- it is summer. The sun is shining. It is winter. The sun is shining. You aren't certain, upon reflection, when the last time was that the sun wasn't shining.
- you are starting to fear that In-N-Out is not actually a burger chain but rather a cult. Whenever you bring it up people's eyes glaze over. They are so hungry. Oh, god, they are all so hungry.
- You're fairly certain that one Starbucks store is following you. There wasn't a Starbucks on that corner a minute ago... right?
- there is some sort of warp in the space-time-continuum near Los Angeles. There is no other explanation for why you have been stuck in traffic this long. No matter what channel you turn the radio to all you can hear is static. Occasionally, the distant sound of a voice speaking in Spanish, as if trying to convey a message to you from many miles away.
- when the rain starts, everyone around you panics. What do they know that you don't?
- you hear them sometimes, shrieking overhead. They look like birds, but no birds that you ever knew. Once you catch them in a pair of binoculars. You lower the lenses. They are not birds, they never were.
- you walk along riverbeds, they're concrete, dry, empty. 'What's a river?' you wonder sometimes, but you never find out.
- at times when you drive over the hill into Los Angeles, you see it waiting, looming above short skyscrapers. You tell yourself it's only grey smog, choking the sky, but sometimes it looks like a wave. Like the Pacific has finally revolted against this city nestled between so many faults. You eagerly watch for it t move, but not yet. Not yet.
- the palm trees aren't from here. The jacarandas aren't from here. The people aren't from here. Nothing really lives here. Nothing really stays.
- there is an hour every night where roaches gather on the street corner. the insect hour, maybe, where they discuss business, see long lost friends. You tread carefully. The last time you crushed one the infestation in your squat two-level apartment two blocks down lasted for weeks.
- there's another earthquake on another day, shaking the office and sending supplies tumbling, and when you ask your coworkers about it they stare at you blankly. 'What earthquake?' they ask, and you realize they can't feel them anymore.
YOU ARE READING
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