War Against the Curse
Publication date: 2020-11-06
Title: War against the curse
Type: Short fiction
Publication: Dream Journal
URL: https://ilovedreamjournal.wordpress.com/2020/11/06/war-against-the-curse/
(If the original link is unavailable, you can read it below.)
War Against the Curse
Twenty small, fragile bodies lie in my bag, long dead. As I walk towards the cold sea, I hear them crush and grind against each other, their skeleton frames chipping away against each of their sharp, exposed bones.
I don’t care how they feel. They are just things to me; monsters made out of plastic, metal and glass. I am a warrior on a mission, sent to cleanse this world of the modern curse.
I am walking to the port. I thought that it would be a suitable place to get rid of the remains. It’s a remote area and, on a day like this, it will be empty. The weather is unpleasant today. The wind roams wild and free, the sky is dull and grey, and I feel cold. It isn’t raining, although I feel small drops of the ocean permeating my skin. On days like these my missions reach their final moments – days that witness the calmness of the storms that passed by.
The waves roar against the concrete coast that never yields to the sea’s wrath. I look around the desolate desert of concrete blocks conquering the sea line, and I see no one. Twenty small, fragile bodies lie in my bag, victims of my latest killing spree, but the world is still infected.
I place the bag on the cold, rough concrete and take out all the bodies – twenty phone carcasses. I lay them in four lines. My boot stomps them, smithereens scatter in all directions; those little black speckles that conquered the world get picked up by the wind and banished into all four corners of the world.
I call it a carnage of modernity, the curse of our time. I stomp and bash and kick the dead bones. I scoop the remains and dump it into the hungry sea, and then I clear the scene. I will burn the bag when I get home.
As I walk away, I have claimed a victory in a war against them. There are many like me, but there’s too many of them. I claimed twenty enemy troops today, but they have claimed the entire world.
It is a small victory in my war against the omnipresent enemy, but I have the rest of my life to tip the scales in my favour.