Excerpt. Thirty Years Gone.

by Louis Bertrand Shalako

c2010

All Rights Reserved









God, I love my job. Here is an excerpt from, 'The Paranoid Cat.' This is from the short story, 'Thirty Years Gone.'

‘Much of the city has simply been abandoned to the wilderness, although any property with a decent sized open area is inevitably farmed. What used to be wide, open thoroughfares have become little better than footpaths through an amazing variety of trees, underbrush and small garden plots on what were once front yards. Once the tarmac cracked, people tore it up and grew crops. The bulk of all houses in the city are moldering ruins, as no one needs the housing. Soon enough the windows were broken, the roofing shingles and plywood began to rot, the doors were all kicked in by vandals and looters, and then whole areas were burned out by drunks and fools…’

Almost daily, Trevor was troubled by the thought that each and every street in this city was like that, and that each and every city in the land was like this, and the situation was the same, all over the world. That one was a hard one to take, sometimes, for Trevor.

The young people, of course, had grown up within existing conditions.

It was perfectly normal, and totally accepted by them.

But he knew what things were like before. They didn’t. In that sense their ignorance encouraged their indifference.