Mutant
The fallout came tangled with snow. We thought the sea would protect us. But it came from New Mexico greasy with Plumbbob's vaporized pigs.
When Life sent a photographer we let ourselves be dressed up in cowboy outfits. He arranged us in front of a sunset scrim among papier mâché Saguaro. We radiated health.
We became scientific data. They said records needed to be kept. But in the end we were not of much use. Everyone everywhere was impacted in the same way. There was no observer.
The mutant landscape is full of forgetting.
The shapes of successive regimes of radiation sickness pills and psychotropics repeat in details of our residential architecture. We associate them with pleasant sensations, find them reassuring.
We paint our buildings as mottled surfaces as if searching for the color of fallout.
Our region is known for producing a mechanical sea urchin, a proliferation of levers connected to an intricate network of lines and pulleys. It requires considerable craft to fashion but has no effects except on itself.
I watch the sun rise from inside an abandoned shipping container by the marsh amongst the papier mâché Saguaro, reading old Life Magazines and listening to hovering symphonies of birdsong. Foreground and background switch places and rearrange all the sounds in between. My hearing is a landscape of forgetting.
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Author's Note
Operation Plumbbob:
Other stories by stephen hastings-king
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I'm so happy to be the first one to fave this gem *!
Great piece, Stephen. Especially like the last two segments. 'My hearing is a landscape of forgetting'. Yes.
Yes *
I'm a sucker for any story with the words "New Mexico" and "fallout" having grown up with Don't Eat the Snow warnings in NM after nuclear tests in Utah and Nevada. So it's doubly rewarding when it's such a great story. Some of this made me think of Bacigalupi's The Wind-Up Girl. *
Nicely created world here, Stephen. I love the mechanics mixed in with the horror.
I'm always a sucker for anything post-apocalyptic dystopia. Nice writing, too.
An exceptional piece, Stephen. Great voice and form.
Strange times require strange images. I don't think the era has been much used. This is much more than backdrop illumination. Well done.
"...searching for the color of fallout."
I love the tone you set, the words you used to set it, the ways in which you used them.
Playing a little catch up this morning, and wow-the second stunning piece of yours in a row. Very strong work. *
thanks very much to all for the reads, lovely comments and faves. i'm pleased that the piece works--it makes the exploring of the creepy inspiration for the story worth the effort.
Excellent. The imagery is perfect and the sense of finding a new way in the loss is all right there.
Excellent style and tone, with just the right amount of invention. Great read.
This is very fine work, Stephen. *
Missed this. Glad I found it. Really fine, Stephen.
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It comes on like lines in a musical score. *
thanks very much for the reads and lovely comments. i'm pleased that you enjoyed the piece. it's curious looking at it from a few days remove how much of it is about the salt marsh....
full of wonders that poetic landscape of yours, and full of the sounds of creaking mechanical parts. "My hearing is a landscape of forgetting." will stay with me.
Wonderfully musical writing!
I like the way 'we' merges with 'I' a whole different POV - good crisp effervescence.
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