We can't stay here anymore - SCP Foundation

My identity is getting eaten alive by consumerism.

Once the summer starts, they materialize, seemingly out of thin air, in the walkways of oncoming ships, seated in the recently landed planes, standing in the subway trains inbetween stations. And thus, our upside-down city gets invaded by the ghosts from other, much richer universes.

Their faces and bodies chiseled, made all from a paste, wearing uniform clothes that profess their love for Salvador Dalí, anolecraB and MILFs. They fall from Orchard, Neoamerica and A67-Cipangu. Smiles plastered on their faces as they shove me out of the way. The smell of sunscreen and burned skin impregnates the air wherever they walk.

They are here for our beaches full of dead jellyfish, the rented piss we call beer, our "beautiful" women forced to work deadend jobs and the nonstop partying that killed all our trees, and the sights of unfinished plastic monuments. All of these simulacra of a forgotten present that may have been at some point, but is now recreated ad nauseam by an unseen force to pander to the misshapen image in the visitors’ minds.

This dead city bends to their will, new Starbucks, Mangos and Five Guys pop up in corners, repurposing old bakeries and shoemakers for some unknown end. A new boulevard opened yesterday to make way for the newest invention, never before seen in my upside down city. Cars now run where the most beautiful buildings in the city used to be.

I woke up today, having survived another night between the subsumed masses that lost their right to choose to not replicate the tourist mindset. Their minds asleep, their bodies fed on sangria, rice and bubble tea with cartoony faces plastered on the cup. To exist that way is the only way to not be hunted down by the restaurant owners and fed to the oncoming visitors. On the screens of the metro, a hundred photos of the best places to visit, all of them buried in the molten plastic of a million flip flops. An empty face appears in their midst, the mayor, its promises of dealing with the neverending madness long forgotten, mouths a cry for help while it wishes us a beautiful and productive day.

Coming out of the metro is hard with every guiri trying to enter without letting you get out. They push and pull and take photos. Stumbling out, I try to not step on the sleeping vagrants that flood the street 一 the only genuine act of kindness that remains.

The mayor's words reverberate through the art nouveau buildings full of billboards for past concerts. It is true that we are being eaten alive, but it is thanks to them that we survive. The mass forms crowds in the bars and the stores, they spare some pennies, thrown over their shoulders. They prey on us, and paradoxically it is what feeds us. We are locked in a parasitic battle for survival of cosmic proportions. And my city is losing.

The walkways are choked by tourists who all go to the same old eight spires that stick out in the distance. Under the ruckus caused by a pickpocket stealing a handbag, I hear anolecraB holding its breath. The horrors of this summer will be over soon, but they will return next year.

Many try to escape. Replicating somehow the same patterns that bring the foreigners here, they go out in search of grass that’s green, and not fed on the blood of those who fell short in their jump into the pool. They disappear, with nothing but their clothes, and they go somewhere else, to bother someone else.

You did that, years ago. After eating a tangerine from a tree poisoned by one too many tourists drunkenly pissing on it, you went out looking for a place where it still rained. I'm not as smart, or as crafty as you ever were.

I will stay here until I fall to the void under our feet.