Ficlet: Changes
Title: Changes
Author: xlivvielockex
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 325
Prompt: New Season (001)
Characters: The most important and overlooked characters in the 'verse: The citizens of L.A.
Notes: ATS Season 4. Not eligible for voting.
Los Angeles doesn’t have seasons. Not like the Northeast. There is no leaf color change to signal that summer has faded into fall. No bare trees, with arms reaching out like skeletons, to let the citizens know it is winter. And no fresh green buds just ready to bust forth with spring. The only way to tell the seasonal change is when the Hollywood celebutantes go from wearing micro-minis and midriff bearing tops to A-line skirts and button up blouses.
L.A.’s seasonal change didn’t consist of huge feet of snow that kept people in their houses for day or a balmy sticky heat that seeped into your pours. No, you knew it was winter when people started complaining about 60 degree chill and smog alerts. Summer was easier because the heat was so blistering, you could literally fry an egg and the city reeked like sweat soaked bodies.
But that was then. This is now.
L.A. has a season now. The more cynical could call it the “rainy” season but it is doubtful if you would see any sort of rain like this in some tropical monsoon. Most people in Bombay worry about flooding, not that a giant chunk of flaming brimstone is going to destroy their hut. The banks of the Nile aren’t overflowing with the blood that runs like a river in the streets. We have dams, built from bodies. Eager beavers we have been. Sometimes the corpses are the only thing that protects you from the monsters.
Monsters, crowding into the city like a plague of locusts. That is what tells us that it is summer. No longer that annual fireworks show downtown or the celebrities crawling over each other to get to a gold statue. A rain made of fire is our April showers.
And every day, I pray for a new kind of season. For something to signal the end to this. All I want for Christmas is Nuclear Winter.
Author: xlivvielockex
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 325
Prompt: New Season (001)
Characters: The most important and overlooked characters in the 'verse: The citizens of L.A.
Notes: ATS Season 4. Not eligible for voting.
Los Angeles doesn’t have seasons. Not like the Northeast. There is no leaf color change to signal that summer has faded into fall. No bare trees, with arms reaching out like skeletons, to let the citizens know it is winter. And no fresh green buds just ready to bust forth with spring. The only way to tell the seasonal change is when the Hollywood celebutantes go from wearing micro-minis and midriff bearing tops to A-line skirts and button up blouses.
L.A.’s seasonal change didn’t consist of huge feet of snow that kept people in their houses for day or a balmy sticky heat that seeped into your pours. No, you knew it was winter when people started complaining about 60 degree chill and smog alerts. Summer was easier because the heat was so blistering, you could literally fry an egg and the city reeked like sweat soaked bodies.
But that was then. This is now.
L.A. has a season now. The more cynical could call it the “rainy” season but it is doubtful if you would see any sort of rain like this in some tropical monsoon. Most people in Bombay worry about flooding, not that a giant chunk of flaming brimstone is going to destroy their hut. The banks of the Nile aren’t overflowing with the blood that runs like a river in the streets. We have dams, built from bodies. Eager beavers we have been. Sometimes the corpses are the only thing that protects you from the monsters.
Monsters, crowding into the city like a plague of locusts. That is what tells us that it is summer. No longer that annual fireworks show downtown or the celebrities crawling over each other to get to a gold statue. A rain made of fire is our April showers.
And every day, I pray for a new kind of season. For something to signal the end to this. All I want for Christmas is Nuclear Winter.