In the late summer of that year we lived in a dessicated mall in a town that looked across the dried out river and the open air artisanal market aged rapidly by late capitalism. In the bed of the dried out river there were empty cans of Miller Lite, dry and white in the sun, and the blood bled by the carcasses The Cucks left behind was clear and swiftly moving and red and white and blue across the gravel, the openings of the empty Miller Lite cans sipping on the patriotism. The Cucks went by the mall and the gunpowder they burned firing their AK-47s at the ghosts of the enemies of freedom choked away what was left of the leaves on the trees. The trunks of the trees too were pregnant with bullets and what little leaves fell were crushed beneath The Cucks's faux American made boots.

Sometimes in the dark we heard The Cucks marching next to the back door of the Hot Topic we took shelter in and garbage cans full of gasoline or AK-47s or bullets or bodies going past pulled by rickety shopping carts. The Cucks made so much noise, we never could count their true numbers even through the haze of evaporating mercury.

Sometimes in the dark we heard bullets striking the brick next to the back door of the Hot Topic we stayed in. My father’s watch, wounded by one of The Cucks’s errant bullets, reminded me to always seek shelter at the first tinkle of a bullet casing hitting the ground.

There was always fighting in the empty river separating the dessicated mall from the open air artisanal market. The Truth took shelter in the open air artisanal mall last year, selling memories of things fed by grass or grain or stitch or hope. The first and last time we visited that place was on our first date after we agreed to cobble something more than survival out of what was left of our lives. The Truth did their best to simulate what this artisanal open air mall was like in The Before, where The Truth sneered as we walked past their counters and look at their concepts and touch their concepts and not buy their concepts. One member of The Truth hummed wordless versions of songs we remember kind of hating because how often they played on the radio, as if those 13 songs were the only songs left on this planet and perhaps during The Before, maybe those 13 songs were the only songs left. When we didn’t come back the next night, The Truth attacked us with fierce passive aggression for at least a week before they got bored and went back to focusing on salvaging what they could from The Before.

At the start of the winter came nothing for winter has always been a memory and with the lack of winter came thick clouds of mosquitos and with the thick cloud of mosquitoes came a persistent epidemic of blood drained bodies and yet The Truth and The Cucks managed to keep their ranks intact.