Rust flakes and flutters across the savaged continent. The old city is drenched in sodium, its prideful architecture in shambles. The bodies of the former regime are still smoldering. Boots and fists sticking out from the pancaked rubble. A wretched stench to accompany all the new rhetoric. It blares from sirens, promising a golden dawn. It has been nine days since the statues of the Great Eagle were toppled, champagne liberated from cellars, and this is all there is to drink, the faucets running brown if at all. Clocks ring out at different times, but the foreign bankers are punctual as ever, arriving with their expressions perfectly starched, reasonable as their equations. The Great Eagle was a maniac, there is no question, but his percentages were consistent. In a nobler history, he would have been committed to an institution, subjected to procedures that pale in comparison to what he had in mind. He lusted after machines, their intricate nerves and fuming mass. He would confess this to anyone who saluted him and the ampoules his doctor administered only made the visions more bunkered. He chews through his tongue at a banquet while his wife watches on. A frail creature, all wrists as he barks his cue cards, but there are whispers she is the marionettist. A psychic from the Caucasus. Assigned by the Yanks to keep him marching towards prophecy. We cannot know how many spectacles hide behind curtains of pipe smoke. The hourglass shatters, its desert spilling across the great gameboard. Who knew death would be such a good sport?
— Nick Greer is a writer from Berkeley. Current projects include essays on trend and postmodernity, a collaborative erotic comic, and a novel inspired by giallo, the conspiracy thriller, and other ’70s Eurosleaze.