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.
Aldas is a writer and editor with MA in Creative Writing. He has been chosen as the Irish Writers Centre delegate for the International Literature Festival Dublin 2020. His work has been featured in Cabinet of Heed,The Fiction Pool, Qutub Minar Review and elsewhere. His website: http://www.aldaskruminis.com/
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