Blog Love Omega Glee: And Don't Play In Traffic Either! (23 January 2012)

The sun shines, turning January into June for a day. Lilith, proprietor of Purgatory, Francine's local coffeehouse, wipes down some tables near where Francine is sitting in the coffeehouse and says, "If it keeps up like this, I'm going to open up the patio."

"I don't even mind going outside to smoke on a day like today," Francine says, taking a sip of her coffee.

Lilith, a brunette in her thirties, points at Francine's cigarettes, and says, "Those'll kill you eventually, you know."

"Yeah, but I figure I'll be dead long before that at the rate the world's going."

"Fatalism, huh? That's cute. I don't know, the world seems to be the same it's ever been. There's just more people now, that's all."

"And they seem to be more stupid on average," Francine says, pointing outside at two boys, who look to be about ten years old holding guns in the middle of the street, "Those handguns look real."

Lilith moves closer to the window and looks outside. The boys stand back to back in the middle of the street, then start walking away from one another holding their guns in front pointing upwards. "Those little fuckwads," Lilith says, "They must have seen that awful tv show last night."

"Do you want me to call the cops on my cell phone?"

"It's Cleaveland, even if they came, they wouldn't come for hours," Lilith says in a hurry, dropping her wipecloth down on an empty table, and heading outside.

Francine watches through the window as Lilith walks outside and yells at the boys. Sheepishly, they stop their duel and leave the street. As Lilith returns, she turns at the doorway to Purgatory, and yells, "And don't play in traffic either!"

Francine says, "That was pretty brave Lilith. This town gets crazier everyday. How'd it ever get to be like this?"

"Believe it or not, this city was close to paradise at one time. It was such a pleasant place to live that decades back, a few of the city fathers (and if they had listened to the city mothers they would have been better off but as usual they thought they knew it all) decided that to maintain the quality of life in the city they were going to have to have a citywide conspiracy directed against outsiders convincing them the city was a terrible place, so large numbers of people wouldn't move in and ruin it for real due to overcrowding. The problem was their plan worked, but too well. And not only did outsiders become convinced that Cleaveland was the 'mistake on the lake', but so did the city residents themselves. So the falsehood became a self-fulfilling prophecy, and the city did start to decay and resemble its false image. Ever since then it's been a spiral of declining civility leading to a declining economy leading to more declining civility which leads to an even worse economy, and so on," Lilith says, as she goes back to wiping down tables.

"So if people were more civil to one another, then the city would be more peaceful and prosperous. That seems simple enough. Why don't we just do it?"

"Because the simplest lessons are the ones we forget first."

"Hmm . . . I just think too many people have kids and then don't take care of them. Then the kids don't know anything and cause problems for the rest of us. Maybe we should have let the little pinheads kill one another before they get the chance to breed more."

"Oh, Francine, clearly you need a refill. You get mean when you haven't had enough caffeine."

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.