In The Studio by Ben Myers

from his great blog "I, Axl - An American Dream": http://iaxl.blogspot.com

“You know if they dropped
the fucking bomb on the planet
and just levelled the place
and you were, like, the only survivor
and you’d be walking along
and at first you’d just see basic destruction,
like collapsed houses and sparking electrical cables
and shit, but as you keep on walking
you’d see, like bodies, scattered here and there,
and maybe they don’t look superficially damaged
but they’re dead alright, and you keep walking
and you see smoking shoes lying in the street,
and bodies, all bald and burnt and shit,
like charred down one side or something,
and everything would be
quiet except for the low whistle of a warm
nuclear wind blowing in from the east,
and then you start seeing more bodies,
piles of them, flesh ripped from their bones,
their eyeballs incinerated in their sockets,
their hands twisted and distorted, skulls
grimacing, rictus, the strangely sweet smell
of burning flesh everywhere, the sky dashed
with red hues, everything dead and useless,
gone and hollow, and you just stand there,
grabbing at your face, screaming, screaming
screaming into a void of nothingness.
OK? Well, that’s exactly how I want your
drum fill to sound, bro.”

Ben Myers' new novel RICHARD is out in the UK on October 1st through Picador.