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There they are, below, encrusted between concrete and steel: the mutant strategies of the clever species. Castes like larvae chambers, metamorphoses without wings, cold evolutionary traps glimmering in the metallic fluorescence of metropolitan abysses.

The roar down the runway. A few seconds waiting for the tower’s OK. Then takeoff. In one breath we were at twelve thousand meters. We bucked through air pockets, stomachs churning. Someone handed me a small tray of food that tasted like cellulose and plastic; I couldn’t finish it.

From the porthole I watched the blood-soaked landscape of dusk. The endless sprawl of Madrid’s lights and its millions of inhabitants.
Another example of insectoid humanity: honeycomb, deep termite mound. Complex survival technologies layered inside countless strata of social insects. Urban civilization defying everything: time, nature, life…

There they are down below, encrusted between concrete and steel: the mutant strategies of the intelligent species. Caste subdivisions, metamorphoses, icy evolutionary traps. Anonymous, shadowy bio-social transformations under the metallic fluorescence of metropolitan abysses. Meaningless lives dragging painfully alongside one another. Spectral existences woven into the rotting fabric of necrosis.

Down there, as everywhere else, an endless number of individuals waited in anguish for the beat of black wings: the coming of the emissaries of absolute evil, the glory of the undisputed lord of matter.

New York looked uglier than I remembered,
smothered in an unbreathable haze.
Everything greyer, filthier, coated in thick funereal dust under a sky of hammered lead.
The taxi slid through black unlit wounds and avenues of blinding white.
Giant LED billboards, suspended like idols atop glass-and-concrete towers, preached the usual useless products our civilization can no longer live without.
Wrapped in exhaust, the grand boulevard slowly revealed its fauna: whores and hustlers in leather, latex, silicone, hypnotic multi-ethnic colors of sex.
Buttocks, breasts, thighs on parade.
Broken smiles soaked in alcohol and stimulants. Obscene invitations beneath glacial neon. Faces carved by scalpels into something inhuman, sick, drugged, ageless flesh in chains.

The clients drifted, eyes dull with hopelessness, hunting a urgent biological need. Yet searching for something more: a reason to keep going in a world grown hostile and decayed, a spark to feel alive, to outrun despair.

Only the brief, stolen relief: a spurt of sperm to forget. Just a moment, before the hive hums on.