48
Alexander Powless
Dumb Brouhaha A crisp copy of the daily newspaper hits your steps just seconds before a tidal wave of pavement swallows the delivery boy. Along with his body, his future as washed-up fictional writer slides down the cement leviathan’s stony throat. One Mississippi… Two Mississippi… As the neighboring house collides into your own, your living room wall bulges and collapses, sending bricks and rubble across the room. Without request, the television set explodes and shards of metal and glass decorate the floor. Your instinct alone sends your body from the shard-speckled floor to the plastic-wrapped antique couch- a gift from your ever prosperous mother. The Cosmopolitan magazine that had once occupied your hands now lies in blazing fragments, but the dilemma at hand disallows you from expressing your dismay, and the truth about Kim Kardashian’s latest relationship forever remains within those singed fragments. One second, you’re affixed onto the milk-white couch as you’re thrown through the living room windows, the glass crumpling away like a page from Revelations; the next second, you blink and your non-house is an ant-sized speck of dilapidated glass and wood from your perspective miles above the Earth. Before you, continents break away and smash into others. Oceans spit out their water and gurgle the mixture of panicking people and flaming rubbish. The Earth is no longer what you once called Earth: a concoction of destroyed buildings and masses of fractured earthly matter orbit the ruptured planet. You cannot help but stare in fascination at the destruction. As you gaze upon the end of your world, the moon scrapes your forehead. The immediate pain comes with the mental registration of this hellish landscape dancing before your wet eyes. The gradual constriction of your throat and lungs confirms its existence. A crumbling yet recognizable PNC bank drifts along, slowly pushing mashed debris out of its path. Though progress crawls, you diligently paddle toward it. By propelling yourself forward off a roofless car, you reach the shattered glass doors of the structure and carefully pull yourself through the gap. The miracle in the malformed room evokes a weak smile on your lips: suspended in the air, thousands of green bills float in bound clusters. Your final Earthly words echo through your head: “I just want to be like Kim Kardashian: richer than rich.” Now all you want is air.
— Alexander Powless ‘16 Signatures