floods running amok

Floods running amok on what had once been magnificent solemn gravel roads. Roads that had run like veins through the city that was considered the greatest in the world. Veins transporting blood to the greatest city in the greatest civilization in the history of the planet. Now it was a husk, a shadow of its former self. It was empty. Hollow. The sky was dark. Clouds hanging low. Lightning flashed above the clouds. Sewage and rotted rodents. That was not new. Greasy oil pizzas. This city has been abandoned recently. Those who came here. Those who lived here. Not those who thrived here. They were of a hardy sort. A little flood never hurt nobody. Until it did. Carts abandoned. Overturned. Even after those who lived in single rooms with three other immigrants and sent back most of their earnings to their families in third world countries, dreaming of the day they could bring their wives and their daughters and their sons, how old were their children now. Their eyes welling with tears. Even after that resilient sort had left, there had remained another. Scavengers. Those who took what they could from the carts. Veering on the precipice between life and death. Some made it out. Others toppled into the chasm.

Floods running amok through the streets. Falling into the ever hungry, ever muddy rivers on each side. Falling into the bay. All of them bloated with all the water. Their levels almost to that of the city. Soon it would be the same. Soon the city would drown, choking in water, baptized then sunk. All its success would not help it. Soon everything would fall asunder.

Tall buildings still stood tall, one of the tallest showing off a glimmering spire, another with a huge clock on the top of the tower. Flocks of birds cawing as they stood on the skyscrapers and watched all scraps of food be lost to the flood or flow to the rivers and oceans around the city. They could not fly. Not yet. The raindrops were too thick, too heavy. They were losing feathers. They were stressed.

The enormous buildings that had once marked prosperity and had inspired those who picked up postcards, even in an age when they were no longer used, picked up postcards that showed the beautiful skyline, the epitome of human success, those buildings looked sad and mellow, tears running down their gleaming faces. Their insides hollow, the human labor long since fled. Fled to god knows where. If god could not save this city, if they could not, what city would be safe? 

The constant pattering of rain was loud and regular. This was the new heartbeat of the city once marked by sirens and street music. Where the parks had once stood were now pockets of grass surrounded by seas of puddles. The earth could not absorb the water any longer. It too, was bloated. It too, was full. Muddy roads. Soft parks. The air tasted of water and despair. A deluge of wrath. Whose? No one knew. At least, none but a few.