compounded by the sweating of thousands without A/C.
The city was nearing its boiling point. No power meant that a vast majority of citizens were left baking in the blistering heat. Many remained without power for the rest of the week.
The heat was driving folks mad. Take, for example, a scene overheard on my police radio scanner, in which a convoy of cruisers were in hot pursuit of a souped-up Civic. That is, until the gaudy Honda crashed into some poor bastard’s living room and the young motorist fled on foot, finally evading the fuzz. (The perp was later apprehended by aid of an aerial surveillance drone, reportedly rigged up with disco-strobing floodlights, meant to spook drug-fiends into a paranoid paralytic shock.)
The next morning’s local news: Metro police announce OPERATION TURN UP THE HEAT — “We have identified some of the most violent and most wanted felons in our city and we need your help locating every last one of these craven lunatics. If you know the whereabouts of any of these degenerate sickos, please contact our Special Taskforce to Combat the Criminally Insane.”
Throughout it all, the sun burned like a halo in the sky, gazing down upon us with cold cosmic indifference.
Maybe this is the beginning of the end. Perhaps it’s the slow, creeping reckoning finally here to power-wash and steam-dry the world of all its filth.
If that’s the case, I know what I must do…
I embarked on a quest to procure slushies for my girlfriend and me.
But alas, my path was fraught with strife! I needed to stop at three different convenient stores before this goal was possible. What is the world coming to if you can’t even get a frozen slushy on a hot day?!?!
Despite the trials and tribulations, obtaining those cool, icy beverages was the most important thing in my life at that moment.
She thinks the world is ending by the time I finally arrive with our melted slushies. I comforted her, saying, “Don’t worry babe, the bastards in charge won’t let that happen, there’s too much money at stake for them to let a silly thing like the apocalypse affect their bottom line!”
I hoped this was true, but I remain uncertain.
My girlfriend’s entire apartment complex is without power indefinitely. She’s resorted to candles for light when the sun finally crests beyond the horizon. Even at 10:30 P.M., the temperature is still a fearsome 92 degrees.
Driving home later that night in serene darkness. There’s a full moon, but nonetheless things are darker than usual. Less light pollution, I suppose.
I park at my house and step out of the car. Overhead, I spy a low-flying aircraft (possibly military?) with sets of propellers on the wings and on the underside of its massive wingspan were rows of bright, blinking multicolored lights.
The next morning’s local news: Another gunfight broke out in the city’s hipster district, injuring three. The following weekend, there was another gunfight in the same hipster district, coincidentally also injuring three people. It seems these days gunfights pop up just as sporadically as the vague, aching twinge in my lower back.
What is going on here?
Strange things are afoot. It all rings deep with apocalyptic energy. Maybe there will be some sort of catastrophic solar-flare event, sparking worldwide disaster, engulfing the planet in a massive supernova. I wonder what more madness will ensue before something erupts or explodes…
In the meantime, I need to transcribe this text from the red-splotched composition notebook in which I furiously scribbled with pen up to this point thus far. (A mighty feat of automatic writing after a dreadfully long, hot day.)
Maybe this is the Rapture after all.
— Clocked out at 11:11 P.M.