Shit's fucked.

Not the way you imagined it, but it's invariably on a bad trajectory.

When you imagined the beginning of collapse, you had run a bunch of different scenarios in your head.

That collapse would be aggressive, it would take no prisoners.

Instead, the best word you could use to describe it would be, well, slow, suspended even. Things are, well,

kind of normal, but most definitely not what anyone would define as normal not very long ago.

The power works, mostly, and the tap water continues to flow, but now with a subtle scent

and flavoring in between drinking water from an old plastic bottle and pool water.

And Facebook and Instagram are still up and running.

Two things are impossible to find. Garden seeds and coffee.

So instead of coffee, you sip on mint tea.

Mint is plentiful in an old flower bed outside your building, and, to be completely honest,

it's one of the only plants you'd been confident identifying enough to ingest. And, well, despite not having been a fan of mint flavor, the water hasn't been that great, so anything to cover it up is pretty appealing for the time being.

You start thinking about a girl you dated in college.

She was your typical white girl who liked to cosplay in the vein of witchcraft,

collecting herbs and making tinctures without actually ever using them.

It was mostly performative, and you guess you probably grew out of it, but you start to wonder how useful those books on medicinal herbs would be right now.

On top of her stack of various general witchery books was Faulkner's Absalom Absalom, the copy you lent her for the class you had taken

with her roommate.

You continue to drift from memory to memory, not recalling the premise of the novel itself,

but rather the lack of existence that existed within the narrative.

Faulkner's novel highlighted the impact catastrophe has on community in the chilling suspension

...