By John Rogers
An exclusive excerpt from John Rogers' upcoming book, 'Everythingness'
Where were we?
No streetlights, now, and no yellow city glow.
Cold,
crumbling kerbs,
faint glimmer of big moon on the drain cover.
No water running beneath.
Was it something about a rainbow?
Something about a ring?
Something important?
Seems so far away now.
We're lost.
This ground is rough on bare feet.
The sky is inky, the night ongoing.
There is no 3G.
Our claws scrape.
We stop trying the sockets.
Doors of empty houses, locked or swinging free.
Silent doorbells.
We'll stop speaking.
No need for language, now.
The traffic lights are still and peaceful.
Sculptures, artefacts.
We watch them with our new eyes.
We stand still, wondering why the wind stopped.
The air is stale and we struggle for breath.
We crouch, hunker, loll.
Your fur has ash in it.
We'll just live here, in the endless night.
There's no coffee, and we don't know what to do.
We walk.
Nobody else is here.
Your eyes are yellowing.
I remember the sun, but my smile becomes a grimace.
I touch my temples.
They hurt from when the horns broke through.
The wounds are cracked and old.
The skin is flaky and itchy.
The horns are smooth.
The broken horn-skin will become smoother.
Like around nails.
The itching will stop.
I remember putting cream on my old skin.
I snort with laughter.
Those days have gone.
I will dry out like a dead bug.
No walls can save us.
Behold my horns.
Wow.
I growl and look around.
This is fucked.
This petrol station is fucked.
We are so fucked.
Based all over Iceland, John Rogers is the creator of Everythingness, a multimedia art project spanning a book, film, sound, entity, image, place, feeling, dream. He is a travel journalist and the managing editor of The Reykjavík Grapevine.