Jared Bushnell

I Am Ruin

No-one could remember when the words began appearing on the architecture of modern civilization. It was a hideous graffiti, painted without care of style or aesthetics. The words dripped a heavy black ink that ran as if slowly applied to the surface. The style was not artful and it had a homogeneous consistency that suggested the same author. The message was unsettling and filled with rage as if the words themselves were sentient. I Am Ruin the words read, the implication was ominous and malignant. It wasn't noticeable at first, the placements were haphazard and random, not robust but thin and crooked. It was only after it was too late that people made any sort of connection to the writing and their arrival. Memory cannot recall where they came from either or when exactly things began to change, there was no big show of it. It was a reconnaissance operation and then an infiltration, an operation of stealth and silence. Did they arrive or were they born of the earth? A question never to be answered.