Locality

By Steve Gergley

At dawn, an orange-gold fog settled over our suburban cul-de-sac. A heptagonal-shaped pit swallowed ninety-four percent of our handsomely manicured front lawn. The asteroid hovered overhead as a smear of artery-colored light. My wife and I placed a thick oak board across the mouth of the bottomless chasm. As our neighbors stumbled through the razor-edged haze and vomited panicked monologues of apocalyptic horror into the cracked and sweltering pavement, my wife and I walked to the center of the wooden board and peeled off our sweat-drenched clothes. My wife threw her bra over her right shoulder. I tossed my boxers to the left and watched them flutter into the lightless void. My wife slid off her panties and kicked them into the yawning pit. For the next sixteen hours and forty-three minutes, we pressed our slick bodies together and waited for our neighbors’ sticky blood to splash across the taut and curved topography of our spotless, tingling skin.

Steve Gergley is the author of a bunch of books and a lot of weird writings of an indeterminate nature. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/. He’s also the editor of scaffold literary magazine.