Pure Gin

“Must be some kind of planet, for all the people who can manage. All of us who can handle it, with all of this damage.”
- The Dandy Warhols

He swung his legs over the edge of the bed; felt the sheepskin thick between his toes.

It was a year ago now, that the world had ended.

On his birthday, a day just like today. She had been cooking him breakfast, he had been sleeping in. It was a year ago, when newspapers had been reporting the spreading madness throughout the country, and it was on this day that the first riots had started. There were images on television of police clashes with civilians, with ordinary people, people just like him, like his sister and her daughter, who had been swept away in a sea of fury and misunderstandings. He could envisage them: the chanting crowd, fists raised to the sky, when suddenly everything that they had known, all the reasons they had for being there, had evaporated.

He rubbed his eyes, the memory still hot under his skin. He looked up at the sound of her sigh next to him.

“Happy Birthday”, she whispered.