I'm told our parents celebrated 9/11 like it was some kind of holiday. Fly a plane into a building, years later they'll be having Macy's sales around it. I imagine that if scientists announced that a meteor was hurtling towards the Earth, a whole industry would spring out of it. Pharmeceutical profits would skyrocket. Meteor pills would be all the rage. And the parties. Holy fuck, the parties.
That's now how it happened though. High tide just came on coming, a little each year. We worked our way around it. When the subways flooded, we made barges. Marketplaces moved from street level to the second floor. We banded into groups. I've farmed on rooftops, built windmills out of metal scrap. Not everyone, of course. The transitional generation got it the worst.Unprepared and generally worthless, a lot of them withered away to nothing in the darkness over skinned knees and bruised prides.
I guess we were lucky to be born amongst the garbage and scrap cities. We banded together. We improvised, or we died. I was seven when the news media started reporting the 404 Attacks. Eight when the ever encroaching sea was half-jokingly called High Tide. Fifteen when I decided to be a joiner, changed my name to a number (79, if you're wondering), and started pranking corporations.And I was twenty one when I met my first demigod. That will take a little explanation though, huh? It started when I met a runaway along the side of the road. The rest I'll piece together from what she told me, and what little imagination I have. Grant this old man some poetic license and come along with me, I've got one bottle of old Scotch left, ...
The sizzle of a match sparking to life momentarily mingled with cricket-song in the swampy air. A large, calloused hand guided it towards a hurricane lantern in the dark, its nails split from work and grimy to the quick.
“Bad smells, lil’ Missy,” a voice said, coming from a hulking form still mostly cloaked in shadow. “Fiyah. An’ pisssss.”
The wick of the hurricane candle borrowed life from the match, which expired with a wet sizzle in the palm of the other seemingly disembodied hand. The sweet pork and sulfur smell of burnt flesh filled the room with the growing light, revealing shelves of yellowed bottles holding dried herbs in front of a mildewed Confederate flag.
