Everyone wears a mask.

The day outside, when it deigns to show itself through the brick and steel is sullen and gray. We turn our head to the closest thing we can find to the sun and finding it insufficient, turn away like a rubberneckers at a highway smash. The telegraph poles drift by like family line of gallows trees and the streetlights hang down like strange rotten fruit.

Everyone wears a mask.

Little piggy eyes peak out from behind low slung hoods. A brat, grey skinned and wide eyed, pulls against his mother, desperate for stimulus. She does not look down. The air is hot and clammy, fetid from the recycling of so many iterations until the oxygenation is perfunctory. The moisture presses itself against the window like a dirty little boy with his nose against the glass. Muddy feet tramp in and out of the doors but no-one ever really gets on or off. It’s just an exchange of ambulant pleasantries, the whole organism never growing or receding.

They drink from plastic bottles, cognisant of the tiny particles running down them into their bloodstream to hack at their DNA. One of them coughs and we all turn to stare the pariah back into submission. He sits down. He is old and frail. He will not last long here. Allergies and phobias swarm upon his body and mind until one day they will consume him and he will fall and fail to get back up. Nobody speaks. Nobody laughs. We all hold our breath waiting for it to be over. But it’s never over.

Everyone wears a mask.