2

It was 4:35 a.m. I decided that since I couldn’t sleep anyway, I’d go stand on the balcony, stare at the ether. In the inky sky, I could see whirling patterns passing by, patterns passing into a sidereal distance; vivacious, complex patterns, patterns of colored gemstones, tropical flower banks, Scottish stained-glass windows, mogul arches and suicide doors, peacock designs. The patterns flickered and glowered brighter than animated billboards, then disappeared like groups of penguins trudging into an Antarctic blizzard.

 

The street below was empty, graveyard quiet, save for the gentle rumble of a passing truck or the lowkey buzz of a motorbike. I’d never seen downtown Bangkok so desolate. I recalled complaints about legions of uncouth continental Chinese tourists trashing Thailand, and COVIT seemed like their perfect closing act.

 

I yawned, then sucked in a steamy breath of the outside air. I’d say “fresh” air, but the air is never actually fresh in Bangkok. It always carries a faint effluvium, and often packs a stink; a stink of diesel fumes, a stink of sewer smells, or that distinct smoky stink created by local farmers slashing and burning nearby rice fields.

 

Again, I considered shapeshifting into a water monitor lizard. I seriously began to identify as a water monitor lizard. I saw myself in scales, saw myself with green skin. I saw myself with a forked tongue, claws instead of fingers, and my blood cold as ice water…

 

Night still hung like a cape over the city. I stretched and yawned again, then crossed my arms and leaned forward on my balcony’s railing and saw out to an abandoned building nearby. The building site, the development, was intended to be an audacious luxury condo, aimed at the continental Chinese market, but construction had been halted, and so it sat abandoned and half-built, its windows staring absently, such as the eye sockets of skulls in an ossuary.

 

Nowadays the abandoned luxury condo project was occupied by rats. Infested by rats. Big, ugly gray rats. I’d been seeing colonies of big ugly gray rats scurrying up the half-built building’s walls. Rats running around its hollowed shell. Rats living on its ossified floors. The rats really were gargantuan too, almost the size of small dogs.

 

There were packs of stray cats living on my street, and I wondered if the cats could tackle, maul the rats, do whatever cats do to rats, but I wasn’t so sure. The stray cats were thin, brittle-looking, and some were tailless. And those rats were <deleted> monstrous.

 

The rats seemed to be growing larger, too, by the day. Perhaps the rats were a result of an experiment gone wrong or toxic waste, like the Teenage Ninja Mutant Turtles. Somehow I didn’t see any physical confrontation between the hulking, toxic rats and the emaciated feral cats being a fair fight.

 

I imagined a feral cat being circled by rats, torn to shreds, the same way a hornet is swarmed and annihilated in a bee’s nest. Then I wondered if the rats would die of “COVIT.” Maybe that’d do them in. The rats, in an abandoned Chinese building, dying of COVIT. Sounds plausible and strangely inevitable.   

 

I stepped back inside, into the tingly chill of manufactured air, and returned to bed. I’d been experiencing trouble striking the right balance with my new a/c system. It was always too hot or too cold. Never just right…

Dont know the tecnical term, but honestly, to embelished and I havnt completed a post of yours yet.

Sorry ,

1 minute ago, CharlieH said:

Dont know the tecnical term,

purply.. I think is the term you are looking for...

 

Very pretty writing, but a bit too much not going too far... 

 

keep at it.. but cut it down a bit or two... 

Has the OP been eating rye bread made of flour that been contaminated by the mutated ergot?

It is considered as a causal factor of The Middle Ages, and other, Witch Hysterias.

 

"The ergot diseases of grasses, caused by members of the genus Claviceps, have had ... In the Middle Ages, vast epidemics of so‐called St. Anthony's Fire disease ... such as the witch trials of Salem and in Norway during the 17th century (Alm, ... a ΔeasC mutant produces no detectable amounts of alkaloids or intermediates, ..."

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6640538/

 

 

Well there's help just a phone call away to Samaritans.

Keep away from the balcony.

1 hour ago, kimcancer said:

I imagined a feral cat being circled by rats, torn to shreds, the same way a hornet is swarmed and annihilated in a bee’s nest

What you need here my friend is a crash course in Haruki Murakami....

"There's no such thing as perfect writing, just like there's no such thing as perfect despair."

 

Haruki Murakami 

 

 

 

 

You're lucky you get mental diarrhea, all I get is brain farts.

isn't it rather spelled COVID?
(that was the only thing that drew my attention in this longwinded sorry tale)