cavaburd n. a thick fall of snow

It's falling, we're falling. Stars abound us, speaking in morse as we tumble. There's a void but it's uncertain. We might miss, it might reach out. Who knows what is worse.

All the crunchy footsteps — the squeaks and the scrunch, cold enough to make the noise be misspelled with a q — only appear in the immediate memory. Not in vision. This does not calm me as they fade from mind, imprinted only as another ant mosaic of static.

“Five hundred clones?!” I bellowed. Bad move as the speymore headache split my head as a garlic flower. The human resource manager smiled, shark teeth aimed at my hungover jugular. “Non-refundable. We can deliver them in batches of ten, or all at once. Our Amazon promise!”

I stood there as the rain washed away my reflected face, for a brief moment I was indistinguishable from everyone else in the lens of the security feed. If only my feet wouldn't had been so damn cold and damp. Never leave home with bare socks if they promise wet weather.

I've seen a lot. Android abuse, faulty maintenance, aisle wars at the Wal. Nothing was as inhuman as the fire-sale where managers competed in who could off-load workers and ruin the most lives.