MARK MCLAUGHLIN

The Apocalypse of Despair

Hard times make for hard people, My Momma used to say. The year is now 2026. Times are hard. People are losing hope all around me and sinking fast. Despair is tangible, you can wear it like a dense cloak. Not just here in New York City but worldwide. Right now it’s the height of our hot season. Nothing below 90’ every day for the last season. Season - is the wrong term. We don’t use it any more since we no longer have any seasons. Now, it’s just a hot period and a cold period. Six months of each. Global warming got injected with steroids from all of the Billionaires building their own rocket ships and marketing mass trips to space. The toxic garbage they left behind up there and the special fuel they used pissed off Mother Nature, ate away at an already permeable ozone layer and The rest is domino effect history. It's all mankind's fault tho. Never heeding the scientific talking heads warnings. Or the floods, the fires and the droughts. I don’t mind it really, not that I’ve a choice. I love the heat. Yea, it's much more acrid and dustier now but it's all I’ve known for a while. Much like our current way of life you adapt and survive or you die. You die like the myriad of decomposing bodies that used to litter the streets before they were picked up and stacked on Liberty Island. “Give me your tired and poor” she said, butsit’s more like, your dead and decaying. But there’s a chance life is better up in the Canadian woodlands. It’s rumored that some patches of the woods are untouched and a safe haven from the heat. Won’t be say getting there but I have to try. Times are hard and hard times make for hard people, my momma used to say.