Non fiction

Riot Piece

We tumbled out of the car as clumsy heroes – musketeers, the glint of their swords was the glint in our eyes; and the knowing glint of the passive moon, suspended in some faraway oblivion. It seemed almost surreal to know that the stars and the moon and planets actually existed in the same reality as the smoking chaos that we were slipping into.

Adam and Dan threw up their hoods and tightened makeshift bandanas, their chuckles corrupting the scene with some hint of innocence. But my reluctant footsteps swallowed their sniggers, and I shambled along after as we entered the sea of rats… These hooded figures seemed so far from human, so beastly but yet still vacant. There was something in the lines of their faces, something poisonous and decaying. I watched them raid the shops and burn the banks and some part of me wanted to join in. I urged to destroy, to suffocate everything my rotten race had created. It felt like we had to extinguish everything in order to create anything- suddenly this mindless riot was revolution.

I bitterly muttered through media headlines – “Citizens burn down their own communities” – but the lie made me sick because there was no community. We had numbed ourselves with materials and possessions, plasma screen TVs and advertisements, with small talk that makes my skin shrivel and my nerves implode. We were too numb with useless, selfish goals that “community” was lost somewhere, ripped apart and spewing up everything it had once stood for.

I watched others loot shops, hunger distorting their faces, their feelings, desperately still consuming. Devouring everything as if it would turn to dust and ashes in the blink of an eye – but I was sick of consuming. I only wanted to destroy. People kept comparing these riots to those in Egypt; though the Egyptians were rioting against an authority who had used and abused them and we had used and abused ourselves. It was obvious that the original excuse to riot was long gone and we were driven by something darker. For the Egyptians there was something hopeful, a chance of change, but our protest felt apocalyptic. But this apocalypse was beautiful.

I scanned the horizon and watched as my people were no longer rats but became dancers, waltzing through the teasing shimmer of shattered glass. Finally everyone had come together, it was only through pain that we could somehow twistedly resurrect this fallen “community”. My blood brewed with the heat of the fire, I urged it to keep on burning until only mesmerising smoke was left. The smoke could repopulate the whole world with its ever-changing hieroglyphic images, the transparent mime of life was all that was allowed to exist now, after our great fuck up.

A few metres away a fireman’s hose was attempting to sabotage this beautiful apocalypse, but only in vain as the water just fizzled out in the wrath of the fire. I looked down at the wet street, the pathetic puddles trying to push on their sorry lives as single streams. My eyes followed a droplet as it trickled like paint, weeping across an abandoned canvas.

Sabina Wantoch