[It was a day of three digits, like “911.” This was “410.” On April 10th, we finally caught sight of the being that had so distressed us. But long before that day we had been scourged by this Thing, this Bane that we learned to call “Earth-Shaker.”]
Not just fields and dance-floors, but homes, too, were affected.
Some people were afraid to visit their basements; others had disappeared there, taken into the earth. Gradually, basements were abandoned. On Staten Island, for instance, an old coal chute was boarded up. Heavy weights were placed on it, but to no avail. The owner asked “Why me? Why us? What does it want?”
Sometimes it shook the walls of our homes. The next day, we shored the walls with lumber stolen from the remains of houses that had fallen the day before.
But we adjusted, made our compromises. We neopigs abandoned homes of brick for those of straw, that when they fell on us we would not die. Not so soon, anyway.
Some tried to rebuild their houses, but before long they gave up and lived in tents. When the tent-pegs sank into the ground they knew it was time to pull up the ropes and move on.
“We had to move every few weeks,” a man in Westchester said to a reporter. “Yes, that’s right here in Westchester, I mean. Westchester! Can you believe it?”
Fissures opened in the earth, at unexpected and apparently random places. People disappeared. We all felt that things were getting worse, even though the government put on a brave face.
In panic we fled, first to the mountains, then to the shore. Wherever we went, we felt Earth-Shaker beneath us. Eventually, we returned to the city. If everywhere, why not there?
We were reminded again that the earth is not our home. Our home is the air, earth only for standing, for planting, for driving over, for shitting on. We’ve always relied on the earth, insulted it, raped it, stolen its treasures. But now the earth seemed to be fighting back.
[To be continued]
Memorable Fancies 
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