Dust Settles, The World Laughs - a dark short story

It was a typical morning in "The land where humanity dies a few thousand deaths every day", also known to the rest of the world as "shhh....don't say it lest you get jailed or worse, cancelled" - a name that was, admittedly, a bit on the nose but had been unanimously agreed upon by the inhabitants after a particularly spirited debate over tea and what passed for biscuits these days.

The sun, in its infinite celestial wisdom, had decided to rise, casting a light that seemed to say, 'Here we go again.' The dawn chorus was less birdsong and more the metallic twang of the loudspeakers, which sprung into action with the enthusiasm of an overly eager office worker on a Monday morning. These announcements, landing like a brick in a pillow fight, were considered by the occupiers as their "humanitarian gesture" – a final courtesy call to the sector's beleaguered residents before they launched their deadly rain.

"Evacuate Sector 7," the loudspeakers declared, in a voice that managed to sound both bored and slightly surprised that it still had to say these things. It was the sort of announcement that, under different circumstances, might have been followed by 'and have a nice day.' The residents of Sector 7, ever the improvisers, had turned the whole affair into a sort of bleak morning ritual.

A gentleman, once dapper until fashion had a falling out with reality, glanced at his watch, which had museum ambitions rather than timekeeping skills. He nodded as if to say, 'Great timing to be anywhere else,' just as 'here' was about to become the bull's-eye in a bomb-dart game by those less-than-friendly neighbors. Nearby, a lady with a green thumb was watering potted plants, treating them like VIPs to the morning's explosive show. The plants, in their stoic way, either admired her dedication or were resigned to being the greenest audience in this absurd daily theater.

The children, bless their tattered jerseys, which might have once sported the names of famous footballers, were now playing a game of 'evacuate or be evaporated,' which involved a lot of running and not so much celebrating – the universal language of children who've decided that if the world's gone mad, they might as well learn to play on the tightrope of absurdity that life had become.

In the grand, tragic opera that was Sector 7's daily routine, not everyone was adept at keeping time with the orchestra. In a quiet, forgotten corner of the sector, a young boy unexpectedly found himself in the spotlight. He had dared to hope that this place might escape the bombing, if only for a little longer. But hope, it seemed, had a knack for abandoning family members. He awoke alone, once part of a family of twelve, now the last survivor of a lineage that had inconveniently overlooked the memo on avoiding extinction.

The boy, amidst the remnants of what once was a lively home, held onto a teddy – a rather underwhelming heirloom, but it had the distinct advantage of being easier to carry than the emotional baggage. As the bombs began their descent, like the world's most punctual yet unwelcome rain, the boy, with a resilience far beyond his years, took a slow, measured step away from his past, tipping an imaginary hat to the sky — a gesture of farewell to the short and only chapter of his life, that was closing forever.

And so, as the dust settled once again on the streets of Sector 7, the world chuckled at its own dark joke, while some distance away, a cat perched on the ruined walls of yet another house of broken dreams, deciding the show was over, sauntered off in search of a sunbeam, indifferent to the farce of human existence.