“Rox in the Box” by The Decemberists from The King is Dead

Every day is the same.

I know that cannot be true, but it feels as though it is. Ever since they came. Ever since they took us away. Every day…the same.

I do not know what they want. Beyond the work, really. And even that. I am not sure if what we are doing gives them anything of us or if it is only to keep us busy and ragged. We load up the carts and send them up to the surface and empty carts return but that is all I know. I am not even sure what we are loading. Or where we are, for that matter.

It all happened so quickly, I doubt even if I was the type to have a gun in the nightstand it would’ve mattered. I know plenty of folks in town for are exactly those kinds of people and they get taken just the same as me, so I think I’m right on this.

It started with that horrible noise, a kind of moan that rattled the windows. Then the thick black cloud, so close to the ground and moving so fast, I almost thought they were animals galloping down the street. Then the odor…it reminded me of the smell of my granddad’s home after the fire, but to Larsen it smelt like the hospital where he worked during the war. So who knows.

Finally, it was the darkness. Slipping into my head, flattening me, stretching me out, absorbing me. Then waking up here.

It’s hard to tell if time moves differently here or it’s just the exhaustion talking. I’ve entertained the notion that here isn’t the here I am used to but, frankly, the thought is too big to process amidst the noise, the smell, the dark, and the endless labor.

Not everyone for town is here. As awful as this is, the prospect of being somewhere, being subjected to something else is…too much, actually. I find myself oddly thankful that this is my fate.

No one seems to really know who they are. Or what. Some are convinced they are people like us. Well, not like us. Terrorists or foreign invaders or militia members. I’m not convinced. I think there’s a reason they stay out of our sight. I doubt they are worried about us being able to describe them to the proper authorities.

That might sound crazy, but…honestly what doesn’t sound crazy at this point? And haven’t we earned crazy?