disaster / calm

A few days before everything went to shit, I swore I could feel the floor of my apartment shaking, very subtly, under my feet as I sit up at night. I would wake up in the morning and look out the windows that face east and see what looked to beclouds slowly swirling around the sun. The blue-bleached sky and this monstrous, red ball that sat in it, pulling the clouds in, slowly slowly slowly.

Riding my bike around I had begun noticing a lot of dead birds that lay all over the ground. In streets, in yards, everywhere. All kinds of birds. Small swallows and fat robins. Large ravens and putrid pigeons. People assumed it was because of the chemicals in the air, as SLC once sat in a bowl of a valley and collected a fine, tasty smog overhead, that the birds were merely falling out of the sky because the pollution that sat above. These birds weren’t dying due to chemical inhalation, they were killing each other.

I once sat at a red light and watched a group of swallow descend upon the nest of a pigeon, some began attacking the pigeons as others began pushing eggs out of the nest on the street below. And once the eggs were done with they all began pecking and scratching at this pigeon. Mauling it to a shredded pulp in it’s own nest which it had built to care for it’s young, before letting the carcass fall to the street. Just one of many incidents I saw before everything was different.

I remember watching the crane that was building new apartments on 200 S. fall while I stood in line waiting to buy Haribo Fizzy Colas and Vitamin Water at my favorite shop, a block away. Several of the men working there were crushed beneath the steel frame of the half constructed apartment complex and the collapsing crane. A day after that a Trax train derailed near my work late at night, sliding into the nearby music venue, killing damn near everyone.

Two days later I was at the DI on 7^th and State looking for a strobe light when a woman an aisle away fell on the floor and began to convulse. People, myself included, had naturally formed a circle around her to see what was going on, as is human nature. She began babbling in something no one understood as she was writhing around on the floor. She was foaming at the mouth, eyes rolled back into her skull. As pink bubbles began spilling out her mouth I left in such shock that I had walked out without even paying for the strobe light in my hands.

Later in the evening I was doing laundry at my apartment complex when I ran into my neighbor, Leann. She had always been nice to me, let me keep to myself, shared a few beers, she was cool. But that night she chased me up four flights of stairs to my studio with a large kitchen knife in her hand.

The same night, after I had dealt with Leann, there was a huge sound. Indescribable. Like mountains falling apart. It felt like the old, renovated building that was my apartment complex was tossed 50 feet into the air. My studio was in shambles afterwards. The old organ that sat at the foot my bed had been tossed across the space into my closet. How had it not crushed me? The hatchet my father had given me, the tool I used to deal with Leann, was planted firmly in the wall about a foot from where I had fallen. How had it not hit me? Luck, I guess. A funny idea to think about at a time like that.

I slowly made my way to the kitchen window and stared out of it to the east.

Complete darkness.

Whatever the hell had happened had knocked out the power grid… and there wasn’t a single star in the sky that night.

I could hear car alarms and people screaming, but couldn’t see a thing.

I had noticed the sun hitting my windows earlier than usual the following morning and when I peered out my window this time, I realized it was because the mountains to the east were gone. I later found out that the ones to the west had fallen into themselves that night, as well.

And as for the rest of the valley, I’m not too sure. I don’t dare travel passed 900 S. from where I am right now. Looters, murderers and rapists from the prison near Draper, those of which were able to survive this long, have made the rest of the valley theirs.

The funny thing is, that now with mountains gone so is the smog that was once trapped by them. Even the winters are clear now, no more flakes of inversion mistakenly captured by my tongue, thinking it was snow.

A vicious fire took The Capital and much of The Avenues, burning so hot and so long that once it was done there was almost nothing left.

But now the land to the north is covered in vegetation and a few times I’ve even seen a deer and her fawns making their way through the grassy hills, creating small hoof paths through the tall grass.

That’s first time a path has been cut into them since there were streets and power lines and houses and cars that stood there.