THE ATOMIC BOOT [ Lily Bastock ]

Sometimes, one event makes another inevitable. Like the use of money over trade sending society on
a fast roll downhill into the trenches of an immoral class system, or the beneficiaries of that class
system discovering other countries and deciding they should rule them. It’s the same with the atomic
bomb. Invention doomed us to a nuclear end.
I flick on the kettle and sit down at the table. Bran-flakes for breakfast. The especially
tasteless, off-brand variety, because with what little control I have I’d prefer not to line the pockets of
a billionaire who sees water as profit. Instead, I give my cash to a different billionaire who does things
I don’t know about. The kettle water starts to bubble.
Horror books I used to love gather dust on the shelves. Stories can’t scare me when I’m living
like a hamster in a plastic ball, racing around, waiting for the atomic boot to drop. I have nightmares
about it: the blast, the fire, the ash, the winter. The big cloud with the ring and the mutilating effects of
the fallout.
The bran-flakes turn to flavourless mush; I push them away, pull up my knees, and sink into
the digital depths of my phone.
The first thing I see is a video of people marching, posters raised. Then an ad. A man lifting
weights at the gym. Another ad. An old woman being carried, skull cupped by gloved hands, into the
back of a van. A young woman swatching six red lipsticks. An ad. Bony children mimicking the
whistle of a falling bomb. Foxes crushed in wire cages. Someone’s redecorated house. An ad. A polar
bear, thin as a dog and trapped on drifting ice, staring into the lens of the watching drone. A collection
of plastic figures. A crushed tent. A sea of hats, blood red. A new phone. A new car. The same polar
bear, now dead. A new law. An old law, revoked. A mother weeping. Dust clouds over a rubble city.
An ad.
The wind slams a window shut and the kettle screams its way to boiling.
There’s nothing to wait for. Death is already here.
The steam of the kettle spreads across the ceiling, a mushroom cloud.