"The conversations had a nightmare flatness, talking dice spilled in the tube metal chairs, human aggregates disintegrating in cosmic insanity, random events in a dying universe.”
—
-William S. Burroughs in Junkie
❋
THEY lived in the quiet suburban shuffle of life, as though drugged, but they knew nothing of the feeling, not yet. Of course when they did feel it they would be none the wiser. People woke to the dusty sunlight like any other day, and stumbled out of bed to their children or dogs or lovers. They drank from their sinks and breathed the crisp air and wondered idly what that faint smell was. No neighbor knew, no mother or father living upstate, but everyone smelt it. Everyone tasted it, different from the metallic or chlorineish tang of the pipes.
Twenty one days later the kids started going missing. Their absence was felt but it was numbed. And no one thought a thing of it.
Twenty one days later weaving around and through the mountains, over forests, the train rumbled onward.