A Distant Thunder

    Trafalgar Square. Slate grey clouds roll across the sky like dark tripe. The tourist horde wanders aimlessly across the Square, flashing their iPhones at each other. The tamest pigeons in the entire world strut at my feet, heedless of potential kicks. The four giant bronze lions recline like Sphinxes, four-square, in their positions around the column, as they have for over a hundred years. The air is warm. Far down below our feet the Tube trains rush through the Victorian tunnels, ferrying passengers across town. White buildings, all around us, which have been in these exact places for centuries, their impassive facades looking down at the passing parade of humanity. And what dramas have unfolded within their rooms? What sorrows? What happiness? What lives? What deaths? And what more is to come? And how long will they remain here?
    The sound of long-ago bombs echoes through time across the Square. I picture the fire in the sky; the roar of plummeting machines in their death throes; the empty swathes of land where once stood buildings, now reduced to smoking black craters; the horrified shouts of little humans as they run beneath the ground into the Tube station, which may save or crush them on a whim; the sound of exploding windows; whistles and sirens; the stink of lives and civic property burnt away forever. And I continue across Trafalgar Square, within the swelling and ebbing tide of flesh, as the first downpour of acid rain washes over us.

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