boom...rumblerumble..BOOM
They had to be near by. It had been almost a week since the fire in los angeles. The smoke had turned an already pristine sunset into a vortext of deep purples with whisping tendrils of soot.
At first I took no notice.
With the apparent desimation of the human race fires were a common occurrence. Things left unattended often lead to chaos.
Or at least that was my thought on it.
Since the end of quarantine, or rather sincw I had ran out of food and was forced to leave my house, it had taken several hours of riding my bicycle frantically around the city to realize I was the only one left.
So it was that my opinions were never countered. Or rather, in my opinion, is that it becomes very lonely and humbling to live without opposition.
Sure there were books to challenge my views on life. The world is seemingly mine and any magazine stand, book store, or library are mine for the picking.
To be fair, I am not an educated man.
Each time I thumbed through the feather like pages of leather bound books tucked away in the vaults of every museum I came across, the words ran empty. As though the concepts and situations that had inspired them had simply vanished when everyone else did.
Museums had become something of an obsession. Whenever I shuffled through their grand open halls, it was comforting. A standing testament to the strength and endless fascination of the human race. each nestled neatly in the empty shell of a world that lay just outside of their walls.
It had been in los angeles when the idea (unopposed) hit me while reading of the millions of slaughtered aborigines in mans vanity fueled quest for land and power...it had been inherited by me.
who the fuck am I?
In that moment every part of me disappeared.
Cheesy Spiderman quotes flashed through my head, but it really was a great power & responsibility.
My vision came into focus on a display of the oregon trail. A sickly looking family sat huddled around a plastic fire, clinging to each other for warmth and comfort .
This is the answer. IThey travelled hundreds of miles on nothing more than promise, and here I was left with less.
It had taken threes week to find two suitable horses. Another week to actually catch em. Luckily the stables where they had been pastured came equipped with a fully gassed dodge truck hitched to a rickety two horse trailer. After ravaging the barn and grabbing all supplies that might be slightly useful in their care (antibiotics, hoof pick, brushes, shiny new horse shoes, supplements) we set off back towards the museum. It took another day to force the conestoga wagon through the creaking doors of the museum, and yet another to fully outfit it to my liking (haphazardly attaching an awkwardly large telescope from the rear, a spiraling model of our galaxy atop, the softest bed I could find from a baroque display shoved inside, along with an irregularly complicated antique chest filled with things that might come in handy) when we set off for the coast. People had told me of their adventures biking up the 101 and it seemed (to me of course) that its road was likely suited to horses.
They were dreadfully difficult to control at first. Time spent running free had made them wild.
After a few hours of fighting, they soon came to terms that they were indeed stuck put.
The wagon was brilliantly designed. Fight as they might, it held true. All they had to do was walk, and the reigns turned them with leisure.
We had scarcely made it to the ocean when I saw the smoky tendrils.
Having felt an enormously successful in my endeavour, we set in for the night. Hours later a boom rang into the night. Jumping from my lavish bed roll the crackling of the sky drew attention.
Fireworks.
The horses attempted to rear up from the post where they had been hitched, and breaking gaze with the exploding sky i rushed over & tried to comfort them with gentle whispers and strong strokes along the snout.
As they once again gained composure, twitching their ears in agitation, the boomcrackle started up once more.
Agitated myself at the carelessness of some people....
Holy fuck.
And this megalomaniac over here complaining about explosions.
Instinctually I searched my horizons for a vehicle to use. With no one around there was no shortage of cars, when a strange rippling moved across the palm of my hand.
Shit. The horses. My vow to live simply.
boom..crackle
"Well whatever you intend to do, now is the time jim."
The sound of my voice startled both me and the horses, and without hesitation I moved to reattach my travel companions to the yoke.
The fireworks continued sporadically over the next hour. Each moving my stomach closer to throat.
Dawn was brushing the horizon when we reached the city. The toxic fumes of burning buildings and gun powder stinging, i urged the two towards what seemed to be the focal point of the display.
There, in dammed near the exact spot we had set out from just this morning, was the remnants of what most people would attribute to a drunken frat party. Beer cans, cigarette butts, gun shells, and charred marks where I assume once held fireworks where scattered unceremoniously about.
But they were there.
There were people here.
But where the fuck did they go?
And what kind of cosmic fucking joke is it that we had all converged in this exact spot within hours of one another?
Hastily scrawled on an billboard for the museum's upcoming exhibits where the words "w3st coast is da b3st coast, viva la Mexico!"
The smell of spray paint was nauseating, though to me it was aromatheraputic.
People. Real people.
But were they coming from or going to mexico?
Dreadful time of year to head north. The rains claim nine months of the Pacific northwests year.
Without a second thought I scrambled back into my archaic space ship.