Popcorn, J.Bloomfield

Popcorn
By James Bloomfield

I'm working late at the office. The office is on the highest floor of a gargantuan tower block, a tribute to the technological achievement of man. Seven hundred offices and four canteens and a television room and a small cinema all packaged in one towering, phallic, steel monstrosity.
I'm alarmed when a blinding flash lights the office from somewhere outside. The mighty glass windowpanes rattle softly in their frames, buffeted by shock waves from a colossal bomb that has just fallen on the heart of the city.
A flotilla of unmarked black airplanes cruise the night sky, barely discernible.
Many more bombs drop and I press myself against the glass in stunned horror, watching as families of buildings fold into dust. At first I holler down to the people below, futilely attempting to warn them of their doom. I pound on the glass with my fists, weeping and yelling out until I am exhausted and cannot cry any longer.
Eventually I feel drained, numbed, and I watch the tireless patterns of dust storms and infernos, hypnotized. I take the elevator to the ground floor and return soon after with a large bucket of sweet, sickly popcorn and a soft drink from the staff cinema. I bring the Director's plush leather chair into my office and I sit down resignedly to watch the anarchy.
I tune the radio momentarily into an emergency broadcast that brings news of a synchronized attack on no less than two hundred major cities worldwide. Everybody knows it is the end of the civilized world but nobody knows who is flying the unmarked black planes.
The frequency of the intense bombing never diminishes and by dawn the entire city is a flattened wasteland.
My building alone never falls.